Aw look at lil Bruno “Yayo Face” Mars gettin’ his shine on! The caught-carrying-coca crooner covers the latest issue of Billboard Magazine and inside explains his rise to fame, his battle to overcome the damage done by his cocaine possession arrest and even working with Kanye West and Jay-Z on Watch the Throne.
In case you didn’t already know Bruno also isn’t his real name…
He was born Peter Gene Hernandez in Honolulu to a Filipino singer and a Puerto Rican-born percussionist raised in Brooklyn. Young Peter moved to Los Angeles in his late teens. He regularly played shows at dive bars on Ventura Boulevard. “To about six people,” he says. “All related, of course.” Bruno eventually landed an artist deal with Universal Motown, only to be dropped a year later. “I wasn’t ready for it,” he says. “I did nothing. And the lesson was — why are you waiting for someone to come and write a song with you? You know how to play the freakin’ guitar. Do it on your own.”
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