DISGRACELAND - The RZA: (Wu-Tang Clan Chapter 1): Kung Fu in Times Square, Weed on Wall Street, and Attempted Murder in Ohio

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Bobby Diggs (aka the RZA) grew up on a steady diet of kung fu movies and hip-hop music. As a kid he hung around junkies and prostitutes in Times Square. As a teenager he hustled dime bags of weed to day traders on Wall Street. But on Christmas Eve 1991, in Ohio, he was caught up in a shooting that landed him in a fight for his life.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone.

These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The stories about the Wu-Tang clans, the Rizza, are insane.

At the age of nine, he was hanging around junkies and dealers, perverts and sex workers in Times Square. And by his teens, he was selling dime bags of weed to day traders on Wall Street. His first shot at a music career, it backfired, plunged him back into a cycle of poverty and violence that he was so desperately trying to escape. He sold harder drugs in Ohio where he was involved in a Christmas Eve shooting that landed him in a fight for his life. And this all happened before the Rizza made great music.

Some of the most definitive hip-hop music of all time as mastermind of the groundbreaking Wutang clan. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Jackie's Beach Party, MK1. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to black or white by Michael Jackson. And why would I play you

that specific slice of chamon cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 24th, 1991. And that was the day that the Rizzo was arrested and charged with attempted murder.

On this episode, dime bags, poverty, hard drugs, a Christmas Eve shooting, an attempted murder, and Wu-Tang Clans the Risa. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Blue Sniffer stood there drooling. His speech was slurred, eyes half-closed. It's a pathetic bastard. Hirmless, though. But he was important, important to 9-year-old Bobby Diggs. The boy the world would later know, as the Rizza. And the young Rizza,

aka young Bobby here, was equally important to the glue sniffer. The glue sniffer was older, so he could buy Bobby a ticket for the R-rated movie that Bobby wanted to see. And to reciprocate,

in addition to the $1.50 it cost for a ticket, Bobby handed over an extra buck to fund the glue-sniffer's junkie lifestyle. It was a win-win. But still, $2.50.

$2.00. And 50 cents didn't come easy. You ask your mom a stupid question, like, hey, my, you got 20. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me,

me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me.

Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban.

Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear. not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tana Monsu. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network.

Can I say something about the Criterion Closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big-screen

favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...pac sense, and you get the same answer every time. Boy, I don't even have good sense. So it was a big deal for a nine-year-old to put. Put a couple of bucks in the hands of a junkie in Times Square and trust that he'd return with a movie ticket. Bobby hustled to raise that kind of dough, delivering papers and shoveling snow. He was relieved to see the glucinifer stumble back and hand over the ticket.

And then the pathetic bastard hobbled off to get what he wanted, heroin, which here in Times Square in 1978 was easy to find. In 1978, New York City's Times Square had what you wanted. especially if what you wanted was filthy and depraved. Peep shows, live nude girls, porn movies, 24-7, and it was more than just perverts. It was also junkies, like I said, nodding off and dope, dust, and coke, all just a handshake away. There was stick-up men, their pistols pressed into your waist.

Give me everything you got, young blood. And the sex workers, they got all your money, too. They just took it with honey instead of piss. But Bobby Diggs didn't want any of that. He didn't want to get off. he didn't want to get high, at least not for now. Fuck Triple X. He wanted triple feature of Kung Fu movies.

As soon as Bobby stepped off West 42nd Street, took his seat inside the deuce, one of Times Square's grimy movie theaters, he was transported. The projector came to life, and the title cards hit the big screen. Flying guillotine, five deadly men of Shawong versus Wu-Tang, Percy Lee, Gordon Liu, the brothers Lao,

the choreograph fights, the costumes, The overdone dialogue and the code of the samurai. The films were fantastical, mythical even. The all-day experience took Bobby to another world in another universe, so far away that for a couple of hours, he could forget about the outside world. Like the projects in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood. Bobby, his mother, and his siblings,

crammed into a small apartment. Four brothers sharing two twin beds and the same clothes. Yo, do you wear those pants yesterday? And they better not smell like you're nuts because I'm wearing them today. And outside on the streets, you had a plan three steps ahead. Brownsville was the kind of place where dudes jumped you just for standing in the wrong spot. And if you were caught with some change in your pockets or nice kicks on your feet, kiss that shit goodbye. When Bobby's mom fell behind on rent and they were evicted, that was actually a blessing in disguise.

Because that's how Bobby's family ended up in Staten Island. Staten Island was different from Brooklyn, less hostile turf to navigate. Bobby's odd jobs brought in some cash, enough to ditch school each week and go to Times Square and watch a new Kung Fu movie. In a four-year span alone, Bobby must have seen 200 of them. He also bought a pair of Technics turntables and then a microphone and a cheap drum machine. Hip-hop was the pulse of New York at the time. At least it was to Bobby and his cousins, Russell and Gary.

Didn't matter if hip-hop began in the South Bronx. Now it permeated every borough, from block parties on the street to Mr. Magic's rap attack radio show on the air. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Busy B, Dougie Fresh, Cool Mo D, E, PMD, Bobby, along with Russell and Gary, formed their own rap trio as teenagers. All in together now, they called themselves, when they dreamed of hitting the big time and leaving life in the projects and the dust.

But there was no money in dreams. The money was in reality. In reality was the streets. The streets had a lure because the streets had dollars. More dollars than you could make pushing a fucking shovel up a driveway in the snow, and once he made a little bit of that money and saw what it got you, you only wanted more. From where he sat in Zucati Park, he could see the yuppie coming.

That uptight, ass-clenched power walk, product in his hair and pleats in his pants. The New York Times Stock Exchange didn't break for lunch, but around noon on weekdays, floor traders spilled out onto the street. They needed fresh air. They needed a break from shouting at the big board, and they needed something to chill them the fuck out. Bobby had what they were looking for. They didn't care that he was a teenager.

For Bobby, it was easy money, and it sure beat getting up at the ass crack of dawn to deliver papers. The yuppie slipped you a bill, and you handed him the dime bag. Bill, Dimebag, Bill, Dimebag, Bill, Dimebag. And Bobby did it so many times that it became Rope. But he got a little too comfortable. Unlike the game of chess unfolding on the table in front of him in the park, Bobby didn't plan three steps ahead. Blue light, sirens, NYPD swarm in the park with guns drawn.

Cold steel snapped tight around Bobby's wrists. Arrested, thrown in a holding cell for selling weed, but fortunately let go after a day or day or two. too. Unfortunately, however, the whole incident wound up on Bobby's permanent record. But Bobby was busy thinking of other records, hip-hop records. With his turntables and some borrowed gear, namely a four-track recorder and a roll in 909 drum machine, Bobby assembled a makeshift studio in his apartment. And next to Kung Fu, making music was Bobby's obsession. He was also thinking about surviving and providing. In 1988, when Bobby was 19, his mother left New York for Ohio with most of his

siblings leaving Bobby. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of the Girlfriends. Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

And I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gait and moderato from Stranger Things.

Tena, monjeu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened.

His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network.

Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll be behind to take care of his little brother in the family apartment. Bobby's dime bag hustle wasn't always enough. So they stole food from convenience stores. They got by on ramen and weed. There had to be a better way. Maybe it wasn't a question of dreams versus reality.

Maybe it was as simple as changing your reality, willing something new into existence. Like the feeling Bobby got when he stepped inside the deuce and was transported to another place entirely. Maybe he could do that with music. He started by creating a new persona for his musical pursuits, called himself Prince Rakim. The guys he was making music with followed suit. His Staten Island friend Dennis Cole became Ghostface Killa,

named after a character in one of Bobby's beloved Kung Fu movies. Kung Fu also inspired the name of one of Bobby's cousins, Russell Jones, who now went by Old Dirty Bastard. But it was Bobby's other cousin, Gary Grice, a formidable threat on the mic, who called himself the genius, and who would later become the Jizzah, who got Bobby thinking about something else. Numbers. Not the number of dime bags he sold that week, and not the number of dollars he owed in rent. Supreme numbers.

As in supreme mathematics. A principle of the 5% nation, a k.a. The nation of gods and earths. An offshoot of Islam that empowered and inspired hip-hop. culture in the 1980s. The 5% nation believes that black people are the original people on planet Earth, black men being gods and black women being queens. They also believe that only 10% of the people in the world know this, but that they deliberately withhold that knowledge from 85% of the world in order to wield

dominance. The remaining 5% the 5% nation are the ones who know the whole truth and are are determined to spread the word to everyone else. Gary was a 5%er. Gary was one of the smartest dudes Bobby knew. So Bobby became a 5% or 2. And a believer in supreme mathematics. The numbers helped you understand how humanity in the universe are connected. Each number had meaning.

