About Me
Try the BEST MySpace Editor and MySpace Backgrounds at MySpace Toolbox !Shanty Town Records originated in the fall of 1999 inside a 4 bedroom apartment at Middle Tennessee State University. Founding Fathers, Reggie Hall and Honest Bonds stumbled across the name Shanty Town, pronounced (Sh anty), while doing research on the MTSU's Blue Raider Mascot. Hall and Bonds visited the school library on a regular and on one cold day in November, Honest Bonds ran across a book intitled "Blacks in Tennessee- A History 1791-1970 written by Lester Lamow. Bonds quickly opened the book and started to read. Ironically, the book's fisrt chapter talked about Slavery in Tennessee and one of the most nortorious slave runners in history. Nathan Bedford Forest, the founder of the infamous Ku Klux Klan, was a great Civil War General and doctor. But he is widely remembered as the Pablo Noreaga of slavery. The Klan was started as a militia set in part to maintain order in the South while rebelling against the North. Forest and his Klansmen considered themselves "The Blue Raiders". In 1911, Forest founded Middle Tennessee State University and of course nicke-named the school's mascot The Blue Raiders. During the Civil War, there was alot of hostility that came out of Memphis, TN, a community with a large population of volatile black refugees and the headquarters for most black Union soldiers. The idea of armed freemen and escaped slaves proved to be too much of a psychological burden for the area whites to bear. Consequently as blacks became more secure in their "free status", they moved away from the Contraband Camps, set up by area whites in order to keep an eye on them, and often constructed "Shanty Towns" nearby. Shanty towns (sometimes called bidonvilles, or the academic term informal settlements) are units of irregular low-cost dwellings, usually on lands belonging to third parties, and most often located in the periphery of the cities. These dwellings are often assembled in a patch-work fashion from pieces of plywood, corrugated metal, sheets of plastic, and any other material that will provide cover. Residences are almost always built without a license. They pose a fire hazard and are remarkable by their near total absence of numbered streets, sanitation networks, electricity, telephones, or plumbing. Practically every city had its black Shanty Town, and, as with Memphis, TN's "South Memphis" and Nashville, TN's "Edgefield" became permenent communities. Reggie Hall and Honest Bonds grew up in South Memphis around the Famous Stax Studio. Both of them grew up on the soulful sounds of Al Green, Willie Mitchell, Issac Bubba Lee Hayes, The Barkays and others. At an early age these two would fall in love with the underground bluesy feel of their beloved city. Hall and Bonds would meet in the summer of 1992 while playing basketball in Hall's backyard. Both would attend Hamilton High and go on to attend MTSU after graduating the school of hard knocks. Hall and Bonds met up with Street Symphony, a produced out of Nashville, while attending MTSU. The three would form the foundation of Shanty Town Entertainment. In 2000, Hall and Bonds left MTSU and went home to record Reggie Hall's solo project. In 2001, Hall and Bonds met up with an old high school friend by the name of H. Potta. Potta introduced Hall and Bonds to a young producer named Nate. The four along with Bonds' uncle, Stanley Kizer, would work hard on thier first project, The now classic Stockz & Bondz: South Memphis Pimpin' Partner pt.1 CD. Hall, the politian with hardcore political lyrics and Bonds, the savvy pimpin CEO and the consument business man are poised to take over the south. BOW DOWN GRACEFULLY OR GET RUN THA FUCK OVA. WELCOME TO SHANTY TOWN. BITCH
