Audio By Carbonatix
Mike West is an anomaly in the South Florida rap game. First of all, he’s not from Miami but Fort Lauderdale, as he’ll proudly tell you. Though born and raised in these parts, he’s spent most of his adult life bouncing between here and Los Angeles, save for brief stops in the Bronx, New York, and Atlanta. All the while he’s been politicking, building with industry players, to create a buzz that will, with luck, launch him onto the national stage.
But despite his friendly demeanor and warm intelligence, the mystery surrounding him remains. The title of his debut album is They Never Knew; his new single is “Don’t Know Me,” a track with Dogg Pound gangster Daz Dillinger. When asked how he earns a living, West cryptically labels himself a “hustler.” There are other ominous signs, too: The cover art for They Never Knew is swathed in blue lettering, and he wears a black bandanna wrapped around his face, covering everything save for his eyes and bald head. It’s an unmistakably West Coast image of a young gangster proudly flying his colors. Though he says he isn’t a Crip, he does admit that “I don’t gangbang, but I’m affiliated with niggas who do bang. That’s why I put the black on — I didn’t want to start a big controversy.”
Born in Fort Lauderdale, the 24-year-old rapper bounced between his mother here and other family members in Los Angeles. He notes that “the gangsters in the streets” were “the ones who really raised me. But it’s funny, because they never really tried to involve me in their lifestyle.” Hanging out with gangsters in Southern Los Angeles gave him plenty of opportunities to get into trouble. “I did a lot of dirt,” he says, modestly adding that he still managed to graduate here from Plantation High School in 1997. It also led to lasting friendships with rap acts like Daz Dillinger and Tupac Shakur’s group the Outlawz, providing another potential avenue in the music industry.
Over the years, West has paid plenty of dues. At alternate times he was a club DJ at Miami’s late, venerated Pack Jam nightclub; a jack-of-all-trades for Luke Campbell, from handling the Magic City czar’s publicity duties and doing camera work for his best-selling Peep Show DVDs to performing as a hype man for label artists; and a onetime best friend (and now enemy) to Father MC, a rap star from the early Nineties’ “new jack swing” era who was signed to Luke Records for a brief, ill-fated period in 1995.
None of it, however, led to a label deal for him. So he set up his own label, Hangtime Entertainment, releasing the aforementioned They Never Knew in 2001. It features a surprising number of noteworthy guests, among them DJ Red Alert, (Tupac’s brother) Mopreme Shakur, and “Uncle Luke.” Though it only sold a few thousand copies, it garnered write-ups in several magazines like Billboard and The Source, setting the stage for his next album, A Westside Story, scheduled for release next year.
But the evolution from hustler to rapper and fledgling label owner hasn’t been an easy process. “As a new person trying to get in the game, you want to learn,” he says. “But eventually, I started generating, generating, generating, putting things into perspective, and things started coming out. The rhythm of life, street life, politicking, and what’s going on in the world.” Of course rap is an art form that rewards rich, if tumultuous living, and the future of West’s career depends on his ability to communicate his life with artistry as well as candor. Still it’s those same experiences “no one knows” of that threaten to elevate him out of the streets and into a better, more positive life.
