“Well, I never imagined that I’d be doing hair for a living. I had a talent. My grandmother told me that I should go to school for hair. It was something that I enjoyed doing because I braided. I’m the oldest girl of nine and I would braid my baby sisters’ hair. As they got older, they got tired of braids and wanted something different. I had to learn how to do different things to their hair. When I went to hair school, I already knew how to do hair. I just needed to perfect it and become licensed. When I got here, I had quit my job. Then my husband was laid off and he seen this building. He was like, ‘I think you should go into business for yourself’. I was working at home, in my basement. I was also pregnant. That’s where Lavish Looks came from. It was seven years ago. My husband bought the building and told me that I was going to do this. 

I would say that in this industry, you have to push yourself sometimes and come out of your comfort zone. Anything worth fighting for, you have to put in the work, it’s not easy. Over time, things will change. Education is key. You have to stay on top of what’s new, different products, and different things that will keep people’s hair healthy. You have to set yourself outside of the norm. In our industry, people are into frontals and weaves but first, you have to learn how to treat their hair. 

I had to stay true to myself and be consistent. I have never had a time where I went a period of time and my clients not know where I’m at. I feel like consistency is what keeps you in this industry. Even though none of my booths are filled, I may have had people come and go but I stayed consistent. I had to keep pushing. I feel like Lavish Looks is Louisville’s best kept secret. People don’t know about us but we’ve been here for seven years. You won’t hear anyone say anything negative about us. What you do hear is that people found a gem up the street from Park Hill.

We need more things for our children. Social media’s taken over a lot. Before, everybody could go outside and play. Now, everybody’s on their phone. They need something that will stir them away from that. There’s really nothing for them to do unless you go way far out. We also need to stick together, within our community. What’s for you is for you and no one can take that from you. The Lord blessed you with it. We need to worry about self and more stuff for the younger generation in our community. 

For women entrepreneurs, I feel like you have to be yourself because if you don’t, no one else will. You have to lead by example and you have to believe in yourself. Do the research and get your business plan together. There’s different things out here that can get you started. If you do the research, you can start it off. It’s always a struggle and nothing will come easy. Always put in the work. Take a leap on faith but you have to put the work behind it.” - Sparkle, Owner of Lavish Looks Salon in Park Hill

“I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. My dad is from Louisville. His family was one of the first families to move in Cotter Homes, when they first opened it up. My grandfather was a veteran and they was setting up Cotter Homes and all the housing projects for veterans to live in. It was like an entry level for families to get on their feet and be able to establish themselves and move out of the projects into a single family home. My father had seven brothers and sisters. They were one of the first families to move there. My father was telling me how all of this land on the other side of 34th St. was “Little Africa” before they started building projects over here. So, when we moved back to Louisville, we moved on 41st St., between Elliott and Vermont, over by King Elementary School. 

When we moved on Kentucky, I started going to the Parkland Boys & Girls Club. That was back in ’92. Mr. Ed “Nardie” White was the director and had just started. He was adamant about having a Boys & Girls Club that was not completely sports centered. He was always around Pan-Africanists, or people who studied Pan-African Studies. They were woke back in the 90’s. They were wearing dashikis and medallions and smelling like frankincense and myrrh. Seriously, that’s how they came through. They were non-traditional people, much different than my aunt and uncles. They were church going, Sunday school attending and kids was in Jack and Jill. Here I was, in the West End, seeing people in African clothes and talking about the rites of passage at nine and ten years old. 

My West End experience started at the Boys & Girls club. While everybody was hooping and in the game room, I was in the arts and crafts room learning how to do macrame, making friendship bracelets and keychains. We would do mask making and paper mache.

One summer, at the  Boys & Girls Club, Mr. White applied for this grant through Arts Reach through the Kentucky Center. Through Arts Reach, he got a drum maker & a drummer to come teach us some classes. The drummer was Yaya Diallo and the drum maker was Baile McKnight. Baile taught us how to make these drums out of PVC pipe and cowhide. We were young, making these drums the ones you see right here. We were cutting this pipe and making them. That was my introduction, hands on, into this culture. 

