“There’s more music in my vein’s than there is blood.” Those are the words of RayWellz, CEO and founder of TICE Records. The young artist/entrepreneur started the label in his small bedroom with a few recorded songs and a love for the melodies that flowed from his heart. During 12th grade, he found a young mentor who had dropped out of college and started a successful magazine. His mentor helped to guide him through the obstacles, both technical and psychological, that come with being a business owner. RayWellz had started asking intriguing questions about investment and small business. He began collecting the knowledge that would bring him to the pinnacle he is at now.
“College is a great thing it’s just not for me right now.” By the end of RayWellz first college semester he had decided that academia did not fit his vision of owning an international record label at that point in his life. Despite his decision to leave college behind, he enrolled in one last class in order to secure a summer internship at Universal Music Group where he would work for the subsidiary label, Island Def Jam. RayWellz’s love for music and business would later prove to be the collaboration of a life time. But his platinum dreams weren’t always hanging on the walls of his mind.
While RayWellz enjoys creative success today, it wasn’t always easy. When he was fifteen, he joined a local street gang and began to suffer academically and mentally. The late night hours on the corner drinking and selling crack-cocaine were destroying him, his family relationships, and his productivity in the classroom. The future star spent most of his freshmen and sophomore year in alternative schools due to suspensions and bad behavior. It was the last fight of his high school career that turned him around and ignited the RayWellz we all know and love today.
He began to return to the spiritual foundations his mother had raised him and his older brother on. Friends, family, and teachers witnessed a miraculous transition in him. In a very short time, close friends and family watched RayWellz do a complete 180.
By the end of his junior year you could hear RayWellz on a radio show called “Teen Talk” on Hot 107.9 where he would give advice to young listeners that would call in. From the Varsity basketball team to the lead role in his high school play, RayWellz was becoming quite the community leader. Newspaper articles such as the one he had presenting an award to B.B. King were becoming expected.
If it wasn’t for the prayers, support, and a strong mother, RayWellz thinks he never would have made it. “Success is not a destination it’s a journey.” After being on the wrong side of the fence, RayWellz agrees, the grass is greener on the right side. More than music, he believes in philanthropy and giving back. He hopes to make the world a better place through love and enlightenment. Inspired by legends such as Jay-Z, Berry Gordy, and Russell Simmons, who are all music business moguls, Ray knows hard work pays off.
