The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - The Legacy Of An American Drug Dynasty: Third Generation Kingpin Reveals Secrets Of A Dope Empire

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

Cavario Hodges was raised in Harlem, New York. His entire family was involved in the illegal drug business in NYC for generations. He grew up around notorious figures like Nicky Barnes and Frank Lucas. Naturally, being surrounded by such activity led him down a similar path. He eventually starting running his own dope operation in Baltimore. His activities here was the foundation for the popular show The Wire. Seeing his future ending with either prison or death, he was saved by a spiritual awakening and left the criminal life for good. He tells us all about his road from kingpin to finding a higher and healthier purpose in life. Cavario also gives incredible insight and history of the drug trade in the Eastern United States. He is now an accomplished author and journalist and even conducts interviews for platforms like VladTV. Go Support Cavario! Website (all books available here): https://themindplugacademy.com/ YouTube: @Cavario.Online IG: https://www.instagram.com/themindplug/ This episode is #sponsored by Rocket Money! Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/connect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's a hierarchy within the game, and then there's a hierarchy within the crews out of the game. So you had my sister and all my first cousins. Then you had the generation before them, which is my mother, my father, my uncles. My mother was the queen bee. They come in and, you know, I'm sitting to do my own work, and how many you want? They get two bags. I'm just at my job. I'm just working.

I'm making $15,000 a day here. Kavario Hodges grew up in Harlem, New York in the 1970s. He was raised by professional drug dealers. Virtually every member of his family was involved in high-level trafficking, including his mother, who was a captain in one of the largest dope rings in New York City, led by infamous drug lords Nikki Barnes, Frank Lucas, and Cavario's uncle, Butch Cassidy. Cavario grew up in drug royalty, a ghetto prince, if you will. And by the time he was in middle school, he was working at his family's spots in and around Harlem.

And for the next 15 years, Cavario ran some of the most successful drug operations, on the East Coast and made millions on the streets of Baltimore on the same corners that would later be the influence for HBO's hit series The Wire. Finally, in 1997, after having a spiritual awakening, Cavario left the game for good. He is now a successful author and businessman. You can read his autobiography, raised by wolves, which is available on his website, The Mind Plug Academy.com. And for a bonus interview with Cavario, go over to patreon.com slash the Connect show.

Okay, without further ado, it was a pleasure and an honor, a one-of-a-kind story you can't find anywhere else. Enjoy Cavario Hodges right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. By 14, I was already, you know, been a couple of years of, you know, carrying two guns every day. And like I said, my father put the first gun in my hand. But my mother, she's the one that taught me, you know, shoot from the hip and shoot the pocket. And my mother said telling me, we've been making and seeing millions of dollars for decades. This is what we do. This is it. This is what we do. This is what we always going to do. This is it. And if you interfered with that, then it was either send your ass down south,

or they're going to find you somewhere with a hot shot or with a bull in the back of your head. That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank, it's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Cavario, if you could, please, just tell everybody where you were born and when you were born. I was born in Harlem, New York, in 1967, during the period in which the heroin game kind of came into his first.

full fruition and began to explode. And you're from like downtown 1 15th? Yeah, I'm from Harlem, Harlem. I'm from the place that when historically when people say Harlem, they're talking about here. They're not talking about Spanish Harlem, East Harlem. They're not talking about uptown, which would be like above 135th Street, whatever.

They're not talking about Sugar Hill. They're not talking about Washington Heights. They're talking about that point between, say, morning side from 110th over to maybe Linux up to as far as 135th 138th Street you know um strivers row you know like that yeah and and that space was that considered still like the capital of black america that downtown part of Harlem when you were a kid yes okay yes absolutely yeah and it seemed like when i was reading your book it seems like you know you get some money and you move out, but you always come back, whether you come up off a dope package or a pension fund.

You might shoot up to the Bronx. You go over to Jersey. Riverdale. Riverdale. Riverdale is when the first boss. Westchester. That's where the first bosses went. Right.

Before New Jersey and then Long Island, it was Riverdale first because it was like conveniently located. So the black kingpins of that era, the heroin bosses would, they be getting money in Harlem. All their turf was in what you called the dope triangle. But then they would be living in the leafy suburbs. suburbs, and then on weekends you come in with... Or one or two nights a week that you had to come in and be... You can't stay too far too long, right? One, things change too quickly.

Two, people feel, you know, what's the old saying when the cat's away the mice play? You got to keep your eye on people, you know? So, like, meeting on Thursdays, every Thursdays, no matter, you know, where, people were, you know, because they may not be necessarily hustling in Harlem. That's where they get their work and all that, whatever, but they might be

in another state or whatever. But come Thursday, you got to come in town with your contribution, with your bag. You know, and it might not be all your bag. Your bill might be a quarter of a million, you know, but if all you got is

175, 125, bring it. because everybody else is bringing it. And then, you know, the person who's at the top of the tier or somewhere near that, they would take that. And, you know, the way to keep a flow going, the way to keep top-notch material constantly coming to you, regardless of availability, you know what I mean? There's been so much, especially during this period, this earlier period.

There's been so much that is available, right? So if you're going to be one of the first people who gets first picks, then you've got to be a solid earner. So if you are a person that, you know, it's good for bringing a million dollars a week or $2 million a week, then the suppliers are going to make sure that you're straight. And it's a constant, like your bill is never paid. You know what I mean? Like, because you'll give them $2 million.

you receive $4 or $5 million in work. And then maybe next week you'll give them another $3 million, but you're going to receive another $4,000 or $5 million in work. Right. Because your credit's that good. Because your credit's that good. And it's because you have a system where every Thursday, you receive several hundred thousand, you know, from different people.

You know, so, you know, every, they know, every Thursday, they're going to be able to pay their overseas suppliers and keep themselves in favor because they are a constant stream of money. no matter what's going anywhere else, these individuals make sure that the money keeps on flowing because obviously if it's money not flowing, then it's not money. Okay, so can you explain the structure back in, let's say, let's say 71, 72, you're about four or five years old. Can you explain, yeah, the heroin structure from where it came from to the middlemen supplying the bosses all the way down to the street level? Right.

So a lot of people have seen American gangster, the largely false and, you know, convoluted story of Frank Lucas, right? Frank created a story in an interview he did with a reporter and a New Yorker, which upon which that movie's based. It's not based upon his reality. It's based upon that article. Oh, wow. Right. And in that article, he talked about, you know, a point in his act. actual career where he was in, you know, contact with a direct plug from the triangle from,

you know, Southeast Asia. Yeah. Right. And during the time, this is near the last few years of the Vietnam War. So that war was, among other things, a pretext for the taking over the drug industry, for this country taking over the drug industry. It's attempt and it's many attempts, but to take over the drug industry. So I would say in his instance, Frank's instance, you had Ike Atkinson, Leslie Atkinson, known as Ike.

In the movie, he was presented, he was represented by this Licekin actor, who usually does not so serious roles, but he was the sergeant in a bar, Star Bar or something that he kind of owned and operated that was

Ike Atkinson so Ike was in Southeast Asia in the military and so he had

direct contacts with the triads in the mountains in the in the bush

who produced this stuff right so he was he created a system that enabled him to

first it was like in the bases and this was what I told me they were using these bags.

There was these like standard army bags, like these duffles. And the bottom of these bags, like the ends of the bag, what would be the bottom, right? They were like duffles that sat up in the openings at the top. It was like a base, you know. A false bottom. Right. But it was a, you know how you have heavy bags and the bottom of the heavy bag is like rounded and it's got, you know, this base. To weigh the bag down so it doesn't fall over.

So they had that. And they used to put it in that. And a lot of times it was in the bag and the person carrying the back didn't know it. Right. So somebody going over, coming over here. Yeah, leaving Vietnam and going home. They'd be like, um, hey man, um, someone so left his bag. Could you take it back for him?

And it would be in the bag. 10 kilos of pure heroin. Yes, a bottle. Pure, pure, pure. I'm talking about something that can be cut 60, 65 times, you know. So if it's one kilo or two kilos, it's 130 kilos. Right. You know what it's done.

Unbelievable. And one kilo could be like $100,000 wholesale, right? In this country over here? Yeah, over here. A quarter of a million. For one kilo. For one kilo. For one thousand grams that you turn into 130.

Yeah. I mean, nobody would put a 65 on a 65. Put a 40 on it. Yeah. And it's, I mean, the amount of. of pure heroin that a human body can stand is so minute. It's ridiculous. I accidentally gave somebody a matchhead amount that was uncut that I didn't know was uncut

when my uncle asked me to go get this tested. Right. I'm thinking I'm getting a package tested. You know, I'm getting something that we're going to put the mix on. You know, that's got the mix on it. So I think he's testing a mix. So, you know, I give the person, you know, like the foil. they might have like, like, gramming or something like that.

And they said, they, you know, opened it up, and they took a matchhead, like, you know, a match in a mouth like a match ball. And one in each nose. And like the, in this exact timing, oh, it's good. Oh, yeah, that's good. Well, throw up in that time and then, boom, fall right to the floor. Wow. That amount. Right.

Right. That's good for the heroin dealer. Oh, yeah. That means you got some shit. That means, you know, a Coke importer might have to bring in a thousand bricks to really get that $5,000, $10 million. That's a fact. But you could do that with 10 kilos of raw heroin. That's why you can't compare a Coke kingpin to a heroin kingpin.

There's no comparison. So we're going to get into that. But first, Frank Lucas. So the lore is that at the time, the late 60s, early 70s, the stranglehold on the importation of South. Southeast Asian heroin was controlled by the mafia. And yeah, the French connection as well, right? So the- Which came later. The Italian middlemen would then have a monopoly on the heroin,

and then they would chop it down and give it to the black street bosses. And by the time it got to them, it was already cut up so many times. And there was a cap on the amount of money you could make if you were like a Frank Lucas, right, from Harlem. So he basically, according to the movie, he went around. them by going straight to Southeast Asia. So did that actually happen in real life? He did go around them.

Was he the first one in your knowledge to do that? First black kingpin to do that? No. Frank Matthews did that. Frank Matthews had the, he had the French connection. All right. And the connection between Ike and Lucas was that Lucas had been married

previously prior to their involvement to one of Ike's cousins. So that's how they got connected. They became a prize of one another or whatever have you. And when Frank

was getting those things from from Ike and Ike was the one that was really taking care of the importation, Ike said that Frank didn't even come outside. He only came once. And all he wanted to do was go to the zoo and see the snakes. So there was no riding burmars, riding burmowers into burma and all that kind of stuff, whatever, whatever.

It was none of that. And he said he slept for the most of the time that he was there. So when Matthews, when Frank Matthews, who's really the biggest that ever did it and got away with it, right? Frank is by far, the most successful drug dealer. in our history. Just like Ike Atkinson is the largest heroin, single heroin reporter in America in the history. Not black, period. Right?

