Mannie Fresh Talks Getting Started In Music, Early Days Of Cash Money

by Slava Kuperstein

Mannie Fresh waxes nostalgic about his origins, from developing an interest in music to his Cash Money days.

New Orleans producer Mannie Fresh was the latest artist to participate in an in-depth interview with the Red Bull Music Academy, joining Mobb Deep, among others.
Fresh gave fans an insight into how he first got interested in music.
"My Christmas gifts used to be instruments," explained Fresh. "I was like, 'Okay, my friend got a bike. Why did I get a turntable?' Or somebody got an...Atari game. I got a trumpet. I was just like, 'Okay, this stuff is just starting to stack up.' [Laughs] My dad must've seen something in me. I would say somewhere around twelve is when I took an interest in it. Like, you know what? I'm just gonna go through my pile of what i thought was junk at the time: my keyboard, my drum machine, horns and all that, and start fiddling around with it."
Mannie Fresh explained that before he joined Cash Money, he was pressured to make gangsta Rap music, but joining Birdman and Slim's label allowed him to make the music he wanted. "What I did before I got to Cash Money, I got back to my roots. I started deejaying again, and doing house parties and clubs all over New Orleans."
"When Cash Money approached me, they was just like, 'Well, what could you to change...our format of how we doing music?' And I was like, 'It's this hot thing called "bounce" right now. It's just blowing up all over the place.'" This led to Cash Money signing UNLV, a bounce act.
Watch the interview below: