The following is an interview that I gave a few years ago as a poster on All Hip Hop.com’s Ill Community. It was originally posted on August 5, 2006. Some of the circumstances have changed, but I feel as if it gives you a fairly informative view of me and who I am.

This week we are coming to you with one of the more quiet posters… he might not make a lot of noise but thats cause he chooses for it to be that way… Show your love for Mannywallace

Whats good Manny

Not much..just chillin. It’s good to see that all my requests finally got filled. Good to be here.

glad to have you… its all about patience
Right now, what are you doin wit yo life?

Right Now, I’m in school working on my MBA, tryin to have a little fun, and trying to stay out of too much trouble

so when you get that degree.. what you tryna do with it for the rest of your life?

Honestly, I’m not sure. I think that I’ll be a lifelong learner. After I get this degree, I’ll probably pursue a Ph. D. When I was younger, I think I was a bit disallusioned. I had a plan of getting my bachelors, making crazy money from jump, raising a family and all that. Nowadays, I think I just want to keep on learning, while carving out a living for myself. I can go in so many directions, I haven’t really decided which one is the best for me.

so as a kid what was your dream?

As a kid I wanted to be a comedian. I used to always have the little joke books that you would order at school. After that I wanted to be a football player like most little boys. Then I wanted to be a rapper, then when I “retired” at age 15, I wanted to run my own label. This was before everyone and my Uncle Rufus had their own label. I made up contracts and everything.

tell me bout the label what was it called

It was called Eva Noslen [pronounced Eve-a Nas-lin] The street that I grew up on was Nelson Avenue. I basically shortened up the “Avenue” to Ave and spelled it backwards. I got this little word processor for my 16th birthday and went crazy. The contracts had all this fine print and all this crazy talk about points and multi-album obligations. I wonder if I can find them. I guess technically, I still have people signed to the label.

yall was doin yall mini recording on the cassette

Sadly, you’re right…we didn’t have any real equipment or anything. I made most of the beats on my little keyboard, recorded them on one tape recorder, and when it was time to lay the vocals, we played the tape back in front of another recorder while the person did their verse. Yeah it was ghetto as hell

what was yall big hit

I don’t even think it had a name…wait “Say Your Blessings”. It was crazy. If we had a videocamera, we probably would have made some wild videos

what was the concept of that song

The dude, he was a little off..he was talking about killin kids and sleepin with their mothers, all kinds of crazy stuff. He kept sayin “kiss yo ass goodbye..and say your blessings” This was back when Brotha Lynch Hung was popular though, so it wasn’t extremely out of place.

damn was this just his character or did dude really have major issues?

It was just his character really, he never did any of that stuff in real life. At least to my knowledge. I think he’s still around where I grew up, but I don’t see him or talk to him much.

overall what was your child hood experience like

My childhood was cool. I was the only child between my parents, my father had 11 other children, with me being the youngest one. I got most of the things I asked for since I really didn’t ask for that much. When I was in the second grade I was placed ina program for the “gifted and talented”, they called it Major Work. I wound up being in that program up through the 11th grade. I went to public school and all that. I wasn’t really sheltered from much, at least in my opinion.

Between me and my friends I was always known as “the smart one”. When I was younger, I used to hang with the older kids, they used to call me Tiny Tim, so when I started tryin to rap with the older kids they called me MC Tim. Anyways, my place was where all the kids used to hang out, the only problem was that no one was supposed to be in the house while my parents weren’t home. I think I mastered the art of sneaking everyone out the backdoor.

People used to come over, watch pornos, eat sherbet, pancakes, drink water, watch TV, use the phone, play the Nintendo, wrestle, whatever…we just had fun. We played a few different versions of Hide and Seek. We had this game called Manhunt, Ninja Hide, and the obligatory Hide and Go Get It. In Manhunt, when you caught people, you could beat on them for a few minutes. With Ninja Hide, it was a team game, everyone would wear black and try to hide in crazy places. Honestly though, sometimes I used to just go in the house and “hide”. Hide and Go Get It was the same as it was anywhere else.

sounds like yall had a lot of fun… I wish we played manhunt…ninja hide seemed fun too
were you close with your other siblings?

They were fun, we played everything at night so it was easier to hide..or do whatever else.

As far as my brothers and sisters, we aren’t really that close. I mean, I know them and all but since they are all older, the traditional connections aren’t there. My closest sibling is my brother who’s 34. I’m the closest with him. Another one of my brothers died just a couple weeks ago due to kidney failure, he was 48. I do feel like I need to be closer with them. Alot of people on that side of the family know me, but I struggle to figure out who I’m talking to sometimes. I have nieces and nephews older than me, which is weird. I remember when I was maybe 16 or so and my nephew was calling collect from jail, and actually calling me uncle.

wow… ok so your brother who died… did you cry as if he were your brother or a distant relative… or did you cry at all

I didn’t really cry at all…I felt a little sad. So I guess it seemed more like a distant relative. I still went on with the rest of my day. I actually gave a presentation that same day.

how does that make you feel when you think about it? is that one of the factors that plays into you wanting to get to know them better?

