Boyz N The HUD

2022 | Hip-Hop

— track 16: “Skins”

Terrance Jade Hollow Horn: I did this album [in 2017], it was my first LP and it was called Hoodie Season. There was a song on there that I did, it's called "Lakota Will Live," I dropped a music video, I didn't think anything of it. It's a rap in Lakota, so I was just like, "Maybe people will like it, maybe they won't." And like, I was fucking wrong, man. I dropped [the video] on Thanksgiving, and then I get off Facebook for about five hours, I'm not really paying attention to Facebook, I'm just with my family, we’re eating, visiting and shit. And then I get on Facebook and it has like 120 reacts about 80 shares and it was at 2K views. I was like, "What the fuck?" So I was like, "Okay, well, maybe it'll die out." I go to sleep, wake up, and it's at like 8,000 views, 200 shares, 400 reacts, I'm like, "Holy shit." And then as the days kept going on, numbers kept getting higher and higher. Before I deactivated that old Facebook, it was at about 80,000 views, and it had like 4,000 shares and maybe two 2K reacts. A friend of mine hit me up, she's like, "This song is really building traction, I think you should get it nominated for a Nammy,” the Native American Music Awards. So I was like, "Yeah, I'll try it out." Made it to the final round, made to the public round. And then I was like, "Alright cool, well, at least I'm nominated." I started telling people to vote for me. October rolls around, and I'm at a wake, there's no phone service there, and I was like, "The Nammys are today, I gotta see what the results are.” All day I was trying to get service, finally get service and then people are telling me, "Congratulations!" I was like, "Bullshit, I didn't win," because Supaman, he won a MTV Video Music Award that same year, he was going for five-for-five at the Nammys, and he almost won every category he was on, except for the one that I won. So I was like, "Nah." And then they showed me a screenshot: Winner of “Best Music Video with a Narrative,” it had my name, Terrance. Jade with "Lakota Will Live." I was like, "Yo, what the fuck?" I was tripping. I couldn't believe it.

I call myself a Reservation Reject. I've been rejected a lot in life, and I took that Reservation Reject mindset I had and was like, "I reject the status quo of being a drunk Indian, being a deadbeat dad, being a misfit, being destructive, bad vibes, bad energy. I took that Reservation Reject, and that's what I'm rejecting. I'm rejecting that stereotypical image of a Native American man in this day and age: That we're nothing, we're not doing anything with our lives, we're selfish people, I'm rejecting that shit. So me having that mindset, I normally don't win shit. And then [after winning the Nammy] a lot of doors opened for me, not just as a Lakota hip-hop artist and producer, but I ended up doing graphics for the Democratic National Party. I did graphics for them, I campaigned for them, and they paid me pretty good too for it. I was working with senators, I was working with governors that were being nominated. Then it stemmed to a little teaching job with Oglala Lakota County School where I was teaching kids the basics of making music. I never had the best recording stuff, or the best software, but I always took what I had and made the most of it, and that's what led me winning a Nammy.

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I'm in Wounded Knee. I was born in Pine Ridge, but I grew up here my whole life. I started out making music, it was actually completely on accident. I won a contest and I ended up winning a MacBook for graphic design when I was in high school. I got a grand prize for an alcohol-free and drug-free type of ad. Then yeah, I had a MacBook, wasn't really doing anything with it, and was hanging out with one of my cousins, and he was like, "Hey, let's go to my friend's house and record." I was like, "Record? Record what?" We go over there and this dude has the same laptop as me, and he has this program GarageBand, and I was like "Hey, I got the same thing." My cousin looked at me, he was like, "For real?" [laughs] And then I just sat there and watched him make a whole song. I was like, "Wow, it's really that easy." So I bought a microphone — or, I didn't buy a microphone, I grabbed the Guitar Hero microphone, and then I ended up recording my cousin. And we would just do that to pass the time. I was just hitting record for them, they'd bring me a beat, put it on there, hit record, and I'd act like I knew what I was doing [laughs], mix it down, and then they'd post it and stuff. And then [they] were like, "Man, beats are too expensive. Fuck. Can you learn how to make beats?" I was like, "Yeah, I could try it out.” It took me about two months, got it down.

