Brooklyn Rapper Maino Says, "Hi Hater" and Talks About Bed-Stuy and Politics

"Hi Hater," is the popular new phrase seeping through schools and neighborhoods across the country. The phrase has sparked conversations on television programs such as The View,Chelsea Lately and The David Letterman Show. It has also been consistently used in the monumental presidential debate by pundits. "Hi Hater," was coined by Atlantic Recording artist, Maino who is from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. The song is the lead single off of his upcoming album: "If Tomorrow Comes."

Maino defines a hater as "any person who gives negativity to something that we're trying to do positive- a hater is a self-centered person who doesn't want to see anybody doing good except themselves. Their actions are all based on jealousy. It's very childish but at the same time we have to appreciate the motivation they give us." The comical approach to simply appreciating our hater has been embraced by many. Rapper, Lil' Wayne confides that a hater who always talks about someone or incorporates them in everything they do will catapult that person to greater heights and open up doors that may never have been opened before. "They create interest in who you are. Thank you is all you can say," he explained.

Maino was recently nominated for a B.E.T award and recorded a remix to "Hi Hater." It features his good friend and label-mate, T.I as well as Plies, Fabolous, Jadakiss and Swizz Beats who diagnosed hating as "a sickness." http://www.mainohustlehard.com

Originally, Maino was at Universal but parted ways with the company. It was difficult to get a deal done for Maino because as much as the industry glamorises the thug lifestyle; labels do not like to take the risk of dealing with real life thugs. There are simply too many risk factors involved. No matter how you slice it, a thug's life comes with high insurance costs, astronomical security expenses and unpredictable episodes that filter into everybody else's lives. Maino's heavy street reputation in Brooklyn honestly scared some executives and complicated matters for him. Although T.I helped push Maino's deal to his home label, it was the long-time friend of Maino's brother who helped cement the contract in stone. Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson made the final phone calls that solidified Maino's Hustle Hard label imprint with Atlantic Records.

Maino's extreme work ethic created a grassroots following and attracted fans within the industry who respected his relentless grind to succeed. Singer, Alicia Keys is such a fan of Maino and his philosophy that she invited him to perform in the middle of her Hot 97 Summer Jam concert set. The crowd went ballistic as Maino performed the anti-hating anthem. "I'm really appreciative of Alicia (Keys) and all of you who've been supportive of me. I've waited so long for this moment and I want "If Tomorrow Comes" to be a solid album. It's important for me to do records like, "Hi Hater" because it teaches everyone, especially kids to brush off what someone says or does because I know where that can lead to. I don't want to focus my music on going at it with people because I've worked too hard to be here. That's why I confront people directly." "It's just entertainment until it escalates to other things," said T.I. Realistically any person who likes to use their mouth as a weapon cannot be so naive as to think they can dictate the other person {or their friends} response to them because everyone operates differently. Maino's response is usually physical.

Like a crab drowning in the depths of its self-created misery, Maino believes that the only time a true hater is somewhat at ease is when it's pulling other people down in the attempts to lift itself up. Maino says, "A hater is always fighting and feuding with different people at different times of their life without realizing that the problem lies within themselves." A person who consistently hates on someone creates an atmosphere that gives everybody else permission to hate on them {the hater}. Nevertheless a hater is like a vampire that only flourishes in the darkness of negativity; sustaining their existence only in that realm because they cannot survive in light and that's how you defeat them-with light not hate.

Musician, Kurt Cobain once lamented over the fact that people who often have dreams strive very hard towards fulfilling their goals, often praying to God to make that dream into a reality. Sometimes upon accomplishing their goal they will go against the premises of their dream. This is essentially what is defined as hustling God to get what you want. For that reason alone the once far-fetched blissful dream transforms into a living nightmare as it did for Cobain in his last years. Lil' Wayne shares Maino's maturity about sticking to the premises of our vision while remembering what it was like when that dream was just a dream. "I'm not going to use my music or forum to go towards how I feel about someone especially if it's negative. My God didn't put me here for that and he didn't bless me to do that," said Wayne. T.I said, "I've learned that if we just replace guns with God and put our trust in God then life becomes much easier." Maino's life is definitely a little bit easier now. He could have been dead but he had a dream and perhaps God had plans for him to see tomorrow.