For example, the first number, the number one, is knowledge. You've got to look, listen, assess the situation. And this was not new to Bobby. He'd been doing the knowledge, as they said, for years, all the way back to his Brownsville days when he had to calculate every step he took. He also recognized that sometimes he didn't do the knowledge, like in Zocote Park when the cops came down on his weed hustle. And what did Bobby Diggs know now?

That he wanted not only to survive, but to thrive, to get above the bullshit going down on the streets, to make hip-hop music not just a dream, but a reality. Bobby believed in himself, and if he believed in himself and believed in the power of the 5% nation, he was confident that he could realize his goals. He just wasn't sure if the streets would actually let him go. 1991 was a landmark year for hip-hop. A tribe called Quest released the low-end theory.

Public enemy drop Apocalypse 91, the enemy strikes black. And de la Sol beat the sophomore slump with their brilliant De La Sol is. dead. It was also the year that NWA became the first rap group to hit the number one spot with an album on the Billboard 200. One month after NWA made history in July 1991, Bobby Diggs, or should I say, Prince Rakeem, released his debut single on Tommy Boy Records, the same label that De LaSole was signed to. But that single, Ooh, I Love You, Rakim, a clunky boast of sexual conquests over a Stax record sample had little in common with Dela. In fact, it had more in common with some of 91's other major hip-hop stars such as Tone Loke and MC Hammer, who the hip-hop

head saw as rap-pop hybrids that lacked authenticity. That was the problem with Ooh, I Love You, Rakeem. It wasn't authentic. It was the product of years of hard work on Bobby's part, the dedication to his craft as a beatmaker, a songwriter, and an MC. His ability to be able to be. to network and connect with the right people in the right place at the right time and his hustle. A hustle that he had learned on the streets and was now applying to the music industry. But the hustle failed. And it wasn't entirely Bobby's fault. Tommy Boy Records passed on the songs that reflected Bobby's gritty reality and instead went for the novelty track. They put him in a top hat and tails in the music video.

And they tried to make Bobby something he wasn't. And the whole thing bombed. The single, the video, and Bobby's budding music career. Now Bobby was right back where we started. No record deal. No prospects in the music industry. No prospects, period. And he needed money, bad. So Bobby had no choice but to go back to the only other thing he knew,

hustling drugs on the streets. But the streets had changed. A group of ruthless drug dealers from Brooklyn had set up shop in Staten Island's Park Hill, and they weren't selling dime bags of weed. They were moving a shit ton of crack cocaine, which was currently plaguing the projects of New York City and beyond. Not only was this group of dealers the biggest game in town, they were also the toughest. The body count that piled up in Park Hill, which locals were now calling Kill a Hill, made that clear.

Bobby wasn't an idiot, and there was no way he could compete, which gave him an idea. If he left New York and went to Stubanville, Ohio, where his mom and other siblings live, He could be a big fish in a little pond, run circles around those Midwest jokers, and make a killing. Even if it meant selling a drug that killed his own people, crack destroyed lives of ripped families apart. Bobby knew what he was getting into. But he also felt that, given the circumstances, he had no choice. A few months later, in the fall of 91, Bobby bought a one-way train ticket to Ohio. He boarded the train with a briefcase.

Inside the briefcase were his 5% Nation Lessons book, a gold chain he could hawk for quick dough, product to sell, and a 25-caliber pistol. Ohio came as advertised. Bobby stole drugs, Bobby made money, and Bobby tried not to think about the moral ramifications of his actions. Company helped. His cousin Russell Jones, aka Old Dirty Bastard,

and his Staten Island buddy Dennis Coles, aka Ghost Face Killer, joined him in the hustle and on the trip. But in Ohio, they're all seen as outsiders. And they attracted the anger and resentment of local dealers who felt like their turf was being invaded. And it seemed like every time they made a chunk of cash, something bad happened. Dirty got pinched, ghost got shot. It was, as Bobby later said, a cycle of non-success. The math just wasn't adding up.

