Albemarle rapper ready to represent in battle

Scooping up ice cream, dreaming up nice dreams of the screams and rhymes and times when the money will flow like honey.
OK, so I am to hip-hop as Aretha Franklin is to auto mechanics. Luckily, Trent Manwill has the skill.
The Albemarle County man, who makes his coin at Chaps Ice Cream on the Downtown Mall, recently won a battle rap contest to earn a spot on BET’s Freestyle Fridays, a segment of the cable network’s show “106 and Park”
The show is sort of a hip-hop combat version of “American Idol” and winning involves $500,000 and a recording contract.
Battle rap is tough. It’s a head-to-head verbal altercation that requires creating insults that rhyme and meet the beat and leave your opponent reeling in defeat. Of course, the tables are then immediately turned on you.

Make a playa look a fool

“It’s improvised rapping. You come off your head. You take from what [opponents] say, or their clothes, or whatever, and you flip it on them,” said the 23-year-old who raps under the moniker of T-G’sus. “I waited in line and battled with about 200 people and advanced to the next round and the next round. Then they held me off to the side and would basically sic me on people. I just did my thing and, when it was over, I went home and waited on a call.”
That call came last month. He’s slated for the show segment that begins Jan. 8.
“The competition was really thick. I didn’t have too high of expectations, to be honest, but battle rap has been my thing for a while,” he said. “It was for television so I had to be clean. I couldn’t use a lot of four-letter filler words and that makes it more difficult to be clever when you don’t have the shock value, but it worked.”
T-G’sus has been putting down rhymes for some time. He’s recorded some CDs in a style known as Dirty South, hip-hop in the vein of OutKast’s album “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.”
“The songs I write and record have musical [underpinnings] that reflect the music I like,” he said. “In my songs, I talk about stuff that I know about. People can tell the difference between what you know and when you’re being sincere and what and when you’re making it up. I try to teach in song, too. I’ve had a lot of experiences and that comes out.”
T-G’sus, whose father is a country music harmonica player and whose mother is a country singer-songwriter, grew up in east Nashville. He’s lived in a variety of states, including Utah and Mississippi, and rapped wherever he lived.

‘Mostly underground’

“I started doing it [rap] for my friends and it became my thing. I like all kinds of music but I guess I tried to get away from what my parents were doing in Nashville, and hip-hop is pretty much the antichrist of country,” he said. “Utah had an amazing hip-hop scene that you wouldn’t believe. They have their own style, but they really liked Dirty South. In Mississippi, the style is harsher and more violent. In Charlottesville, the hip-hop is more cerebral. It’s very positive and uplifting.”
Yes, yes, Virginia, Charlottesville has a hip-hop scene.
“In Charlottesville, it’s mostly underground. The venues where hip-hop appeared — like the Satellite Ballroom — have pretty much disappeared,” he said. “It’s hard to find a place because there aren’t too many venues willing to do it. There’s a stigma to it. When people are at a place and drinking, sometimes things happen and then it gets blamed on the music genre.”
Although he’s excited about his upcoming war of the words, T-G’sus continues to write and record.
“I’m going to make a long career out of this,” he said. “I keep recording because I don’t want to get a contract and have to panic and fight to get out songs. I’ve got songs now that I’ve worked on and they’re recorded and in a vault.”
His appearance on BET may be the key.
“I’m pretty excited,” he admitted. “I’ve been working at this for a long time and it paid off.”