New Orleans’ Original Gangsta Rappers Want One More Verse

Before there was Juvenile, Lil Wayne or Master P, two in-your-face rappers pioneered the defining sound of NOLA hip-hop. Now all they want is a little respect.

Illustrations by Sara Drake

New Orleans Rapper Tec-9 steps onto a helicopter to be flown to his lucrative gig. He’s been off work for two weeks but is about to embark on twenty-eight straight days of giving people what they need. “Mondays I cook anything I want. Tuesday is steak day. Wednesday I cook whatever I want. Thursday I cook what I want. Friday is seafood day. Saturday is steak day again,” says Tec, one half of the famous New Orleans gangsta bounce group U.N.L.V., “and Sunday is fried chicken day.”

Tec-9, a.k.a. Reginald Manuel, spends most of his time offshore, cooking for an oil rig’s crew — one of the few ways he could figure to make over $60,000 a year, enough to continue paying for whatever luxuries he got used to in the ’90s as a star on the fledgling Cash Money label.

“When I get jazzy with it I have a Mercedes R35, sitting on 22s,” says Tec. But today he meets me at the Burger King in his gimpy Ram 1500 work truck. He wants to take our hood history tour in my similarly sh…