Pornographic magazines like Club International are laid out on the coffee table alongside hip-hop periodicals The Source andBlaze. Assorted friends lounge about, ironing shirts, watching TV, and playing pool on a custom-built table. A young woman in a Tshirt and black panties saunters from a bedroom, surveys the scene, and turns around. When asked about her, Trick responds, "She an animal. She'll do me, you, my whole crew." Those are lyrics from his 1999 song "Suckin' Fuckin'." For this rapper, there appears to be no distinction between music and life.
Among those present is Sparky, who was released that morning from Dade Correctional Institute after a three-year sentence. Trick drove his oil slick-black Volvo 2000 to spirit him home. "He my boy. He did his time straight. Didn't snitch on no one," Trick says proudly while his friend looks around, wary, as if adjusting to his newfound freedom. Sparky declines to identify the reason for his incarceration. "It's better if I don't talk about that," he says politely.
Meanwhile Trick is rolling what he calls a "boonk," a Phillies cigar leaf wrapped around cocaine-laced marijuana. Trick takes the first hit, then says the obvious: "I don't believe drugs is necessarily bad." He is, if nothing else, blunt. In accordance with his "keeping it real" credo, Trick uses no artifice; he hides nothing.
The rapper finished his last stint behind bars in early 1995. He's been convicted of everything from cocaine trafficking to assault since 1989 and has spent more than four years locked up. Even today he keeps jailhouse culture alive in his songs, in the friends he rolls with, even in the way he spends his days. He rises at dawn, as if he's still on remote control to queue up for prison breakfast. Before sitting for an interview, he walks into the kitchen and cracks open a bottle of Sprite. Almost instinctively he pours a drop into the sink. A small homage, he says, to dead homies.
"A lot of rappers talk about these things but they haven't lived it, or maybe they aren't living it now," says Charisse Nikole, a writer at the hip-hop magazine Blaze. "To a certain extent, Trick is still living it. His image is real. It's really scary. He's like what, 23 or 24? When you look in his eyes, you can tell he's seen stuff beyond his years."
You ain't no nann nigga,
that'll represent like me,
who'll say some shit like me,
one who'll lay the dick like me,
bitch, you'n no nann nigga....
-- from "Nann Nigga"
When Trick's song "Nann Nigga" came out this past February, it steadily grew in popularity until it reached the No. 4 spot on Billboard magazine's rap charts. The song was so filthy and raw that it was hard to clean up for radio. Yet with the help of Atlantic Records, which signed on as distributor for www.thug.com, the sanitized version received massive airplay. Fans flocked to the stores. Currently between 800,000 and 900,000 albums have been sold, and the record will likely go platinum by fall. The song's success added nann, a Southern black superlative that roughly means "no one else," to the national lexicon. It also created a huge following for unrepentant thug Trick Daddy. And the rapper's success is inextricably linked to his Miami record label, Slip 'N Slide Records.
While Trick dominates the present, Slip 'N Slide's 28-year-old founder and president, Ted Lucas, is betting that another Liberty City native, 24-year-old Katrina Taylor, better known as Trina, will command the future. She gave such an explosive solo on "Nann," wielding her sexuality like a Tec9, that Lucas has signed her to an album, which is expected out this fall.
But this tale is not about a record executive who found talent in his back yard. Trick, Ted, and Trina's relationship is based on more than business. They were friends back when their futures were far less certain. The landscape of their music, where dogs tote AKs and 'hos ride their men until the condom breaks, is littered with inner-city drama of a biographical nature. Yet when they met, it must have seemed inconceivable that these three, who hail from one of the hardest-core urban environments in the United States, would parlay their friendship into a million-dollar business relationship.
If it wasn't for the Hennessy,
and thug livin' from my enemy,
my brotha' still be alive and a part of me.
So I say a prayer for that player,
and I tote my fire everywhere.
... That's how we livin' though,
dead and gone before we 24....
-- from "For the Thugs"
Trick, Trina, and Ted owe their friendship to Trick's older half brother, Derek Harris, better known as Hollywood. Until he was killed five years ago, Hollywood was a street-savvy heartbreaker, a handsome man of medium height with beautiful eyes. Trina dated him for about two years, starting when she was a senior at Miami Northwestern High School. "He was a nice person," Trina says, "a quiet person."
Trina's mother, Vernesa Taylor, is more effusive. "Oh, he was a sweetheart. He'd give you the shirt off his back. He was adorable, the sweetest guy. Just very caring."
