Jermaine Coleman, better known by his stage name Maino, is an American rapper from Brooklyn, New York City, New York.After spending ten years behind bars for drug related felony and kidnapping, Jermaine ‘Maino' Coleman decided to live life outside the pen' as a rapper. With jail terms and criminal convictions regarded a bonus in a rapper's credentials, Maino's sentence is a convenient PR accessory. "If Tomorrow Comes..." is essentially a script detailing the life and style of ex-convict Maino.His opening skit states, "I never wanted to be a product of my environment; I always wanted my environment to be a product of me." With such words introducing the album, you want to know who Maino was and now is, after incarceration. Although he attempts to express his new identity, it is difficult to draw conclusions about a man who say ‘Hi to Haters', and yet threatens to ‘Kill' in the same breath.Make or BreakDid jail time break or strengthen Maino's criminal tendencies? In the beguiling track "Remember My Name" he spits lines like "I promise to be nothing short of a G/ never beg for mercy, never seeing me flee/I got blood on my knife, got cash in my jeans..." Suggestive enough to think he is probably back right from where he started, right?But in this same track he convinces listeners with such lines as "...help me heavenly father, don't let my life get rougher...Left a mark in the hood to make a mark in the world...you can see that I'm different...the face of an angel and the heart of a lion," that he's as clean as can be.All The Above"Tell me, what do you see when you looking at me?" is the opening line, penned by T-Pain, of the album's smash hit single "All the Above". In this rap, Maino finally answers the questions prompted by his album's seemingly self-contradictory lyrics.He laces T-Pain's hook with lines like "...see me come up from nothing, see me living my dreams...look how I ride for the block, look how I rep for the hood... I go hard for ever, that's how I'm designed... You don't understand me, you are quick to judge me". And in the skit "Contemplation" he continues "I was caught up in the street and still trying to be a good father." Maybe Maino is all the above, "a soldier, a rider and a ghetto survivor", as T-Pain puts it in the track.And the Album"If Tomorrow Comes..." is offered as a story telling album, a virtual script of Maino's life after prison. The tracks are arranged in sequence, telling his story from his last day in the pen, to meeting DJ and producer Kay Slay, to facing criticism and contemplation to finally getting his break with the Atlantic Records phone call.His rap verses also showed he is certainly a rapper with talent. While it's easy to turn a collaboration with T-Pain into a smash hit, Maino could equally have made a ‘cane for his own back' but he killed it. With production enlisting pros like Swizz Beats, Just Blaze, and J.U.S.T.I.C.E League amongst others, tracks were honed to perfection.Even though you can't tell who Maino is from "If Tomorrow comes...," it will definitely put you in ‘Maino's Nikes.'Album: If Tomorrow Comes...(Atlantic Records 2009)
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