"If Tomorrow Comes" was the title of Sidney Sheldon's best-selling novel and made for television film. The book chronicled the life of a formerly naive ex- convict who spent years caged in a prison cell as former friends and peers prospered and enjoyed the perks of newfound success. After spending many years isolated by the trifling compounds of sadistic prison walls, the felon returns home-far from rehabilitated and much more ruthless and bitter then before.

Maino says his life is like a movie or television series without pre-scripted lines or rehearsal time for life's mistakes. When we were young there was no editing or rewinding back to correct situations for any at-risk kids in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Initially introduced to the rest of America by director, Spike Lee, Bed-Stuy was the setting of the film, Do The Right Thing. The movie chronicled a day in what the Census Bureau once defined as America's most notorious neighborhood. Complicated by nature, Bed-Stuy is an osmosis of African-Americans, Caribbean's and Africans. It was home for many Africans who attended engineering, law and medical schools in New Jersey and New York through diversity programs in the seventies and eighties implemented by African nations to encourage students to study abroad. African-Americans who settled in the neighborhood had originally migrated from the South during the Northern Migration. The outlook of a new future was greeted with a new type of hidden racism that positioned African-Americans below Caucasians, Irish, and Italians who mainly lived in Benson Hurst, Brooklyn. The Great Depression and the exploitation of low-income families subjected to extreme mortgage sub-prime lending gave birth to slum living. Many families who bought homes in Bed-Stuy had to re-sublet the homes they were living in to several families just to pay the mortgage.

Bed-Stuy is also known for having the most aesthetic architecture in New York along with some of the ugliest crimes in the history of the state. Although sections of the neighborhood are becoming desirable residences for real-estate investors who understand the value of Brooklyn's historic brownstones, this was not the case in the eighties and early nineties. Back then, Bed-Stuy consistently lived up to its slogan of Do or Die as drugs were introduced in to the community. Even a bullet-proof soul wouldn't have survived in sections of Bed-Stuy that had fallen to the hands of drug dealers. How drugs manufactured in Central America were able to infiltrate a community that rarely left its own borough is still a mystery? What is not a mystery is that as military spending increased to defeat the Soviets in a Cold War that most teachers couldn't explain, neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Harlem and the Bronx were under siege experiencing a war of their own. Missiles of crack and heroine exploded through urban environments changing the dynamic of families and leaving shells of dysphoria for those affected. The emotional drug affair between dealers and addicts ignited a civil war of Black on Black crimes The business of prisons experienced record gains in net profits as did mortuaries all at the expense of many families. Perhaps some parents merely overlooked the memo telling them about the grand job opportunities created for them as a result of the Reaganomics tax cut for the rich, because at that time there was nothing trickling down in Brooklyn but rain. Innocent children assumed coroners were merely lazy artists who never completed their drawings. They would add vibrant colors inside the chalk line silhouettes of dead bodies that aligned the sidewalks of streets like Lexington, Clausson, and Fulton amongst others. Where there is a surplus of drugs and shortage of psychologists, the future of incoming generations is compromised.

On Norstrand and Gates, Mr. Coleman who had once been a respectable father and provider had been reduced to a hallucinating crack fiend. His son Jermaine "Maino" Coleman was disappointed. "It was embarrassing. I was ashamed at that point. Its one thing to see crack-heads on the street but to have to come home to that everyday is heavy. My mother wasn't that strong and she couldn't handle it, so she started dabbling in heroine. Having to go to school and facing your peers when your parent is on the street like that is a lot to deal with. Politicians always have ideas about fixing neighborhoods and I know you might believe the answer is education but what do you do when you come home from school and there's nothing to eat? What do you do when you have to watch your father beat your moms and see your parents become defeated by drugs? Where do you go? How do you tell someone to get off the streets or not be in a gang if it's safer to be on the streets and be a part of that? I take responsibility for the things that I've done but I come from a mentality of feeling like I'm hopeless. I'm never gonna' be sh-- other then a criminal... being in and out of jail. What's sad is there are a lot of kids feeling like that right now and people think they're just troublemakers. It's really hard to tell someone whose got hunger pains what they shouldn't do. I was on the streets as a little kid hustling to get food for me and my brother, Mouse. As a kid I can honestly tell you that I never ever... ever thought I could be part of everyday civilization or ever once had the thought of being an upstanding citizen, not how I came up in the Bed-Stuy I knew. "