Bobby was thinking about this as he sat behind the wheel of his sister's car at a traffic light in Steubenville. He was also thinking about what she told him when he left that evening. You better not fuck my car up. It was Christmas Eve, and it was late, and he waited for the light to turn green. He was driving two girls home, just friends. One of them was Ghost Girl. At least that's what Bobby thought. Then another car pulled up alongside them. Four guys inside, all looking at Bobby and the girls. One of the dudes was bugging out. His eyes wide with rage. And Bobby knew. that look. It was a look that said, Yo man, you got my

girl in your car. The dude was outside now, out of his car, and he stormed toward Bobby and he put his foot into the door of Bobby's sister's car. And the dude wanted to know what the fuck his girl was doing in a car with some other dude from New York. So he kicked the car again, and Bobby panicked.

Not just because he promised his sister he wouldn't fuck her car up, but because he was outnumbered. He put his hand to his belt and felt his pistol. He wasn't going to use it, not unless he absolutely had He just wanted to make sure we're still there. The dude banged on the car window, and the girls freaked out, and one of them screamed. They've got guns. Just go, go, go, just go, just go right now.

Bobby didn't check to see if the light had changed. He took his foot off the brake pedal and slammed it down on the gas. His adrenaline surged, and the engine roared, the wheels squealed, a Christmas light strung up on houses outside flew by like melting day glow crayons. And Bobby looked into the rear view, no one behind them. But he couldn't be too careful. He didn't spend years learning how shit worked on the streets in New York to come all the way out to fucking Ohio and drop his guard like some herb.

He drove around. He parked, killed the lights. He turned them back on and drove around some more, and he told the girls to chill the fuck out. And finally, hours later, he drove them home. The street was a dead end, and the neighborhood was quiet. Christmas Eve kind of quiet. Children nestled all snug in their beds.

visions of sugar plums and all that shit. Bobby watched the girl walk up to her front door and get safely inside, and he was about to pull away, when suddenly a pair of headlights came on across the street. An engine revved. Fuck. Those dudes were waiting here all along. And the other car sped towards Bobby.

Shots rang out. And Bobby hit the gas and peeled away, but it was a dead end. More shots, and Bobby turned the wheel and tried to maneuver his way out. His sister's car crashed up onto the sidewalk, and the other car closed in. Bobby reached for his 25, pure instinct, pointed the pistol through the open window and fired. He racked the slide, aimed one more time, and again pulled the trigger. The gunshots woke up the neighborhood, lights flew on, faces pressed against windows, sirens wailed in the near distance. It was a Cody Park all over again. But this time,

it wasn't yuppies and dime bags of weed. This time, it was one guy shot in the thigh, another guy grazed by a bullet, and Bobby Diggs from Staten Island sitting in a Jefferson County jail cell awaiting trial for attempted murder. We'll be right back after this... At first, it was an attempted murder. At first, Bobby was offered a plea deal for his role in the shooting, which left one person shot in the thigh. After all, he'd acted in self-defense, and there were four of them and only one of him.

60 days, he could do that time. But once the prosecution discovered that Bobby was not a local guy, but from New York City, that plea was no longer on the table. In the eyes of the Ohio authorities, Bobby Diggs and the guys he hung around with, guys like old dirty bastard and ghost face killer, they could be part of a larger operation. Maybe an operation that was spreading its wings far beyond its New York base, bringing guns and drugs into their communities. and who knew how deep it all went. That was the thinking on behalf of the prosecution. It was attempted murder, which meant eight years behind bars. They wanted to bury Bobby Diggs,

just like those four guys wanted to bury him under the cover of darkness on Christmas Eve, but Bobby wasn't going down that easy. Even though he was struggling, he struggled with knowing he was disappointing his mother. He struggled with the fact that his own sister had to put up her life savings, 10 grand to cover his bail.