Then they stop making music, and I was like, "Well fuck, I like this now, I like making beats." So I started just being a producer, and then about 2009 a friend of mine was like, "Why don't you rap?" I was like, "I could try it out," and I gave it a shot. I wasn't good, but I wasn't bad. I sounded cool but some of my word game was a little funky. About 2011 we did our first show, we opened up for Baby Bash over at Prairie Winds Casino. So I got a taste of that, of being on a show, and that felt good — that feeling right before getting on the stage, that fucking scared feeling, and then getting on stage and just doing your thing, and then getting off and then that fucking high. I was kind of just like — I like that. I like that a lot.

I started doing music on my own from about 2012 to June 2013. I just had my first son so I took a break from when his mom was pregnant to about two months after he was born. I picked music back up again, started a duo with my friend who passed away, Jesse Kills Back. He was a screamo, metal, thrash guy. I was just a rapper, but at the time I was using really aggressive vocals, being loud and all this. So it was an odd mixture, but it blended well because we had hard thumping beats, sharp instruments like guitar and grimy bass, just these hard hitting snares and shit. We made it work, and we ended up doing some shows from about 2013 to the end of 2014.

From 2015 I just started experimenting. I took a break from posting my music and I just started studying hip-hop, studying different cadences, different kinds of rhythms, I started learning different keys, different styles of making beats. I went into this whole mode where I wanted to better myself at my craft. 2016, I came out with three albums in one year, more like mixtapes, but they were produced, mixed, and mastered by me. Things started going good. I was doing shows out of state, I had a show in Atlanta, I had countless shows in Colorado, Antoine Edwards blessed me with a song so I got to perform at the War Party down in Albuquerque. I even did the [2019] Indigenous Peoples March [in Washington D.C.], I performed at a show they had later that night. Remember that video of that kid with a MAGA hat, and a Native guy was singing? Yeah, I was there. And then Covid hit and everything just — it was just a complete dropoff. In 2020, I had ten shows booked, and I would have made well over $20,000 in shows alone. First one canceled, pretty soon all my shows started canceling. Some of them let me keep the deposit that they sent, but some of them were like, "We're gonna need that back." I had to struggle to get them back. And in the midst of that, I ended up losing my home. I was homeless. At the time I just had a daughter, I had my two sons, I went through a real hard time.

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When I started that album, Boyz N The HUD, so much bad things happened to me in the midst of making that album, and if it weren't for that album — if I didn't make the album I probably would have done something stupid. Things are still hard for me now, but I got a level head. I'm doing what I can to balance out everything going on in my head, trying to take care of myself, and it's working, but [while I was making the album] I lost a lot of people: really close friends, people I grew up with including both of my grandparents on my dad's side, they both died. It was just hard. But the album kept me afloat, it kept my head above water.

I was recording in a car. The whole album was recorded in my mom's Chevy Traverse and my kid's mom's Chevy Malibu while I was at work. The job I have is — in Wounded Knee they found some bones, and the dates on them are all over the place. They're telling us that some are older than 300 years old, some are 100 years old. So I got a security job where I sit six hours a day watching them. That's where I actually recorded my album, while I was working there.

There's a few songs that stand out on the album, that define where my whole message is. The title track basically sums up how I grew up, and [how when] I go to a different community they grew up the same way, [then] I go to a different community they grew up the same, you know? Just looking for a hustle. Because it's boring around here, so sometimes all there is to do is drink. So a lot of the boys, they hustle for that. They hustle for the bootleggers, they hustle for their weed, or whatever their vice is, they hustle for it. That's what “Boyz N the HUD” is. These houses saw so much pain, but they also saw so much love, they saw so much good, they saw so much hope, they saw dreams come alive. It's not always bad here. But when the bad happens, you got to always take the good with it. That's basically what [the title track] is about, and basically the whole album is about that. If we change our way of thinking from, "Poor me, poor me, poor me, I went through this, I went through that." I'm like, "Why you dwelling on it? Use that to grow." And that's basically what this album all is. You can grow through the pain. You can grow through the hurt. You can grow through these obstacles. They don't define who you are. It's how you handle them, that's what defines you.

