Renaissance Man: A Testament of Life From "The Outlaw" Jesse Pringle

The term "renaissance man" defines an individual who is both knowledgeable and successful in multiple numbers of endeavors, which provide the man an opportunity to utilize a variety of skills.

In order to smoothly navigate today's entertainment industry without the use of a major company, artists have to know how to be what they call a "human Swiss Army knife." A Kansas City-born gentleman named "The Outlaw" Jesse Pringle (pictured) is a successful example of an entertainer who knows how to wear many hats. The man literally does it all.

Pringle is most-known today for being the main R&B sensation who's part of the camp at TRU Muscle Entertainment (TME). Founded by Big Court (formerly known as Court Dog), TME is a multi-faceted brand with room for artisans of all types to flourish as singers, rap artists, performers, digital technology specialists, and even filmmakers.

TME is fully-distributed with the strong backing of No Limit Records (No Limit Forever) where Big Court also serves as a lead executive. However, prior to becoming affiliated with TME, Pringle was involved in various different ventures, including being a writer for big-name brands in radio ad campaigns, a music video director, and even as a professional MMA fighter.

As a performer in 1999, Pringle even got the honor of performing in the Motherland for Joyce Banda, a future head of state for the African nation of Malawi. In his exclusive interview with myself on behalf of Vocal Media's Beat online music magazine, Pringle offers words of wisdom, which entail courage, perseverance, and the fighting spirit that it takes to win in life.

WARNING: The following interview is not designed for the weak. This guy "The Outlaw" Jesse Pringle is one baaaaad man!

Victor Trammell: When did you become an MMA fighter?

Jesse Pringle: I started training and fighting MMA after my son was born in 2003. I had always been an athlete growing up, which continued halfway through college. Fighting was always a part of my life. My professional fighting was literally a way of supplementing my income with what I felt was easy pay. When your gas is turned off and you're looking for rent money, there are not too many things you won’t do.

What was the most important thing you learned from being a professional competitor?

After getting kicked out of college and working various jobs to survive, I still had a huge void in competition and competitive activities. Fighting gave me that release. I would say the most important thing I learned from fighting and back when I started it wasn’t legal yet; so regardless of the level of skill, everyone was fighting...so I often fought guys that outweighed me by 30-40 lbs.

Being a former football player made it easy because it didn’t matter how big they were. I always felt strong enough and skilled enough to beat anyone. What I really learned was the depths of my willingness to win regardless of injury and circumstance. My “gameness” was tested and I proved to myself that I would and could fight to the death.

There’s something in all of us that when pushed to the limit of defeat we either choose to fight or tap out. I had losses but it was never from quitting or tapping out. One fight was stopped after my arm was broken from an arm bar. The pain was excruciating when it happens but rather than tap I wanted to kill this guy even more. The referee stopped the fight due to injury.

So my answer is and always will be gameness...being a game warrior prepared for death if it comes. Most opponents and competition in the ring and in life aren’t willing to die for what they believe in. I am.

How long were you a musician before you became officially affiliated with Big Court and TME?

I started singing and writing original music in 1996. I went by the name OME (O-May) and had several songs hit radio. I worked with a who’s who of artists and performed a ton until I dropped the stage name and re-branded in 2011. After taking a hiatus from music to transition into film and television while living in Los Angeles, which went really well, I decided to rebuild my music brand and release it again in 2017.

This was the year Court and I really started to talk about teaming up. We first started collaborating in film and we were developing several movies and series projects. After getting to know each other really well and considering all the things we had to continue to offer the music business, we decided to begin releasing new music under the new TME Court had started. That’s when "The Outlaw" Jesse Pringle was manifested.

The trailer for the "No Limit" TME web series showcases your acting skills and your fantastic screenwriting. Were you able to work closely with other co-stars before they saw your script? Or did it just flow naturally as they trained on the job? It looks like you were able to coordinate the casting process as well.

Thank you for the compliments. I had become a union SAG/Aftra actor and WGA screenwriter while in LA and had created two really successful online series called "Kill Em All Kansas City" and "Kill Em All Los Angeles." This made writing the No Limit Series a smooth and extremely creative process.

After speaking with Big Court and hearing him share his ideas about the type of series project that he wanted to film in KC, paired with our combined knowledge and interest in the crime-drama genre, the process of writing scenarios and characters to match was relatively easy.

Working with actors beforehand to develop the stories wasn’t necessary. What wasn’t easy with my previous series and with the No Limit series is finding actors and actresses that actually look, sound and act like believable characters to tell the story that we were creating.

This led us, of course, to look for talent outside the box of existing-working actors and hire “real” people that let’s just say have a "real-life" experience quality to add to the roles.

Does this make it hard sometimes because they aren’t skilled actors? Yes...but that just meant we make script changes to accommodate the lack of acting skill and to use the story and script that could fit and in order to make the scenes look and feel real. I always strive for my films and screenplays to really reflect real life with a splash of fiction rather than all make-believe.

Your hit single "The Realest" has gained much success. How do you plan to use the single's great momentum to build a strong full-length project, if an LP is part of the future strategy?

Thanks for your support of what I call my most exposing song “The Realest." We’ve actually had a full-length LP worth of music for a while. However, Court and I both agreed to follow more of a process for releasing singles with videos. We're promoting each song to the fullest rather than releasing all the music at once. That could potentially ruin and hurt the quality of each song being lost in a catalog of work.

The music I’m releasing is my life’s work. To be honest, we take it one single and video at a time to make sure every single gets the due process it deserves. Let me add that because we are totally independent, outside of our distribution with Universal Music, we are funding and promoting and booking every opportunity ourselves. That’s what being independent is.

The process seems a bit longer. However, as I said before, we give everything to every single and video we release rather than just unload a bunch of lesser quality content and product in the world and hoping it works out. With teamwork, hard work and hustle, we are a force that can only be matched by major labels with millions of dollars behind each project.

My "The Realest" song was written and its video was released to be a wake-up call to the current state of music. We show everybody that together, we are an unstoppable machine...made with real people who have the gameness to fight and win regardless of obstacles and opponents.

Watch Jesse Pringle's "The Realest" video below.

(Courtesy of TRU Muscle Entertainment, directed by Big Court)