We had this program called ‘The Untouchables’, which was a rites of passage for young black dudes, that showed us an alternative to gang life and the streets. I was in the Boys & Girls Club everyday. My mother made sure that I was somewhere where I was supervised and had some structure. I started to absorb the culture. Mr. White definitely made sure that everyone wasn't pigeon holed into peewee football or basketball. He made sure that there were alternatives. His goal was to make sure to match every dollar spent on sports with some type of artistic or cultural program and I’m a beneficiary of that.

When Mr. White said that he was ready to retire, this was maybe 3 years ago, he asked me to start coming back because he wanted me to take his job. I was not hesitant about that at all. I was like ‘Sign me up. Where do you need me to be?’. I started to commute back and forth from Lexington a couple days a week. That’s when all of those seeds that were planted started to really show their blossom, the growth, and the development. We’ve been having a documentary filmed about us. We’re having a full length feature film made about the Drum Corp, the success stories about the Drum Corp, the connection that Mr. White and I have and the leadership training and what it’s done for other kids.

Everybody has qualities and characteristics of being a leader. Everybody is not specifically chosen and cultivated in being a leader. I could have been a follower. I was on the cusp of being a following because I was stealing baseball cards, stealing magazine, and hopping the train. But through the Drum Corp, I was around people who felt that leadership was very important and necessary. The people who was teaching us were leaders. It was the Drum Corp and school that helped me be a leader.

There has to be young professionals, who are from this area and are products of this area, that want to come back and feed into this area. That’s null and void, right now. You can look around and the business owners are gone. The people that make it out don’t want to come back. That’s why there’s so many abandoned houses and trash in the neighborhood. There’s this stigma about West Louisville about what it is and what it ain’t. It’s important that we get people that made it out of the hood to come back to reinforce some of the things that were given to them, so that we can continue the success. If not, it won’t continue and that’s what we’re seeing. We are living in a time where, on a broad scale, there’s no where for kids to go. We don’t get the publicity or the notoriety, or the visibility. So, it seems that there’s nothing. 

For a program like this, that’s been going on for 25 years, that has countless graduates of high school and college, executives, doctors, people with masters and doctorate degrees, and lawyers that come from this program. We just don’t have anything that tells people about what’s going on. 

We are in preparation for the 12th Annual Da Ville Classic Drum Line Showcase at the Palace Theater. This has started about 12 years ago by high school freshman, who were member of Drum Corp, my sister being of them. Mr. White saw to it that we had a traditional marching style, HBCU drum component in our program. With that, we asked Kentucky State to come down and do a clinic of sorts and showcase in this drumlins showcase. It started in ’06 at Chickasaw Park and it has grown to the Amphitheater, the Kentucky Center for the Arts and now, the Palace Theater. 

We’re creating avenues for these kids to be successful. It’s amazing to see one our kids get his bachelor’s in social work in Lincoln’s ensemble. One of the girls who started the program is getting her master’s in social work. One of the other kids is in law school at the University of Kentucky. My sister has her master’s in speech pathology from EKU. She’s a linguist and getting ready to start working on her doctorate. That’s what we do with this program, is really showcase to the community the spirit of the drum. We wanna show the community that this is more than beating drums, it’s a life skill. They can see a kid who came from this group at seven years old and is now twenty-two and getting ready to graduate. When Black Panther came out, the whole world was like, ‘Wakanda Forever’. Everybody is really into this fictitious black society where we have this resource that makes us great. We have a real life black society with a real life resource that makes us great. We got a 7th grade drummer who has skills and will be in somebody’s orchestra or on tour with a pop start because the nurturing of her talents through this program. We want the whole city to see that.

If I could give any advice to the world it would be to use community and family to build the world that you want to see. Build partnerships and use people around you to make your situation and the world a better place. We need the village mentality if we are going to be successful and continue to help and grow with each other. If we are self-minded and have selfish ambitions and don’t put any energy into helping someone else, then our success doesn’t count.” - Al, Director of River City Drum Corp in Park DuValle

"I’ve been all over the West. I was born and raised here, everybody knows me. This right here is the jungle. Yeah, 32nd’s the jungle. I tried to get away but it is what it is. I’m connected everywhere throughout the West End. 

We need more leaders. You got all these kids listening to this music and wanna shoot everything up. You’ve got grown people sitting around and standing outside of the store and playing with guns with the kids. We just need more leaders around here. Nobody wanna do nothing. It could get better but it’s not. Nobody wants to make it better. 