I feel kinda bad about it, I used to feel alot worse. I used to think I was a bad person for not being in closer contact with them. But after talking to a few people, I found that it wasn’t that uncommon.

how often do you see them? I know you said not that much but is it only limited to funerals and other special occasions?

Alot of them I hadn’t seen since our dad’s funeral or shortly after. My one brother came to my undergrad graduation back in 2003, but I didn’t talk to him again until April of this year. He just happened to be in the city and I went and chilled with him. Had a drink and a smoke. We were talkin about how we needed to stay in touch. After that I didn’t talk to him again until he called me this past July about my brother

How are the times when you ARE with your sibblings? regular? better? great?

I would say that they’re regular..leaning towards getting better. They accept me and all, they just tell me that I should come around more when I’m back home.

so when you go home you dont go out of your way lookin for em?

Nah, when I go home…I generally stay on one side of town. They don’t stay that far away. I just never really thought about going over there.

tell me about your fathers death and how that affected you if its not too hard for you to speak on

The short winded version, in late April of 2001, I went home just like any other weekend that I would visit home, see my parents and all. When I was getting ready to go back to school. He comes in and just starts talking…saying how proud he was and how I didn’t do drugs and go to jail and all this stuff. At the time, I was a bit like , but it made sense a few weeks later.

Few weeks later, I was gettin ready to go to a furniture store with some lady friends, but my mother called. We talked and then she told me to talk to my father. He was about to go fishing, that was his passion. We talked, got off the phone…I went about my day.

Came back, wasn’t feeling too good. For some reason, I had been listening to Noreaga’s “Sometimes” all weekend. Next afternoon, I walked up to the library, got a phone call. It was my homeboy telling that my mother was trying to reach me. She finally got me and told me to go downstairs and she would call me on the phone there…then she told me.

He was out on Lake Erie and according to the story, he dropped something in the water, while leaning over trying to get it..he fell in the water. Someone swam over to try and save him, but I’m assuming that he panicked and wound up drowning.

The effect that it had on me didn’t really register at first. I went back to my room started packing. I found out on a Sunday, I didn’t go home until Tuesday. When I made it in the door was when things kinda hit me. It would just be me and my mother. So we had to look out for each other.

Were you and your father close?

We weren’t “Father/Son Day @ the Park” close, but close enough. He used to take me fishing with him when I was a little younger. He worked second shift so he’d be sleep when I went to school in the morning and gone by the time I got home. The weekends were our chance to really do things. Sometimes we’d go over on the other side of town I mentioned earlier. As I got older, he always gave me option of going or staying at home. More often than not, I stayed at home. Even then he kinda made it a point to tell me I should spend more time with my brothers and sisters. Sometimes he was off in his bottle or other endeavors, so I kinda stayed away from it.

This link about your fathers death
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/watercraf…c01/052101.htm
[link no longer works]

How do you keep something like this around? I imagine it gets hard knowing you have this constant reminder around

I used to have more, but the rest of then have since been changed or deleted I suppose. I’ll only see it if I look for it. I try not to think about it that much.

were you angry that the news made the net?

I didn’t really bother me…when it first happened it was on all the local news websites.

Nowadays what does mannywallace do for fun or relaxation

I like to take pictures, I’m trying to get back into writing. I like to drive around, but with gas prices as they are, I don’t do that very often . I go fishing every now and then. I try to go out every now and then, mingle with the people and all. I listen to music, I like digging up samples

there is no special someone in your life right now?

I have a “friend” that I’ve been seeing for about 2 years. She’s a good girl…I tend to think we hold each other down. We don’t really have a label on what it is we do, but to the outside world we’re a couple. We date occasionally. I guess I’ve been trying to play catch up after being with someone else for almost three years and being on the brink of marriage. Right Now, I’m just livin.

brink of marriage?

I was engaged a few years ago to a girl I knew from back home. She quit her job and moved down to where I was to be with me. She even enrolled in school to make the move more worthwhile. We lived together for about two years. I learned alot during that time. Somewhere during that period, I asked her to marry me and all that, she accepted. We were a young struggling couple, but we were going to struggle together (at least thats what I thought).

I always told her that when I got out of school things would be better for us, and when that wasn’t the case, things went downhill from there. I was a “liar” and all kinds of stuff. We took trips and stuff and we were fine, but when we came back we were even more broke, and fighting again. She moved out shortly after an incident in Daytona Beach.

what was the incident?