Because they went from that to teak furniture. And then the infamous caskets that people were like, you know, people like the people love hyperbole. So it was in the bodies. No, it wasn't in the bodies. Right. It was in the casket. And Ike Atkinson was the one in Vietnam or Southeast Asia actually coordinating all of this smuggling for the kingpins.

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when the teak furniture got very popular. This is after the coffins. He went to push down a, a pack into this, the top of this post, this bed post. He went to push it down and he pressed his palm into the bag. And it left a palm impression. Oh, my God. And they pulled that?

That's how they got. Wow. Back in the 70s, they had that kind of technology? They could pull it. Wow. I mean, you know, the fingerprinting technology's been around since the 20s, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

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That's rocketmoney.com slash connect one more time. You know how the game goes. Rocketmoney.com slash connect. All right. Let's get back into the episode. Okay. So in this time, then, is it safe to say that the black guys were getting it straight off the boat? They didn't have to go through the Italians anymore?

No, no, no. Most did. Most like the, in my opinion, they liked the association. They liked that the things that went along with being associated with the mob, you know. You know, that whole idea of the superiority of fair-skinned people was very, very, pervasive in that in that generation right most of them came from down south right so they had that deep deeply indoctrinated into their minds um so dealing with the italians you know made a lot of them feel like better you know and the idea of going overseas and interacting with you know foreign entities and so

forth was so far-fetched. I mean, it was like I said, these guys come from down south. That was a big enough thing in and of itself. You came from all the way down to rural Virginia or, you know, rural Carolina to come up to New York. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then got the nerve to get involved with these Italians, you know what I mean?

And start selling, you know, selling drugs. That's like a big thing. So the idea of getting on a plane or whatever and going to another country. And I think that's why the story of Frank Luke is doing that. that is so unique is because, yeah, for, you know, he was a country boy from North Carolina. And to go all to have that kind of foresight, he's like, no, no, no, I need the lowest price. I need the low, low, low. I have to go to the jungle of Burma.

I think that was. Yeah, he looked up, he looked, well, it was a thing where he stumbled upon that information that that was, that there was somebody whom he had access to who could, you know, get him this material. whatever, have you. And he was a huge fan of Nicky's, Nicky Barnes. Right. Huge fan of him, right? Everybody was. How did Nicky Barnes play into this? You know, if you say Frank Matthews, Frank Lucas, were the bigger dealers. What was Nicky Barnes just the flashiest? No, no, Nick was big. Nick was big. And Nick was before Frank Lucas.

and Frank Matthews and Nick were around the same time. They were contemporaries. Did you ever meet any of these guys? You would have been really young, but... Well, Nikki Barnes is connected directly to my family. So at a point, Nikki was a dope fiend. There was a heroin addict, right? And like, as they say, one of the worst kinds, you know,

like, you know, Larson-hearted, like really down-and-dirty dope fiend. and he was eating out of garbage cans on 150th in Lenox Avenue like he was that bad of a dophine at a point. My mother helped to get him off of heroin. My mother and her husband, whom that we'll talk about later, she was, her husband and Nick were tight. They came up together. And he was also at a point in his life on heroin, her husband.

And so when he got up. up and on whatever ever, like he was the guy and, you know, a lot of the supply that came to my family were from him. Okay. For the most part, until, you know, Butch, you know, became that person. Okay. And who's Butch? Cassidy. Could you explain who Butch Cassidy is?

Butch Cassidy is my uncle who is probably going to the, if not the longest running heroin kingpin in the, in, in, in New York, you know, out of Harlem and South Bronx. He's from the Bronx originally, but he came up in Harlem, came up in the game in Harlem, whatever. What was the key to coming up in the heroin game, like for Butch or for Nicky? Was it finding that overseas supplier? Finding a proper supplier,

whether it was, you know, Fat Maddie and then over on Pleasant Avenue on 16th Street, which was, that was Nicky's angle. Those are guineas, right? Those are mob guys? Pleasant Avenue guys. Stand-up guys like Maddoinidad, very, very stand-up dude. He took a heavy pinch that, like, damn near. He was like 70.

And wasn't his first by far, they stood all the way to fuck up. You know, he's hardcore, you know, the kind of people that don't really exist anymore. Right. But the key for these guys was finding supplies, finding a. Someone who could supply limitlessly, you know, someone who could supply the best that the process could produce, you know, that could take a 60, you know, take a 50, you know what I mean. There weren't a lot of people back then who could get their hands on something like that. but there was so much room that a person could

say you got it from somebody who was getting it from Nicky they may or may not have to put something on a nine times of the 10th they would put something on it you know but you'd still be in position to make a ton of money profit-wise because if you're getting something you can put a 60 on and you give it to me and I can put a 40 on it

that's still two guys down the Jane, we could still put 10 on it. That's right. And it is but so much, there's been so much heroin that anybody can take anyway. Right. Right. So when I was a kid, the bags were called quarters. And with these glassine bags that when you opened them, they were about like maybe two and a half inches high, maybe two inches wide, right?

and they would have, like in our specific instance, we had heavy bags, right? So they would be nine and a half one-eighth spoons. We called, they called it mixed jive, right? Mixed jive, you know, or scrambled, right? And it was comprised of quinine, which has chemical properties, right? And in Benita, which was innocuous, it had no chemical properties, it's a stretch for volume. Yeah. Right.

And so they would have nine and a half spoons of this mixed jive in a quarter. And that would be sold for $50, $50. But if somebody was touting, which is, you know, I'm somebody who's in the neighborhood and, you know, I'm not, I'm a drug addict. But I make my way by helping drug dealers sell their drug. drugs. I am a representative of, you know, like, I quantify the quality of this of this shit. Hey, bro, come on. Get it from these guys right. So that's $5 for me, $50 for the dealers, $55 quarters. And so that, that was how, that was how the money, you know, was made. The profits were made because it would be so, so much material. And,

So little of it could be ingested at any given time. Yeah. So, you know, like you could stretch the shit. I think you take one key that you pay $250, for. By the time you pay for the key and you paid the crew and paid the table that has to mix it and all that, whatever, whatever. By the time you've done all of that, you probably still have made $250,000. Yeah. Now, did the guys, so with that being said, do you think that the guy under the guy under the,

boss under the main lieutenant could they actually make more than the guy their boss getting it wholesale because he can now put 30 or 40 on it make so many hundreds of kilos and sell them out on the street in quarters seems like you could actually make more in the guy you get it from you could but there was a hierarchy there was a system you had to operate within that system otherwise things could fall down pretty quickly. It was highly competitive. So if you put out a thing, a package that was taking, say, it's 60, and you put it on a 40, and then you gave that mix to somebody, now they've got, maybe they've got a whole key that you put this 20 on, right?

and now they take it and they go and they put another 15 on it. Right. Right. So now the person who has to, the person who's going to go and bag it, assuming that it didn't get bagged when it initially got here, got hit and got bagged. There were a lot of operations like that.

Those operations were the ones that set the standard. That means you had to be at least as tall as this to ride this ride, otherwise you're sitting there with some shit that's going to be top and pot in a few days when that equineine on finished working on it. Yeah, okay, that's fascinating when I read that in your book. So if you put too much cut on heroin, it'll actually like dissolve. It'll become the gummy, right? No, what'll happen, that gummy shit doesn't happen.

Like that's the thing that happens when people go to shoot. They put it, they pull it up in hype. Oh. They put the water on it, whatever, whatever. And if it's got a bunch of cut on it, it'll gel up. Okay. It'll gel up. So in terms of the having too much.

cut on it and then, you know, you're storing it. It's at an apartment that's just off the street where it's being sold, right? And you tried to stretch it and make some extra money. You're the guy you were talking about it, right? The guy beneath the guy. And you decide you're going to take it. And this has happened. People done all kinds of dumb shit because they're greedy and stupid and short-sighted.

So, you know, there have been times of a person, you know, Nikki will get the things and send them to the mill where they get chopped up so you got a bunch of people sitting around

mostly naked Is that true? That's true. So you'd have chicks with their tits out like in a stereotypical drug movie at the heroin mill?

That was common. And what was the purpose of that? Do you think? Keep the motherfuckers of stealing. You know, first of all, money went a lot further.

So a person could still, you know, a few hundred dollars worth of drugs from you and, you know, pay their rent for the month and fill a house with groceries or go shopping or whatever. You know, money went a lot further. They went a lot further. So they didn't have to steal a lot. And if you got seven, eight, nine people all stealing two, three hundred dollars, you know, over a period of time, that's a bite out of your ass. So, you know, guys weren't strict. But sometimes there'd be guys who would be at the table, you know what I mean? But whenever it was women, a lot of times the women weren't wearing anything.

They couldn't tuck anything between their legs or beneath their breasts or shit like that, right? That was a real thing. Did you ever witness that? Or didn't you have an apartment in your family that was used for a mill? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But it was mostly family doing it.

So that wasn't, it wasn't a necessary thing. It was family doing. A lot of times people would be like regular people, church. going, working people. And then when the thing came, it was like, yeah, I got something for you to do. And they would know they would be spending the next four days or so. In somewhere, they don't necessarily know where, where they're going to be sequestered for that period of time without any interaction with anybody else, whatever, while they cut this thing up and bag this thing up.

So you cut up, you know, four, five hundred grams. And, I mean, it's mountains of this shit. You got, you know what I mean? Like the mountains of heroin, mountains of quinine, mountains of Benita. And you got to, you got to sift the quinine, you know, dozens of times. Hey, everyone, just a quick intermission. I want to tell you about my stand-up comedy dates this summer. July 19th and 20th, I'm going to be in Chicago, Illinois,

at the comedy bar. Come on out. I got four shows there. And then in September, September 27th to the 29th, I'm going to be in Vegas doing skank fest. I'm on a ton of shows there. That's the greatest comedy festival in the world.

Get tickets at linktree.com slash johnny Mitchell. Once again, that's linktree.com slash johnny Mitchell. I'll see you on the road this summer. All right. And where do you source quionite? Um, there were different places.

Uh, There were some people who would get their quinine from pharmacies. Right? The quality of sister. Because quinine had his quality as well. If you had a shitty, like Ronnie Bump, right, Ronnie Bump Bassett, who would be, I guess, the Frank Matthews equivalent out of Queens, right? Major, major motherfucker.

I'm writing this book right now, actually. It's called Finish Business. he was very meticulous about his cut about his quinine. So he had a source that gave him the top quality quino cost a little more. But he didn't have to worry about it eating up his dope. Right. You know? But most people, and then Benita, Benita was a lot easier to get,

but they would get this ship out of barrels. But Benita came in like these little, it looked like a bar of soap. right and had this a little band around it with the label right and um you know they'd take those and put them through a sifter through a strainer and just down to powder because it blocks yeah can eat isn't blocks right quinine is in uh powder yeah so you know you'd get barrels of the quinine um from a source and um a lot of it said there were people who got obviously as you might imagine filthy rich selling just quinine oh but you could get caught up in a drug conspiracy

if you were selling quino to a major heroin producer. Right. Right. Yeah. You're an intricate part of their operation. Right. Now, you could say, well, I don't know what the fuck they were doing it. So what the fuck you think they were doing with, you know, five, six hundred pounds of quino. Right. Right. So that was an industrial, you couldn't just get those big barrels at CBS.