They need to fix up these abandoned houses. These bandos could be real nice if they paid a little attention to them. Take away some of these liquor stores and get more child care centers. We need a medical center, too. We have to go all the way out in the south or downtown. We need something here.

Blacks need to stop killing blacks. We need to stick together and do this shit right. They want us to kill each other. That’s why they’re letting us do all of this nonsense. The community would be way better if they’d stop the killing.” - Deb (left), Parkland

"We need more places for kids to hang out because we can’t do nothing anymore. We need a real rec center. Kids can’t do a thing.” - Ana (right), Parkland

“I’ve been in the West End all of my life. I moved out for about two years and moved back; I missed it. For most people, the West End is all negative, but for me it’s the culture great. This where everything started. We get a negative image but there’s a lot of positive things going on. 

My music makes me the happiest. My dad did music and I’m picking up right where he left off. Actually, me and friends do it together. We all live in the West End, as a matter of fact. We just did a show at Shawnee Park and we were getting all positive feedback. The group’s called Ganja Boys. We rap and we’re a collective. We have people doing a lot of different things. We have somebody that takes photos and somebody that does music. We even have someone doing fashion. We’re just trying to come up in the best way possible. 

I feel most creative when I have good vibes, good energy and nothing but positivity around me. It just puts me in a good mood to do positive things. It’s a blessing to me and I just want to take that blessing and bless other people with it. 

I feel like the West needs more support. Instead of building all of these hotels and building up downtown, they need to fix the West. There needs to be more programs for the kids, so they can be in tune with their talents and not focus on the bad things. We can do more beautiful things if we just pay more attention to it. 

Whenever you feel down and when someone tells you that you can’t do something, focus all of that negative energy and prove them wrong and do positive things.” - Ben, Shawnee

“I’ll be 60 this year. I was raised up in a time where there was a lot of jazz being played. So, jazz led me to play the trumpet and other instruments. When I was 5 years old, I seen jazz musicians on tv. Watching them make the sounds with the instruments, using their hands, I thought it was magic. I love how it always fits the scenery that you might be in when you hear it. Jazz just crowns any moment.

My music inspires me. I’m trying to start a band. I went a long time without playing the trumpet, so I’m really just getting back. They call it getting your lip back but I’ve been playing for a long time. I started out on piano but this is the instrument that I stuck with. I practiced every day. It was knack because in 18 months I was playing in a professional band. It was complicated jazz because I was playing by ear and by heart.

I’m facing a lot of struggles because I have to maintain my life. I can’t put a lot of energy and source finding into my music because this isn’t really a jazz town. This used to be a jazz town. There was world class jazz musicians that came here and played at this place called The Jazz Factory. World class jazz musicians appeared every week. Now, they’re not doing that anymore.

My advice to the world is to follow your heart, not your mind.” - Donnell, Portland

“It’s not considered Beecher Day, it’s Thunder. Beecher Day’s in the summer. 

The West End needs help, more houses and more things for the kids to do. There’s nothing for the kids, everything’s gone. We need better community centers, that’s really gonna help the kids. Give out some free tutoring. You see how many kids that were in high school that don’t go to school no more? 

The disconnect between the older and younger generation is a respect thing. They don’t respect us young folk. They think they can just talk to us any type of way. If they gave us a little more help, out here, the West End would be better.” -The Crew, Russell - Thunder 2018 at Beecher Terrace

“I love coming to Beecher Terrace Day. They’re trying to get things together and people are trying to do the right things. We’re getting together and having fun. That’s why I like coming down here. I hope everything goes smooth.

We met in 1995. We just created love and we’ve been together for 23 years. The key to happiness in a relationship is understanding, trust, and love. Don’t worry about the next person. Do you and that old jealous stuff, get away from that because that won’t keep your relationship together. You’ve got to trust your spouse in order to be happy. Let that man be that man and let that woman be that woman. That’s what I like about her, she lets me be that man.” James & Renee, Russell - Thunder 2018 at Beecher Terrace

3 Queens, Russell - Thunder 2018 at Beecher Terrace

“Understanding, communication, and trust are the keys to a good relationship. It’s hard because we all have our problems but you just have to put that trust out there on the table. We’ve been doing this for twelve years. We met up here. It was like love at first sight, for real. Twelve years and three kids later, I’m ready to get married.