And he struggled when he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant with his child. But struggling was all he knew. The prosecution, the judge, they hadn't seen the things he'd seen, experienced what he'd experienced. And they'd never pay off a glue sniffer just to see a fucking movie. And they weren't smarter than him either. They couldn't do the math like he could. So when Bobby took the stand to testify,

he thought of the 10 supreme numbers and how they could. could help him. One, knowledge. What did he know? He knew how he was seen by the cops, the prosecuting attorney and the judge, as a threat, as a menace to society. Two, wisdom. Once you've got knowledge, act upon what you know. He told the jury that he was not the person they all said he was. He wasn't a bad person. He was a young man who made some bad decisions. Three, understanding. After you act upon what you know, you've got to truly understand it. Yes, he understood what got him in this situation in the first place, which meant he could also understand how not to get into this situation again. Four, culture, the way of life. After you know something and act upon it and

understand it, only then can you live it. This culture of drugs and guns may have been the culture he came from, but it wasn't his culture. This was not his way of life. Five, power, a.k.a. Truth. He told the jury had heard him to know that he had hurt another human being. That was the truth, and truth is power. Six. Equality. You must be equal in all aspects of one's true self. Seven. God in perfection. G. The seventh letter of the alphabet. Seven colors in the rainbow. Seven notes on the musical scale. Eight. Build. To elevate the foundation of knowledge. In order to build positivity, you must eliminate all negativity. His past was negative. His future was positive. Nine. To exist. You're born first in the womb. You're born a second time mentally

through the understanding of supreme mathematics. The day he testified was April 23rd. Take the two and the three from 23rd. Add them to four for April the fourth month. That's two plus three plus four, which equals nine. The ninth nine. The ninth nine. is born. Today, he was a new person. 10, which is actually zero, because you are the one, standing on the left side of a zero, and that zero is a circle, a cipher. Bobby knew about ciphers, groups of MC standing in a circle, freestyling and working together. He knew that there was strength in the cipher, the bond, the completion of all 360 degrees,

120 degrees of knowledge, 120 degrees of wisdom, and 120 degrees of understanding, and 120 degrees of understanding to complete the circle, from knowledge to understanding and back again. Bobby concluded his testimony and returned to his seat at the defense table. The jury stood up and exited the courtroom. And two hours later, the jury returned. And Bobby stood up to hear the verdict read. The foreman spoke. On the charge of attempted murder, we, the jury, find the defendant Robert Diggs.

Not guilty. Bobby felt a weight lift from his shoulders. He turned to face his mother. She had a sober look on her face. Boy, she said, this is your second chance. Don't mess it up. And don't look back. Bobby did the knowledge.

He quit smoking, quit drinking, quit dealing dope. He fused the lessons of the street with the lessons of the five percenters. He memorized the 120 questions and answers that unlocked the keys to life. Who is the original man? The original man is the Asiatic black man, the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet Earth. the father of civilization, the god of the universe. And who was he? Bobby Diggs. He was a new person. He was, as the teachings of the five percenters taught him, born anew. But not as Prince Rakeem. Rakeem was the past. Rakeem was negative. Bobby had to work on that positive build.

His new persona would have purpose and intention, and it would be simple. Just three letters. First was R. In the divine alphabet, R stands for rule. or ruler, and to rule is to control righteously. Z is the last letter in the divine alphabet, representing the final step of consciousness and standing for zig-zag-zig, which represents the 360 trip from knowledge to wisdom to understanding and back again, zig-zag-zig.

An A, of course, is Allah, the supreme being, original man. R-Z-A, ruler, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, understanding Allah, the Rizza. The Rizza then envisioned a cipher, a cipher that actually worked, unlike the cipher of poverty and violence he'd been trapped in, the cycle of non-success. The only way out was to make a new cipher, a new circle, a circle of power.

The strongest, most powerful circle was a group effort, and the shit was bigger than you. You needed a group of guys who had your back and you had theirs, and let's call it a clan. That wasn't just knowledge, that was wisdom. and understanding. A whole 360-degree trip. Zig, zag, zig, zig.

The New York field office was busy for a Friday morning. The copy machine hummed non-stop. Phones were ringing off the hook. And the agent sat at his desk and took a sip of coffee. It was lukewarm, weak. In all honesty, the coffee sucked. The agent hoped that it would make up for a lack of taste with an abundance of caffeine to get him through the stack of paperwork sitting on his desk.

He picked up the first memo on the stack. Federal Bureau of Investigation, written in all caps at the top. Fought so bold that coffee should take notes. The date below the heading was August 4th, 1999, and the memo was just a few days old. The agent began to read. 2. New York from New York. Case ID. number 281F-N-Y-N-E-W, title, Woutang Clan.