Another song that sticks out on [the album] — Krizz Kaliko, his resume is pretty stacked, formerly of Strange Music, he went platinum with Tech N9ne, he went gold with T-Pain, he did a song with Eminem, B.O.B., he's really getting up there with his music. That song [we did together called “Disappear,”] is basically [about], me and my family, we suffer from meth addiction. We've got family that are on it. And I've seen my Auntie cleaning up a mess in tears. I saw my mom in tears. People I love, I saw them in tears after one of my cousin's just flipped out on the meth rage. And they have to clean that up. And it does make you want to disappear. You just don't want to put up with it. I bought this pack from Wishmaster Beats, and it was a collaboration pack with verses and hooks from Krizz Kaliko. I was finishing up the album and I heard that song, "Disappear," and it was just like, I felt that. I felt what he was saying. When I heard that hook, that's exactly how I felt when I was in the moment trying to help my Auntie, trying to help my family whenever somebody was too gone off meth, I felt that. "I just wanna disappear," that hit different. I got permission from the producer for me to change the drumbeat because I wasn't feeling the original drum pattern. So I changed it up a little bit, took some parts out. I bought the stem packs too because I got exclusive rights for them. Then I added my own drum on there, I added my own bass in some parts. I had to make that hit on a different level. I didn't realize it at first, how [the lyrics] hit me after I recorded it. Some songs it's like, when you write something, hearing yourself say it out loud, it's just different. That was one of those moments for me. It was such a universal feeling, because it's not just with meth, it's with alcohol and gambling and other addictions too. I started seeing it like that.

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My motto since this year is, "Create our own opportunities." Because opportunities on the reservation are fucking scarce. So what I'm doing is, with the connects that I've built over the years, I'm bringing music here to the reservation. I got Krizz Kaliko, I invited him out here and he came, he did a show right here in my community. I even got to work with Mike Bone from Reservation Dogs, they came out to Wounded Knee.

I ended up doing artist development in 2018 with these two guys, one goes by — his name is Jake Janis but he goes by CONQUEST, and the other one Joel Thunderhawk and he goes by Staccs Thunderhawk. I met them at the time they were 16, they're both 20 now and they're doing their own shows, dropping their own music. Under my artist development I got them shows, I gave them free beats, free studio time, mix and master, I helped them write if they needed my help, I even helped them pay for their album. I saw music bringing together enemies. Jake and Joel, they didn't get along whenever I met them. I kind of "Parent Trapped" them, got them in the studio. They did this song, “Grinding,” when that song came out, it was wildfire. A whole bunch of young rappers started coming out. We came up with the name Sick Savages for them. They're pretty successful now, their songs average anywhere from 2K to 10K streams on SoundCloud. They're doing pretty well for themselves, even as individual solo artists they're doing good. Staccs actually won a Nammy same year I did, it was for flute with the Pine Ridge Flute Society.

I want to shout out Gabriel Night Shield, he knows how to get shows, he knows how to network. Same for B. from Dakota South Records [Brandis B. Knudsen], that guy is a fucking champ at networking. Another one that I looked up to when it comes to entrepreneurial stuff is Witko, aka Mike Clifford. I looked up to them because they were the only ones in South Dakota that were making big moves when I was coming up. They set a foundation for an artist like me, and from that it’s Sick Savages, Sick Savages to Nevada Brave, Nevada Brave to Dawson Dayne, Dawson Dayne to TEE LONG, TEE LONG to 6A6Y Draco, Draco to Scrim Reaper, just, it goes on and on. It's still in the baby stages of what I'm doing, but in the long run I feel like it's going to morph into something huge. It's going to bring a big spotlight for these young artists that are here. Because that's mainly my focus, is the younger ones, the next ones. I'm still gonna do my art, still gonna do my thing, but I'm focusing on helping them find their voice through their medicine, and helping them get a bigger spotlight, helping them tell their story too, because we all have stories here. Everyone here knows how to hustle, it's just, "How? How are we going to do it?" That's what I feel like my goal is here. I'm passing down what knowledge I know to them so we can keep this going. Because this is gonna pay off. It's not gonna happen right away. It's a big mountain, and if we keep climbing it, it's gonna pay off. Whenever we get top of this mountain, we got to remember that there is a bigger one behind it. As we're going, we're learning new ways, how to help climb it faster. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to help other artists build, keep going, not stopping even if you get discouraged. You missed an opportunity on a show? That means the next show, you're not going to miss. The next show, you're going to go harder. Next show, you're going to affect everyone. Those are stuff that I tell these artists, especially because they're still youth, they have the world at their fingertips. That's something that I'm telling them, you can use that. Make it into something that nobody thought could happen here.