Truth & Power

Up North Records rapper and businessman, credited in Cross Country Pimping 4, and today a co-owner of Too Real For TV.

Truth & Power, known as TP and online as TPDMV, is a rapper and the owner of Up North Records, which he uses to push rap from New England. "Up North" is his name for the region: Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. The bio posted with one of his interviews reads Rhode Island born, Washington, D.C. raised, Cape Verdean, with distribution through Universal. His 2015 videos carry an Up North Records / Universal Music Group copyright line.

The Source profiled him in March 2014. Sha Be Allah called him "a rapper, a business man and an all around good fella" and heard Too Short and Luke in his music. The piece covered his single "Associates" and his album Backwoods n Bentleys. It said he had worked with Too Short, French Montana and Max B, and had a cosign from Bishop Don Magic Juan. He was on the road with Maino's KOD tour at the time. The headline said he was redefining the word player.

On film he belongs to the Too Real For TV catalogue. Michael Maroy put him in Cross Country Pimping 4: Big Business; the official preview, posted by Too Real For TV in August 2010, lists him with Kenny Red, Don Magic Juan, Pimpin' Ken, Pimp Snooky, Too Short, Good Game and Waka Flocka Flame. Hood Box Office, which sells the film, says he is on the cover. His own official videos include "Ride With Me" featuring Stanco (2015) and "Pimp With You" featuring Antonio Mclendon. In 2015 he took the Up North tour through Boston, where LyME LyTE TV filmed him at the sneaker store Laced, and sat down with DJ Chubby Chub to talk about new music and a new signing, Sosaductive.

The business side is his own account, given to Hood Box Office in September 2026. He says he started with vending machines and barbershops that moved mixtapes and T-shirts, and that when the mixtape trade was shut down he kept a distribution line running. After that came nightclubs, hookah bars and record labels, then property. He says a Too Real For TV segment shows him walking through a three-family house he bought for $40,000, and that he sold it a few years ago for about half a million dollars. Today, by his account, he works in real estate, crypto and credit repair, and he lives in Puerto Rico.

Hood Box Office says he and Pimpin' Ken made Pimp College together. Its founder, Young Dope Man, says TP flew him and his crew to the East Coast, put them up for weeks, paid them for the footage they shot, and introduced them to French Montana; those clips went out on WorldStarHipHop and YouTube. Hood Box Office calls him the best of both worlds, after Maroy's film that paired Pimpin' Ken with Pimp C: the player and the rapper in one man.

Disclosure: TP is a business partner of Hood Box Office, which maintains this archive. Hood Box Office says he is a co-owner of Too Real For TV, whose films it streams. His music, videos and interviews are on his Hood Box Office channel.

BORN
Rhode Island, by his own account; raised in Washington, D.C.

STATUS
Living

ERA
2010–present

ASSOCIATED WITH
Up North Records; New England ("Up North"); Too Real For TV; Cross Country Pimping 4; Pimp College; Pimpin' Ken; Too Short; Max B; French Montana; Hood Box Office

STANDING
Partly documented