You had to, you had to go to an industrial wholesale. There was no CBS. Of course. I'm kidding. That's all New York is now. Starbucks and CBS. You're fucking right about that. Okay, so do you think there was more, you mentioned that like downtown Harlem, 116th, 115th street between 7th and 8th Avenue. That was also a spot where hustlers that went out of town would descend on Thursdays to re-up. No, don't get convoluted. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Those those neighborhoods were major, major selling neighborhoods. Okay. So that was not the re-up neighborhood. No, no, no, no. There's no, no, there's no, there's no, there's no, no, there's no, was the out-of-town game? like it was in the 80s when New York crews would shoot out of town like you went to, you know, Baltimore?

In the 70s, yes. Yeah, was that a thing with heroin? In the 70s? They were doing that in the 70s. Okay, wow. I remember as a kid, people, older people around me, I knew of the existence of the cities of Baltimore in Boston and Philly by way Trenton, by way of the older people around me talking about, you know, the work going to these places. That's how I knew the existed. Other than I, I wouldn't have known they existed.

Right. So, yeah, that's been happening. Okay. That's been happening. So who controlled the actual retail street distribution in Harlem still? Retail street distribution was not controlled by any one particular individual. You had a guy on, like, you had, uh, Have, Heave on 117th Street between 8th and St. Nick.

And he wasn't the only one. You know, at the same time, he had Alan Lloyd the same time. And these, you know, they're making just these individuals of bringing, say, um, have was dealing with Ronnie Bonn. Ronnie told me that Hev was bringing him. He was good to, for,

for a key and a half, two keys, you know, a week. Wow. By himself. Just in one block. Yeah. Like millions of dollars, millions of fucking dollars. You know what I mean? It's just one guy, one fucking block, right?

And then you got 16th Street. And 16th Street is like a longer strip than 15th Street. And I think this has a lot to do. with the fact that St. Nicholas cuts across 7th Avenue. So the way it is angled, 17th Street is this long, but 16th Street is this long. Right. 15th Street is this long. Like 16th Street is long from 7th to 8th.

It's a long as strip. And there's millions of being made on this block. And then in my block, 15th Street, as I'm a little kid, they're selling, you know, sometimes a thousand quarters in a day. And this is one lot. You know me? Describe for me the traffic times. You would walk out, you'd be hanging out on your stoop or a little Cabario be looking down through the window at the street and the lines of cars waiting to get served and how that happened.

So they'd be coming up the block. They're coming from 7th Avenue, right? The block goes east to west. So they're coming from 7th Avenue. And, you know, there'd be 4 or 5 cars coming up the bus. coming up the block. When they get past, like, mid-block, that's when serving begins.

So whether you're walking into the block or whether you're driving to the block, right around this point, it was like a building they called Chocolate City where it was like an half-thous-hour, whatever, and the guys in my neighborhood, you know, my family's, like that's where they hung out and stuff like that. So that was like a point,

and that point forth was where the transactions happened going towards 8th Avenue. So it might be, five, six, seven cars moving slowly. And a guy will come and run and jump on the hood of the car. It's like a little kid, right? And serve. And serve right there.

The drivers are, I mean, he stop. And, you know, give me, give me five. Give me, give me ten. Or, you know, give me two quarters, you know, or whatever. Give them the money and do the transaction. You jump off and run to the next car behind that, jump off. And I'm watching this from the window at four or five years old. Yeah.

Obviously, it's super fascinating. Right. You know what I mean? And, you know, at some point, during the day, I'll be outside and I'll be interact. Because this, you know, heroin business starts 7 o'clock in the morning. So 7 o'clock in the morning. Zoom, cancer boom, out.

You know, that was my family stamp. So you let them know that it's out here, you know. Your family stamp was what? Zoom, cancer boom. Zoom, cancer boom. That's fly. It was a heavy package. So every different, did you guys change up names depending on the different quality of the package?

Or was that just your legacy? Zoom cancer boom. Your stamp was very important. important. Right. And it was very important. Prior to stamps, it was a bag color. Prior to bag color, it was the tape, color of the tape on your bag. Right. Right. And so those things were very important. They were brands. Like that infamous scene in American Ganksway says, you know, Blue Magic is a brand. Right. I stand behind that, whatever. That was serious. And Blue Magic was real. What were the other stamps in your neighborhood? I assume a couple stamps.

each block could be possible. You had poison, that poison to put out, which was the only thing that was reputed to go head to head with Blue Magic when Blue Magic was pumping. You had West Indian Chuck with please, please, please, please, which, you know, I'm a little kid moving around, you know, riding around the neighborhood on my Apollo 5 speed or whatever have you. And, you know, this is what I'm hearing. All I hear is shoutouts all day long. You know, right? Please, please, please. Stands out, stood to start my head.

But it was a bomb package. Yeah. It was a bomb package. Poison, Blue Magic, the West Brothers down between Manhattan Avenue and 8th Avenue, they had strong package. I can't remember the name of their stamp. Hmm.

I can think of the names of, of the people who had the standing that you knew, their thing must be the thing because their name is on a lot of people's lips. Yeah. Right. So, you know, Cisco kid. I remember, Rod, there was a furniture store on the corner of 116th and 8th Avenue called Jayhorn. And huge four-story furniture store.

And most of the people in the neighborhood got their furniture from Jayhorn. just passed Jayhorn, because Jayhound was on the corner, and it was a huge building, so maybe like a quarter way in to the block off of the avenue. I remember seeing Cisco Kid out there. Cisco Kid is my man Reggie's dad. So I remember him being out there with a large bag. Like the kind of bags used to be in the supermarket back then, which were large brown paper bags. no insignias. And there's a large ground paper bag.

And out there, like, it's full of quarters. And people be lined up. Full of quarters of heroin. Yes. And he'd be selling it. And he's riding by, a lot of people behind the room. I mean, all kinds of conditions and so forth. And that was just him.

Yeah. You know, and he got rich. Yeah. He was a kid. So there's just, there's just hundreds of millions of dollars. a year coming through this black slum. Triangle. That's right.

One 10th to 119 to monicide to Linux. Like that whole space in it. And are there like- When I was born, they were approximately a quarter million heroin addicts in America. According to statistics, 80% of them were in and around my neighborhood. Wow. Now, why is that, you think? Because that's where the best dope was.

People would move there from other places, moved there from other parts of the country. Mike, immigrate to Harlem. That's right. Just to get high. Just so you can be in proximity to the best dope, rather than waiting in Virginia for somebody to get it there by the time it's gotten there. They've done the, you know.

The two-step. They turned the ten-step. Yeah, right, right. You know what I think people do that now in San Francisco. They move from all over the country because they can smoke fentanyl and crystal on the tenderloin. in the streets and they could do it unbothered. That's, wow. My wife was, my wife was just there a few months ago, and I'd warned her.

But when she got this, she was like, I've never seen no shit like this in my life. Crazy. That's crazy. Harlem. Harlem. I was in Portland. That's where I'm from. A little while last year.

It's fucking crazy. Is it? Fucking crazy, bro. It's crazy. The motherfuckers are just using drugs everywhere. Nobody gets arrested for drugs at all. Well, it didn't seem like people did back then either. No, they didn't.

They didn't. But, see, that wasn't surprising to us because, you know, this is black people. Right. This is a bunch of black people who gives up. Okay. So it was black people getting high. Those are the fiends coming through. You didn't see white.

Not much. Not much. Okay. Not much. Not much. Okay. Not much. Because a lot of people were on her own.

You know what I'm saying? That's several members of my immediate family on her own. My sister, first cousin, several. Right. So let's talk about your family. So, wow. Your family, man. I mean, these are gangsters.

These are people probably suffered a lot of generational trauma from... No doubt about it. You know, but these were like old school mean black people. Oh, yes. And I say all of this with love. But yes. No doubt. But you're right.

But this fury and this hardness has to come from the Jim Crow era. And now they're in, you know, the mecca of black. people, the capital of American black people, and they're just super deep in the heroin game. They're one of these crews. Your uncle was Butch Cassidy, obviously. Tell us about your mother. God, we love her. I feel like I know her after reading the book. Tell us about your mother and your uncles and your cousins and where they operated. What level of the game were they at in this whole this whole universe of heroin in Harlem. Well, there's a hierarchy within the game,

and then there's a hierarchy within the crews at the end of the game, right? There was two generations before me and my family. So you had my sister and all my first cousins' generation that were 14, 15 years older than me. Then you had the generation before them, which is my mother, my father, my uncles, who my cousins and my sister and all in them that came before me were brought in by.

Right. Right. So when, obviously, when I was born. Oh, I'm sorry to cut you off. So your family, your parents' generation goes back to when heroin was first on the scene in the 50s. Yeah. When they call it horse. Yeah.

They go back to the horse generation. Wow. You can buy a $2 bag of dope and be. high for eight, ten hours. Wow. So they go back... You and your buddy. Now, did they, how, did your mother ever talk to you about how she got started? Like, was she at, uh, no. Okay. It was just a reality. It was just a reality. But, you know, I, in the process of writing raised by wolves, in the process of the diary, the journal that raised by wolves evolved into, because I had no intention of going against the drainage of my, uh, training.

to write a book about the life that we lived. That was absolutely the opposite direction of what I was taught. Right? I realized in that process that I didn't really know shit about my mother, my father. I only knew what I actually gleaned from my direct interaction with them. They were very, very close-mouthed about everything. Old school. Yes.

Yeah. You know, which is why to this day I still, you know, I spent a lot of time trying to pry information out of those who were left. Right. Still, not active at all. Although you never really know with the older generation. You never fucking really know. But they're not active at all.

I was just talking to one of my aunts a couple of days ago when we were up there in the city. I introduced Al to a shout out on Deidja. And I'm, you know, I'm like, you know, I asked her or Al asked her something, whatever, whatever. She's like. Yeah, right. I'm like, it's been 40 years. Well, old school people.

The statute of limitations is far past. You could talk about it. Old school people, especially old school gangsters or criminals, they never talked about the past. That's right. That's what I was raised on. That's why I raised my wolves. It was so cathartic for me.

So let's just talk about. I didn't know shit about my mom for real for it other than what I saw myself. And even after she passed and I started working on this thing and started calling a book. And I started reaching out to different members of my family who were still around and who were around. and under her, and they were still like, uh, well, and I'm like, bro, she is not going to reach out from the grounds and snatch you up, you know, but the, the indoctrination was so deep that they still, it's like, I want to talk, but every time I try to say things and I know I shouldn't say, my voice gets stuck in my throat.

Wow. That's how, I remember being that way. Yeah. I remember being that way. You know, that whole process of writing what became that book was really deep, uh, catheteries. Thoracic therapy for me. You know? That's why it's inside the life and mind of a great hustle that.

