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Paul Wall & his wi
USUALLY, the only time you hear the word marriage in Hip Hop is when a rapper is talking about being married to the game, married to the money, married to the music or some other non-human entity. Once every blue moon you'll hear a rhyme about a down ass chick OR a ride or die broad, but it's rare that you'll hear the word wife uttered out of A rappers' mouth. For some reason, talking about marriage in a music that is roughly 30 years old now is still a risk. Ozone caught up with Bun B, E-40 and Paul Wall to FIND OUT HOW THEY'VE BALANCED their marriages with their successful careers. Each of them are at different stages of their marriages and offer different perspectives and stories of the celebrations and challenges that have greeted them along the way.
How long have you been married? E-40:
We’ve been together 19 years. I was with her before rap. We’ve been together since the summer of 1984. We were teenagers. I played in the marching band at Franklin High School and she was at Vallejo. I always had my eye on her and vice versa and we became a couple. She was there when I was just Earl. She’s been my backbone, my rib. We were living off of love, man. We’ve been together all these years with no fall outs in between, not even a day brah.
Bun B:
We are going on 8 years of marriage. We were together for 12 years. We got where I wanted to be financially so that we could get married. We wanted to have a real nice wedding without doing what most young couples do and spend all the money on the wedding and leave nothing to start off with. We wanted to celebrate doing
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everything the right way and set an example for our kids. We didn’t want them to grow up and be shacking up.
Paul Wall:
We’ve been married for 5 years. We’d already been together for a while. Our bond together got stronger when we got married though. She was already my best friend, someone I talk to every day and don’t get tired of. When we got married, our bond just got unbreakable. We got closer.
Do you have your wife involved heavily in your career? Has it ever been an issue as far as time spent at home as opposed to being out working? E-40:
She used to come to the studio with me a lot. But
when I started putting a lot of hours in and we had two sons, the kids had her occupied being a mom. I’m not trying to make it look like a perfect picture, but it was. We had hard times, I had my ups and downs before rap, you take your lumps financially, but once I got on, I felt I wasn’t gonna take my foot off the industry’s neck. That’s why I’ve been going hard all these years. But with me and her and the obstacles, she was there when I had funk in the hood. She was just down. I don’t have no complaints. She ain’t one of those materialistic broads. She’s strong. She’s a year younger than me, but we’re cut from the same cloth. We come from a good tradition; we’re from the old school.
Bun B:
My wife is highly involved. A lot of the decisions I’m making at this point of my career have a lot to do with where I want her and my family to be. My wife has a good ear for things that ladies like, what women listen for in music. She is built differently from other women. She’s seen a lot of things in her time so I can talk to her about a lot of things like life and current events. She keeps me balanced.
Paul Wall:
When I met her, she was a singer in Houston locally, just trying to make it on the Houston scene. She sounded really good on the Swishahouse mixtapes and she was doing stuff for Lil Keke. So she’s already creative. She’d come to the studio with me sometimes, hear a beat and come up with an idea for something. She really helped me out on a song I recorded with Trina once. Even though she wasn’t singing on it, she had good ideas for me. I’m a prude, so I try to stay away from getting too explicit. So she has to encourage me to rap a little dirty sometimes.
Do you try to keep them near you often? Like take them on the road with you a lot? Bun B: Sometimes it feels weird when my wife is not around. I get to go to a lot of places and do a lot of things that most people never get to do or see. So more than anything I want my wife to be around to experience those things too. I want to