Photograph by Melissa Gene

Legit loot: Cesar “Crhymes” Tellez has no fear of going to jail for his financial manuevers.

“I was able to secure a PPP loan with the SBA to support my music career,” says southeast San Diego rapper Cesar “Crhymes” Tellez. Despite losing 15 months of career traction to Covid, “the blessing was the opportunity to receive help from the Small Business Administration in form of grants and forgivable loans. I’m just a tenth grade high school dropout, and I was able to figure this shit out all on my own.”

“Turns out 2019, I actually for the first time ever made more money in music-related revenue than in Uber or Airbnb combined. I started accepting payments for my merch and musical services through PayPal, Cash App, and Venmo, and those companies track your sales and send you a 1099 form to file your taxes. With that 1099 filled out and filed, I was able to prove that I am a legit taxpaying small business. That’s how I was able to secure the SBA’s $10,000 EIDL grant. Later in 2021, they made a new rule that states that if your small business suffered more than a 50 percent loss in revenue, you can received an additional grant of $5000. I went ahead and did my 2020 taxes and it showed that I suffered a loss greater that 50 percent. I then turned that in to the SBA and received that extra 5K.”

That wasn’t the end of the government green. “So then I saw that the state of California was giving out grants to small business owners as well. I read and met all the requirements for that program and, bam, I got another grant to use for my small businesses. Thank you, California Relief Grant program and SBA. After seeing that I was able to get approved for those other grants based off my taxes, I figured, why not give the PPP a shot, too? They just recently changed the rules for independent contractors like myself, to use the gross annual income of 2019, as opposed to the net income, to calculate the forgivable loan amount. Seeing that I’m a legit small business with taxes and financial records to back it up, I had no fear of going to jail.”

Tellez first made his mark with Sicko Records and DagoSD.com, as well as hosting a Friday night Imperial Beach event called Club DagoSD and collaborating with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. His first solo effort, One Breath Closer, was followed by Evolution of Crhymes. His record label Crhyme Mate Entertainment has signed artists from San Diego (Big Ev & Thee Husstle) and the United Kingdom (Shakezpeare).

Thanks to the government programs, “I have money to put into ads, to promote, support touring, create more merch, and all around keep me in business. This is money I can use towards my independent career that I don’t have to pay back, so long as I use it just for my business payroll and expenses. And that is exactly what I am doing with this extra cash flow.”

He considers the bounty an improvement over being signed by a major label. “A record deal is essentially just an advance for a loan. The record label is the bank, and your record deal is the loan. If you don’t make the money they advanced you or the money they spend on your album rollout, guess what? You have to pay every single penny back with interest. And, more than likely, you’ll be shelved and blackballed if you can’t pay it back.”

Crhymes will use some of the money to remaster a deluxe edition of his album Thuggery, which included contributions from Snoop Dog, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and a divorcing superstar whose cred took a nosedive. “At that time, Kanye West made that ‘slavery was a choice’ remark, right when I was rolling out the project back in 2018. That didn’t help things at all. At that very moment, no one wanted to hear any new Yeezy tracks, the public was big mad.”