"Hollywood, he was the type of person he would give you his heart," Lucas says. "Everybody knew that Hollywood was more the type of person that would help you than hurt you."
On the night of June 22, 1994, Hollywood sat in the front seat of a parked Buick on NW 25th Avenue and 152nd Street with his friend Walter Betterson. Sometime after midnight a gunman wielding an AR15 assault rifle emptied a clip through the windshield, killing both men. Hollywood was 23 years old at the time. Because police are still investigating the shooting, few details are available. Even Trick is still in the dark. "I don't really know what happened that night," he says. Police suspect the case may be linked to several homicides committed by members of the Booby Boys drug gang.
His death became a shared epiphany for the three friends.
"That shit done tore me up; I loved him more than anything," recounts Trick, who was still serving time for cocaine trafficking. "A lot of people had to open they eyes after that. Me too. I was like, 'I'm a grown man, I can't be doing this shit no more.'" When he left prison, Trick vowed that he would not return.
"[Hollywood's murder] was definitely a wake-up call," remembers Lucas, who was limping back to financial equilibrium after a bold but flawed plan to promote a Miami Arena concert.
Trina was nothing more than a schoolgirl whose future plans included a vague notion of someday becoming a hairdresser. Her boyfriend's murder delivered a new awareness of her world's danger. "I was young, and that had a big impact on me," she recalls. "Nothing like that had happened to me before. I mean you're close to someone today, and tomorrow they're gone."
The experience filtered into Trick's music: He frequently mentions Hollywood in songs. But as with much street rap, while Trick may lament his losses, he never criticizes or rails against the violence that claimed his brother's life. Such stoicism is characteristic of the music that is alternately called "thug rap" or "street rap."
Since Lucas founded Slip 'N Slide records in 1993, its 11 employees have stayed close to the streets. Thug culture permeates the record label's offices. Lucas, a devout Baptist who regularly praises Jesus for his company's success, keeps two live .45-caliber bullets on his desk "just to let 'em know I mean business."
To keep that connection fresh, Lucas assembled the Red Eye Street Team, a kind of reconnaissance group of young men who prowl the hip-hop scene at night, going to clubs and neighborhood hangouts to scout talent and stay in touch with the community's musical tastes.
Trick's prison-filled past gives him credibility among rap fans. And he's not the only Slip 'N Slide artist with such a pedigree. Rapper Buddy Roe, real name Marlon Hanna, aborted his first album midproduction in 1997 after pleading guilty to drug-trafficking charges in federal court.
A third South Florida rapper has achieved popularity recently. JT Money, Miami born and bred, made it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts this past April with his latest single "Who Dat?" from his album Pimpin' on Wax. He moved to Atlanta several years ago to be closer to that city's bustling hip-hop industry, but he still claims South Florida roots. Trick and Money know each other well. Both say their current success is good for the hometown. "Yeah, Trick my homeboy, he tight. I think he complements what I do," Money said in a brief phone interview from Atlanta while heading to the airport. "This is all for the home team."
"He my dog. We represent the crib," Trick agrees. "JT was on my first CD." There's no fear that Trick will leave for the glitter of other cities, though. At least for now, MIA, as he calls Miami in his songs, has seduced him with its beauty and danger. "I can't go nowhere else. They got laws in other cities where you can't buy liquor on Sundays. And then it be cold in most other cities."
This is the first time South Florida artists have reached the zenith of the hip-hop scene since 2 Live Crew outraged the nation with its booty-shaking music a decade ago. But make no mistake, Trick Daddy is no booty shaker. He doesn't even consider himself a purveyor of rap. "I ain't no rapper. Rappers do that gay shit," he mocks. "They talk about all their jewelry, money. They talk about shit they don't do, or say don't do stuff that they do." His music, on the other hand, is truthful, he claims, 90 percent autobiographical. (The title of his first album is Based on a True Story.) Yet sometimes his brand of truth is a hard sell.
See back in the day,
there wasn't no AIDs,
there wasn't no AKs,
more afros and braids
Wasn't nothing for a boy to get a straight fade
But not no more, niggas done twist up the fro,
let 'em lock and grow,
quick to go to gun play bout that flow
-- from "Back in the Days"
Trick grew up as the second-oldest child in a household of 11 brothers and sisters in Liberty City's Pork 'n Beans projects, officially called the Liberty Square housing development. "I always been getting into trouble, ever since I was a shorty," he says. "Fights? Every kid in the project fight. I used to get in two fights a day -- one in the morning and one in the evening." He attended Holmes Elementary in Liberty City in the '80s. The place "was thugged out from day one," he recalls. After class he and his friends drummed up mischief; they tossed firecrackers into people's mailboxes and stayed out late at impromptu block parties. He claims to have thought little about the future. "I just wanted to be rich. It didn't really matter how."
