Between the Liner NOtes

Who Is Group 1 Crew?

By Group 1 Crew
As Told to Jennifer E. Jones

Blanca's Story

I grew up in a non-Christian home – a broken home, just me and my brother and my mom.

I was always into music. I wasn’t a bad child, but I had my own troubles to face. My dad was a drug addict and into gangs. My main years growing up, I never had a father figure in my life. I didn’t hear from my father or anything, so that was a big issue with me. My mom got a boyfriend, so that was another issue -- not a good relationship between him and me.

It wasn’t until I was 17 years old that I was invited to a play at the local church by our house. My father had come back at this point. He was the first saved in our family. That was a big change from seeing how he was before. [It had been] 10 years since he was ever really part of the family.

He went with me to the play. It was a play about a lot of teens in different situations, and God spoke to me about how I was using my talents. I knew I had a gift in singing and I loved music, but I wasn’t giving it to God. I was using it in other aspects like trying to get a record label and into the more secular mind set of things. God was just saying that He’s giving me these gifts and talents for me to give it back to Him. He was going to bless my family and my household.

Blanca I made friends at church. I met Manwell, and he had started a Bible study for musicians in the area. God’s had my life planned out for me. I thank God for those friends that I made in Group 1. There were 13 of us to start out. It was accountability, just people who had my same type of lifestyle and young people into the music thing. They were really there to help me out and push me with my relationship with God.

Since then I’m still part of the group. I never left. Me and my father are currently the only ones saved in my family, but I see God working in that so much with this great blessing. My mom is starting to see the fruit of my labor, so she’s seeing how God’s blessing me for being faithful through all the tribulations that we’ve had to face as a family.

Pablo's Story

I was raised in a Christian home. My father was the right hand man of the pastor, and now he presently is a pastor. I was always raised in a God-centered home. That’s all I’ve ever known.

Throughout time, I experimented with life and I walked apart from my parents’ shadow. Like every teenager who wants to learn things on their own, I did that as well. But that seed that my parents sowed in me has never left. I could only go so far, and there was always that seed that brought me back.

I can relate to kids who are raised in church and know the pressure and also being seen as a pastor’s kid in the eyes of the public. But I also know what it is to want to experiment on your own and try to figure out who you are. Therefore I don’t come at people like, “Oh you sinner” or trying to convict people. Nothing like that because I understand where they’re at. I’ve been there before.

Pablo A lot of our ministry comes from being off stage. We’re not the kind of artists that like to stay in our green room. We like to be out there. We love being in the crowd and talking to people – being ourselves.

We had an Acquire the Fire event that we did either in New Mexico or Arizona. Something happen at the event where we couldn’t go on stage. Nobody saw us perform. The guy that was driving us around, right after he dropped us off, he says, “I just want to let you guys know that you guys ministered to me just being the way you are.” Being the way we are was just asking him, “Hey, how’s your day going? How’s the event? How’s the city? How are you involved in the church?” We love being one-on-one, more hands on, rather than being on stage where people put you on this pedestal…

The spirit is undeniable. We’ll go into a high school, and automatically before we say the first word, people go up to us like, “Are you saved? Are you Christian?” It’s just something in the atmosphere.

Manwell's Story

I started rapping back when I wasn’t saved. I grew up the bad kid of the family, the black sheep, the cat who was always in trouble in school. I got kicked out of two or three schools [including] my preschool. The preschool one was for verbal assault. Don’t ask me what I did. Middle school it was physical assault; I got into a fight with my principal. Then in high school it was attempted assault on a teacher. So I wasn’t necessarily the best kid growing up. I did a lot of robbing and stealing – the whole quote, unquote thug life.

Approaching my salvation point, I was realizing that it wasn’t me. I wanted to make people laugh and smile. My daddy always told me, “You’re gonna meet someone crazier than you, bigger than you, and he’s gonna put you in your place.” I was like, “Man, that day is coming soon.”

[I learned that] I don’t have to be the hardest guy out. I don’t have to try anymore to be this persona that I feel tough. I can just be me, and in that is where I found music. I put the mic down for like a year after I got saved, because I wanted to get into my Word and find out who I am in Christ.

Manwell When I picked it back up, He never let me stop really. I never opened any door on my own. He kept opening doors, and I kept walking through. It hasn’t been easy, but transitionally, it’s been smooth to each group. Every time a group would drop out or quit, I would do a solo project. Just went back and forth until now… it just stuck.

It was a God thing. This group fell apart as well. Blanca and Pablo moved to Chicago when I originally got found by my manager. It started off with 13, then it dwindled down to 5, then from the 5, Blanca and Pablo left and it was just left with me. That’s when I released my second and third project. Through that is when my manager found me.

He’s like, “Hey, I know a label that’s looking to sign an urban group. I like what you’re doing, but if you can get a group together, then I think you guys have a good shot.” That’s when I said, “Well, God, this is really up to You. They’re in Chicago and I’m not trying to talk them into a deal."

When I called them up, I said, "Here’s the opportunity. I want you guys to really pray about it and do it because God has you doing it…"

It was just God who brought it together. We didn’t jump at the deal. We took our time. Like, "Find out if this is what God wants for you." They felt it was, and they moved back here. We gelled even more so. It was 100 percent God.

Group1 Crew (2007)