“The idea that rap is the only thing people can do as rappers and DJs is false,” Arnold says.įrom the Hieroglyphics running their own record label in 1995 and curating a yearly, community showcase for other artists, to the Coup’s Boots Riley becoming a renowned screenwriter and director in recent years, there is no shortage of local rappers, DJs, and producers who have made an indelible impact on the region’s culture with their outside ventures.īut it’s with food and drinks that Bay Area hip-hop has delivered its best work. The same can be said for a young Master P, who before making his name in New Orleans with No Limit Records-one of the most successful labels of the ’90s and ’00s-spent his formative years in Richmond operating his first business: No Limit Record Shop. Look at F.A.B with Dope Era, some of the hottest gear in the streets right now.” It could be Pam the Funkstress formerly owning her restaurant and catering business, Piccadilly’s. “It could be Berner being a partner in Cookies. “As time went on, rappers and performers looked at things other than just the music as a form of economic sustainability,” Arnold says. The East Oakland rapper famously self-ignited his career by selling his music from the trunk of his vehicle, pioneering popular phrases like “born to mack” and “out the trunk”-terms that are still used in hip-hop to indicate one’s DIY ambitions. It all started there.” In Arnold’s view, Too $hort may have been rap’s earliest player to showcase his entrepreneurial autonomy. “Going back to Too $hort and Freddy B in 1983 selling tapes on the bus line with no record label. “Hustling is a huge part of the Bay Area rap aesthetic,” says hip-hop journalist Eric Arnold. In today’s globally competitive and hyper-inflated Bay Area market, you need to be able to maneuver multiple services in order to get ahead-especially in light of reports that saddle the region with the notorious title of “most expensive place to live in the U.S.” For the true hustler, though, that high cost of living has simply inspired alternative forms of income. It’s a soil that has cultivated a deep community of “ultimate hustlers”-rappers, activists, educators, poets, BART dancers, tech developers, revolutionaries, journalists, immigrants and other expressionists-who, going back to the Gold Rush of 1849, have had to embody a level of risk taking, multifaceted commerce and grit in order to thrive. There is arguably no place that demands more hustle than the Bay Area. They’re part of a long legacy of entrepreneurialism in the Northern California rap scene.
(Darius Riley | HOUR VOYSES)īut 40 and his team aren’t the only cooks in the kitchen. Two of Goon With The Spoon's prepackaged burritos, spotted at a liquor store in Vallejo. In the case of Goon With The Spoon, that fresh remix includes removing the pork casing from his sausages and introducing untraditional sausage flavors, such as Philly cheesesteak and teriyaki pineapple chicken. He’s just doing the same thing but in the food market.” “It’s pushing the envelope, just like how he brings a different style to the rap game. “ always takes the best of what he likes, then adds something unique to the table,” says Droop-E, E-40’s son, who is a rapper himself and consults on his dad’s business operations. As he says on “Function,” this Ballatician could “sell the White House black paint.” Dot, the show’s host, told June.īy this standard, how could anyone not crown E-40 as the preeminent entrepreneur in the Hall of Game?įrom purveying his own brand of wines, tequilas, cervezas, cocktails and malt liquor to dishing out lumpia to running his own record label, Sick Wid’ It, and releasing so many slappers in a lifetime that we have all lost count ( he once put out three albums in one day ), no one better represents the art of calculated effort and long-term investment than Charlie Hustle himself. “When I think of an ultimate hustler, I think of a person who’s been able to leverage their music to outside ventures,” B. In a recent interview with Complex Brackets, June-who co-owns Honeybear Boba and “does numbers” with his music-credited E-40 as “the ultimate hustler.” In a genre of music that has produced figures like Jay-Z, Bun B, Sean Combs, Suge Knight, Gucci Mane, Nipsey Hussle, Nicki Minaj and countless other business savants, E-40 being crowned “the ultimate” speaks volumes. If you don’t believe me, ask another certified Bay Area tycoon: San Francisco rapper Larry June. Here’s no other rapper in the history of hustling who can serve you more flavors than E-40.