At age 13 he arrived late to class one day, and the teacher refused to let him in. Trick departed, returned with an iron pipe, and went after her, according to court papers. A school monitor had to restrain him. After the incident he was sent to a youth detention facility. "Maurice appears not to be remorseful, but seems to be very upset that he was caught," a counselor noted in the court records.
The next year, police charged Trick with auto theft, and he was again incarcerated. The year after that, he was charged with aggravated assault and was again turned over to authorities. After his release his mother sent him to live with his father, Charles Young.
That's where the wild child met his half brother, Hollywood, who was three and a half years his senior. The older sibling made an impression and became a strong influence. Hollywood sneaked Trick into clubs and brought him along to parties. "We just chilled," Trick says. "We kept it real."
At that point Trick says he was just a thug figuring out how to make a buck. It never entered his mind to find a legitimate job. "You mean like flipping burgers?" he asks incredulously.
On April 3, 1991, 16-year-old Maurice Young ran a stop sign at SW 103rd Avenue and 149th Street, right in front of a Metro-Dade police cruiser. When the cop pulled over Young's car, he found three kilos of cocaine and a 9 mm Walther PPK semiautomatic handgun behind the driver's seat.
By that time neither the judicial system nor Trick's father had much sympathy left. According to court documents: "The defendant's father, Charles Young, stated he has given up on Maurice. He no longer wants him living in his house, nor does he want anything to do with Maurice. Young failed to respond to requests for follow-up interviews."
Trick was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to armed trafficking with intent to distribute cocaine. On May 3, 1991, a judge sentenced him to four years in prison. He served one year behind bars and was released on probation in March 1992. A month later he violated the terms of his release when he and a friend fought with a man named Harold Tinker. A police report states that Trick pulled a gun from his car and fired into the air. Trick says he took the gun from Tinker. Nevertheless he was returned to the slammer for more than two years.
It was while stewing behind bars that he started writing lyrics, mostly about his life. "In prison there's nothing else to do," he recalls. "You ain't got nothing but the walls. If you don't make noise, there ain't gonna be noise." He wrote about his brother's death and about friends who dealt drugs, then went to jail. On "They Don't Live Long," from True Story, he explains the origins of his early life of crime: "I'm taking care of mama now/See papa was a rolling stone/ Left mama alone/She raised us on her own." Later in the song he shouts out, "[I] can't forget my brother Hollywood." The majority of his lyrics were neither boastful nor apologetic. And like much rap music, the themes didn't extend much beyond the futility of street life.
By simply testifying to the destruction he had seen, inflicted, or suffered, it seemed that Trick had achieved resolution. The subject matter is prison and death. "In my songs I'm saying thugs don't live that long. Don't do it if you're not willing to accept the consequences, and there are consequences. This life costs dollars and time. It even can cost your life."
Trick decided his stuff was good. So he reached out to the one guy he knew who was associated with the music industry: Ted Lucas.
See, marijuana got me coping with my problems
And Hennessy got me hoping I can solve 'em
My baby mama full of drama
Trying to scar me
I'm being like my sorry-ass father
I try harder
-- From "Hold On"
"When Trick was in prison, he was sending me these letters saying he wanted to rap. He sent me a notebook about 12 inches thick with songs, songs, and more songs. Probably about 400 songs in that one notebook," Lucas recalls while sitting in a rough-hewn pine booth in the Roadhouse Grill on Biscayne Boulevard. As the budding rock and R&B mogul tears into his barbecued chicken sandwich, Clint Black croons a ballad from the jukebox. Lucas remembers talking with Trick after the rapper's release from prison in 1994. He had reservations. "I was like, 'I would love to sign you to my record company, but you crazy. You going to end up going back to prison.'"
Although Lucas has no record, he knows a thing or two about criminals. While growing up in Carol City, he explains, his father was behind bars most of the time. He remembers entering jailhouse waiting rooms as a child and crying because he felt so claustrophobic. "Yeah, my dad was in prison all my elementary years," he recounts. "He was in for robbery, attempted murder, that kind of stuff. Everybody told me, 'You're going to be crazy, just like your dad.' They had me thinking I was the baddest kid and I was going to jail too." So he began to prepare. "They had me thinking, 'All right, if I'm going to jail, I'm going to be the baddest nigger there.'"