Not just the life, not just this is the stuff I did and saw. And this is how I felt about. And what I thought about the things that I'd done and experienced and witnessed. You know what I mean? Because when you're raised in an environment like that, you have no, and you have somebody like you with this sharp mind, you have nobody to talk to about it. Nope. You got to tell somebody, dude, guess what I saw today?

But you have nobody because that's just normal. You just do. You don't talk about it, nor do you really think. That's right. So, okay, well, we'll just talk about. People start looking at you, you know, within your own system. They start looking at you like, like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Right.

You know, this is your business, not your business. That's it. That's all. And it could be the person who's right, like your best friend. I couldn't tell my best friendship. I couldn't come out to outside my best friend. You know, they got like a million dollars on the bed upstairs. Yeah.

I can't say shit I got to go outside and act like everything is fucking normal Now did you have normal friends from the neighborhood Who's parents worked and went to church? Absolutely most people Most people And this is something that I speak to all the time

Still to this day Most people in the hood Did not sell drugs Did not participate in a drug life So And I did a couple of posts about this On IG like There was a time

When people in the neighborhood neighborhood did not speak at all like people in the street. Didn't use our colloquialisms, didn't use our slangs, didn't use our vernacular at all, at all. They spoke like regular people while we were like, look, you know what I'm saying, go around the corner and see the man hit the man with the thing, you know what I'm saying, and I'm saying, holler back and, you know, let's, you know, get with the other situation, you know what I'm talking about. That was it.

So if you didn't know, you don't have no idea what was just said, Nick, have a conversation right in front of you. then at some point around the time that you know rap is starting to pervade you know everything then you start hearing regular moms dads working class church people never been outside after the street lights came on people start talking about you know yeah man you know sam hustle got to get to the bag and it's like what aren't you going to work right yeah you know it's like they started picking up our stuff. And after a while,

it became, like the generation that came behind that generation, just talk like that because they figured, I'm from the hood and this is how we talk

in the hood. No, I had a lot of regular friends. Like, everybody who wasn't in the thing, wasn't in the thing. And it was no confusion about it. How many people did you know,

like you, these little kids, these little princes that, whose family were big-time dope dealers? For me, yeah. It was just, just my family,

my cousins. Yeah. You know, it was just us. there were a couple of other kids, but they were few and far between, a couple of other kids, like, you know, from, like, there's one kid from 14th Street.

And, I mean, for the most part, I mean, most of the, most of the people who did get involved back in, back then, they had mostly gotten involved on the non-business side of the bag. So if there was a person, I had a lot more friends who were impacted, by the game from the perspective of their primary caregivers being addicted than participants in the money part of it.

So it was more normal to be an addict from Harlem than a big-time drug dealer? Absolutely. Right. Okay. So you can't tell by the way these guys recall it, but yeah, I was actually there. They weren't there. They weren't outside if they were there. You know what is so fascinating.

Please talk about this. The dichotomy, the symbiotic relationship. between the heroin dealer and the heroin user. Like you admonished your own son when he wanted to dip his toes in the game. And he cursed out a dope fiend, right? Like the dope fiend was, you know, scratching and maybe, you know, got a little rush, rushed him or something. And he said, you dirty dope fiend, motherfucker. I hate you.

And you smacked him. You said, fuck that. In Baltimore. He is feeding you. He's putting money. He's putting food in your mouth. little things you got, that's what it came from. So there is a real respect, at least back then it seemed like, in the 70s, the heroin

generation, there was a real respect paid to dope fiends. Am I correct? That's the fact. The thing is, during that time, right, when I was born, the majority of the people who were getting money at that point had just been heroin addicts. they had just been dophines. So anybody that they were serving was somebody they came up with

who just didn't get away from it. They just didn't get away from the bag from, you know, from pumping. They just didn't get away from it. So they knew each other. Yeah. They went to, you know, grade school together and high school together.

They knew each other. Yeah. So that's first generation. They couldn't act like that because it's like, I had to walk you back to life just a year ago before you got.

I had to walk you back to life. You OD'd in the bathtub. You feel me? And they know, they know how hard it is to get off hair. Yes. So they don't look down on this person. They're like, he is sick, and he's got the grill on his back, and maybe he'll get off

of it, maybe not, but it's a person. Right. And he's putting money in your pocket. That's right. So it's treating the customers, like when you opened up shop, you ran a lot of different shops from smack to crack and then back. you always there was always a sense of like treating the junkies and the dope fiends well i was told specifically and directly my mother told me specifically you i mean for one she's she's raising

several heroin addicts for one right two she grows up you know in this environment she knows what it is right um Harlem was a village you know what i'm saying so we were all connected you know we weren't separated by more than six degrees pretty much nobody nobody right which which kept a lot of shit down too because it's like you had a problem with somebody it's like you do something to this person

some kind of way it's gonna come back around and be like you're gonna be harmed by like oh shit that was my mother's best friend's son there's some shit like that right so people were less likely to go to some extreme for one back then there was less violence during this heroin getting era absolutely because money was a priority

right and if you went to feared with that, then it was either send your ass down south or are they going to find you somewhere with a hot shot or with a bullet in the back of your head somewhere. It's like targeted. That's right. The money is more important. Like my mother used to tell me, the thing is the man. You will never be the man.

The thing is the man. And you'll serve that and maintain that for those who might follow you as it was maintained by those who came before you. Wow. That was the understanding. that was so that helped me i didn't realize at the time which is what a lot of raised about was about the realizations of what the impact of things i'd seen and told and taught and experienced uh at you know five six seven eight nine years old how those things manifested in my life and

behavior and personality and condition and everything later on when i didn't even really directly remember them you know and so she she she told me like these people are people are people She said, if you're out there, you're selling your package, whatever, and somebody comes up to you and says, yeah, man, I'm really sick. I'm not feeling well at all. You know, say, and they need a bag, whatever, whatever. You give them that damn bag. Wow. You know, and hesitate.

Yeah. It's like if you see somebody hungry, somebody's somebody tell you, you know, I'm hungry, whatever, whatever, you get them something to eat. Yeah. Without even, that's it. That's all, period. That's what you do. So that's how it was raised. And that's the difference, by the way, between growing up in a neighborhood where these kinds of

things are happening and then thinking, you know, you can participate and be effective. And in growing up in the actual collectives in which these things are happening and you're getting the rules, the regulations, the guidelines, the understandings that are necessary for you to be effective out there and not be detrimental to yourself or detrimental to the thing itself, which is what happened, people who are uninitiated, people who had not been verified. by somebody who was qualified in order to be certified. Those kinds of people came in and applied what would be square mindset, square ideology and so forth, to the game from the perspective.

And of course, if it was like if they were staying true to square them, then they would really be taken advantage of. So what they did was their version of what it looked like through a square's uninitiated eyes, right? So a square would only be able to see the most austere aspects, you know, the clothes and the cars and the jury and the behavior and the mannerisms, but they wouldn't understand any of the catalysts for those things. And sacrifices.

The way that people dressed and walked and talked, not everybody walked, talk, dressed the same way, regardless of their access, because there were certain things that were reserved for certain people. at certain levels. Right. You didn't do that because you ain't that person. You can't be doing what they do. Even if you can save up enough money to get what they got and do,

you don't do that because you're not that person. Now, when this generation of people in, you know, in my era came along and started to say, well, I'm getting away from the mores and ethics of my mom and dad who are, you know, like working class people, whatever, whatever, and church-going people, that kind of things. low bind people, stuff like that. And we get into this thing because aesthetically is so attractive. You know, that lifestyle is so attractive.

And shit, I'm from around here and it's been happening around here all my life. So I kind of feel like I'm a part of it anyway. You know, I'm going to share accidents in my geography. So, yeah, I'm going to get in the game. And without those insights, without an awareness of the subtle nuances, they really, they destroyed the fabric.

the thing that made it profitable, the thing that made it useful, you know, in terms of building wealth and creating opportunities so forth, such as it were. They destroyed that because they became, you know, their numbers got greater and greater and greater because of, you know, cocaine and cheapness and access and so forth. Heroin didn't have that. So, yeah, it was. So you'd say those are the main differences between the heroin and the crack game, is that in the heroin game,

you couldn't just set up shop. Like you had to be in with a family like yourself and brought up in it and reared in it. Crack, there was so much raw coke. So much cheap. Yes. Coke. That you could be from a middle class Harlem family

and go get a couple of ounces and bag up and now you're in the game, but it's so dangerous. And that just creates so many problems. Yeah. And it undercuts people's money. Right. Because a person like that,

is not thinking about the maintenance of the game. They're thinking about their own comeuppance. They're thinking about their own validation. This is a personal platform for their own self-aggrandizement. That's what this is. You know, low self-esteem is rampant in society. It's even more rampant in the lower rungs of the society. So if you're a kid who grew up in the 70s, and this was prevalent,

who ran around and handed down converse or pro-Keds, and they were your brothers last summer and they're yours this summer and they looked like it and that was a lot of people there were people who had whose parents had what would be considered good jobs

and the cost of living was so low comparatively that they were able to give them nice stuff from time and time but they weren't it wasn't a materialist kind of mindset that those people had right so

those people were, they saved their money and they were frugal, you know, and they didn't, you know, buy their kids a pair of sneakers, you know, every other week or, you know, even once a month. The average cat would get a pair of sneakers once for the beginning of school year, maybe, maybe two, if they came from a pretty well-heeled family. Mommy might have been a nurse and dad might be a, you know, a tech. you know, somewhere in a hospital, whatever, that might be anesthesiologist making good money, right?

Which was a rarity, but it happened, that degree of it. And they might get a couple pairs of sneakers for the beginning of the school year. And, you know, a couple of, maybe two weeks worth their fresh outfits, whatever. So everybody was always fresh for the first couple of weeks of school. And then after that, back to the hand-me-downs and whatever have you.

In the summertime, get some summer clothes. Yeah. If you're fortunate, right? But other than that, most people were not, that's why you don't see a lot of pictures from the 70s like you do now where you see a bunch of kids that are wearing, you know, really nice little clothes, whatever, whatever. Back then, you don't see that so much. If you do in the 70s and 60s, you see that stuff, it's a very special day. It's Easter Sunday. Right, right.

You know, it's a wedding or something like that. But you see them other than that, you see pictures of them other than that. and it's like abject poverty. Right. So if you grow up in that and it's contrasted with a kid like myself

and my cousins, right? Where, you know, this kid is, you know, you're, you guys are spoiled kids. We're very spoiled. Very, very spoiled. You're from the slums, but you're making hundreds of thousands,

if not more a year. Your family is. Millions. They're making millions. Millions of dollars a year. Millions. If you got, if you sit in an apartment

in the South Bronx and a million dollars on the floor, just sitting there just in case. You know what I mean? And you're maintaining, you know, my mother was taking care of 40 people. Yeah. You know?

