Hanging with Pitbull
Cuban-American rapper Pitbull, who moved around Miami so much when he was a kid that he can rattle off stories about stuff that went down on street corners from Culter Ridge to South Miami, Westchester, West Miami, Little Havana, Wynwood, Carol City and Opa-locka, likes to keep things real.
You won’t catch him in the VIP rooms of South Beach nightclubs with $400 bottles of vodka in front of him.
“Why are you gonna buy a bottle for $400 that you can get at the liquor store for $50? And I won’t take one for free, either, because then they think I owe them something, ” he says. “I always say, ‘I appreciate it, but I’ll be right here at the bar.’ I see other rappers with the chains and the diamonds. One’s got a Phantom, the other’s got a Maybach, and I’m always saying, ‘Let’s see how long this lasts.’ I don’t need to floss like that.”
Which is why Mr. “3-O-5 til I die” suggests lunch at the no-frills Mike’s, hidden away on the ninth floor of the Venetia, an older condo tower on the mainland side of the Venetian Causeway.
THE FANS
He walks into the lobby sporting a plain white T-shirt, jeans and shades. The 27-year-old who has made a name for himself straddling his city’s often disconnected Latin and black youth cultures, in the process taking Spanish-sprinkled, Miami-flavored, crunked-up hip-hop to the U.S. mainstream, barely makes it three steps before fans clock him.
“Oye, Pitbull. ¿Qué pasa?” says one middle-aged man.
“What’s up, Papo?” responds Pit, who used to go by Armando Christian Perez when he attended so many public schools in so many pockets of Miami-Dade County that even he can’t keep up with all the names.
A couple of guys in the Venetia lobby ask him to pose for a snapshot. He obliges. Upstairs at Mike’s, another guy interrupts his shrimp gumbo to lay it on the line: “I just moved down here from New York. I spit fire, know what I’m sayin’? I got some good raps, but I might need some help to put something together.”
Pit tells the rapper to let him finish lunch (the gumbo, a chicken Caesar and a shot of tequila for dessert), “and I’ll come holler at you.” Then comes a guy talking about a producer friend who has been trying to hook up with Pit to record something. Pit politely gives him the name and number of one of his peeps.
“You can win over people one at a time. I want people to say Pitbull’s buena gente.” Good people.
So he’s spending the rest of the day with 21 high-school seniors who received awards from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, which presented Pitbull with its Compadre Award for supporting and being a role model for Hispanic youth.
You’d never know from all the commotion at the Venetia, and later with the kids, that Pit is at a crossroads in his career. That his last album, Boatlift, released in November 2007, sold just over 100,000 copies, lackluster results after the success of his two previous releases (2004’s M.I.A.M.I. sold 615,000 copies, and 2006’s El Mariel sold 225,000). Or that he’s in a war with his label, TVT Records, and is happy to tell the world how much he wants out.
TVT, one of the top independents in the country, which also records Lil’ Jon and Ying Yang Twins, filed for bankruptcy in February. It got into financial trouble after it sued the Miami label Slip-N-Slide to keep it from releasing early Pitbull songs and lost, ending up with a $4.58 million judgment.
“Unfortunately, they haven’t promoted us as artists the way they should have, ” Pitbull says of TVT. “But I don’t like to cast myself as a victim. I learned a lot. Now I just want out.”
He says record sales for Boatlift are off, because “you can’t get them in the stores. [TVT] hasn’t distributed it.”
TVT executives wouldn’t comment.
HE’S PAYING
“I’m on tour right now with my own money, ” Pitbull says. “I’m paying for the bus, the hotel, the band. But it’s crazy to see how the music connects with people. I was just in Salt Lake City. It was packed — 14,000 people. I want to move on. I know bigger things are still coming.”
However big the future might be, Pitbull vows to stay true to the 3-0-5.
“Miami means the world to me. The 3-0-5 made me who I am. It’s such a unique city. Now that I have traveled everywhere, I can say that what Miami has to offer is incredible. In the ’80s, my parents used to call it the quinceañera, because it was growing up so fast. And it really has grown. But when I’m in town, I still hang out at the barbershop. I invested in a barbershop with Fademaster, on Calle Ocho, and that’s where I be.”
Pitbull is proud to be street and to talk street, and he easily fits into all the gritty neighborhoods, Hispanic and black, where he lived as a kid. If there’s one thing he has, it’s cred. While the rest of the hip-hop world fetishes Al Pacino’s Scarface, Pitbull can say he lived it.
On the song Que tu sabes d’eso (What do you know about that?), from 2006’s El Mariel, Pitbull seems to be setting the wannabe gangsters of hip-hop straight, especially those who have questioned the white-skinned rapper who insists on weaving a lot of gritty Spanish into his rhymes:
“¿Qué tu sabes de viajes pa’ bajo pa’ Key Largo pa’ recoger 100 aparatos en un bote cigarro? (What do you know about trips down to Key Largo to pick up 100 keys in a Cigarette boat?)
DRUG DEALER DAD
Pitbull says his father was a drug dealer in the ’80s. He says he, too, dabbled in some shady dealings until, mentored by Miami’s godfather of rap Luther Campbell, he turned to a better game.
“My hustle now is music. But I was on the streets. I’m Cuban from Miami. I was gonna have my hand in a couple of things here and there. But I don’t glorify it. My father was deep in it. To me it was a blessing in disguise. Because it kept me from getting deep in it. Unfortunately, the youth looks at the drug-dealing thing like it’s cool. But there isn’t even that much money in it these days. Now you need an Internet hustle or something.”
Ask Pitbull about his parents, and, again, he keeps things real.
He has a strained relationship with his father, who wasn’t always around, he says. And right now he’s not talking to his mother.
“I still take care of my mother, ” Pitbull says. “To be perfectly honest, I miss her. I try to see her, but, for some reason, she tries to knock me. I saw a lot of things growing up, and not only do I remember, but now I understand. I wouldn’t want my kids going through any of that s – – -. They don’t have to live the life I lived.”
Pitbull has a daughter, 6, and three boys, 5, 2 and 1. He lives with the mother of the two middle children.
“I’m trying to be a different kind of dad. I had three videos out, and I was still living in Opa-locka, because I wasn’t going to move until I could buy my own property. I’ve never bought a chain. The only jewelry I have is a ring that was my grandmother’s, but it broke so it’s at the jewelry store.
“I’ve been trying to put my money in real estate. I’m not trying to make money off of it now. That’s for my kids. When they grow up, they can do whatever they want with it.”
Pitbull is eager to get on with his career. He has had a few hits he’s proud of, but he knows he has something better in him. He has so many vibrant scenes to capture about growing up hardcore in the 3-0-5. And he has told chunks of that story already.
But he wants to work on a full narrative about a Miami that few others know like he does.
“I’ve never been able to lock myself in a studio and really go to work. I haven’t turned in my classic. I don’t have my Doggystyle. I haven’t done my best work yet. But I will.”
THE NEXT THING
In the meantime, there’s always the next hustle.
“I wanna do women’s heels. Everybody else [in hip-hop] does tennis shoes. But I have always had a fetish for heels. I like them tall. But not like Jimmy Choos. They’re too expensive. They can be 50 percent less, even 75 percent less and still be better shoes. I mean, I ain’t knockin’ Jimmy Choo’s hustle. They’re killin’.”
This story was originally published June 1, 2008 at 8:06 AM.