Hitmaka Says His Parents Were Multi-Millionaires — He Sold Crack Anyway To Live The Rap Life
Hitmaka did not have to be in the streets. By his own telling, he chose it.
In a new interview on Zeus Network, the producer and artist — who first broke through as Yung Berg — opened up about his upbringing, and it was not the struggle story rap usually sells. Asked about his parents, Hitmaka said it plain: “My parents was multi-millionaires, bro. But I wanted to go and be, like, a bad kid and sell crack.”
He is clear the choice was his. “I could have been like a rich kid in a Range Rover at 16 with a permit,” he said. Instead, he says he loved the music so much that he went to the hood selling crack — because, in his words, you have to “live your raps.” On the clip, he compares the life he was chasing to Franklin Saint, the fictional kingpin from Snowfall.
Hitmaka frames the whole story as a phase he is lucky to have survived. “By the grace of God, I’m here,” he said, pointing to over 20 years in the game.
The interview also flashes back to his come-up — hanging around the Def Jam building in the DMX era, writing songs — and to his time working with Lil Wayne in Atlanta back in the Hot Boys era, around records he was developing with Pleasure P of Pretty Ricky. His respect for Wayne is total: “He just went flame to all my records, man. Wayne is one of the greatest of all time.”
It is a rare admission in a culture that usually runs the story the other way — the star who had no choice. Hitmaka says he had every choice, and picked the block anyway, just to make the music feel real.
Source: Zeus Network interview with Hitmaka, clip via KDEENTHEGREAT. All quotes are Hitmaka’s own account of his life, as told in the interview.
So what do you think — a rich kid choosing the streets to live his raps: is that real dedication to the craft, or just a bad kid with a safety net?
