Tommy Wright III
Self-produced Memphis rapper who ran Street Smart Records and led Ten Wanted Men, whose 1990s tapes were later sampled by A$AP Rocky, Big Baby Tape and Beyoncé.
Riverside to Whitehaven
Tommy Wright III was born on May 6, 1976, and raised as an only child in a family of deaf people. As a boy he played trombone, tuba and baritone saxophone, and in the late 1980s a neighbor, DJ Disco Hound, introduced him to Memphis nightclubs and hip hop. At 15 he was living in public housing in the Riverside neighborhood before moving to Whitehaven, where he met the rappers who became his group Ten Wanted Men.
Street Smart Records
Working on four-track equipment, Wright recorded “Still Not Quite Human” in 1990 and released “Memphis Massacre” in 1992. His own Street Smart Records, which he owned, operated and produced entirely, issued “Ashes 2 Ashes, Dust 2 Dust” (1994), “Runnin-N-Gunnin” (1995), “On the Run” (1996) and “Feel Me Before They Kill Me” (1998), along with the Ten Wanted Men sets “Wanted Dead or Alive” (1995) and “10 Toes Down” (1997). The crew included La Chat and Princess Loko, whom he signed as a teenager and mentored. Collaborators such as Mac T Dog and Shawty Pimp appear across these releases, and his gritty, self-made production earned him the nickname The 1 Man Gang.
Setbacks
Unable to keep paying rent on the office and studio that housed Street Smart, Wright lost a legal fight over the space and spent about four years in and out of prison before his release in 2005. The label ceased operating in 2003 amid financial trouble. He returned with “Nashville Takeover” in 2016 and has continued to perform live, though he no longer issues new albums regularly.
Sampled legacy
His tapes found a new life through sampling: A$AP Rocky's “OG Beeper,” Russian rapper Big Baby Tape's “Hard 2 Kill” and Beyoncé's “I'm That Girl” all draw on his recordings, the last via a 1994 collaboration with Princess Loko used on “Renaissance” (2022).
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