He credits his grandmother, Earthel Tyler Parks, for helping him steer clear of the authorities. "I kept him going to church is all," she comments. "He wasn't too bad. He didn't get in trouble with the police." That was largely because of football, which absorbed much of his energy. He played free safety and quarterback at American High School in Hialeah, then won a scholarship to Chaminade Madonna College Preparatory School in Hollywood. He believed he was talented enough to eventually play with the pros. But he spent less time with the books than he did with the pigskin, and by his senior year, it was unclear whether he'd have the grades to qualify for even a mediocre college.
When it came time for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, he took a shortcut; that is, he cheated. With the aid of four well-placed girlfriends, who he says moved body parts to indicate letters on the multiple-choice exam, Lucas squeaked out a decent score.
As a result Ranger College, a two-year school in Ranger, Texas, accepted him. His plan was to transfer to a Florida university, but he didn't stay long enough for that. The summer before his first year, Lucas met Hollywood. The two hit it off. When Lucas arrived home for winter break, he went out with Hollywood one night to Strawberry's Too, a now-defunct nightclub in Hialeah owned by the daddy of Miami rap, Luther Campbell. "We had a whole lot of fun," Lucas recalls. Hollywood picked up the tab. "After that everything just changed for me. I was beginning to see the one, two, threes of life."
Lucas delayed his return to college. His grandmother and mother became nervous. The football coach called to check on him. Then Lucas took off. "You could say I ran away," he says. "I knew I didn't want to go back [to college], so I just left town."
His grandmother didn't hear much from him during that time. "I guess he didn't want his grandma to know what he was up to. But he came back," she says.
Lucas says he traveled on an illegal gambling circuit through Georgia and South Carolina. "Just like any normal black kid in America trying to make something happen, what does he do? Well, that's what I did," he offers. "I'm a child of God, but I'm not perfect."
In 1992 he returned home with money. After giving some to his mother and grandmother ("Yes, that's right, he did," Earthel Parks recalls), he became interested in promoting concerts at clubs. He began by booking artists at discos around town and turning a small profit from ticket sales. But soon, he says, he started hiring up-and-coming artists like R&B singer R. Kelly to play at the (now closed) Studio 183 and other clubs. A year later Lucas took on a bigger project. Along with friends who ran a music promotion company called DDS Productions, Lucas arranged a Miami Arena concert featuring the groups Levert, Silk, HTown, and R. Kelly. It flopped. Lucas estimates he and DDS lost about $100,000. The budding impresario was nearly wiped out. "It was just too big," he admits. "I wasn't ready for it. Plus the timing was wrong. It rained that day. It was back-to-school time. People needed clothes, they didn't want to spend no money on a concert."
He learned another lesson from the experience. Although the promoters suffered a loss, the musicians were paid. "I saw how much I was giving these groups and not making any money myself. So I thought, man, I can get my own group, start my own record company." In 1993 he did just that. With seed money from friends (he declined to give the dollar amount or source), he started Slip 'N Slide Records.
But his learning curve continued on its downward arc. The first group he signed was a trio of auto-body shop employees who harmonized as they worked. "They sounded better in the car shop than in the studio," he muses.
Then came some good fortune that resulted, at least indirectly, from ex-2 Live Crew frontman Luther Campbell's bad luck. Campbell, who had his own record label, filed for bankruptcy in 1994 after an artist sued him for unpaid royalties. Several Campbell employees, knowledgeable veterans like public-relations specialist Debbie Bennett, took jobs at Slip 'N Slide. "Ted Lucas would be nothing without his staff," Lucas says gravely.
Lucas signed a rap duo called Tre+6, and the new Slip 'N Slide team went into action, producing and promoting the group's CD. According to Lucas about 50,000 albums were sold.
By then Trick was free and vowing to go straight. Between prison stints he had won a rap contest at another Luther Campbell club that closed, Pac Jam. Campbell didn't have the time or money to sign the young rapper, so Lucas stepped in, inking a five-year contract to produce Trick Daddy Dollars, as the artist was then called. In 1997 Slip 'N Slide released Trick's first album, Based on a True Story. It sold between 100,000 and 200,000 copies with the help of a medium-size distribution company called Warlock, which pushed it in stores.
