Dawn Raid s Brotha D: My wife saved my life
From drugs and crime to being a devoted dad, the hip-hop legend reveals how Black Ferns star Adrianne helped him change his ways.Jan 25, 2021 4:31pm
If someone had told a teenage Danny Leaoasavai i – best known as Dawn Raid founder and rapper Brotha D – that he would mark his 50th birthday as a doting dad, dedicated husband and passionate community worker, the hip-hop star would have likely laughed in disbelief.
The musician s youth was derailed by grief, domestic violence and trouble with the law – and it took a man s death, which saw his brother imprisoned for murder, for him to turn his life around.
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It is, on paper at least, an unlikely foundation for a game-changing record label. It was 1999 when Andy Murnane and Tanielu Leaosavai i (aka Brotha D) met at Manukau Polytechnic’s business school. Buoyed by the enterprising spirit, their friendship soon turned to commerce, starting with the pair hustling bootleg t-shirts at the Ōtara Markets, before eventually running a music empire unlike anything the local industry had seen before, breaking records and barriers for more than a decade. The duo behind Dawn Raid Entertainment, New Zealand s most iconic Polynesian music label, hope a new documentary will set the record straight on the legacy of their business and South Auckland hip hop culture.
Oscar Kightley on his documentary about iconic South Auckland hip-hop label Dawn Raid
20 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
4 minutes to read
Karl Puschmann is a senior entertainment writer and columnist for the New Zealand Herald.karl.puschmann@nzherald.co.nz@CritiKarl The story of the iconic Dawn Raid Entertainment record label begins with its founders Andy Murnane and Danny Brotha D Leaoasavaii selling t-shirts at the Otara Markets at the tail end of the 90s, sees the pair triumphantly scaling the heights of the music charts in the 2000s, before losing their grip and plummeting as far as it s possible to fall a few short years later.