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Home » Interviews » Infinity - Tha Ghetto Child Interview (October 2001)
The Carolinas have given the hip hop nation a gang of recording artists who have gone on the fame and fortune, most notable are KC & Jo Jo and Petey Pablo, both whom have exploded on the pop and r & b charts with a big bang, bringing some of the Kakkilaki funk to the national spotlight. Now that Charleston South Carolina’s native Infinity, tha Ghetto Child has inked a deal with MCA (making him the second Southern act to do --the first being the Field Mob) Carolina will soon have a new native son to be proud of.

We recently talked to infinity over the phone and he eagerly shared with us the details of his life and his upcoming album, Pain.
Infinity, what’s up?

What’s the deal?

Okay, I know that you’re from the Carolinas, what city and what state?

I’m from Charleston, South Carolina, my nigga….I’m Johnson’s Row….really any ghetto in Charleston, that’s basically where I’ve been in because I really raised myself. I ain’t have no mama like most cats so you know how that go. She resided in Johnson Street Projects before that happened so that’s where I first ended up at.

I come outta the Charleston where it is gutter and ghetto. It ain’t too much country there. See, I don’t know too much about all that country stuff, ya know what I’m saying. It’s a lotta people saying that down South is country [but] where I’m from it ain’t too much country.

Well, I’m from Jackson, Mississippi and we’re an urban market.

Ya see what I’m saying. It was a cat over there in one of them magazine talking about well, there’s 3,000 people down here in Charleston. That’s a bunch of bullshit! Shit, it was 9,000 people at the Hardknock Life Tour. So you mean to tell me that if we threw a concert everything shut down. Hell, naw dawg! It’s a lotta muthafucking hoods and little crumbs around there. I was just one of the niggas that God showed me the light so that I could stay focused and get out that shit.

Yeah, I hear you man, coming from the South, I hear people talking about how country and slow they think we are, but when some of my friends from up North come to visit me they are shocked at how fast and swift we are with game down here.

I know that why so many cats come down here from New York to get their dough, so it can’t be too country if they running down here. Them city boys don’t wanna stay in the country. It ain’t what people be thinking and that’s why MCA came down here and fuck with a nigga like me because they know that they don’t have to paint no picture. It’s already there, ya know what I’m saying. All they had to do is find a nigga like me that was already real with it. The stuff I say on my album dog, every drop of that shit is for real. I’m not talking in third person. I’m not talking about my nigga I knew who went through some pain or coming from my imagination…talking about what I think that people might be going through in the ghetto. This shit comes from my experiences, it comes from my soul. That’s why I know that nobody can judge me dog. It’s real pain in Charleston South Carolina! Man, they still got a tree up where they used to hang Black people as slaves on Ashley Avenue.

I hear ya, dawg…..

You understand, we’re still going through that type of [racism]. Man, here I am a young Black nigga with no opportunity given, with a son who I had to get full custody of when he was eighteen months because his mama ended up on crack. That’s why I represent for the crack babies man, I represent for the people who don’t have no voice.

I represent for the niggas who be in the cut so deep that ballers would even understand them because the game is changing now. People don’t wanna hear about shining and ice these days. They don’t wanna hear about that no more because they know that it ain’t nothing but a dream and niggas are tired of chasing dreams. Niggas want to hear ways they can get out of the situation they’re in. They wanna know a better way for them to be able to maintain for their family right now. They don’t need the ice, they don’t need the mansions, give them a plan so they can just get out the state of mind of just being locked in. that’s why I got a song called “Picture My Plan.”
arrow.gif (305 bytes)		 Okay let’s talk about how you got into rap?

It’s like this right here, I’m God’s child. I know I’m God’s child now. Coming up in Charleston, South Carolina, rapping wasn’t really my niche. It was football. I was a football player. I loved football.

What position did you play?

QB, dawg. I am a leader. I was always a quarterback. You know as time went on my high school coach stayed on me because I had all these golds in my mouth. Not because I was out there grinding or anything like that. Outta all my nigga I was the only one in high school that tried to maintain, and do the right thing. But nobody knows how hard it is coming home to no lights. They don’t know what’s like to come home with no water. How hard to take cold showers in the dead of winter. It’s hard to do those things, when niggas all around you saying yo, you ain’t gotta do that. But I fought it, dawg. I fought it all the way through school –up to the 12t grade. But then the grips of the streets just pulled me in. But when the grips of the street did pull me in, I came to realize that hey, there’s o way God put me on this earth just to be on no block. I got too much brains just to be out here on the block. God just broke me down. And when he broke me down he stripped me of a lot of things that I thought was mine. When I stop hustling on the block the friends that I thought I had were gone.

I thought crack was gonna be the way to get me outta the hood, but it wan’t my friend, crack was killing all of my people, plus it was killing my mama. So he brought me down and said yo, there’s millions of people that are going through what you’re going through and when you get through going through what you’re going through and I’m going to talk through you and you’re gonna talk through music. So I put it in my music. I thought that I was going to make it in football, but God fixed it so I would make it in music.

Okay, the album’s called Pain. It’s some very personal stuff that you talk about on that album. I was listening to it and thought to myself, I don’t know if I could say all of this on my album, how do you feel about it now that it on wax or cd?

You know I found out that I don’t got to be ashamed of who I am or what I’ve been through. It wasn’t my fault that my mama was on crack. It wasn’t my son’s fault that his mama was on crack. It wasn’t our fault that all that happened. It doesn’t mean that we got to do that. It doesn’t mean that we gotta settle for what ever life puts in front of us. So now I’m comfortable with myself and I’m comfortable with my current situation. So that's why when I started rapping I said yo, it’s million of other people who have been through what I’ve been through. You ain’t got to be embarrassed, dawg.

I know right now that God loves me for the good and the bad things that I’ve done and in spite all of the things that have happened to me. He understands what I’ve been through and what’s in my heart and he’s the only one who can really judge me.

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by: Charlie Braxton | Photos Courtesy MCA Records.  © 2002 Down-South.com

 

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