This might be the last Thunder for us. I grew up here. Thunder of Louisville has always been up here, it’s Beecher Terrace Day. That’s what we call it. Once they tear it down, it’s over. Well, when they get everything reconstructed ain’t no telling what it’s gonna be when you come back here. It’s over. We’re gonna be forced to go down there. For us black folks, we ain’t gonna wanna go anywhere else, it’s tradition. Damn, that’s cold. It’s the last one. I started not to come and was just gonna stay home and sit on the couch and watch tv. I’m glad I came out here.

We need more love down here. Down here, it’s ridiculous. I  mean, I grew up wild but now, they need love. The city’s tore up. The West End needs more community centers, unity, and more support for each other.” Von & Tia (pictured with Moon Dog & Moon Puppy), Russell - Thunder 2018 at Beecher Terrace

“It’s a celebration here, today. It’s for all the people. There’s no violence and everybody gets to watch fireworks with their families. The kids can come to a neighborhood where you don’t have to worry about nobody jumping on you and no arguments. We’re barbecuing, eating good, and everybody’s saying hi. Plus, we’re all black and we’re family.” - Comedian Bean (Left), Russell

"Stop the violence, man. I’m praying for the night. I hope everybody’s safe and there’s no killings. It’s a nice day. Everybody’s feeling good and looking nice. Everything’s all love.” - Putt (Right), Russell - Thunder 2018 at Beecher Terrace

“I started braiding when I was eleven. My mama was a hair stylist, so I was a shop kid. She inspired me and I was brought up around all of this. Our whole family is full of hair stylists, so it was kind of inevitable. I’ve been in this shop for nine years. The money attracted me at first but it became more than that. Besides the money, it’s the feeling you get when you make other people feel good about themselves. That keeps me in it. Even when the money’s slow, you still have that feeling to fall back on.

When you first get in the shop from hair school, it slows down a lot. You’re so used to being busy because hair school feeds you clientele. When you get out of school and out on your own, you have to start from the ground up and rebuild. It’s rough. After the transition, or so many years of staying at the same spot, it builds up. Starting out, it’s rough. Coming out of school, you’ll be going back and forth asking yourself if you want to keep doing this but you gotta keep going.

You gotta put yourself out there. Social media plays a big part in me getting a lot of clientele. Put yourself out there and once you get out there, it’s all word of mouth. If you do right and you do good work, people will send people your way. 

My advice to people who are just starting out is to not give up. When it gets hard, just push a little harder. Everything will get better later on. Soon you won’t have to work as hard to get your clientele. Just don’t give up.

Focus on you, yours, and what you’ve got going on. Don’t worry about nobody but your situation. When you worry about other people’s stuff, you’ll start losing track of yourself and try to keep up with everybody. Do your own thing and be good at it.” - Tiffany, Devastating Doos in Russell

“I’m from East Louisville and I’ve been in the West since 2008. I’m originally from Clarksdale Projects. You see, they tore my neighborhood down. Yeah, so I’m from the East End. I’ve been in the West for about ten years, now. It’s a beautiful part of town. It’s bigger. It’s alright. I come from the projects, so I was used to the project life, with the apartments and everybody’s in one space. It’s a bigger part of town, down here.

They need to put more stuff out here for the kids. They’re taking all the community centers and tearing everything down. In the neighborhoods, where it’s majority black, there’s no positive activities for the kids. Yeah, they got churches but everybody’s not into religion. You can’t force that on nobody. There ain’t no skating rink, movie theater, no nice little centers with game rooms and stuff. Even if it’s a computer room, where the kids can just go in there and get on a computer or an iPad. They need stuff like that.

The struggle inspires me because I really want more. I want more for myself and my community. I know what would help if the opportunity was given to a whole lot of us. A whole lot of us ain’t got nothing to do but to get get into the streets. The struggle inspires me and just seeing young black men turn their life around and doing something positive. When I see other people grow, it inspires me and makes me wanna grow. It makes me wanna put out that energy to make someone else grow.

I’m putting my energy to making myself better. I got a book called, ‘Hustling is a Habit’, it’s on Amazon. I’m also about to drop this new music, on Tuesday, on all social media outlets. It’s called ‘A Mouth Full’. I gotta couple properties, I’m into real estate. I’m trying to build a solid foundation and leave a nice little legacy. The way society is set up, it’s best to invest in yourself and be an entrepreneur. It’s so many opportunities and it make things happen for yourself. 

