Lil Twist

Hi J here hanging out at Young Hollywood Studio with Little Twist.

What's up?

I'ma tell you girl you need to move on, move on. So here's a question now. You're almost 18 years old, you're still gonna be Little Twist. You're not so little anymore.

I know right. I'm gonna be 18 in January.

And what's the whole Twist thing? How did that come about? You're like I'm gonna be Little Twist.

Uh my cousins tried to make fun of me because I never got braids. Like I always tried to get braids. Right. But my mom used to put these little twist things in my hair. And they went all the way down my hair like braids and my cousins caught themselves making fun of me by calling me Little Twist. Right. And I ran with it.

Isn't it crazy though you're not even 18 and you're working with all these people? I mean Drake, Lil Wayne.

Yeah, it's a blessing man. A lot of work.

Where do you even go from here though?

Hopefully straight to the top. That's where I want to go.

And what would be the top for you? What's the ultimate dream? If you could write the script right now where is Little Twist gonna be in a couple years from now?

Wherever Jay-Z is right now. That's straight to the top. Yeah. Right. Whatever he's doing, wherever he is, that's what I want to be doing and that's where I want to be.

And let's talk about you know some of your mentors. Lil Wayne has been your boy now for a while. Like how did that happen? How'd you guys hook up?

Um, I performed before him in 2007. He was performing in a city outside of mine. I'm from Dallas. He performed in Tyler, Texas. It's an hour away. I drove down there and I begged his manager, which is my manager also now Cortez. I begged his manager like, yo can you please put me on this stage? Like you won't be disappointed. He put me on the stage. I got up there and ripped it and they started calling like shortly after that and I've just been down ever since.

So things like that really happened. You hear stories but you don't know it's just like that. It's exactly what happened. So persistence is key for all those out there that want to make it and and see what it takes. It's just believing in yourself and being persistent.

Yes, sir.

I got a lot of followers. How does one do that? Everyone wants to know like it's so hard and you got a gang of followers following you.

Yeah. Um, I just built my fan base like through Twitter a lot of it. And then um, being good friends with Justin. He was like one shout out. Well, I'm kicking it with my bro. And Justin Bieber in case you don't know who Justin he's talking about.

Yeah, Justin Bieber.

He um, put kicking it with my big bro @liltwist. Follow him. I got like 15,000 followers in like five minutes.

Now you got a little movie career going on.

Yeah.

We got Lottery Ticket coming through.

Yeah, Lottery Ticket.

So is that just a coincidence? You both were in that movie?

Yeah, no, he actually put me in that movie. I called him like, yo, you need to put me in this movie. I really want to be in it and he was like, I got you little bro. He called me like early in the morning one day. He was like come to the set. I went up there and just put me in the movie like put these clothes on, do this, do this and we just shot.

Lil Wayne asked you to teach him how to tweet. Justin Bieber told all of his fans, they need to follow you on Twitter. And Bow Wow's calling you to be in a movie. It's dope.

It's a blessing, man.

I love the confidence this guy has. It's so great though. You're like it doesn't faze you.

Yeah, I I you know it it does faze me. Like it just makes me it makes me happy. Right. That I actually get to do this now. Like I've been rapping. I've been trying to pursue this dream for 10 years. I started rapping when I was seven years old.

Really? In Dallas, yep. And it started You're the Texas Twist. People got to YouTube that. If you haven't seen the the Texas. How did that come about by the way?

I started rapping when I was seven years old and I ran into this guy um that used to be my like my CEO at the time. I ran into him at this mall in Dallas and I was just telling him like, hey, I want to rap. Like I know how to rap. He tried to shoo me off. Like you can't rap. And then he was like, okay, if you want to rap, go around the whole mall and rap for a dollar and bring me some money back.

Wow.

And I brought him like $12 back. And we started sitting down writing stuff and went in the studio and recorded Texas Twist and that was like the number one song in Dallas for like six weeks straight.

In the words of Jay-Z, who you love and I truly believe it with you, his song says, you know, I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man.