His childhood is such a compelling story, that it’s better if he tells it.

"A lot of people out here in L.A. got single moms. But not only did I have a single mother who had me at like 18, she also gave me up for adoption when I was like 8 months. So, I was raised by an entirely different family who started out as my baby sitters and then just ended up taking the parental guidance to raise me. My birth mother slowly stopped coming around and before you know it, the family that was baby sitting me ended up being the family that raised me to this very day.

Growing up in Hawthorne (California) is just really, really, tough. I never got to meet my birth father but the father that raised me, who taught me how to talk, walk and carried me on his shoulders…he grew up in Redondo Beach. He was in a gang called Redondo 13. When he had my two older brothers, he moved four blocks east to a city called Lawndale. And the kids of that neighborhood came up to my older brothers and boom, my brothers were up in Lawndale 13.

By the time I came in, he moved to Hawthorne. So, the gangs in Hawthorne hit me up to be part of that set. So, at a very young age, I was exposed to the gang lifestyle, the gang culture by my older brothers, my pops, my cousins, my family. I was getting tattooed by sixth grade. I had already gotten in mad trouble by seventh grade. The street life out here swallowed me up as soon as it could. When you’re a kid out here and you feel like you don’t belong to nothing and you feel like you don’t have a family and you feel like you’re on your own and you’re questioning your entire existence, and you got these cats out here like ‘Yo, we’ll be your family, homie. We got your back...’ Loyalty means everything to me. Man, I’m just loyal to my crew, my hood and Hawthorne since sixth grade. That’s how I saw it in my older brothers and my Pops and my family. I got jumped into a gang in sixth grade, dude. In 8th grade, I already decided that I wasn’t going to go to high school and that I was gonna run the streets and do the business."

But life had other plans. As he explained, he was about to ditch school when a Hip-Hop assembly was held at his school. Little did he know, the assembly would hold inspirational emcees that looked like gang members of his neighborhood. Their message of peace over violence had a deep impact for the students in the school including classmate and current NFL player Dennis Northcutt, who stood up against the gang violence as well that day. When the MC’s passed flyers, Redcloud only saw “Free Hip-Hop Show.” Inspired, a young Redcloud walked to the address on the flyer, unaware that he would arrive at a church. Continued on page 8 »