God, you should have been buying those South Bronx buildings. Yes. And they're giving them away for a buck. But the thing was, Harlem, too. The thing was. And I asked her about it,

because she did tell me one time that she had an opportunity to buy a whole block of brownstones. And when I asked her, well, why didn't you? She said, well, I mean, I had money. I didn't never think I would need any buildings.

Whatever? Like, if the whole point of that is to gain access to wealth. I already got that. You're right. You know, but this is, again, this is a limit of exposure, education, information, which is still a significant problem right now, of course, right? I just think they know things that they don't actually know. So you're, what, um, when you were, say, like eight, eight years old, we're talking the mid-70s down, uh, what chain on the, in the structure did your mother, uh, inhabit? Like, where, uh, was, uh, was, She a lieutenant?

And who was she getting her stuff from? She, she ran her own situation. Okay. All right. So she would get her work. You know, sometimes she got work from Nick.

She didn't like him. Nikki Barnes. You know, but that was, that was, that was the nucleus that, you know, it was.

So the work came from Nick. Right. The work came from Nick. So she's getting bricks? Um, yeah. And, um,

I'm trying to think of who else. I mean, she had other friends. There was a gentleman at most people know about you'd have to be an old head there are a few people who who well no i can't think of anybody from harlem they would have to be in um a lot a lot of my old heads from Harlem have passed i got three up four off the top of my head i can think of that were deeply ensconced you know peewee kirklin um you got um tom frost um um

whose son's, Kirk is on loving hip hop, his wife, Ashita. And his other son, Kev, who was, who's more in the street. Kirk is the older son. Kev is the youngest son. Kevin and this pop, Tom, were actually in the feds at the same time at the point. Okay. But Thomas, he's from that era. He's still around.

Leonard Roelock, which is the original Pistol Pete's father, right? He's still around. Red is still around. So these guys would remember, Jesse Gray is still around. These guys would remember, you know,

some of these more obscure major guys whose names have never been mentioned, right? So my mom had a gentleman, older guy who was older in her, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson had a hardware store on 8th Avenue between 116th and 115th on the downtown side and were overalls from down south, we're overalls every day, whatever, whatever. So when they busted, when they finally busted, somebody told him, when they finally

busted Mr. Johnson, he had a, they finally had a diamond mine, a silver mine in Africa. He had several jets. they would rent to rich people. And this is how I knew, how I learned about the existence of Arabian resources. Wow. For Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson.

All right. Very low-key. He had these two. I remember when I was younger and I would listen, I would hear this Reno and talk about how fine his daughters were. You know, one of them worked in the hardware store.

So she had people like that. My mother didn't have to do it. Because she didn't like Nikki. Right. Okay. A lot of people who knew Nikki didn't like, especially women. So she was coping. Your mom was coping from Mr. Johnson sometimes.

She could, you know, she could work for Mr. Johnson. And when you end, like, you don't, you don't pay for it. Of course. You get it. Because she's so known. Right. So she's getting hit off with kilos. And then how many people does she have pitching for her?

I mean, she got a whole team, whole operation. Wow. You know, the whole team. Yeah. So you got lieutenants and baggers and, you know, I mean, she knew everybody. She took care of everybody, you know. My mother raised 40 people. Yeah.

And she only had me and my sister. Right. Right. People would rob their parents, steal whatever they had, bring it to my mother. My mother would buy it because they were on drugs. My mother would buy it and then send it back to their parents. Right. Right.

You know. But, yeah, she had her own system. And you never worked for her? No. I never worked for, not directly for her, no. And I found this interesting. Why not? Was that?

Because by the time I started rocking, she had retired because of the kidney thing. She was a heavy drinker. She, after the drinking, it was heavy Pepsi, which the shit is terrible for you. Terrible. And she developed kidney stones, right? a really bad kidney problems. So she had the operation. After that, she kind of fell back for the most part.

But everybody else was still active or whatever, whatever. Right. Now, you have so many different uncles that are maybe uncles, maybe not, you know, school black. Right. This guy. Men with which I have an invulcular, you know, relationship with it. And for all intents and purposes, they are my uncles.

Right. You know what I mean? Like, they are, you know, people that I would, you know, give my life for. Yeah. You know. Can you tell us about your father and your fathers, your, your biological and your father? Mm-hmm.

So, um, when I was born, I was given the last name of a gentleman named Tracy Hodges. And, um, he was older than my mom, um, as was my sister's dad. My mom had my sister. She was 16. Her dad was like 38. Um, but they were married. Um, And my dad or my, the man who I thought was my father for the first nine, ten years of my life, Tracy Hodges was a hustler and a number runner.

Because all of this shit comes out of the numbers. Right. Right. Which people learn a lot about in Ronnie Baum's book. First hundred pages, there's no drugs except for the, you know, drug use because that's what young people did back then. the way that young people use pills today, back when I was younger, weed. Back when in those times in the 60s, because Ronnie was born in 50, he's born 50. So by the time he's 14, he's, you know, running around with his guys.

They're having fun, sticking people up and shooting heroin. Yeah. Force was fly still. Yeah, that was the thing. Until like the Vietnam era. But you were fly. Yeah. And you were fly.

Like you dressed to the nine. You know what I mean? If you just get high. Yeah. And that's what getting out was. And, you know, it wasn't for the, for the fainted heart type of thing. You know, it was part of that come up incident, that validation, you know, of being made a certain way, qualified for the thing, you know. And so, yeah, so he was Tracy a numbers guy, you know, and he felt with the drugs as well, you know what I mean?

But, you know, the number, like a lot of people did, a lot of people back then. And they did the numbers and they did the drugs like that. So Tracy, he was one of the forebears of the angel dust, the PCP thing. Right. He was one of the guys who first brought that to the forefront. So initially, the angel dust thing came from guys in the West Coast. And they came and, you know, they start moving around and hauling whatever. They had with so much.

And, you know, cats like Nikki. Yeah. And, you know, that level of guy, they were the ones using the shit, you know, because this is, again, this is for, you know, the not fainted heart motherfuckers, right? And a lot of them having been formerly heroin addicts, a lot of them, I've never known of a heroin addict that didn't get into something else and, like, basically become addicted. to that. So it was either weed or coffee at the minimum, alcohol,

cocaine, right? And in this era, PCP. Right. Right. Yeah. So Angel Dust. What is Angel Dust or what was it? I know there's different versions of it, but what was you know? Back then, there's PCP of phenocycladine and

it's a chemical, purely synthetic. it's psychotrophic um and where do you get it and it was it was it was I mean originally they made it

it uh it was USC yeah that's what they made it University of 7 Cala California how does street cats make it and um how does trade it's a liquid it's a liquid it's a clear liquid

it's a clear liquid very very pungent right um and so that's what they were about it like when these guys came from the West Coast initially and introduced it, they had it on mint leaves. So they bag it up on the mint leaves or whatever. And that's how you, that was how it was transferred.

So you'd roll up the mint leaves and you'd smoke it whatever. And once guys like smoking a joint. Yes, it was a joint. It was a very, very thin joint, like a lollipop stick. Right, right. It was so fucking powerful. Yeah. And I mean, I've known people who smoked it one time and never spoke again.

Literally. Never spoke again. Operational. Just never talked again. Wow. Now, did that ever reach, did the angel dust trade ever reached scale? Considering it does fuck people up so bad?

I know people who became multi, multimillionaires. Off a dust. Off a dust. Wow. Oh, yes. A lot of people didn't fuck with it because heroin was so prevalent during that same period.

But for people, I guess, who couldn't get, get access? Because in the heroin days, there were four or five people at the top, you know, a Nikki, a Frank Matthew, a Frank Lucas, a Butch Cassidy, you know, that they were the ones who had access to the supply. So if you weren't getting it from one of them, you weren't getting it, right? So no matter who had it where, you could always trace it back to one of these handful of people.

And that was it. If you didn't get it from them, you wasn't getting shit worth saying I got it. With the angel dust thing, once you tapped into a connect, you were good. And it was not as nearly as difficult as it was with the heroin thing, right? You had to really be, like, introduced to somebody by somebody who was respected to one of these guys in order to gain access. So it was like a guy that she was introduced to Nikki by way of this lady named Olive. who put a lot of dudes on. Right.

She was like a well-known, you know, fly broad back in the 70s. You know, I mean, there was a group of women. There's always been a group of women like that. But these women were different than the ones that came along in my generation, you know, that are a few years younger than me. They were just, you know, I'm cute, you know, I'll be on your own, give me some money type girls. These girls was plugging in guys getting packages

and getting the percentage of the package. Right. You're bringing a good earner. Yeah. I got you. Right. But Angel dust sounds like it was a little easier to get your hands on. I don't know.

I want to say much easier. Easier. Right. Easier. Because it still was a limited kind of access things. Like you had to find somebody who had it and you had to find somebody who had it good. And if you found somebody you had and they had it good, then, okay, you're good. You're on.

Right. So. And there were enough dust fiends to make a big industry out of it? Well, the thing was initially, there were guys who had. money like Nick, you know, those are the level of guys who were doing it. Oh, wow. Just like with the freebase thing. Right, I was going to say.

So it was like an early freebase. Those guys were the ones who had the money. In my day, you know, it was like, you know, I started sniffing cocaine in 78 or something like that, right? At the old age of 10. Yeah, the old age of 10. So I'm like, you know, the idea of putting cocaine in water was like, you want me to strangle you?

Right. Don't even sneeze or sweat near my blood. Yeah. Right. So the only people who were dealing with enough of that shit that they would dare to put it in water or think about putting in water were people who had lots and lots of bread like they did. Yeah. Right. So with the prior to that base thing, the angel dust thing, they were the guys.

So what would happen is, all right. Tracy, these people came over from the West Coast, brought it. When they would come, they'd have so much, they'd sell it out, then they'd be gone. and now people are like oh where the fuck where's the water you know so Tracy was one of the guys

who tapped in early with a supply so that he could supply it be a supplier of it there in New York so he tapped into a guy who Tracy was a hustler Tracy cooked in his number hole

he had like a grill in his number hole and and you know had his drug thing going on at the same time. He would also deal with clothes, you know, because motherfuckers were spending

thousands of dollars on clothes. Right. So he dealt with a Jewish dude down in the garment district that put him in contact with the PCP supply. Out on the West Coast. Wherever the fuck was coming from. Wow. He was a Hasidic dude.

No shit. That's how he got plugged in with his PCP connect. Wow. Wow. Right. So this connect was in Philadelphia. So what he would do is he would go fishing, right? You get a bunch of fish.

And then he would go and get the PCP because it was extremely pungent, loud, very distinctive. You know, a lot of people, they don't like the smell of it or whatever. Even when it's not burning, it's very, very strong. Yeah. Now, give you some examples of it. how strong this shit is. So he would put the PCP inside the fish. That's how it would transport it.

Right. Because the fish smell would overwhelm. Of course. You know, what's going to smell? Oh, okay. All right. You're good to go. You're good to go.

