I won’t sugarcoat it — I wasn’t raised with softness. I came up hard, in the raw corners of Dansoman, where people don’t survive on dreams but on instinct. The kind of place where even the wind whispers warnings, and every corner holds a story soaked in smoke and regret.My name is Tero Mandem. That’s not the name my mother gave me, but it’s the one the streets gave me — and the name I earned through pain, blood, and voice.I was raised behind a kiosk. Not beside — behind. My mother had managed to turn a space the size of a goat pen into a home. She sold secondhand underwear in the Lapaz market, hanging bras and boxers from wooden poles like victory flags. She worked from sunrise to streetlight, just to make sure I ate once a day.My father? The streets have never told me who he was. All I know is, my mother says it was a rainy Friday night, she trusted the wrong voice, and nine months later, I arrived.We weren’t poor. We were below poor. If poor people had neighbors, we were downsta

continued from the performance nightThe next morning, the streets were buzzing.Not with police sirens. Not with gunshots.But with our name.“Mandem boys kill am!”“You see the one in Nike? That be the real boss.”“Problem be mad o. The boy just fire bars like he dey breathe punchlines.”In Dansoman, Lapaz, and Mataheko — it wasn’t just music heads talking. The local gangs started murmuring too. That’s when things started to twist.Some feared us.Some hated us.Some wanted to be us.But fame in the ghetto ain’t like fame in Accra or on TV. It’s dangerous. Every name you make echoes in the wrong ears.We’d made a name.But we hadn’t made money.And that was the biggest problem.See, we could freestyle on any beat. We could pull a crowd without a poster. But in Ghana, especially in the hood, music don’t feed you — not without a sponsor, not without connections, and definitely not without cash.We needed to level up:•Get in the studio with better mics.•Shoot music videos.•Pre

You know what they don’t tell you about the street?It doesn’t break all at once. It fractures little by little—until one day, you blink, and everything’s different.That’s what happened after Biggie got arrested.The heat didn’t calm down. It got worse.Cops weren’t just driving past anymore—they started searching. Slapping boys at junctions. Dragging people into vans, asking about our gang, our names, our movements. Even our music became evidence. They said our lyrics were confessions, that “Gone to War” wasn’t a metaphor but a threat.We couldn’t walk freely anymore. We changed locations like underwear. One night in Lapaz, next in Sukura. Always sleeping on concrete. Always with one eye open. Even laughter became suspicious. Every smile felt forced.The unity we used to feel—it started to fade.Lovelone was the first to go quiet. He stopped showing up. Started talking more to his girl than to the gang. Problem said he was folding under pressure. O Don said we should watch him. But

Success, when it finally shows face, doesn’t walk in quietly.It bursts through the door — wild, demanding, and full of expectations.That’s exactly what happened to us.The Mandem, once just local thugs with rhythm and rage, were now MMS — Monday Music Syndicate. And trust me, we were living that name heavy.It started small.One video.One song.“Tears from Lapaz” broke the street algorithms. But what followed after that was more than just numbers — it was movement. Vibes.Suddenly, we were getting calls.“Yo, Mandem, come shut down this block party.”“Boss, we wan feature una on this campus fest.”“Chale, we dey run show for Legon SRC week. We go pay.”It was like the whole country had been waiting for something raw, something street, but clean enough to vibe to — and we fit that slot perfectly.The Invitations Came in Droves.First was University of Ghana, Legon.We stepped on that stage like we owned the ground. The moment we dropped our first song, the whole hall turned into a r

I never meant to fall that hard.At first, Ruby was just another beautiful face in the crowd — long curly hair, smooth caramel skin, the kind of presence that made rooms slow down when she walked in. But there was something deeper, something beyond the way her laughter danced in the air. It was the way she looked at me, like she saw through the tattoos, the rough speech, the secrets. And it scared me.We met during one of our shows at the University of Ghana. She wasn’t like the girls who came backstage screaming our names. Nah. She just stood in the corner, arms folded, sipping malt, watching. When our set ended, she walked up to me — calm, no smiles, no games.“You rap well,” she said. “But I can tell you’re not just about the music.”I laughed. “What else am I about then?”She tilted her head. “Trouble.”I should’ve walked away. Should’ve kept it surface. But something about Ruby made me want to open up, even if just a little.We started talking — every day, late nights on the phon