It began to look as though Trick and Lucas might make a career in the music business.
You'n no nann ho
that'll keep it wet like me,
make you come back to back like me,
lick a nigga's nut sack like me
You'n no nann ho, that'll ride the dick on a dime,
who love to fuck all the time,
one who's pussy's fatter'n mine,
you'n no nann ho
-- Trina's verse on "Nann Nigga"
For a video shoot of Trick's song "Suckin' Fuckin'," Slip 'N Slide has rented an opulent white mansion in Coconut Grove. The house sports 1980s design touches like a white marble floor and a Lucite banister that wraps around a spiral staircase -- cocaine-baron stuff. In fact it was used for a scene in the 1983 movie Scarface, which depicted the life and death of a Cuban drug dealer in Miami. Trina has a bit part in the video. She opens a scene on the phone with Trick, inviting him to a party. She's dressed in a white bikini and has a delicate white feather boa draped over her shoulders. If her acting seems slightly stilted, she can be forgiven. In a year she's risen from obscurity to the threshold of fame. "Everywhere she goes, people are just raving about her," Trina's mother says. "We were at the Bath and Bodyworks in the mall the other day, and the cashier was like, 'Are you the Trina?'"
The forceful personality that came out on "Nann" and made Trina such a hit originated in her grandmother's home at NW 66th Street and 15th Avenue in Liberty City. It was a household filled with forceful women: her grandmother, mother, and three aunts. She did not know her father while growing up. She was encouraged to be forthright. "It would be expected for me to say what was on my mind," Trina declares.
"She has a very strong personality," her mother says. "She was always, like, the leader. We called her Li'l Momma because she was always taking care of people." And, more to the point, she was a sharp talker. "Yeah, she always had the slick mouth," her mom adds. "She always the one who can answer you right back."
Compared with the childhood memories of Lucas and Trick, Trina's recollections are downright bucolic. She recounts games of skip-rope and hopscotch in the street outside her home. On weekends there were cookouts in Morningside Park and trips with the family to Haulover Beach. She attended Charles Drew Middle School with Trick. "He was a little more on the wild side," she recalls. "We didn't hang out that much. But we were friendly."
At Miami Northwestern High School she was a majorette. During her senior year, she went to a club one night where a friend introduced her to Hollywood. The 21-year-old gave her his pager number. After they started dating, he would take her dancing at hip-hop clubs such as Paradise, Strawberry's Too, and Luke's Miami Beach. She never entertained the notion of performing.
After graduating she took an office job at United Parcel Service and worked as a telemarketer for AT&T. Meanwhile her mother enrolled in cosmetology school, prompting Trina to consider a career as a beautician.
At that time Hollywood and Lucas were discussing the possibility of promoting music together. Lucas had just started Slip 'N Slide; Hollywood and Trina liked to visit the new studio. Lucas even invited Trina to do some background talking on a recording by one of his first groups, Tre+6.
Lucas began hanging around Trina's close-knit family. "Ted and Hollywood would stop by all the time," Vernesa Taylor recalls. Trick would even call from prison, she remembers. "He used to brag on the phone about how he was going to rap and write songs. He'd say, 'They don't believe me, but I'm going to do it.' And I told him to keep on trying," Taylor says.
Then Hollywood was murdered. "It showed me how easy it is to die," Ted Lucas says. "Everybody doesn't get to live to 30 or 40 years old. It made me closer to God."
Trick admits it was his brother's death that gave him the motivation to stay out of prison for good. Lucas helped pay to transport Trick from prison to Miami so that he could attend Hollywood's funeral.
In the years that ensued, Trick and Lucas stayed close to Trina. "When Hollywood died, we tried to comfort her," Lucas says. "We never let go; she was always part of the family. Trina's like a little sister to me and Trick."
"[Trina] took it pretty hard. She was devastated," Vernesa Taylor comments. After the shooting the young girl spent a lot of time in her room listening to Whitney Houston songs and writing in her notebook, her mother recounts. "I told her, 'Trina, you don't need to be listening to this all the time. It will keep you sad. Hollywood would want you to carry on.'"
Trina talked about that period reluctantly while eating fried snapper at the East Coast Fisheries restaurant on the Miami River. Hollywood's death was "a shock," was all she said. Trina dropped her plans to be a hairdresser. In 1997 she took a course in real-estate sales.