Slow down. You know what I mean? Type of shit. So he got on with that. He got on with that. He got on, you know, he made money with that, whatever. Now, what made that popular in terms of you responded to your question about, Was there enough of a clientele base to support that in a way that made it beneficial?

Well, remember now, you always have to put the money into context for the time. Right. Right? Yeah. So, you know, pre-wild-ass inflation, the invisible tax, the amount of money that you could say was a lot of money would be, like if you had $1,000, you had a lot of money. You could do a lot with that. You know, you could pay your rent for several months, half the year.

And, you know, or, you know, you could buy groceries for six months for your family of five, like to give people some base context, right? So you didn't have to have a whole lot of people buying in order for you to, you know, be walking around with car money in your pocket. A brand new catalog was $6,500. Right. Brand new, you know, with all bells and whistles. And you're walking around that, your pocket on a daily basis with, you know, no particular thing to do with it.

Right. Except to keep your pocketful. Yeah. Right. And so a little bit of money was a lot of money back then. Okay. So you could say that Angel Dust was a good hustle. That it wasn't boy, wasn't hop, wasn't smack.

But it was like maybe how like selling weed would be in the later generations. I'm not bubbling crack, but I got this good, solid weed thing going that makes me a nice six-figure living. That's right. Okay. That's right. So how did Tracy... Sorry, I want to talk about Tracy. He was a good man. He was a good man.

He was probably the kindest and most decent man. Would he kill somebody? Yeah. He would kill somebody. But would it be his first resolve? No. But if it was like, well, you just don't understand the words coming out of my mouth, then you're dead. Right.

Right. And I learned that. about him from Reno, you know. Tell us who Reno is? Because no, Reno told me. Tell us who Reno is. Oh, Reno is, he is, for all intents and purposes, he's my older brother.

Right, right, but he's actually, my mother's oldest brother's son, second, his second oldest son. He just turned, I would just, with him on his birthday, he turned 71, you know. And so he told me, he was my conduit to, that generation, his generation and the generation before his. I see.

You know, he would tell me things that were not appropriate for him to tell me, but he had so much reverence and so much value for me as a kid that he would allow me access to the adult world through the back door. And he would tell me everything. He was your mentor. Yes. He was your mentor to the game. Yes.

Yes. Wow. Him, Bernard, we'll get into that. You know, those two were the most inappropriate of everybody. They would show me everything, take me everywhere, you know, and just prop me up. But they were not doing it without the okay of my mother, who was the Queen Bee. Yes. You know, so it was like, you know.

Your mother had the respect from a lot of men. Sure. Yes. Yes. And she was a killer. Your mom was a killer. Yes, she was. This is in the era where you would just, you know, some guy, he might even had a job,

might even, you know, he had a hustle, right? Maybe some of them is legit, but he's a killer. Yep. Like, who talks like that now? But back in the day, in the slums and in the ghettos and in, you know, like this guy, he's a killer. He's a good guy, but he's also a killer. Yeah, he's a good guy, but he will definitely leave you slumped in a trunk. And you know what I found?

And when I'm reading your book Raised by Wolves, there were so many at the first hundred pages, it's like reading like a Nathan McCall makes me want to holler, Man Child in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. The amount of death before you're 10 years old,

people are dropping like flies. Even though, yes, the heroin trade is building up generational wealth, people in the slums back then used to just die. Can you, and I don't know how sensitive this is to talk about, but like, could you tell us how Tracy met his demise, how Vincent, your biological father met his demise, Reno, etc?

No, June. Reno's still alive. I'm sorry, Reno's living. Black June. Black June, yeah. Would you mind going into that? Okay. So, yeah, that's good because it transitions well from the whole agile dust, come up, Vincent, all that, whatever.

I mean, he always did very well, Tracy and took very, very good care of me. and my mother. And I just want to point out, these aren't necessarily, like there's really a lot of redeeming qualities about these men. Absolutely. Like you didn't have an abusive childhood.

Not at all. They were just products of their environment and the historical accident of being born black in America, you know, pre-civil rights. And it just was what it was. And they probably did the best they could. And Black June was a,

killed a lot of motherfuckers of Vietnam. too. So you guys got PTSD. That's right. Nobody got counseling back then. Nope. There was no therapy. There was no breath work. No. There was no veganism. No. There's none of that. Nope. So this takes a toll on the human body. And mind. Yes. Yes. And spirit. That's right. So please tell us, you know, tell us the, the gory details of how a lot of these guys met their end.

So Tracy, the PCP situation, he's doing well with that, whatever. Now, and since we're in this space, let me put this, you ask something about the opportunity within that business. Guys like Nikki and the guys who had paper, you know, former addicts who could tolerate that shit, you know, that heroin addiction, heroin does something to you

on a, on a chemical level, that if it doesn't kill you, it certainly makes you a degree stronger. And your tolerance for things is much, much higher than a person who'd never had that experience.

Right. Right. And so Nikki and him and that level of guy had popularized, you know, smoking angel dust. And the young girls

that they kept around them, hung out with them. I'm talking about there. 30-something, the girl is 17-18, you know, fast and fine as all hell. And fine back then

was something because there were no surgeries and all that. So when these girls had, you know, the average girl in the neighborhood didn't have this big, fat, round ass.

That was a rarity. They might have nice shapes, but these bulbous behinds that all these women they're paying for and dying for, whatever have you, the guys are chasing, whatever have you. Like, there was a rarity. So if you were one of the girls that had that,

then these guys were all over you. Buy your cars, all kinds of jewelry. You were a trophy to have. Right. So those young girls, they would be around these guys and they'd be driving their cars and they'd have all this money, whatever, whatever.

And of course, they have their male contemporaries guys who were their age who were like, oh, wow, you know, and they're into them. And, you know, they're giving them the money that these guys are giving them. And they're also introducing them to the guys, the things these guys are doing, like smoking dust. Right?

And so that clientele is growing, right? So if you're Nikki and you got, say, Shameka, who was a well-known young lady in the streets back then or whatever, and she's hanging out with you, she flies, she's super desirable by the guys her age, whatever have you. And so they want to be around her. And she's hanging with him and he's smoking dust, whatever, whatever. So she brings the smoking and dust.

and the sniffing cocaine and all the fly shit that those guys do to these guys, right? And then these guys, you know, are at a certain level if they've got her attention and she's got their attention, the guys that are her age that she's giving her time and influence to, they are influence you within their space.

So the guys, their age and younger than them are being influenced by them. So if they're smoking does and whatever, so these guys want to do what they're doing, and that's how that grew, right? So now this environment is happening. Tracy is doing this thing. Tracy and his girlfriend, she's a lovely lady.

Sorry, I can't remember her name anymore, but she was very kind to me, very nice lady. And which in contrast to my mother, my mother was not kind and nice. She was good and she was, you know, beneficent, but she was mean as hell, right? She could be kind, but it was intermittent, you know. And so, but she took care of everybody. That was for sure you were taking care of. Provider, for sure. So Tracy and his lady, they go to go make a move.

They go to Philadelphia. I don't know what this is somebody dealt with before or not. And I don't know what his girlfriend went with him often or not. But it's a couple hours ride. Go out there. Maybe he says, you know, come with me or we can go somewhere. somewhere else after the fact or whatever happened. Maybe they went somewhere before the fact.

Maybe went to Atlantic City first or whatever. But for some reason, she was with him. They go and they go to the hotel to do the deal, whatever, whatever. And then the guys who was purchasing from, they flipped on them. And they killed them. It's in Philly. They flipped on them. They put them in the closet.

They rob them, put them in the closet in the hotel room. And before leaving a hotel room, they shoot the closet door. So it's like, you die, you die, you don't, you don't, you know, type of thing. And they both died. Yeah. So that's how Tracy died. Which is a very unlikely outcome for someone like him because he wasn't a person who relied heavily on violence like a lot of the other men who raised me. Right. Right.

So you wouldn't think. And that was hard on you. Oh, it was extremely. Extremely, extremely. You know, this is my father. It's my dad. You know what I mean? And so, junior, Black June, my mom had already killed Black June.

At this point? She already killed Black June. Can you tell us about Black June? All right. So Black June was my mother's second, third, third husband. First was my sister's father, Walter, then Tracy Hodges, then Black June that I know of. Right? Because like I said, she didn't.

Whatever you did and see, you didn't know. So Black June. Now, Black June was from Harlem, very hardcore. Black June was brought into the underworld space by an older dude, either Greek or Italian dude named Pete, a little short guy, Pete Grocer. Pete had a grocery store on 115th Street, 7th Avenue. June used to work in there, right? And June was always...

stocky, big young guy. So whenever Pete needed somebody tuned up, you might send you to do it. Right. But you worked in the market. I learned these things from my mother's best friend who grew up with her from second grade. It was like my mom or Barbara.

And she told me about these guys, right? Long after my mom was going. Otherwise, it would never come out. So June grew up in that. And then early on, he went to Vietnam. Right. And went to Vietnam and, you know, was a prolific killer. Right.

Of course, maybe that had something to do with the, you know, using heroin like a lot of people did. A lot of people came home from Vietnam, heroin addicts. Mm-hmm. You know, and so, you know, he came home. He was an addict or whatever, whatever. and then at some point he gets himself together or whatever. I don't know if June's business acumen was tremendous or not. I think he was more so just an enforcer type because that's what I learned from him.

I learned enforcement from him. I learned business from my mother. Right. You know, she handled shit, you know. But when it came to, you know, going and making sure somebody understood that they needed to pay their bill, whatever, whatever, Black June coming, you know. Now, Vivian you have to be there, then you're just in double trouble. Right. You know what I mean?

Because she's going to participate. Vivian was your mother. Yeah. All right. So at some point, they start, you know, rocking together. They made a lot of money together. Yeah. And he was younger than my mother.

right so at some point um he starts messing with some lady i can imagine it was probably pretty damn hard to deal with my mother you know um very so at some point he just he starts dealing with a woman who is more like a lady right right and you know that woman um this guy he decides he's going to go and leave my mother and go get with this woman so he takes he takes him like a half a million dollars of their money wow and he is in the front of our building on the Grand Concourse which we had moved to when I was surely after my best friend got got killed right he was like nine this is in the Bronx you're living so now we're in the Bronx the Grand Concourse a few blocks away from

Yankee Stadium which you know back then was like a very nice place to live you know then working class which you know we like she taught me to blend in with working class people. No matter how much me you make plenty with working class people. Right. You know, that way you having this out of the other

doesn't look odd. There's working class people, you know, they have nice things or whatever having. And you won't stand out. And that worked for me, you know. When I could buy a million-dollar house,

I didn't. When I could buy a half a million-dollar car or a quarter million-dollar car, I didn't. I thought I would when I got older. But when I got older, I had learned enough to, you know,

and I gained enough understanding around the thing she was telling me that I understood, oh, why you don't do these things. And I'm seeing why. you don't do these things. I'm seeing guys get jammed behind this shit. I'm like, yeah, I'm cool.

