TERO MANDEM Subtitle: From Street Boss to Saved Soul

Chapter 2: Gutter Dreams (Part 2)

continued from the performance night

The 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.

• Press CDs.

• Pay DJs to spin us on late-night radio.

And for all that, we needed cash — real cash. Not “fans” and likes. We needed funding like the industry guys had.

Problem brought the plan.

One night we were sitting outside a chop bar, chewing gari soakings. He looked up and said, “You know what? Forget all this slow grind. If we want to blow, we have to move like the streets. Let’s push weight.”

I paused. “Weight?”

“Drugs,” he said. “That’s how these boys are eating. See that Benz that passed by? He dey work for Gavuna.”

Now, Gavuna was a name you didn’t speak loud. He wasn’t just a drug dealer. He was the plug. A ghost with eyes in every alley. People said he never used a phone, never stayed in one place for two nights, and once made a man disappear for forgetting change.

So when Problem said he could link Gavuna, I didn’t believe him.

Until two days later, we met him.

It was inside an unpainted house near Banana Inn. No furniture. Just crates. And a short man in a white singlet, playing Lucky Dube on an old stereo.

“Na you be the Mandem boys?” he asked.

We nodded.

He looked at each of us. Slowly. Like he was reading our future.

“I like boys wey get fire but calm. You no dey talk too much, that be good,” he said, pointing at me.

He opened a small black bag on the floor. Inside were wrapped packages.

“I get some customers for Mile 7. You go move these for me this Friday. If you return with clean accounts, we go talk.”

Just like that, we were in.

The hustle had changed.

We trained fast. How to move low. Where to hide stash if you were stopped. What not to say even if they beat you.

And Problem — as usual — came up with a genius disguise.

“We go dress like Christians,” he said. “White shirts, ties, black trousers. Even Bible sef.”

I laughed. “You wan sell coke in Jesus’ name?”

He smiled. “No one suspects a saint.”

So Friday came.

We packed the stash into small bags and dressed like youth fellowship members heading to crusade. Shirts ironed. Faces innocent. Biggie even carried a Bible.

We walked straight into Mile 7.

But something was off.

The street was too quiet. The usual crowd wasn’t there. The clubs looked frozen. And people were watching us — not like fans, but like snitches.

Then O Don whispered: “Yo… police dey around.”

Our heartbeat jumped. Bags strapped. Guilt written on our foreheads. We tried to act normal. Problem started humming a worship song just to add flavor.

Then a police van rolled past — slow.

Eyes scanned us. One officer even leaned out to stare. Then the van kept moving.

We didn’t breathe till it turned the corner.

The disguise had worked.

If we’d dressed like street boys, we’d be locked up.

If we’d run, they would’ve chased.

But saints don’t run.

We didn’t sell that night. It was too risky. But we weren’t caught — and that was a win.

We dipped into an uncompleted building nearby and smoked to ease the tension. Laughed about how scared Biggie looked. Even Problem admitted his hands were shaking.

But the night wasn’t done.

Later, we hit another club down the road — Club SUE. And there, the goods moved fast. In whispers. In dark corners. In toilet stalls. People bought, we delivered. Simple.

That night, we made our first profit.

Not millions. But enough for a plan.

We sat under a mango tree back at Mataheko and counted the cash.

Then I said, “Let’s shoot a video.”

Silence.

Then O Von said, “Born For War.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “That’s the one.”

It was our anthem. Our story. Our beginning.

That moment marked the shift. We weren’t just street legends anymore — we were trying to become visible. Artists. Ghetto ambassadors. And even though we knew the route was dirty, the goal felt clean.

From there, we started planning.

Problem spoke to his cousin who had a Canon camera.

Biggie had a friend who knew how to edit.

And O Don’s sister — Hajia Saskey — said she could get us dancers from her Zongo church. She loved our music. Said it reminded her of the hustle her brothers went through.

That same week, we bought thrift clothes for costumes, ironed them flat, and chose a location — a broken warehouse behind a scrap yard.

It was time.

Time to show the world Mandem wasn’t just noise — we were vision.