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ShowTime of Hunid Racks I hear about your drinks everywhere. What else do you have coming out? I just closed a deal and I will have my own Hunid Racks Cigarillos. This is going to be one of the biggest deals that I pulled off to the day. Even bigger than the drink? Bigger than the drink! We are going to be in more spots. We already got nationwide distribution on the deal. It is going to be real big for the company. Will rappers endorse the cigarillos too? Right now I’m talking to Young Jeezy, Lil’ Wayne, Snoop, Tha Dog Pound, E-40, Too Short, Messy, Yukmouth, Keak Da Sneak, Mob Figaz and Jadakiss. Everyone will have their personal flavor. We will start off with about eight to ten flavors and each rapper will endorse their personal flavor. They will have a percentage of the sales of their personal flavor. I got my mind on making the money and I ain’t just trying to hit nobody over the head. This is going to be one of the biggest deals that I do and everybody will eat off of this. How did you start Hunid Racks? The concept of Hunid Racks came from when I was a young guy coming up in the neighborhood and the ultimate goal was to save $100,000. I took my dream to save $100,000 and put it into reality. If I could take 100 racks and put it where people could understand it! As a young businessman every time I got a thousand dollars I wrapped a rubber band around it and put it under the carpet. That rubber band in my logo represents every thousand dollars that I saved. I knew if I could wrap a rubber band around a thousand dollars one hundred times then I would have $100,000. That is where the whole concept came from. How long did it take you to save up $100,000? It took me about two or three years. It was a smart move because we all grew up in the same environment as young Black men. Everyone from the hood is trying to make it out the hood, and the only way we know to make it out is to sell drugs. If you look at your peers and see them driving fancy cars you try to elevate your game. But I saw the other businessmen in the neighborhood, the ones who owned the local bakeries or cleaners or janitorial services. Of course everyone glorified the ballers, but we also glorified the Black men that had businesses in my neighborhood. I wanted to be like the ones who had those businesses. How is the company doing right now? Right now we are doing really good. We started off with the original Hunid Racks, and we moved to the Mac Dre Feelin’ Myself drink. We did a direct deal with Mac Dre’s mom. We are also going to drop a Tupac can; we did a deal directly with Afeni Shakur. You pay homage to fallen soldiers as well as current legends. Being from the independent Rap game and from the Bay I understand there are certain artists that get a lot of respect like C-Bo, Yukmouth, Messy Marv, Thizz Nation and Mob Figaz. What I did was I took those artists and incorporated with the drink. The combination was a big hit. How would you describe the flavor of your original drink? Hunid Racks is a smooth tasting drink. It will give you a push. It has a fruity type of taste. We got fruit flavors without a medicine type of taste. They can mix with any type of drink out there. They mix good with Henny, Remy, Grey Goose and a lot of different things. My goal is to make Hunid Racks the number one Black energy drink. What were you doing before Hunid Racks? I owned a couple record shops. My record shops are Frisco Street Show, Oakland Street Show, and Vallejo Street Show. I also used to own Urban Life Distribution. My first store was called “Mo’ Music For the People” and that was back in 1985. I have been in the business since 1985 and I used to deal with Solar Music Group and St. Charles and all them. I broke every muthafuckin’ record that you could think of in the Bay, from E-40’s first album to the first Too Short album to the first NWA album to the first Run DMC album. I was right there in the beginning of all of that shit. You must have seen a lot of changes over the years. Before MC Hammer broke his first album I was right there. I was selling his shit way back. I remember before his shit even came out and we used to go to the club and he would be dancing all damn night. Rodney O & Joe Cooley came to my store. I had Scarface, Eightball & MJG, Master P and all of them come to my store. Everybody used to come there back in the day. I got a nice twenty year run as far as an independent Bay Area businessman with underground music. I remember when Messy Marv, San Quinn, JT, and Dre Dog used to do homework inside my store. Did you ever think of writing a book about all of this? Actually I am working on a movie. It’s a movie about my life and how I came from the streets to the business. It is about how I lost everything and got back in business again. At one point in time I lost everything, so now it is twice as rewarding. You can come from the streets and lose everything and then bounce back again. I’m coming back even stronger now because I understand the game. I want to say to all the young homies to never give up on your dream and always keep pushing. If you fall off just bubble back because there is always time to bounce back. I’m living proof because I got my dream in a can. Hustle in a can! |
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