When most people think of West Coast rap, they picture low riders, khaki suits, Converse All-Stars, and red and blue flags- in short, gangsta rap. Perhaps the most overly glorified subgenre of hip-hop, the relevancy of gangsta rap is finally waning. There’s now an entire generation of kids who’ve grown up with similar hardships as their elders, but have different perspectives on ways to make it out of the hood. These kids are the present and the future, and live with a Carpe diem (“Seize The Day”) attitude to the fullest. In Los Angeles, their new leader is a multi-talented 16-year-old who goes by the name Mann.
Born Dijon Shariff Williams in Inglewood, California, Mann embodies this new generation of hip-hop in many ways. At the core though, his story is no different than most others. He was raised by a single mother and his extended family of aunts and uncles were all notoriously knee-deep in the street game, making illegal money any way they could. But instead of falling in with their line of work, at only five years old young Dijon was already looking to do more with his life, spending considerable time at the Amazing Grace Conservatory studying acting and dancing. While being represented by the Bobby Ball Agency, Dijon began making strides as a child actor, appearing alongside Whoopi Goldberg in Ghosts of Mississippi and on an episode of the popular sitcom Married With Children. At the Amazing Grace Conservatory, Mann found his true passion - rapping.
“When we would be at lunch and students would be dancing,” says Mann. “That’s when clown dancing was in. I started practicing and joined a clown group and got really good. While dancing, everyone would freestyle and rap. So, I started rapping and got good at that too. I realized how much I loved rapping and put all my energy into it.”
Suffice it to say, Dijon, who was barely a teenager then, had little experience with or knowledge about hip-hop. He admits he was a sheltered child who grew up listening to popular pop music and as he describes, “whatever they played on Disney Channel.” It really wasn’t until he started going to public school that he shook things up a bit. But while doing so, he fell in with the wrong crowd.
“When I was in the midst of hanging with the wrong crowd,” he remembers, “The guy who was running the gang I was in, he really wanted me to hold his gun for him. I will never forget that as being the point where I had to take and stand and say no. I was being pressured into it and I knew I had to stop.”
It was a hard decision to make, but Dijon decided he needed to acknowledge the mature side of him, the side that made his family adorn him as a child with the nickname Mann.
“Everybody called me Mann because I never kicked it with kids my age,” he says. “I would always try to be older than I was. I always talked like I was older. I always practiced for the next stage in my life, and now that I’m here I know it’s where I’m supposed to be. I am a Mann because I don’t have to try to be one. It’s just what I am.”
Still, amongst a crew of creative kids is where Mann was most comfortable. He and his friends would gather at each other’s home studios and record rap songs with hopes of one day taking their careers to the next level. Armed with a refined sense of discipline that he’d acquired while being on the sets of film productions and plays, Mann was able to organize this rough collective of individuals into a unique entertainment entity - Official ENT - complete with its own set of artists like the Fly Guys, Elan and Kwest and Chettah.
It was among this crew, last November, while performing at a showcase at The Knitting Factory in Los Angeles, that he was discovered by his current manager, Jamie Adler. Adler, who was at the show to see another act perform, was so taken with Mann’s high-energy performance that he approached Mann and asked him to record some new material specifically for label shopping purposes. So Mann hit the studio and set a popular LA dance-craze to the tune of “Jerkin.” Adler brought “Jerkin” to Sean Kingston’s manager Steve Lobel, who immediately signed him to his production company a-2-z entertainment. Lobel then brought Mann to Sean Kingston’s producer and label owner, Jonathan “JR” Rotem. JR was so taken by the energy of the dance-infused “Jerkin” that he went in and reproduced the record on the spot. The next day, Mann cut the vocals and began building a musical relationship with JR, that in late December, lead to a full on record deal with his Beluga Heights.
While his as-yet-untitled debut album is still being recorded, Mann’s already in full swing gathering fans nationwide. His infectious Billy Joel-remake, “Ghetto Girl,” featuring label mate Sean Kingston, simultaneously debuted on Los Angeles’ Power 106 FM and MTV.com on the same day lighting up request lines and forcing kids everywhere to start hitting up his MySpace page looking to catch a glimpse of hip-hop’s real voice of the young people.
Describing where he draws his influences from, Mann, says: “LA kids right now are into fun and fashion and having a good time. And that’s what I represent. I rep the fly, flashy and fresh dude at school…. who’s also smart. The cool kid at school who handles their business, but also has fun. That’s the majority of LA that nobody knows about.”
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