Rapper Menice Isn’t Following The Trends, He’s Setting Them

Timothy Dollinger isn’t your regular rapper. He’s part Iraq vet, part family man and part hustler. Part hustler because, as he says, “If you’re not working, then you’re losing out.”

At 28, he has a different mindset that makes him different from most of the other rappers out. He jokingly hesitated about giving away his age, “28 is kind of old in the game.” Perhaps it may seem a little older when you compare it to whatever the kids are listening to that having them jumping around and snapping their fingers.

“I don’t understand why record companies market teenagers so hard,” Menice said. “What do they know at that age? They haven’t lived anything yet.”

This is perhaps what makes Menice different. He has lived a lot and doesn’t shy away from including his experiences in his music.

“Music has always been an outlet for me,” he said. When he was growing up being raised by a single mother and his sister, he turned to his music. When he was in Iraq and had to miss the birth of his son, he turned to his music.

He would like to use his music to bring hip-hop back to the days when it was about something.

“I listen to Tupac everyday,” he said. It keeps my mind where it needs to be.”

It makes sense that he would turn to Tupac to help him keep his focus, because the deceased rapper had a hand or rather a bar, in Menice’s rap career. Tupac’s “Brenda Had a Baby” made Menice want to be a rapper.

Now that he is a rapper, with a deal with a subsidiary of Universal Music Group to make it official, he is hard at work on his album, Life Behind Bars. The single that is #9 on the Billbaord Top 100 R&B/Rap Chart, “Sweet as Candy” is on there as well as a song that he wrote to his son, as an apology for missing his birth.

It doesn’t seem like his son is holding any grudges, though, because Menice says that is his favorite song and he listens to it everyday. When he’s in the studio with his father, “he bangs on keys, and asks when is it his turn,” laughed Menice.

Though five may be a little young to be a rapper even by today’s standards, he is the perfect age to promote his father’s singles.

“He was in the mall with his mother, and he just kept saying the name of one of my singles ‘Menice Stay On My Hustle’,” the father laughed. “He and his sister are the best promoters.”

See. Part family man. He might not be such a menice after all.