The agent paused, Wutang Clan? The hip-hop group? He was a little surprised to see their name, but not shocked. The FBI had a heart on historically for musicians in the counterculture. Bureau agents before his time monitored Hendricks and the Grateful Dead and Janice Straplin, and this probably wasn't any different. Rap music in particular was a hero. across the ass of many a white collar prude. He continued to read. Synopsis. Request to open a new case on above captioned matter. Details. Information was

received by the New York Police Department about criminal activity being conducted by members of the Wu-Tang Clan organization on Staten Island. The detectives have documented, in their case files, that the Wu-T-T-C is heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons, weapons possession, murder, carjackings, and other types of violent crimes. Information developed by the detectives determined that the WTC has purchased numerous guns from the Steubenville, Ohio area. At least one of these guns has been identified as the murder weapon in the killing of a Robert Johnson, aka Pooh on Staten Island on 123097. Johnson was an associate of the WTC who had a falling out with the group and is believed that his murder was ordered by

someone within the WTC. This murder case remains unsolved at this point. Seven years earlier, when Bobby Diggs was born anew as the Rizza, when he made his triumphant return to Staten Island, having just dodged eight years in the pen, he thought he put Steubenville, Ohio, long behind him. He was wrong. The shooting put him on the radar,

not just in the Midwest, but in New York. Lawyers talked, and so did cops, and detectives never shut up. They like to connect the dots and tie one thing to another. Call up a guy they knew in the next state over and see if the extra piece of one puzzle fit into the missing piece of another. See if their hunch was true. And it was true.

The Rizzo was planning something big. Real big, actually. But not a drug dealing crime syndicate. It was a hip-hop group, the kind that no one had ever seen before. A group so big they weren't just a group, they were a clan, the Wu-Tang clan, A collection of MCs from Staten Island in Brooklyn. Guys who were all stuck in their own cycles of non-success. Guys who needed to bond together to make something greater than any one of them.

Friends and cousins like Ghostface Killa and Old Dirty Bastard. And Gary Grice, aka the Genius, aka the Jizzah. Corey Woods, aka Rayquan the Chef and Jason Hunter, otherwise known as Inspector Deck. U-God, Method Man, Mastakilla. Some of these dudes already had their alter egos from the street. Others got their names from Riza's favorite kung fu movies. The name Wutang came from those movies, too.

The Wutang sword style had fucked with dudes and the rhymes of the Wu-Tang clan were unfuck-withable. Their tongues were their swords. And they honed their swordsmanship, not in Staten Island, but in Shaolin, more of a state of mind than a physical realm. The Wu-Tang clan built a new world into which they could escape from the world they knew, just like the Rizza used to escape into the Deuce movie theater back in the day. But make no mistake, this was an escape, not a fantasy. Rizza made them all promise. Give me a few years of your life, and will not only be successful, we'll be famous.

We'll be so rich that we'll never have to go back to selling drugs in the streets or stealing food from the neighborhood market. We'll take the hustle legit. The rest of the clan put their faith in their leader, and the Rizza delivered. Wu-Tang Clan became a worldwide phenomenon. But at the New York office of the FBI, seven years later, in 1999, the origin story of the Wu-Tang Clan didn't look like an innocent meeting of musical minds. And never mind the group's platinum first album or their four-times multi-platinum second album.

The feds knew a front when they saw one. The Bureau memo that the agent with the shitty coffee was reading classified Wu-Tang as 281F, which is FBI speak for a major criminal organization. Wu-Tang was a clan all right, from the FBI's vantage point, a clan of organized crime. The agent took one last sit while he read the final paragraph on the page. The detectives are seeking the assistance of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office to further their case along as to package the numerous crimes committed by the WTC organization in the form of federal charges in RICO prosecution.

The agent picked up the receiver of his desk phone and paused. RICO prosecution? This wasn't run-of-the-mill Bureau of Paranoia. There was plenty of juice for the squeeze here. And if what he was reading was correct, this was just the tip of the iceberg. The agent punched in a number, and the line rang. A voice answered, and the agent spoke.

It was his opinion that the Bureau, should approve the NYPD's request and begin surveillance of the Wootang clan immediately. I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued. Scraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page

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they take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

Do that. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or. you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Marone,

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That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.