On Sunday, multi-hyphenate media personality Rashad “Big Bank” Holsey, Sr. will be celebrating one year of his monthly “Hik’n Wit Bank” event, where he invites friends, family and fans to join him on a hike through various trails in greater Atlanta.
This weekend’s hike happens at Stone Mountain and will last six miles. Participants can choose to turn around earlier and, like previous hikes he’s hosted, it will end with a cookout where hikers can play spades, UNO and other card games, sing karaoke, and line-dance.
“I started off doing this by myself or with people that wanted to go,” says Holsey, who is a co-host on the popular Atlanta-based podcast “Big Facts” with DJ Scream and Baby Jade. In the year he’s been hosting the hiking event, attendance has grown from around 50 people to more than 300.
“People started hitting my DMs saying they wanted to hike with me, or started reposting my hiking videos. I’m glad it happened that way because they’re actually witnessing [it] in real time.”
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
What followers of his journey are witnessing is perhaps one of the most head-turning rebrands Atlanta has ever seen.
Holsey was introduced to most of the world as a rapper named Big Bank Black. Before scoring a hit record with “Try It Out,” a 2009 hip-hop club track featuring Kandi Burress, he was locally known as the co-founder of Duct Tape Entertainment, an Atlanta-based record label whose talent roster consisted mostly of recording artists from the Zone 6 Edgewood and East Atlanta neighborhoods.
Duct Tape also had a storied reputation for its one-foot-in-the-streets, one-foot-in-the-studio modus operandi.
The label had a streak of mainstream successes. Holsey signed a deal as Big Bank Black with Def Jam Records and was soon followed by labelmate rapper Alley Boy, who received a contract with Atlantic Records. Both gave Duct Tape considerable legitimacy as a music business entity.
Then their most popular artist, the late rapper Trouble, released a string of popular mixtapes before releasing his official debut album “Edgewood” on Interscope Records in 2018.
Unfortunately for Duct Tape, the label’s reputation for intimidation continued to grow, drowning out its entertainment ambitions and keeping the company and its talent from reaching the levels of their Atlanta contemporaries who were becoming superstars.
“That energy helped and hindered us,” says Bank about the label and its street credibility.
Though his artists consistently released music and were booked for live performances, they usually made headlines for getting arrested, threatening other rappers and starting altercations.
Bank would soon put his own rap career on pause, pointing to the anxiety he felt traveling. He said he began to sense that other cities, with their own versions of Duct Tape Entertainment, were looking to make names for themselves, at their expense.
“We were before our time,” adds Bank, pointing out that much of the art imitating life in Atlanta’s current trap-oriented music can be pointed back to DTE.
“People frowned upon us for bringing that energy; now that’s all the energy they want. I don’t take that as a badge of honor though,” he admits.
Credit: Courtesy of Rashad Holsey
Credit: Courtesy of Rashad Holsey
Bank pivoted from music into movies, giving brief but convincing performances in films like the 2018 remake of the Blaxploitation classic “Superfly.” Then in 2019 he created and began hosting the amateur talent showcase “The Shhh Show,” and later that year entered the podcasting space with “Big Facts.”
Adding new business ventures put a lot on Bank’s plate, but it was what he was eating that came close to killing him.
“I used to get a double cheeseburger meal, 10-piece nuggets, fries and a drink,” says Bank, shaking his head at the memory of eating such a high-calorie meal in one sitting.
He says he started to think more about what he was eating during a lunch meeting with Epic Records executives Sylvia Rhone and Ezekiel Lewis to talk about a potential record deal for his son.
“They were eating salads and I ordered a burger,” says Bank, who remembers weighing more than 300 pounds at the time. “[Rhone] looked at my plate and said, ‘You must not want to live long.’”
Bank says that when his weight became as high as 312 pounds, loved ones began making mention of his size. Some, like his “Big Facts” co-host DJ Scream, would make gestures like buying him a Vitamix blender, hoping he’d take the hint. But since he was still making large amounts of money and women seemed to chase him regardless, he says he never felt or saw for himself the weight he was carrying.
That changed after an alarming doctor’s visit in 2021, when he was told he had high blood pressure, low oxygen levels and was borderline diabetic. Or in his words, “I was [expletive] up.”
“I was always going to the doctor and they were warning me,” he says, adding he gave himself credit for at least getting routine check-ups. “But this time they tried to give me 16 pills to take for the rest of my life. I was like, ‘Hell no; I need to do something about this.’”
Bank’s first decision was giving up eating red meat, then adopting a pescatarian diet before finally going vegan. He says that decision led to him being less aggressive, having more mental awareness and not having nightmares.
From there he started taking long walks on the Silver Comet Trail and noticed people entering the trail from the woods, with hiking sticks. Intrigued, he and his wife Shawnte began looking up local hiking trails and started visiting Stone Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain and Sweetwater Creek.
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
The combination of his new diet and outdoor activity led to almost immediate weight loss for Bank. To date, he’s lost more than 100 pounds.
He says he was drawn to hiking because treadmills at workout facilities couldn’t keep his attention. “Up until then, the only outside I’d been was outside doing the wrong [things],” he admits.
“But when I got into nature, I fell in love with it. It was just serene. I was losing more than just weight -- I started losing toxins out of my mind.”
After months of mostly hiking alone, he was approached by social-media-savvy fitness instructor Robert “Red” Rushing, CEO of Weight No More, who came up with the idea of using Bank’s popularity to turn his hikes into community events. In June 2023, they collaborated to host the inaugural “Hik’n Wit Bank” at Stone Mountain Park.
In the last 12 months, hikers and walkers, mostly Black and not always fitting the stereotypical profile of who you would expect to participate in such excursions, have come out to join Bank at various parks, including Sope Creek Trail in Marietta, Red Top Mountain in Cartersville and others.
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
Atlanta’s city seal features a phoenix rising from the ashes, crowned by the word “resurgens,” which is Latin for “rise again.” The symbol pays homage to when the city rebuilt itself after burning to the ground during the Civil War.
Seeing as how Atlanta is known and criticized for constantly reinventing itself, it’s fitting that figures like Bank find ways to do the same.
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
Credit: Courtesy of Hik'n Wit Bank
“One of my homegirls told me I’m a healer, but I didn’t know that because I was thinking I’m supposed to look a certain way,” says Bank, who has taken the natural route to transforming his body, but made at least one cosmetic change, he’s replaced his gold teeth with veneers.
“I thought in order to change I had to talk like a pastor, but she said that ain’t for me. I can just reach the people that can understand me. I never thought about it like that.”
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