Snoop Dogg's privately owned Doggyland casino is located in an unnamed building in Inglewood, and in mid-January Monday, its paisley-print blackjack table and Indoggo-branded bar were commandeered by rapper Benny the Butcher from Buffalo, New York, for a video shoot. .
With cameras rolling, Snoop and Benny laughed loudly drunk in the center of the scene, while rapping to the beat of their upcoming collaboration. To the left of him was Hit-Boy, the song's producer, while Big Hit, Hit-Boy's father, acted as a human money counter to the right of him, tossing bills and twisting fingers.
“Big success, what's wrong?” Snoop Dogg exclaimed as the two exchanged a blow between shots. “I just bought your album again. Too important.
Later that week, on the other side of a quick Las Vegas run that found them at a jam session with Ty Dolla Sign, Hit-Boy and Big Hit holed up at Chalice Studios, bobbing their heads in unison as they looked back and forth. time the final product. . Once they had absorbed each shot to their satisfaction, Hit-Boy plopped down in front of his computer and reviewed his array of samples; As soon as he decided on a vocal cut, Big Hit worked on a verse idea, freestyle references and metaphors while trying to capture the beat.
“This is all a dream come true,” Big Hit, 52, said. “It seems like a fairy tale.”
“I lost everything,” Big Hit says of his time in prison. “The struggle is real there.”
(Walter W. Brady / For The Times)
This free schedule of studying, filming and A-list shoulder rubbing is now the norm for Big Hit, real name Chauncey Hollis Sr., who is accelerating the rap career he long envisioned with his son. But he is also completely unknown. Big Hit has spent most of his adult life in prison on drug charges (from 1991 to 2004, with intermittent stints thereafter), laying his head in a cell while Hit-Boy (Chauncey Hollis Jr.) established himself as one of the fashionable men. -Dominant hop producers.
While navigating the system, Big Hit says, he survived a brutal jump at the hands of authorities that left him stranded and strapped to a stretcher while doctors wondered if he would survive. “They kept us standing from cell to cell for about a week, waiting for them to give us a bed,” he recalled. “We made a plan to defend our rights and they yelled at us and booed us. “They went overboard with me, because I was the one who didn't stop.”
In prison, he contracted COVID three separate times. The workouts required putting letters in bags to facilitate bicep curls; she learned to stuff her sheets into the vents to collect dust and protect herself from respiratory illnesses. When he was released in May 2023, he brought home his last prison meal (two slices of bread and bologna) as a spoiled reminder of the conditions in which he survived and the place to which he cannot afford to return.
“I wish I had someone who would really tell me the other side of the drug game,” he said. “It was all true: the glitter, the girls, the cars, the money and all that. But people wouldn't let you see the darker side of the situation. I lost everything. The struggle is real there.”
Meanwhile, overseas, Hit-Boy, 36, immersed himself fully in music while saving earnings to send to his father and care for his mother. His most commercially successful creations are as thunderous as they are inevitable: “N— in Paris” by Kanye West and Jay-Z, “Backseat Freestyle” by Kendrick Lamar, “Sorry” by Beyoncé and “Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott.
Hit-Boy will attend the Grammy Awards in 2022.
(Johnny Núñez / Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
This February he will return to the Grammys, where he is once again nominated for producer of the year, and for the first time in his career he will walk the red carpet with his mother, father and 3-year-old son.
It's a moment he and his father have long envisioned.
“I've won three Grammy Awards, but my dad has never gone out to see them,” Hit-Boy said. “We want that producer of the year award. Not many black people have been nominated, let alone won, so even being considered is already a fool's errand. It would mean a lot to my younger self; “You really did what you wanted to do.” “
But beyond the gold trophy, Hit-Boy's main goal has been to help his father establish a new life, rehabilitated through music and not the streets. It's a dream that was born in 2014, when Big Hit appeared on Hit-Boy's group cut, “Grindin' My Whole Life,” and scored a local hit through “G'z Don't Cry,” which sparked waterworks, but the candle went out. after Big Hit committed a hit-and-run in Humboldt County, sending him to prison once again, this time for nine years. (Big Hit says he was robbed after the accident and he fled the scene when gunshots were heard, and he didn't know that someone in the other car had been seriously injured.)
“He's been gone eight months,” Hit-Boy, right, says of his father, left, “but it's really 30 years of programming. “They took a big part of his life away.”
(Walter W. Brady / For The Times)
Instead of working side by side in the studio, Big Hit wrote rhymes in prison, planning an eventual debut album that would be produced by his son. In December 2023, the vision became a reality through “The Truth is in My Eyes,” which brings together a lifetime of street tales into one triumphant body of work. On this album (and on “Paisley Dreams,” a collaborative project with Game), Big Hit spits every word like his microphone could be snatched away at any moment.
