@HustleVision|"Pleasure Meets Business"| Album Release

September 25, 2014

@HustleVision|"Pleasure Meets Business"| Album Release

There comes a time in every artist’s life where he has to stop being humble and promote how far he’s come in his work.

Born TeFeris Henderson, a Lafayette High School alumnus, HustleVision had been afraid to admit he’d been running into artists like Iggy Azalea and T.I. on a regular basis as he spent time recording in Atlanta. It’s not that way anymore.

“I never talk about it. I never, we call it ‘flexing,’ brag about what’s going on because who’s really going to believe you? ‘I saw T.I. yesterday.’ People say ‘Yeah, right,’” he says laughing. “But the people I’m around, they see it with me all the time, so it’s pretty rewarding, being from St. Joe.”

Rewards for HustleVision keep coming as he recently released his debut album, “Pleasure Meets Business,” an eclectic mix of hip-hop, R & B and blues that was partially recorded at Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta, a favorite of artists like Whitney Houston and Usher. To clarify, HustleVision is still hesitant to name-drop the people he’s seen at the famed studio, the place where Drake recorded songs for his debut “Thank Me Later” and Lil Wayne recorded “The Carter III.” But he wants to show people back home that as a former St. Joe artist, as the former once said, he has started from the bottom and now he’s here.

About 10 years ago, HustleVision was known around St. Joseph as Frostee, a young, ambitious rapper who had such a wealth of material that he released three CDs on the same day. They sold well locally, propelling the artist to test the waters in Texas, where he would drive by himself on the weekends to sell his CDs at markets like Traders Village and various businesses.

“No one goes to the gas station without any money,” he says laughing. “It sounds simple, but that would be the main place I would go and sell my CDs.”

Eventually changing his stage name to HustleVision, he knew what places to hit up to perform — areas that were thirsty for hip-hop.

“I would book places that no one would go. I would go to the ‘hood where the pizza man doesn’t deliver,” he says. “Nobody else would go to these places and I would go by myself.”He adds: “That’s why they call me Hustle because no one ever helped me do anything ... I just built it all with the help of God.” It’s like he says on the song “Already On It”: “Wake up in the morning/Thank the Lord for my mentality/Hustlin’ my dreams/Then turn my dreams into reality.”

Speaking on “Pleasure Meets Business,” HustleVision wants the album to be the dividing line between the previous music he made as Frostee and his more diverse current work, which is why he refers to it as his debut.

“I want them to see my body of work. I feel like I can do anything on here, I have a blues song, I have R & B, I sing on there,” he says. “I play the piano, the saxophone, I’m learning the guitar right now. It’s multi-faceted.” While the album wears its parental advisory label proud on sexually charged songs like “Whatz Good” and “Show Me Luv” and spit-fire, chest-thumping bangers like “F---in’ It Up” and “Ride Wit Me,” HustleVision has one subject that’s completely off-limits: violence.

“It’s fake. There’s no person that can talk about shooting somebody or killing people in St. Joe and not be in jail,” he says laughing.

While he covers some familiar hip-hop territory, HustleVision ties it with an overarching theme of rising above rough surroundings, like the event that changed his life — when he says his mom abandoned him.

The event and the wedge driven between HustleVision’s mom and him comes up on songs like “We Made It” and the bluesy “Gone for Good,” as well as a voicemail she left for him he felt compelled to put on the album. “I sent the songs to her. I don’t see her, I don’t talk to her. She got my number and called and left a message. I left those messages after the song,” he says.

A cathartic and emotionally devastating middle piece to the album, following the confessional “A Mother’s Love,” we hear his mom wish him the best with no apology for what she did. “We played it in about six different states we've been to ... Someone cried each time,” he says. “I get goosebumps thinking about it because watching a stranger cry after listening to your music, it’s rewarding, but it’s like ‘Oh (expletive).’”

While it’s unclear if the relationship between HustleVision and his mom will ever be repaired, he’s got family and friends all over the place backing him up, including his engineer Eric Surrat; his manager, Big Shug; as well as his CanonGang crew, the production crew that helps him create music videos and TV shows.

As HustleVision continues to gain popularity, he says he wants to keep that family small, as he doesn't trust a whole lot of people. Already, he’s dealing with people wanting to get in his circle. “People that never showed any support, now they’re seeing the things that I’m doing and trying to be a part of it,” he says. “It just comes to a point where I’m just like ‘Nah, I’m good.’”

As for him continuously running into a bunch of celebrities, he says his family in St. Joseph still doesn't know what to think of it.

“My family, they’re kind of weird-ed out. Me, I’m kind of used to it,” he says with a huge laugh.

While a St. Joseph tour date is still in the works, HustleVision will be holding album release parties at;

Aura Nightclub, 3832 Main St., in Kansas City on Aug. 1 and at Empire Room, 334 E. 31st St., in Kansas City on Aug. 2.

HustleVision's Album "Pleasure Meets Business" is available now from his website www.HustleVision.net, amazon, itunes and google play.