Believe in yourself. Everybody’s a genius, you just have to tap into it and put energy into it. Get up off your ass because there’s opportunities out here. Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t easy. Some get it easier than others. You gotta create it. Don’t let nobody discourage you and tell you that you can’t do it. I’ve been through a lot, myself. My name is Raymont Forney and I come from nothing but at the end of the day, I want something. So that means that whatever opportunity is given, without me having to sell my soul, I gotta take it. I have to invest in myself. With today’s society, you’ll be working yourself in circles dealing with the day to day. That day to day will only get you so far. I say that to say to everyone to believe in yourself and chase your dreams.” - Raymont, Portland

“I grew up at Eddie’s Liquors. Eddie’s my grandfather and I was very close to him. I was his favorite. When I grew up, we had lots of uncles, so many I couldn’t count. We came from Illinois. We started off across the street, in that building over there. It was a store there and my grandfather ran it with his brothers and my father. Eventually, they bought this side of the store and moved over here. I was about three or four years old, when they moved over here. Once this started, I think my uncles left and went somewhere else. My dad and my grandfather continued to own this store. 

It’s very important to continue that family business. Even though I have my own business ventures, this is still my home. This is where I grew up at, since I was a kid. I moved away at 18, and moved back because this place has a special place in my heart. This is home for me. These people around here mean a lot to me. They know us. I can’t go nowhere without being recognized and that’s why I always stayed out of trouble.

The West End needs more stuff for the youth to do, more jobs, and more opportunities. I hate that there’s nothing to do around here. We need more stores. I cannot stand going to Hurstbourne to do all of my shopping. I’d rather spend my money within my community, but you can’t because there’s nothing down here. We don’t have any food and we have to go across town to a restaurant. It’s crazy.”- Iman, Shawnee

“What got me into barbering? There was these older guys, by Chickasaw, Markie D and Big Norm. I swept hair for them, so I wanted to be like them. One of them gave me a pair of clippers and I started cutting hair in my house for a dollar. I was 13 and I’m 47 now. That was a long time ago. I didn’t get my barber license until I was 20. I was a youngster and I was intrigued by it.

Well, I was a barber for almost three years, then I started Miller Tyme. What I did was come out of school and I worked for a man named Brown Sugar off 8th & Broadway. I learned from him how to run a business and how not to run a business. After that, I worked at Fadz on 23rd & Broadway. I opened that up for a gentleman and that’s what taught me how to open a shop because I opened that one up for him. After that, the rest is history. I’ve been having Miller Tyme for 23 years.

My grandparent instilled in me to treat everybody fair and that’s why business keeps coming back. Yeah, they instilled in me to treat everybody fair, do the best I can, and wake up early and come to work. Don’t stay in the bed. The early bird gets the worm. 

The kids inspire me. A lot of them are lost and some of them are not lost. I wanna reach the ones that are by talking to them and cutting their hair. You know, let them see what I do and maybe follow my footsteps. 

My advice to anybody who wants to start a business is to treat people fair. Have firm hours. You want people to get to you. You don’t want to come to work at one o’clock, you wanna come early. When you open up your business, open up early and leave late. You gotta do what you gotta do. It’s gonna be struggles but opening up early is the best advice. Put that stamp on it and help the community. 

The West End needs hope. We need some of these businesses, like Brown Forman and Reynolds, that are in the West End to put something back into and help develop the West End. What are you doing as a big business, that’s making billions of dollars, to help the community that you’re in? We also need good mentors and good policemen. We’re being rejected, look around. 

Put the guns down and let’s all be together as one. It don’t matter the color, put the guns down.” Mark, owner of Miller Tymes’s Barber Shop in California

“More than anything, the West End needs people to come together. Things are falling apart because you have everyone against each other. Like you have this side of Broadway beefin with the other side. Now, at his age, you can’t even play in your own yard. When I was that age, we were able to play in the yard, run around and go to the corner store, without a problem. We need more active people, support, and more community centers.

Stop trying to compete and be yourself. Support each other. Everybody’s all against each other, not realizing that we can’t go anywhere without support.” - Queesha with her son, Kash, Russell

"Today was a real tough day for me. Sparring is tough. The first guy I sparred, today, has always been real tough for me. Granted, he’s younger than me but the guy’s an animal. He got into boxing after he got jumped and then he just took off. I was real upset about today and that’s why I decided to walk home instead of my brother picking me up. Talking to you actually made my day, man. 

