When Sheron Smith took on the responsibility of managing her son Dante’s career when he was just nine years old, little did she know that she would be launching an entire industry. Now better known to the world as Mos Def, her son has become a highly successful actor and television personality as well as one of the biggest names in hip-hop thanks in no small part to his mother/manager Umi’s endless nurturing and guidance over the past two decades.

Smith, immortalized in the 1999 Mos Def track “Umi Says,” explains of her role as both mother and manager to her son. “The difficulty is being sure you’re making the right decisions for the right reasons.”

But pulling double duty has its advantages as well. “When people contact me about my son, they know that they’re dealing with the direct entity and not a third party person,” Smith says of her unique position. “I’m able to give people a sense of connection with my son that they don’t get when they talk with an agency or production company.”

As Mos Def’s career continues to thrive in the worlds of music, film, theater, and television, Smith’s management and Production Company, Good Tree Media, is doing a little growing of its own. In addition to recently expanding its staff, the company has several new music and film projects in development.

As if her mother/manager responsibilities weren’t enough, Smith is also hard at work with N’Kiru (Swahili for “The best is yet to come”), an outreach program through which she and her son hope to establish a chain of community centers throughout the country aimed at helping urban youth. She is also in the process of forming the Organization of Mothers in Hip-Hop, a group Smith hopes will enable her and her fellow rap moms to perform additional outreach services. “I would like to see us pull together,” Smith explains. “There are so many positive things that we could do.”

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