Lil Boosie Biography

Lil Boosie entered the world on November 14, 1983, in the town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana with the given name of Torrence Hatch. He was given the nickname "Boosie" by his family and it has done him well as it's a catchy name that everyone liked, and would continue with him all the way to being part of his stage name when he started making music. He grew up surrounded by challenges and experiences that helped him develop a strong personality and the ability to deal with a lot of different situations. Where he grew up and lived on West Garfield Street in the southern part of Baton Rouge was a place where everybody did what they could to just survive.

Lil Boosie grew up with an early introduction to the harsh realities of the streets: violent crime, gang members, and more. His experiences as a young child are not what most children are exposed to. Boosie's home area in South Baton Rouge had a reputation, and even people who didn't know it well still hesitated to come visit there. People living in that neighborhood just did whatever they had to when it came to their own safety, or that of their families.

One of the choices Torrence made to stay out of trouble was to become involved in sports, basketball being his specialty. There have been some claims posted around the internet over the years by people, who knew "" when he was younger and playing basketball, that claim he was extraordinary player. Many people say his ability on the basketball court would have landed him on a team if he'd gone to college.

When he was 14 years old, Lil Boosie had to deal with his father's death in what was referred to as a drug-related murder. This sort of tragedy is high stress for any age teen to deal with, and fortunately Boosie was able to move in and live with his grandmother. After losing his father Lil Boosie was like many youngster without a positive male influence in his life.

He soon became entangled in the world of violence and drugs. His involvement in drugs got him expelled from his high school, but he turned that into his motivation to find other things to be involved in - music was his calling. It was when he became involved performing freestyle rap, and found a way of expressing himself through music, that Torrence Hatch was reborn as "Boosie Bad Azz" to the world.

At the beginning of his involvement with music, no one would give him any support or endorse him in any way. Finally Boosie was able to make an appearance on LA rap artist (who was also from Baton Rouge) C-Loc's album and the song, "It's A Gamble," which also had other artists involved like Concentration Camp, South Park Mexican, and Triple 6 Mafia (now known as Three 6 Mafia). Needless to say, after coming out of the 225 in Louisiana, Torrence Hatch was trying to gain as much public exposure as possible.

In 2000 it was his enthusiasm for creating music that got him a project named "Youngest of the Camp," which went to sales of more than 10,000 copies. With this album Boosie finally got the exposure to people of his very real presence in hip hop. Quite a few of the featured artists on "Youngest in the Camp" were from his hometown, Max Minelli being one of them. Because people knew Boosie's background that he was a real dude who had gone through the same kinds of struggles growing up that they had, they respected his work and started loving it. Actually there was a lot of independent promotional work done by the fans that helped him - especially those around his neighborhood.

From that point on Lil Boosie continued creating his music even while he was dealing with tough times in his personal life. Not allowing himself to become discouraged, he stayed motivated while staying focused on his goals and finally received an job offer from the record label, Trill Entertainment, and was cosigned by a member who happened to be part of the celebrated rap duo, UGK (Underground Kingz) at that time, the late Pimp C.

In 2003 Boosie produced an album called "For My Thugs" on Trill Ent. which was released independently and then proceeded to go on to generate sales of over 15,000 copies. When he started at Trill Entertainment in 2003 he met another artist, Webbie (aka Webster Grandney, Jr.) and began collaborating with on him on a regular basis. Amazing things happened when Webbie and Lil Boosie got together and did "Ghetto Stories," an album that went on to earn over $15,000.

While Lil Boosie continued to pay attention to his music, he also decided to partner with Webbie once more on "Gangsta Musik," and found it gained him tremendous attention once again. Stand out songs from that album included "Realest They Come," "Out Here Grindin," as well as one featuring Lil Wayne - "Louisianimal." One of the songs on the album, "Swerve" was used on the soundtrack for the movie, "Hustle and Flow," which was an extremely well received rap movie, and the album proceeded to sell really well because of acclaim generated for the movie and the songs. Both Boosie and Webbie put their time and effort in this project and the result was rap fans throughout the US and soon the entire world, became aware of hip-hop legend Lil Boosie.