fact that I came from somewhere different,” Juvenile said of their rocky start. “[Mannie] felt he would have to show me, like, prove himself right…and the next time we got in the studio, I realized that Mannie Fresh was like this multi-hit maker.” Juvenile laughed about instances when the final mix was “completely different” from what he recorded in the studio the day before. He was awed by Mannie’s ability to create different styles of beats for different types of acts and tap into an artist’s individual creativity. “It was a happy medium,” he admitted.“I had to stand down and start taking constructive criticism.” Trusting in Mannie quickly paid off for Juvenile, with his 1997 Cash Money debut, Solja Rags , earning him his first Billboard placement, at #55 on the U.S. Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The same year, Juvenile joined labelmates B.G.,Turk, and Lil Wayne to form the New Orleans supergroup Hot Boys, a union that would set the stage for the label’s impending national takeover. Mannie has a similar recollection of working with Juvenile during the early Cash Money years. The rapper was his “biggest challenge,” he said. But as the Cash Money sound began to invade the mainstream, it was Juvenile who led the charge with anthems like “Ha” and “400 Degreez,” the title track from his quadruple-platinum 1998 album. Mannie was the sole producer on Juvenile’s first four Cash Money LPs, while also contributing to his fifth and final project for the label, 2003's Juve the Great . Nineteen ninety-nine was Cash Money’s year, and Mannie’s production was the engine driving it all. The collective impact of B.G.’s “Bling Bling,” Lil Wayne’s “Tha Block Is Hot,” and Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” solidified the bounce-flavored New Orleans hip-hop sound’s place in the national and, ultimately, global music mainstream. Mannie, of course, produced all of Cash Money’s hits that year.These songs took the raw, 808-driven sound of those early Cash Money gangster bounce projects and polished it for broader consumption,adding atmospheric,orchestral touches like the tension- building digital strings that set off “Back That Azz Up.” A year earlier, in 1998, Cash Money had signed a $30 million distribution deal with Universal Music Group. The joint venture allowed for a previously unheard of eighty-twenty profit split favoring Cash Money, while allowing the company to keep a hundred percent of its masters, creating a new paradigm for independent music in the South and beyond. “They were making a lot of bread out the trunk, so when they finally did get a deal, it wasn’t a take-it-or-leave-it thing.They didn’t have to take it,” said Wayne “Wild Wayne” Benjamin Jr. of WQUE 93.3 FM. The voice of New Orleans radio for over thirty years, Wayne was the first to break Cash Money’s records in the market, giving him a front-row seat to watch the label pull off one of the most talked-about record deals of all time. Between 1998 and 2020, Mannie would hit the Billboard charts twenty-six times. Following the 1999 airwave monopoly, he cracked Billboard as a rapper and producer in 2000 with “Get Your Roll On”
Returning to the clubs and block parties put Mannie back in front of the people who had made him a local celebrity, including the drug dealers who would often use his sets as a live soundtrack to their operations. Being the top street DJ in the city made him an obvious candidate for longtime associate Bryan “Baby”Williams to approach regarding a new record label that he and his older brother, Ronald “Slim” Williams, were then developing. At the time, the brothers had only one artist, in fifteen-year-old rapper Kilo G, whose grim The Sleepwalker was the first Cash Money Records release, in 1992. (Sadly, that album’s dark themes would prove prophetic as Kilo G was gunned down five years later). While Baby was fond of Mannie’s skills as a DJ, it was his production acumen that he was really after. He was looking to create a signature sound for the new stable of artists he was building at Cash Money, and he was convinced that Mannie held the key. “Baby was like, ‘Bro, you have to be here for whatever else we have going on,’” Mannie remembered. “Everyone knew Baby’s background, so I told them,‘I can’t do this if you all are going to sell drugs. It’s gonna be this or nothing.’ So we had our back and forth in the very beginning because they were dabbling in both worlds.When they finally made up their minds, they said they'd take a chance on me, and the rest is history. The first generation of Cash Money was all bounce records, but they were the best bounce records in our region.” In 1993 alone, Mannie produced the debut albums for U.N.L.V. ( 6th & Barronne ), Lil Slim ( The Game Is Cold ), Ms.Tee ( Chillin on tha Corner ), PxMxWx ( Legalize “Pass the Weed” ), and Pimp Daddy ( Still Pimpin’ ). He also produced I Need a Bag of Dope from B-32, an early alias of Bryan “Baby” Williams, from long before his rebranding as Birdman. (The nickname was short for “Baby wit’ the 32 Golds”). While Mannie was shaping Cash Money’s “gangster bounce” sound, a rapper from the Third Ward was taking his own pathway to local fame. Terius “Juvenile” Gray had already made a name for himself as a live performer, starring at street parties and hole-in-the- wall clubs, when he teamed with another bounce pioneer, DJ Jimi, to make 1992’s “Bounce (For the Juvenile).” After Being Myself , his 1994 debut album for New York’s Warlock Records, he was looking for a new label. A chance meeting with Baby landed the rapper an audience with Mannie, and the rest is Southern rap history. “We didn’t get off on the right foot,” Juvenile said of his first studio encounter with Mannie. “The crazy part is the whole reason I came to Cash Money, and wanted to really be with Cash Money, was because of Mannie Fresh. But when I first got in the studio with him, I rubbed him the wrong way because I kept talking about how I wanted beats like Precise was making for [the Big Boy Records- affiliated New Orleans crew] Boot Camp Clicc. I said,‘Damn, I guess I ain’t gonna get the good beats now.’” Instead, the two would find themselves at the start of one of the longest and most fruitful creative partnerships of their respective careers. (They most recently collaborated on Juvenile's 2026 album Boiling Point , and currently co-host a podcast, Still 400 ). “It was the
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( opposite ) Mannie Fresh with Bryan “Baby” Williams at a Big Tymers photo shoot in 2002. Photo by Gregory Bojorquez.
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