So anyway, you know, we're on the concourse, you know, and he's trying to leave her. And he's in this car that he bought this woman that he's going to leave her for. And she's standing there holding the Pearl Handu. Nick will play the 38 special. Snub knows that he had bought her for her birthday that she had already shot him with once before.

Well, no wonder he wanted to leave. Yeah. They locked him up for that when he got shot. because he wouldn't tell them who did it. He was on parole. He wouldn't tell him who did it. And they know, well, you're not going to tell us who did it. We know they're going to end up dead some fucking way.

So they locked him up to keep him from killing whoever did it, not knowing it was his wife. I used to go visit him. We would go visit him in jail or whatever. And super talented guy, too. He used to do these wood carving pictures. It's giant wood carving pictures, like glazed and finish and everything. Wow.

With birth stones in the eyes. And he did one of her, her sign satirious and his signed Pisces. Wow. And like you sent home a lot of, he's woodworked, this big jewelry box with velvet lining and different, like super talented. Oh, he made that in the joint. Yeah, he made in the joint. Oh, wow. Right.

So this night, he's about, you know, he's thinking he's going to pull off whatever, whatever. And she's standing in front of the car. And she's like, June, get out the car. And he's like, move out the way, V. He said, June, get out the car. move out the way, V. And she said, you don't get out that motherfucking car?

And he didn't get out the car. And she shot him six times to the windshield. Killed him. Did she take the money? Oh, of course. But she didn't go to jail. Right. They arrested her that night.

And she was complete, because she loved him, you know. She was completely, um, This is Barbara explaining me what happened. She gets the call from my cousin Bootsie, who is my mother's sister. I can't remember her name, my aunt.

She's named after my grandmother. My great-grandmother, my grandmother's grandma. It'll come to me. And so Bootsie, who was one of my first cousins, who was also on heroin, right? And she calls Barbara and tells Barbara, V just killed you. So they had her at the at the tombs.

So they, Barbara said she went to go meet her to tombs. And, you know, they let her, they let her see her briefly. And she was completely frazzled, you know,

she just killed her husband, you know. And then after that, she had like, Barbara described it as like some, a semi-nerous breakdown. And, you know, I assume that it,

It was genuine. Assume it was genuine and not a ploy. You know what I mean? But you never know. You never know. She was a smart and tough woman. So how did she end up beating that case? So she sat in the hospital for a month and then she went to trial at the Supreme Court on 161st,

American Arkansas, which is just three blocks away from where she killed him. And the judge told her that she had done a public service. and let it go. Times have changed. To the public service, that's how bad his reputation was. That's how violent, known for violence, he was. Wow.

This is a man who would hold bars hostage so he could drink. Right. Nobody leaves. Right. Nobody leaves. You better than I leave. They'd kill you.

Right. Right? Yeah. You and my mother would have knock down, drag out, like bar room, bro. She would come in. Vivian, June's acting up. He got to get him.

You got to come down and get him. He won't let anybody leave the bar. And she'll come down there because he'd get drunk and, man. I mean, with me, when he got drunk, it'd be, he'd come in. It'd be 1, 2 o'clock in the morning. And he'd wake me up. Yeah, come here. And I'd come out of my bedroom, walk through the den, through the hall, into the dining room, sit down,

Florence is mine's name. My grandmother, my great-grandmother's Florence. So Bootsie's mom name was Florence. So he'd sit down and he'd take out a brown paper bag and he poured money on the table. He said, count that. And, you know, I start counting or whatever. And my mother walked by and she looked. She didn't say nothing.

She'd go in the kitchen and make a cup of coffee. And she's sitting in the kitchen. And I'd be sitting there counting in the street money. Yeah. You know what I mean? So you're talking about fives and tens and singles or stuff like that, whatever. And I'd get to about maybe $300, you know, and he'd be sitting there for 15 minutes or whatever, whatever.

And I'm like eight, nine years old. And it is like, you know, two o'clock on a Tuesday. Yeah. Oh, look like, okay, Joan. He's, he's not enough of, you know. But that was bonding. Yeah, but that was bonding. So these are guys, people that are just were inevitably going to meet their demise.

Oh, no doubt. One way or another. One way the other. There was a cirrhosis of the liver. You know what I mean? Holy shit. He didn't drive. He didn't drive.

Well, they had, um, because both of them drank so much that, um, they had a driver. They used to have one of the checker cab, you know, big, thick cabs with the jump seats and all, whatever. Back in the days, they had, they had a drive. had a black one, they had a guy, they're a driver who drove them around, whatever, whatever. But yeah, to them were going to, they weren't, these aren't lifestyles that you can, you know, grow old in. No. Not the way they were living. These are hardcore people with some deep-seated situations.

I mean, that's what all the drinking and the drug and all that shit was about. Like, they grew up in the world where people, you know, who weren't black, didn't pretend like they had any regard or respect, you know, for black people who said. The racism was blatant. Yeah. You know what I mean? Holland was at one place where you didn't have to deal with that shit. Like people didn't come above 100th Street. They did.

They came to cop and get the fuck on. Like that. So how did he? Okay. So Black June is gone. What about the guy that jumped off the roof? Burnout. Oh, this was really nuts.

Can you tell us about that? The burn art came after Vincent. Okay. My father. My actual bylaw. Okay. So Vincent, my father who grew up in my neighborhood with my mother, both born in 115th Street like me. My father had 20 siblings from his mother and father. And of all of them, he was the worst of the worst. He wasn't the oldest, but he was the toughest and the meanest. Once chased my uncle Michael out of New York, he moved to California and didn't come back until my father was dead.

because my father didn't want to go to the store for my grandmother. That's the story was told to me. So you chase him up 15th Street with a machine gun. All right. He was known to be very wild, very violent, very crazy, very volatile, very unpredictable. Yeah. a couple of months before Tracy's death. Now, I grew up knowing his sisters and his brothers

and their children, my cousins, as my aunts, uncles and cousins, would I? But had no idea that he was my father and didn't, I had so much family that I didn't ask, well, what are the logistics here? Who's just married to me? It's so convoluted. There's so many people,

and nobody thought to tell you. But they would have been going against Vivi. Vivian. Vivian didn't want you to know who your real father was. Everybody knew it me. Wow. Right. So when I come home from Tracy's funeral and I'm sitting in the window, sitting on the, they call the heater, they're calling the heater.

I got the thing that sits in front of windows in like hood apartments with old apartments back in the days. The radiator. So I'm sitting on the radiator. I'm looking out the window and I'm just like, you know, crying and shit. My mother comes in. What's wrong? We just came from bury my father. I have no father.

She goes, oh, yes, she do. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? And she goes, Vincent's your father. I said, what? She said, yeah, he's on this way. Everybody was like, oh, finally. My sister was like, I've been wanting to tell you forever. Wow.

But nobody, you knew better than to go against Vincent. So she said, you know what? You're old enough now. You're a man. You're nine, 10 years old. So, so. It's time to know. So, no, I was, I was, I was 12.

Okay. I was almost 12. I was going on 12. Yeah. Right. So when Tracy died, I was 11. And this was a summertime. So I would be turning 12 that year.

I remember because I know that I was only, my father was only around for two years before he got murdered. I was 14 when he got murdered. And so. he was back in the streets. He was always known as a heavy-handed dude. A lot of guys will say that he was a bully. And he was dangerous.

He wasn't just a push around bully. He was a blow your brains out, bully. You know, do what I say, you know, or give me what I want or you're going to die. And I'll probably not even remember. Think about it later. It's like, I want me sitting around going, I wonder if I should kill that guy.

You know, fuck him. You know, type of guy. Right. And I was just talking to Tom Frost about him. You know, he recently found out after a friend of ours had died, a old gentleman named Buck, had passed away. And we were talking, and he was, Buck was telling him how he was upset with me because I hadn't followed up with some video that shot with him,

whatever, have you. And so, you know, Tom was like, so how did you know him, whatever? And I was like, you know, I know Buck's out of the kid, whatever, but he called me to come and video him or talk to him because he said he had some information about my father. I didn't even know him. I had no bucks as I was like 16. So that's when Tom told me. He's your father.

Who moved your father? Vincent. Vincent. I said, all right, remember him? Big Ed Vincent. Real bully. They ain't just motherfucker. Wow. Crazy shit.

No way. Still knows everybody. Tom knows everybody. Pop Frost knows everybody. He knows about everybody. Wow. You know what I mean? Shout out to Uncle Frost.

Wow. But so, yeah. And how many times had you met him before he died? Like he came over. When I was a kid, little kid, I mean, I used to see. to see him pretty frequently. It was Vincent. Mother's friend Vincent.

I didn't know he was my father. So when I was about four years old, he let me hold, he put a gun in my hand, right? And he put his hands over and he let me shoot it out the window of our fifth-floor apartment, right? And, you know, that's the kind of shit he was on. You know, I knew him. I said, I knew he's my father.

Right. And then he went to prison. And then when he came home, home, you know, this is around this time, you know, when Tracy's buried, you know, got buried. So, you know, we spend it like, he's trying to get his feet back, you know, on the ground, in the game and whatever. And his guys are the guys, you know, his guys are the most powerful, most dangerous, you know, you got, I mean, everybody, but, you know, Tito Johnson was his man, right? Tito Johnson was a guy who was with Nikki. Tito Johnson is a very.

nefarious character, smart, dangerous, charismatic, you know, handsome guy, ladies man, you know, and, and hardcore. Very dangerous, hardcore. But not, like, my father, you might see, this is a dangerous motherfucker right here. Like, when he walked in the room, motherfuckers were like, yo, is he coming over here? Is he coming over here? But Tito, unless you knew, you might not be that way. you know what I mean by the time you realize it

he's wrapped around you like a serpent and you know putting a crush on you you know what I mean and that was his that was his guy these are kind of you know guys that he dealt with in Nikki Barnes's book Mr. Untouchable he writes about how

my father wasn't doing so well and his man his name was Stan and he he had got a hold of a package and then And he brought it to my dad and was like, you know, this rock this together, whatever, whatever,

and they go through the package and they get the money or whatever, whatever, and they count the money, finish counting the money, my father takes out of this pistol, shoot standing ahead and takes the money and leave. Oh, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, and he kind of, my mother told me about him, he's kind of always been this way. Yeah. You know, kind of always just been mean and violent. Kind of living to die.

Yeah. It kind of always been that way. You know, so, you know, we hung out. We did different things, whatever, we took me to WWF and shit like that, whatever. Me, him, my cousin, Lenny, and my grandfather, stuff like that. And so he goes out one day, he leaves his house one day, and he doesn't have his pistol. We can't find his pistol. And so, you know, he leaves without it.