The studio has become a safe haven for Big Hit as it acclimates to a whole new world. It's a task easier said than done, but those with a front-row seat are already seeing the change in their thinking.
“I sat with him in the studio for hours when he had been away for about 10 days, and the garden was still on him, in terms of his energy,” said DJ Hed, host of Inglewood-based Home Grown Radio.
“I was ready to get back to what I knew how to do, to make some money,” DJ Hed continued. “I had to tell him, 'Your son is really a legend here, and if you go into music, I think everything will work out for you.' I saw him at his launch party and he told me that he was now all for music, for offers on the table and for making money. It was a moment that he reminded me why I do what I do.”
“You've spent years and years without sensitivity, thinking to yourself that if you're not seeing it here and now, it's not happening,” Hit-Boy said. “It's been out for eight months, but it's really 30 years of programming. “They took a big part of his life away.”
“What we're doing is miraculous,” says Hit-Boy, right. “Some people have told me, 'You all made me reach out to my dad again.' That to me is priceless.”
(Walter W. Brady / For The Times)
Big Hit endured a tough upbringing in Pasadena. His father, who grew up an orphan, smokes and drank with him. Big Hit was an alcoholic before he reached his teens.
He calls himself a “young brat” who has a habit of cursing at his teachers and getting into fights.
“By the time [my father] I saw that it was out of control, it was too late,” he said. “That beast had been formed and molded in me. I remember one day we were on the porch and he said, 'You want to be like your dad, huh.' I looked him in the eyes and he said, 'N…, you're scaring me.' He tried to change it, but it was too late.”
Big Hit ran away at the age of 11 and hit the streets; A natural con artist, he quickly advanced through the ranks. In 1991, he was caught with 3 kilograms of cocaine, more than a dozen guns and wads of cash.
Hit-Boy had just turned 5 when his father was convicted and sent to prison for what would be 13 years, and although the two did their best to stay in touch, he felt the pain of his father's absence. Hit-Boy and his mother moved around Los Angeles, sleeping on the floor or in the homes of friends and family; At one point, the family resided in Upland, where a 2 for 99 cents deal at Arby's became their daily livelihood.
Hit-Boy's uncle, Rodney Benford, was a member of Troop, the Pasadena R&B group that scored some R&B hits in the late '80s and early '90s. Some of Hit-Boy's earliest memories were nights at his uncle's house, giving him a first-hand look at the life that a successful music career could facilitate.
“I would go to prison to see my dad and then I would go back to my uncle's house and he would be having a party,” she said. “I saw the worst of the worst in prison and the best of the best with my uncle.”
Hit-Boy tried to follow in his uncle's footsteps and create a rap group, until his collaborators expelled the founder from the scene. Instead, he took his future into his own hands and learned how to produce with a cracked copy of FL Studio and rap with a USB microphone.
Navigating the business has proven to be the most difficult part of the journey; Looking for quick cash, Hit-Boy signed a production deal with Universal Music Publishing Group in 2007, to which he remains attached after more than a decade of fighting.
“I realized it was a bad deal in 2011, when 'N—in Paris' came out,” Hit-Boy said. “I thought I had my hit, it was all over the radio, so I went to UMPG and said I needed a check. They told me, 'You already signed this contract, so there's nothing we can do for you.' “
(Thanks to the help of Jay-Z and Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez, he was finally able to secure an end date for his contract with UMPG that will soon allow him to move on.)
Recently, she's had a good run on her joint albums with Nas, the first of which (“King's Disease,” 2021) earned the Queens legend her first Grammy. But other high-profile collaborations have been bittersweet: Hit-Boy and his manager said the producer is still chasing royalties from a string of multi-platinum albums made with major-label artists.
“You'll help someone have one of their biggest moments and they'll act like they don't even know you,” Hit-Boy said. “I've won Grammys with people I can't get in touch with.”
Stories like that are one of the reasons Hit-Boy and his father are trying to chart a new path, betting on themselves and building it all in-house. Nothing they're doing is conventional: a 52-year-old rapper releasing his debut album executive produced by his son. For them, releasing “The Truth Is in My Eyes” exclusively for purchase on Bandcamp, rather than making it available for streaming on Spotify and other platforms, was another empowering move, allowing true fans to connect with the music of a deeper way.
But even more important than the album's sales is the impact it has already had on the community.
“I was talking to Game and he was telling me how many people had tried to put in his cousin or his uncle or his family, and it didn't work at all,” Hit-Boy said. “What we are doing is miraculous. I've had people say to me, 'You all made me reach out to my dad again.' That to me is priceless. That is success.”
