TinyGun has said it himself, “Everything happens for a reason,” but “everything” for this Los Angeles rapper is a whole lot as he attempts to turn his life around and become a role model for those around him.
TinyGun lost both his parents at age 13, along with a couple of siblings and other family members to cancer. Then he went to prison at a young age, but he’s back and working hard to make a better life for himself and his family.
“Everything happens for a reason, not saying that was a reason, but I’m saying it helped groom me, it helped me get over a lot of other stuff,” TinyGun, or TG, as he’s also known, said. “Like right now I’m trying to do something right and make music. Them passing away when I was young, it sharpened me up. It made me like rock solid. I won’t be like so emotional, but I can be understanding to things.”
TG has always liked rap, but he didn’t know he could write his own music until he met friends in prison who inspired him to work on his craft.
“When I first got to prison, I was a big Young Jeezy fan and Lil’ Boosie fan, so I was telling people that Boosie was the best rapper and then someone they butted into my conversation and I said nah, my celly is a better rapper than Boosie,” TG said. “His celly was right there and he raps for me. His celly was Da Gutta Soul, and I said dang, he actually hard. Being around the yard with him a lot and listening to his raps, he was like, man, you know how to catch some bars real cool, you should try to write your own raps. So basically he inspired me to rap my own raps.”
TG said he drew up a game plan and went to work to make things better for himself and give others opportunities none of them had before. He helped start the RiskTakerz label with fellow rappers Da Gutta Soul, DaiyDaiy, DxG, Nhaz and others, and worked with supporters and fans to produce good music.
His latest single, “AutoCorrect,” talks about his message about prison and life.“The message in that song is basically AutoCorrect, you’ve got to correct yourself,” TG said. “Don’t allow other people to correct you when you can correct yourself. It’s like when you join a gang, you open the doors for people to judge you and correct you, separate from being on your own two feet because joining a gang is majority rules. When you’re from something like that, you can easily correct yourself where the gang doesn’t have to correct you.”
TG dropped his latest EP, “Shooterz Touch,” an album with a definite sports theme, back in May.
TG said people should really pay attention to the single, “Hiz’Story” on that album.
“That’s like the story of my mom and my dad, the first verse is about my mom, and the second verse is about my dad,” he said. “It’s a short song, but it’s so summed up it’s like, ok, we get it. People who want to know should really know that struggle and that part of me. Hiz’Story, it’ll put you in a position to understand what I’m talking about on my parents’ situation.”
TG said he wants people to know that he came up hard and struggled just like everyone else, but he’s working to become a better person.
“I made a lot of bad decisions in life,” TG said. “So I want to basically be a role model for the youth, my homies, to say like, you can get a first, second chance, you can get a third chance even, you’ve just got to auto-correct yourself. You can get those chances. God can bless you with chances, but you’ve got to eventually do something right in your life. I want people to know, when they read the article, he was down but now he’s up, he was broke but now he’s fixed.”
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