What got me into boxing? Muhammad Ali influenced me. I look at boxing as another outlet for me to bring my family out of poverty and help out my community by giving back. I want to put gyms and community centers in the West End and help kids out. I really want to give kids something positive to look up to. I want young black men and women to know that you can do anything you want to do, no matter where you come from. I’m at the bottom right now but I’m not letting that stop me. With life, you get knocked down and you get back up. Just like boxing, just because you get knocked down, it doesn’t mean that the fight is over. If you know how to maneuver around getting knocked down, you go on and continue to fight, until you get that win. I look at boxing just like I look at life.

Greatness motivates me. I wanna be great and I won’t stop. Once I start something, I won’t stop. My family keeps me going. I told my father when he was 36 that by the time he turned 40, he wouldn’t have to work no more. He’s 41, now. I’m a little late on that. I was into football when I told him that. Now, since I’ve gotten into boxing, I just catapulted. I’ve been at for 2 years. Every time, I think about giving up, my father will give me that pep talk and will give me that look. I can’t disappoint and let him down. I feel like I’m fighting for him. He’s been raising me all his life and never gave up. I can’t give up on him because he never gave up on me. 

Keep going. No matter how hard or tough it gets, just keep going. Anything negative will never stay on you. It will never last, eventually it will subside. I can’t live life for one day. There’s 86,400 seconds in a day, I cannot allow 10 seconds of my day dictate the rest of the 86,390 seconds of my day. I just can’t let it.” - Leon, California

"My generation is so misunderstood because we have more technology. Back then, it seemed like people didn’t have as much as we do. They did stuff on their own and figured stuff out. Now, we can do things on the internet and we have more options and easier ways to do things, which makes us lazy and the older generation doesn’t like it.”- Sean II (Left), Portland

"Technology makes everybody silent because you’re hiding behind a phone and a computer. The actual face time is lost. Technology isn’t always a bad thing but if you don’t learn how to put things down to correspond and talk with people, miscommunication will come in. You say one thing on the internet or on social media and someone can take it the wrong way and misinterpret what you’re trying to say. That creates beef and misunderstanding and then you got people just going back in and forth on the internet. It just makes it so you’re not talking face to face. The misunderstanding becomes a problem and then people just don’t talk anymore. It seems like you can easily delete someone off your social media and block them, which will cause you not to talk to them. Older folks are used to talking face to face and the kids are used to talking on social media and texting. That’s where the breakdown is. 

The West needs more older guys to fill in that gap. I know that the community centers are closing, so you have to get that old connection and that young connection to strengthen. Guys feel like gangs are the strength but you have to get some guys to be the strength in positive things. You’ve got to get the older guys and the younger guys get together and find a common bond between them. You have to find the common bond and some of it is through sports but everybody don’t play sports. You have to find something else to get the young and the old together to do something positive and keep it going. I think guys are trying to do it through sports but that’s not enough, you gotta find something else.

My advice to the world is just to love and do something that will effect the people around you. Try to do something positive that’ll make a difference. Don’t just always point out the problems, be apart of the solution.” - Sean (Right), Shawnee

“I feel like Louisville can be a positive place for music for any musician in the world. It’s really hard for people who are really good at it to be behind the people who are really dump at it and making it. It’s really hard for people like me, who are lyricist. So, when it comes to me, as a person, I make sure to follow everybody’s music. I don’t down anybody for nothing. I may give you tips here and there to help make your music better, but at the same time, I just like to tell them to keep working at it and keep doing them. All of my people’s are musicians, we all do music all day. I think that if you’re going to be a musician, learn the background, no matter what genre. I listen to every single genre, I don’t leave one out. It’s not a passion, if you’re just coming out of nowhere, thinking that you’re going to get rich off of that. It’s not like that! You can’t get rich off knowing something, you have to understand the mentality, putting in work and making it something that you want to create. That’s the way I envision it. I just don’t understand those that say, out the blue, ‘Oh, I want to be rapper!’. That’s one of our problems. That’s why we can’t make it in the big leagues. Only record labels are going to choose a few people.

