Will Castro - Unique Hustle: My Drive to be the Best Car Customizer in Hip Hop and Sports

Praise for Unique Hustle

Wills always taken care of me with the best whips in the world. When I was a kid, we used to play a game called Bingo, and when you shouted Bingo that was the car you wanted. Now kids do that with my cars. I give Will full responsibility to do his thing, and he always does a great job.

LeBron James
Los Angeles Lakers

Will Castro is an artist. He sees things with a deep vision where others may see nothing.

Erik McMillan
Former all-pro NFL safety

Will Castro is my brother. Hes all heart, a true friend. Hes always there for me and my family.

Fat Joe
Hip-hop artist and actor

Will Castro is one of the best people I have met in show business. And the fact that hes also Puerto Rican doesnt hurt. Hes one of the most knowledgeable people in regard to the repair, renovation, and restoration of vehicles. His story is amazing. You have to read this book. I love the guy.

Geraldo Rivera
Journalist, reporter, author

Wills craftsmanship is impeccable. For him to take regular cars off the street and add style, luxury, and street flavorIm blown away by it.

Sean P. Diddy Combs
Entertainment mogul

My Drive to Be the Best Car Customizer in Hip-Hop and Sports

Will Castro

With Mark Finkelpearl

Mango Publishing
Coral Gables

All rights reserved. No reproduction, even in part, without the written permission of the publisher.

Copyright 2019 by Will Castro with Mark Finkelpearl

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Front and back cover courtesy of Johnny Paul Melendez, Lebron James, and Will Castro; courtesy of Nat Newsome

All other photos courtesy of The Will Castro Archives

Photographers: Jim Bibbee, Troy Parasio, and Steven McMahon

Graffiti art courtesy of Keith (Reme) Rowland

Layout Design: Jermaine Lau

Mango is an active supporter of authors rights to free speech and artistic expression in their books. The purpose of copyright is to encourage authors to produce exceptional works that enrich our culture and our open society. Uploading or distributing photos, scans or any content from this book without prior permission is theft of the authors intellectual property. Please honor the authors work as you would your own. Thank you in advance for respecting our authors rights.

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Mango Publishing Group
2850 Douglas Road, 2nd Floor
Coral Gables, FL 33134 USA

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Unique Hustle: My Drive to Be the Best Car Customizer in Hip Hop and Sports

Library of Congress Cataloging
ISBN:(p) 978-1-63353-889-4 (e) 978-1-63353-890-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 20199932087

BISAC category code: BIO002030BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / Hispanic & Latino

Printed in the United States of America

THIS IS DEDICATED TO my grandfather Bonfacio.

He believed in me, kept me focused, and engrained in me my work ethic.

I love you endless papi.

Table of Contents

Customizing and the Explosion of New York
Hip-Hop

This book is amazing. When I was coming up in the game, if you were into cars, flyness, and taking it to the next level and you did not know Will Castro, you were going to hear about him soon; his work speaks very loudly. It inspires me. Hes part of hip-hop culture. Just start with all the whips he did with Busta Rhymes. I remember once seeing an eighteen-wheeler filled with Bustas amazing cars, and they were all Will Castro builds. Eventually, Will and I connected through Fat Joe. All the cars that Will built for Joe thrilled me. Will started by putting rims on my Escalade. Then, from there, we upgraded to foreign carswe started getting into the Rolls-Royce world, the Bentley world, the Phantom world. And I found as we were doing all this together that his customer service was unbelievable. Hell get on an airplane and fly to you just to have a conversation. Will Castro was born to pop up. Whether I have a car to work on or not, hes there with something to represent his brand. Will is hip-hop. And his customers are always satisfied. I dont even want to call them customers. Theyre more like his family friends. And I know for a fact that if I need Will, hell come through for me and for his friends. Every time.

Hip-hop people express their success in different ways. For me, I like to project happiness and how blessed I feel to have made it in the game. And sometimes we like to treat ourselves with a beautiful car. And what is more beautiful than a Rolls-Royce touched by Will Castro? What I love in my cars and what Will always gives me is a clean interior. Everything gotta be fly: the paint, the rims, the stereo. Sitting in a clean interior with a white T-shirt and jeans is like putting on a pair of brand-new sneakers straight out of the box. And thats the thing, Will knows our life, and so he knows the presentation we need inside these cars. Sometimes, he gives us too much presentation, and then we have to do a million shows to keep up with what Will is bringing. But hes bringing it. Theres nothing we can do to stop him.

DJ Khaled
Miami, Florida

Writing this book wasnt all that easy for me. It brought up a lot of memories I would rather have forgotten. But I decided early on that if I was going to write down my lifes story, I had to do it openly and honestly. I had to be willing to look at what Id done wrong in my life and own it. And it hasnt all been terrible. In fact, so much of it has been so great, I had to write a book! Going through my life has brought back to mind phenomenal moments that Id not thought about in decades, especially of my childhood spent on the streets and in the projects of New York. I hope that if you get anything out of my lifes journey so far, its something about persistence in the face of tough odds. Its about never, ever giving up, even when youre down on the mat and the ref is two slaps into his three count. If you get up and keep fighting, you never know whats around the corner. And just having a chance to get around the corner is a blessing from God. Keep going. You wont get anywhere if you dont keep steering down that road. Just make sure you have some nice rims as you roll!

Will Castro

It was a Sunday afternoon, just like any other, when the doorbell rang at my house in 2008. I got up to answer it, walking away from the football game on TV. The second that I opened that door, my life changed forever, and I would experience the darkest times I ever knew. And I had no idea yet. Before that doorbell went off, I was on top of the world. I was living the American dream. I had a house, a wife, and a fabulous daughter named Paige. We were living large. At home, I had a personal chef cooking for us every night. I had a hit TV show on Speed called Unique Whips and a new one on Spike TV. I had a star-studded, celebrity client list that wanted me to customize car after car for them. My clients were guys like Busta Rhymes, Erick Sermon, P. Diddy, LeBron James, and Jeff Gordon. I even hung out with Donald Trump at Trump Tower long before he won the presidency. (Trump in my day was a New York businessman a lot of people admired.) I was at the top of my game. I was successful and smart. And now I had to answer the door. When I did, Id figure out fast how not successful and not smart I really was.