Short winded version…me, her, and her friend from school drove from Ohio to Daytona Beach for Black College Reunion and BET’s Spring Bling and all that mess. Everything was cool for the first couple of days. Saturday night comes and we were supposed to go out with her friends sister who was also down there. We drove up to their hotel and all. I waited in the lobby, they were takin all day so I went up to the room like “whats goin on”. Went back and waited some more. Then they went and linked up with some more folks and they were smokin, drinkin, and all that.

Her friend wanted the keys to drive back to our room, but I thought my girl had them, and since they had gone off. Her friend walked back to our hotel, which was like a five mile walk. To add insult to injury, the girl was 6′2″ and big. I catch up with my girl again, and I’m tellin her that I’m ready to go. She tells me to go have fun or whatever. So I hit the bar that was at the hotel, had something called Gator Punch, a couple I then walked up the street to a store and bought a 12 pack of Molson Ice and just sat on the street talking to people and drinking. If anyone’s been to any of those events, its beautiful women everywhere and ignorant niggas, so ladies are getting violated everywhere. I was drunk so I think I joined in on the foolishness. I bought some weed from someone and I don’t remember what he looked like or what I gave him, no bag or anything.

I passed out somewhere, and I remember some guy helping me on the elevator and saying he found me in a stairwell, which is weird cause my last memory was being on the street grabbin asses and takin pictures of titties. Anyways, I don’t remember much after that..or how I ended up in the bed at the hotel where we were the night before. When I woke up, they told me that my girl was in the hospital…and I became livid.

Turns out that they went over to a club and were all holding hands to stay together. The story I heard was that some of the girls broke away to take a picture or something and my girl got separated from them. The weed she had smoked and the liquor combined with her being a diabetic must have gotten to her as she passed out and got stepped on I suppose. (her shirt had footprints on it). They came and got me in a cab since I still had the car keys. We argued from that point on. The consensus was that I should have been there to protect her or something. Her mother cussed me out, she moved out but I still went to her family reunion a couple months later.

wait…. didnt you tell her you was ready to go? she should have just came on right? how does she blame you for her foolishness? was she always like that?

You would think she would have just listened, and came along, but no. She used to tend to blame most things on others first, before she looks at her own errors in judgement. I can’t really speak on how she is now, I don’t really deal with her that much anymore.

How did that make you feel?

I really didn’t care. It was pretty evident that we were on the outs or on the way to being “just friends” so it didn’t have much of an effect on me.

Considering yall almost jumped the broom how, how long did it take you to get over her

It’s hard to say, we took the trip in April, she moved out in May, in June we went to Myrtle Beach and back to Hollywood (first time we went was two weeks before Daytona). The last time we did anything major was June 2004. Interesting thing though, when she moved out…it was only across the street. So we could still go over to each others places. We were better that way, and it seemed to be what we needed. Her and her friend went down to Miami in July for Zo’s Summer Groove. She started talking to him and I kinda started distancing myself from her. I guess if I had to say..it probably took me about three months to get back into the swing of things.

lol @ across the street
wow 3 mos after an engagement? if you could sum that entire relationship up into an album or single what song or album would it be?

Well, I still talked to her after those three months sometimes, but that was the time it took me to start meeting other people. But if you think about it, she moved quicker than me.

As for songs, I used to always say that Usher songs seemed to define us. When we first got started it was “U Got It Bad”, somewhere in the middle it was “You Don’t Have To Call”, and in the end it was “Burn”.

whats your favorite song or album period?

I can put a lot of albums there and I can only choose one? Hmm…I guess I’ll say Ice Cube’s Death Certificate. Its just one of those albums that has stood the test of time, he was angry and had things that he wanted to get out, and he did it with perfection. My favorite song on there is “A Bird In The Hand”…

and how does that song relate to you?

It doesn’t directly relate to me, its a song that kind of lashes out at the government, while attempting to justify why some people sell drugs. It suggests that the government doesn’t help as much Black people as much as they should. In the end, Cube says “We don’t wanna drug push/But a bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush”.

yeah I remember that line
this is the marie acid part of the interview… she gave me the idea to ask a series of one word answer questions

Fresh Prince or Martin

Martin

family time or “me” time

“Me” time

Sex with your girlfriend or sex with a female who pretty much not a friend at all

Sex with the girlfriend…

Michael Jackson or Prince

Prince [I lean more towards MJ nowadays though]

cool.
anything else you wanna hit on or speak about before we get up outta here?

Not too much, if anyone wants to be on my record label..shoot me a PM and maybe we can work something out. Also, check out my blog on Yahoo 360, lots of stuff there.

aight then Manny ‘preciate you for kickin it with us this week on one on one

Thanks for having me..its been a pleasure..

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