I’ve been doing this since I was 7 years old. I rap. It’s not all the cussing and the negative, I like to bring some positivity. I don’t like rapping about all of the shooting and the guns. I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I do bring it up. At the same time, there are songs where I express my feelings and I use metaphors. I don’t know if you heard of XXXtentacion, but that’s my inspiration. Before him, I didn’t have a rapper that inspired me. 

I’m most creative when I’m by myself. I can’t have nobody around me. I love to perform around a lot of people but when I’m creating, I’m best by myself. I keep a lot of people out of my music and just drop it and then they mess with this.

I think that the West End needs more studios and places to make music. We have a place called Amped, that you have to sign up for, but we need more places like that. There’s not a lot of places in the West End for people to create and express themselves musically. It’s downtown or out there. I’m sure people get tired of waking up and knowing that music is their passion but they have to go all the way out there, when it could be right here in our neighborhood. 

The West doesn’t need anymore guns. I’m tired of guns, they’re killing off my family. They just killed my cousin a few days ago. We’re all getting tired.

We also need more positivity because there’s so much negativity in the West. Everybody got some type of ego and it’s kind of weird. People are beefing over the smallest things. You can breathe wrong and you can get shot off that. It’s dumb. 

I want everybody to learn their chill. Find where you can go. If you feel like you are about to shoot somebody, find your chill and walk away. If you learn your chill, things won’t be that bad. I had to learn that. Learn your chill or talk to God. “- James, Shawnee

“My brother and I started in July 25th of 1969. We are from the country, from Hart County, Kentucky. My brother left home when he was 17 and went to Illinois and worked at a cleaners there. I think it was in Joliet, Illinois. He figured that he wanted to get into the dry cleaning business and he came back to Louisville in 1965. He and I got together and went to the Small Business Administration and applied for a loan and we didn’t get the loan. In the meantime, in 1966, I went to dry cleaning school in Silver Springs, Maryland. I learned the intricate parts of dry cleaning. I learned everything from the spotting, the cleaning, the pressing, and even the customer service and customer relation. After that, I came back and worked with another gentleman for a couple of years. Then in 1969, we were able to get the SBA loan and we started in 1969. That was just about 50 years ago.

What inspired me to go into business in the early and late 60’s was that there wasn’t many African Americans in business, especially in the West End of Louisville, where predominantly African Americans lived. Some of the leaders in the community were reaching out to people to try to start businesses and to be an influence in the community. It just happened that my brother and I always wanted to be an influence and be in business, for ourselves and to help others. It’s something that we dreamed and talked about, even as teenagers. We just happened to be at the right place at the right time because banks weren’t lending African Americans money to go into business. I don’t know if they felt that we weren’t stable enough  or if there just wasn’t enough money. After the riots, the federal government allocated for African Americans to get loans to go into business. We were blessed to obtain a loan.

The first location was a block south from here, before the renovation of this community. It was 3008 Wilson Ave. We were there for 38 years. We did our own work there. We moved over here in 2008.

I encourage young African Americans to go into business. Be prepared and find what your interests are and work at it. Go into business for yourself and for future generations. Prove that African Americans can do it with hard work, the help of the good Lord, dedication, and preparation. Be prepared for all you’ve got. Study and learn about the field you’re going in. There’s going to be challenges but if you have a hands on approach, you’ll be able to figure it out. It requires hard work. That’s helped sustained us. 

The West End needs more services, like grocery stores. It needs manufacturing, maybe not big but even a small scale. The third thing would be a nice restaurant. You know, a nice sit down family restaurant, where we don’t have to drive a far distance to get to. Oh, and the youth needs something on a different level where the average kid can get off the streets and play sports and do things academically. There’s a lot of young kids with the knowledge and don’t get the opportunity.” - Wayne Barbour, owner of Barbour Bros Cleaning, Park DuValle

“They call me Muddy Waters and I’m 81 years old. I got that name when I first came here from Athens, Alabama. I was 18 years old. I liked the blues and I would always buy records. I used to take a nickel to this joint on 16th & Walnut and put it jukebox. I would walk in with my cowboy hat, my boots, and my overalls on. I would put my nickel in there and play Muddy Waters! I would play Muddy Waters all the time. That’s where that shit came from and they’ve been calling me Muddy Waters ever since.

The West End needs people to stop thinking that it’s the worst place. We also need all the black people to stick together.” - Muddy Waters