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Juvenile
New Orleans rap veteran of more than adecade, Juvenile has come a long way from the Magnolia projects in New Orleans uptown region. At age four, like many kids in the ghetto, Terius Gray (Juvenile's real name) and his father had left when he was very young. He would later form a group called UTP, which he later tattooed on his stomach. Juvenile's career started in the rap trio 3Grand. In 1995 he went solo and joined the Warlock Record label. In February of 1995 his first solo album, Being Myself, was released. After his new found popularity, Warlock Records re-released the album in May of 1999. The original cover had Juvenile posing in front of a tagged up wall. The later release has him chilling in a tub full of money. Real success came after Juvenile met up with two brother, Ronal Suga Slim and Brian Baby Williams, from Cash Money Records. His first release with Cash Money Records, Solja Rag, quickly became an underground hit by selling over 200,000 copies. The album's success lead to Juvenil's new group The Hot Boys to release their first album, Get It How You Live, in October of 1997. It soon sold over 400,000 albums. Their latest album Guerrilla Warfare, released in July of 1997, is expected to surpass that mark, Cash Money Records, a division of Universal Records, released their top selling album 400 Degrez in June of 1998. With video and radio hits such as Ha adn Back That Ass Up, Juvenile has enjoyed being on Billboards top 200 Cd for over forty-five weeks.
Lil Wayne
As the youngest member of the Cash Money Records camp, Lil Wayne quickly became one of the most popular Hot Boys before he even released his first solo album, simply on the merits of his young appeal. But when his debut album, Tha Block Is Hot, hit the streets in late 1999, the video for the album's title track was then the most rotated video in the states, resulting in the album's debut at number three on Billboard's top 200 chart, selling 230,000 copies in its first week. This unexpected success only improved Cash Money's superstar appeal, adding Lil Wayne to their roster of platinum artists such as Juvenile and BG. In 2000, Lil Wayne appeared in the straight-to-video film Baller Blockin, toured with the Cash Money Millionaires and Nelly, and released his sophomore album, Lights Out, at the year's end.
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