In 1998 Trick approached her with some lyrics. The song, Trina explains, was intended as a comical riff between a man and a woman. To make it work, Trick needed a woman who could spit words like bullets. He says he immediately considered Trina despite her lack of experience. "She bad, she off the chain," he says.
Lucas agrees. "Nobody else talks like Trina. Nobody else has a slicker mouth than Trina. She was a rapper already and just didn't know it."
Trina listened to a rough tape of "Nann" that Trick had recorded. "We thought it was just comical," she says. "There wasn't nothing to be offended at. That's stuff that happens every day. You hear it, you see it, you are used to it. It was just funny."
The verse that Trina wrote didn't disappoint. The song begins when Trick sends a friend to get Trina's number at a club. Trina declines, saying, "Hell no, I don't wanna holler at no motherfucking Trick/ Over there all smelling like boonk and shit." Trick then attacks her hubris: "You ain't no nann nigga," meaning: Who do you think you are? Then he lists his virtues. She responds, "Who this Trick think he is?/He got me fucked up with someone else." The song is funny. It's also scary. If this passes for flirting, full-fledged love could be lethal.
Trina explains she wrote her verse from "a mix of the life I've lived and the people I've been around. One line is someone I know. Another line is something I saw." She cautions that it is not autobiographical.
Lucas was impressed with the product. "After we did the recording, I was like, 'Damn, we got a star in you; you could put your own album out,'" Lucas says.
When it comes to the song's overtly sexual nature, Lucas is matter-of-fact. "Look, if we don't say it, somebody else will. She's just keeping it real with what's going on every day in life."
Or, as Trina says: "People just want to be entertained."
As Lucas listened to other tracks from Trick's second album, www.thug.com, he became increasingly excited. He knew the darkly melodious grooves and Trick's unique percussive delivery would be popular. The big push came during this past January's Super Bowl, when the national press and entertainers such as Puff Daddy and Cher were in South Florida. "That weekend everybody worked," Lucas says. The whole Slip 'N Slide family was out there." They carried placards publicizing the album and pushed "Nann" at clubs all over MiamiDade.
Lucas was trying to attract the attention of a big record company in order to ink a distribution deal. Until then Slip 'N Slide had spent relatively little on things like manufacturing CDs and cassettes. An arrangement with a powerhouse like Sony or Universal would mean national promotion and sales.
The response, Lucas says, was swift. The big boys started calling almost immediately. "Everybody wanted me. I couldn't even sleep. My phone was ringing at three and four o'clock in the morning," he boasts. He adds that recording companies flew him to New York and Los Angeles. They put him up in company apartments and took him out for lavish seafood dinners. Eventually he signed with Atlantic Records. "People came with more money than Atlantic, but with Atlantic we got control to do what we want to do," Lucas comments. "Other people wanted control over us." Lucas declines to give the dollar value of the contract.
Michael Caren is the senior director of A&R (artists and repertoire) for Atlantic Records. He recalls hearing www.thug.com, then checking out Slip 'N Slide's past efforts. "We looked at what Ted Lucas and Slip 'N Slide had been able to achieve in the past. They were true entrepreneurs, using ingenious marketing and promotion efforts as well as understanding the demand of the streets."
With Atlantic behind them, Trick's videos started appearing on MTV. Radio stations across the nation began playing "Nann Nigga." By March "Nann" was the No. 5 single on the Billboard rap charts. By June it was No. 4.
Atlantic will also promote Trina's CD All You Need to Know, due out October 26. In addition Slip 'N Slide R&B artist JShin, whose album My Soul, My Life is scheduled for release October 19, has an Atlantic contract. Caren says his company has high expectations for both artists. "The personality that Trina put in ["Nann"] got so much attention. We see just as much potential in her as in Lil' Kim, who's also with Atlantic," the executive says, referring to a successful female rapper also known for her bawdy lyrics. "And JShin's album we expect will be an across-the-board hit."
Lucas has ambitious plans. He wants to make movies and run studios. He wants to be a brand name. "I love Miami. I'd do anything for Miami," he comments. "I want Slip 'N Slide Records to be like the way the Dolphins represent Miami in football, or the Heat in basketball. I want this thing to be bigger than Gloria Estefan. That's what the plans are, and if I can help someone out of the 'hood in the process, that's what I want to do."
RELATED STORIES
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"Hip-Hop Goes Back to the Streets," By Hobey Echlin, June 3
RELATED LINKS
Commercial site with Trick Daddy sound samples
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