After Spike Lee's depiction of a day in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the late Christopher "Biggie" Wallace repositioned the complex neighborhood back into the spotlight as Biggie rapped about his truthful but stressful experiences of crime and survival on his debut album, "Ready to Die." Along with his group, Junior Mafia {compromised of Lil' Kim, Lil' Cease, Klepto, Banger and Nino} Biggie conquered the world with his clever lyrics and memorable voice. His fame, fortune and success proved that music and high achievement wasn't just a dream for someone like him. He ignited Brooklyn to a higher dimension instilling an unapologetic arrogance and pride within "Stuyvesant's livest ones." Kind-hearted by nature, Biggie opened up opportunities for many people to flourish and they did.

Unfortunately, Maino was never a part of that. He wasn't around to experience the rise and domination of Bed-Stuy's hero in his highest glory. Instead, Maino was incarcerated. He would spend years in prison as he had predicted when he was a child. Maino ended up serving a ten-year sentence on kidnapping and drug-related charges. His brother, Jermael "Mouse" Coleman who is now a writer would also spend many years isolated in the federal penitentiary. This is where Maino's story begins, a story about America's Native Son in it's truest sense. Maino's story is also about how a lack of love will turn a Saint into the Devil's Advocate.

"When I saw my best friend get murdered right in front of my eyes it scared me... not so much because of what I saw but that fear that someone could just take someone else's life away- just like that and not care. It bothered me so deeply. I didn't understand how someone could do that to a fourteen year old's life..I mean at fourteen we're still learning. We were still young...I promise you that it was at that point that I said, 'why should I care, why should I have a conscious to not do the same thing to someone else.' It pushed me farther mentally as far as being heavy into the streets. That sealed the deal. Since then I experienced plenty but that was my first time of experiencing death so close. I don't know what it's really completely done to me up to now. I' haven't figured it out but I know that it did something to my mind. I think about it every single day and night. I can't really help it it but I do. Truthfully it scared me. I changed."

"If Tomorrow Comes" is an album story that will bring to light the difference between pure entertainment and reality because the distinction is at times blurred. Maino's story is about Bed-Stuy and the origins of slum living as it relates to exploitation and racial segregation. It is about the complication of economic theories like Reaganomics and the severe affects of the introduction of drugs in to urban communities. Because there are dire consequences of locking up children in federal institutions in which there is never a guarantee for them to see tomorrow, perhaps the idea of prisons being places to reform and rehabilitate could be re-examined. These are some of the different things that Maino considers in his art of music.

Bed-Stuy's Prince of Thugs isn't just rapping about the problems. He has ideas and says he thinks about how he could change all the issues that affect Urban America and places like Bed-Stuy. "I think about that everyday. I always wonder what I would do if I was in a position to change our neighborhoods and the issue is deeper then just passing laws. The problem is we have a nation with people who think just like I used to. I haven't moved past the pain and you haven't given me an answer to how to replace pain either so we're all still dealing with an unresolved issue. But that means there are a lot of people walking around without a conscious and without real guidance of what to do and what not to do. Not having a conscious is what allowed me to shoot at people...get shot at and all the different things that I've done. There are a lot of laws for punishing criminals but where is the law for ensuring that children have a safe home to go to after school so that there not in the street or not running to people who could be detrimental to their future? Nobody is looking at the core of the issue. All these other issues and bills like getting arrested for wearing sagging pants is a distraction from the real problems. Who gives a f--- about that? That's just stupid. The problem is we have kids dealing with a lack of love. How do you replace love? I keep asking the same question and no one can answer it. Better yet how do you replace pain? What's the compensation for not having love because a person who doesn't have love is dangerous, that's where hate comes in." -To Be Continued.