And he gets in his Riviera, get a green, Riviera, he loved the Riviera. He got in his green Riviera and he drives into the city and he goes to this, this spot and meets with Tito and a couple of other people, whatever, whatever. And him and Tito get into something and then he leaves. And when he's leaving, he's getting in the passenger side of his car. And there's a young woman driving. and when he goes, he opens the door, goes to get in,

somebody runs out of the bar apparently and shoots him in the back of the head one time. And from what I was told, ran back in the bar. Yeah. And then he falls halfway in, halfway out the car, whatever, and the girl pulls off, right? So that's how he dies. And you said in the book that you believed

that the woman that he was with was actually His wife His wife Was actually sneaking around With one of his rivals Yeah, a guy I forget this guy's name now

Because you know Part of the cathartic process Is letting things go So as much detail As I recalled And much details I learned And then imported into the book Once it was out of me

There's a lot of stuff As thick as the book is A lot of stuff that I removed Because once it was out of me and sat in the manuscript for a while once I started thinking about the book as a structured piece

I was able to remove a bunch of that stuff and try to make the book more cohesive and less convoluted with all these other peripheral things right and so that people could take away something from it which was the whole point purpose I was intent upon not writing something that was just a regurgitation of a whole bunch of

hyperbolic bullshit from the streets and the hoods, whatever. But I couldn't import something that was of actual value that people could grow from and learn from and be better from than it wasn't worth writing. You know, or publishing. So, yeah, Hazel, she was a very unkind, selfish, superficial woman. My sister, my father's other children, I have a brother who's like a year's older than me, Malik, and a younger sister.

And so she says that Hazel's gotten nicer in old age, whatever, but she's gone through enough shit to, yeah, to get nicer. You know what I mean? But back then she was not nice. She was a nasty bitch, really was. And she was a sneaky motherfucker. Right. And she was dealing with a guy while my pops was a day away that.

he did not fuck with at all. And when he came home, you know, he had to break up with her and going about his goddamn business because, you know, this guy comes home. I mean, he's going to kill everybody fucking body. So, you know what I mean? I got to go type of shit. So there was that, you know. So, you know. She thought maybe he was, she helped set him up to get killed.

I was given that indifference. by one of my aunt's husbands who used to run with my dad at a period. Right. Right. So they were close. Right. And so he told me that at a point. And so that was something, you know, he gave me those conditions and so forth for me to

surmise what, you know, what I might surmise based upon that information or whatever. He didn't overtly say, you know, that's what he thinks happened, whatever, but it's like, you know, these different things, you know, contribute to one potential scenario, right? But, you know, I would later, later, much later, learn, you know, because people knew. People knew, but, you know, these are older people from that generation. And, you know, like, as we said early on, like, you didn't talk about things. If you knew, you knew, you act like you didn't, you know. So, you know, I would be in, you know, not much.

Much older than I am now, I mean, younger than I am right now, before I found that exactly who had done what. Wow. You know, but I was so far beyond the retribution mind and all that kind of shit. Like the day I found out, oh, it was quite dramatic as you read in the book. It was quite dramatic. And it was, yeah, by 14, I was already, you know, been a couple of years of, you know, carrying two guns every day. and all that type of shit. You know, like I said,

my father put the first gun in my hand, but my mother, she's the one that taught me, you know, shoot from the hip and shoot through your pocket and all that kind of shit. Like, she used to want to talk me how you do.

She taught you how to shoot through the pocket. Yeah. So you don't have to pull it out. They don't even see it out. That way, motherfucker from a block away, can't say, I saw him. You're standing there like this. Right.

See, that's for movies. Right. So when I looked back at all of the, like, she had raised me on, like, different types of books, like Mind Comph and, you know, the prince and these books are kind of like standard in mob families. Right.

You know what I mean? Like anybody who really comes from it, really comes from it, they'll tell you that they read the prince when they were kids. Right. There's no morals. This is exactly, it just is what it is, and this is how you move up. Right. And this highly political backstabbing structure. That's right.

Wow. And all the gangster books. I had a bunch of books about the entire history of gangstabbing. gangsterism, the mob and all that. Right. So as a little kid, I knew about Vlachi and the Teamsters and, you know, all of the history. I had this big hardcover book with all the pictures of St. Valentine's Day Massacre and all that. I knew about all this stuff at like 9 and 10, 11 years old.

So you were never told. I was a very strange kid. Yeah. You were never told like killing is wrong or. Drugs are, obviously you saw drugs were bad, but you were like, no, this is how we eat. It was what it was. Yeah. Right.

So, no, there was none of that. There was no moralizing. Right. There's no moralizing. What you didn't do is you didn't cheat, you didn't steal, right? And you didn't covet and, you know, you didn't betray because these things would get you murdered. Right. So you'd be smart.

And you don't do those things. Right. That's a survival reason. Right. It's nothing to do with morals. Nothing to do of morals or ethics. It's, this is how you stay to fuck alive. This is how you make yourself not a target for death.

You know what I mean? But I learned after I got out the game that in contrast to normal people, we were far more ethical within our world than normal people are within the airs. I did not know that. I grew up thinking that squares followed all the rules and did the right thing because that's what the square world dictated that you do. I had no idea that they were some of the lowest lyingest. cheating as non-ethical people ever. And at a point, and I was 30 years old when I retired. So I'm learning this at 32, 33 years old.

I'm learning that they're like this. That wasn't my perspective of the square world. I used to say things like, I'm so glad I'm not in the streets no more, man. I got to hurt nobody, punching nobody in the face and a shit like that, whatever. I really believed that. I really thought I would not have conflict. You know what I mean? Because I viewed their world from the insulation of my world as being so rigid and structured

and shit like that in terms of like. just behavior. They seemed like they didn't do much of anything. But it was really about the people that I was around. This is about the people I was around. Like in my lifestyle, the people I was around were in high-end restaurants, high-end clothiers. So the kinds of squares that I spent any significant time around, the kids in music and art,

right? That was my perspective. My perspective was based upon those interactions. You know, so that's what I thought squared and was. I thought it was that. So you're 14, now we're coming into the 80s. Basically, most of the heroin generation, some of them are still around, but a lot of them are gone.

A lot of them are dead. A lot of these older men and some of your friends are gone. So how do you first get in the game? you don't actually sell heroin as a youth in the in the boom right like we're already into cocaine no no I started I started with cocaine by the way of my best friend's mom my best friend Edgar how old are you now 13 okay so 79 80 yes 80 81 maybe no no 79 80 okay um already obviously already sniffing already hanging out and drinking fucking fucking yeah I mean I'm living in adult life I have adult liberty and freedoms.

Right. You know what I mean? My girlfriend is 18. I'm 13. My girl's 18. Right. Right. Because no 13-year-old girl can hang out with me or go where I go.

It's inclined to do what I do. Thank goodness. Right. And everybody's sniffing. There's no stigma yet around cocaine use. Literally none. Yeah. It's like it's elite shit.

Yeah. You know, I always tell people for context, if you go into a club and you buy four or five bottles of champagne, whatever connotation is attached to that, transferred that to cocaine. Right. Back then. They got some cocaine. It's like,

oh shit. He's got coke. Right. He's a baller. Yeah. Right. You'd attract women over to your table. Oh, yeah.

Right. And dudes. They know the girls are coming. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it was that kind of thing. Right. So Edgar's mom was dating a

Colombian dude, older Colombian dude. She, former heroin addict, like Edgar's dad, former heroin addict. she was a numbers lady she was the numbers woman she had she had a number hole on um 170th street um in the bronx which was a a hot strip back in the days from the drug dealing thing right uh heroin and so um this columbian dude wants to marry her and you know he's giving her

you know cocaine has this big deal thing so he's just give her a coke they give her an ounce you give her two ounces give her three ounces next you know he's giving like a eighths at a time now at this time an eighth 125 grams

is like you know several thousand dollars yeah easily right during this time a key is 60,000

yeah it's very scarce right still because it's so expensive right it's unaffordable to most people yeah so a key is 60,000

he's giving her a quarter of keys yeah your body You have phone. That's what it's for. You don't have to sell any of it. No,

just powder your nose. How do you nose? Right. You know? And so we're hanging out, you know, we're kicking it and shit like that. And, you know, I'm in the club scene and shit like that. So she's like, she's like, man, y'all need to take, tell me me, I got. Y'all need to take some of this shit and get some money.

You know? Right. Get some money. Now, I'm a, I'm a spoiled drug dealer's kid. Right. I don't need for nothing. Right. Right.

Now, a little prior to this, maybe you, years so prior to this, my childhood friend also, very close friend, Dougie, he lives in the building and not in the concourse. And he's one of those kids who comes from a family that's struggling. He's got like eight siblings. It's just his mom, right? And so this guy got to go out and, you know, do something for his daily bread. So, you know, he goes to the off ramp in Mountie. Eden off of the, what's that the cross Bronx. And it's at Jerome Avenue about maybe 10 minutes from Yankee Stadium. This inlet comes in from the new George Washington Bridge.

So when the Yankee games are on, people coming from Jersey coming off this ramp and they go down the street. So this off ramp has a lot of traffic during Yankee games So he would go over there and he would wash windows with the squeegee He thought whatever whatever And this was when little kids did it only Just little kids The adults were doing this whatever You know just little kids

So I go with him one day You know and I'm always you know fresh You know brand new sneakers You know brand new clothes whatever And he's out there and he's doing it He's jumping on the hood of these cars I'm like, that's crazy. I'm doing that.

Yeah, yeah. Gross. Like poverty. Right. Right. So, you know, I'm watching him and, you know, he's making his little money or whatever. And I'm probably standing with two or $300 of my pocket. Yeah.

Right. So a kid, a older kid, sees him and starts to like stop him whenever, because not everybody wants a car wash, whatever. Right. So, you know, somebody says they do, then he'll try to rush. dug away, pushed him away, he'd take it. So I was like, I'm not going for that. You know, and I'm aggressive for some reason.

I'm aggressive, I like to fight. I'm violent, you know what I mean? So I'm like, yeah, let me get that. I'm going to wash him windows. You know, because I want him to say something to me so I can beat him half to death with this screeching. Right. Which he would never expect because I'm like, I'm 12 and he's probably 16.

something like that, you know what I mean? And I didn't, you know, grow to be, you know, six feet tall until I was 17, 16, 17 years old. You know what I mean? Prior to that, I'm like, you know, five, five, five, four or something like that. You know, I'm not a big kid. I'm just really strong, but not big. So, you know, I'm out there doing a little window thing, whatever, and the dude comes to say something to me.

and I say, you take that car. He goes, okay. And he goes and he goes and take that car. And that car is behind the car that I'm at, right? And that car can't move until I get off the hood. Why am I in the hood? Well, that's what I saw as a little kid. Right.

Serving hair on through the window. That's what I saw. So it's like, these are my trainings. Right. So I can only apply what I know. So I jump on the hood. What you're going to do? You're going to drive away with a kid on your hood.

Here, get the phone of a car. Right, right. It's like extortion. So while I'm doing that, and they're easing up the ramp to the light, there's other cars coming up. Yo, you get that one. Hold that motherfucker up. You get the one behind him.

Hold that motherfucker up. So these are my trainings now kicking in. So you're running a crew already. Running a crew. Right. So how did this turn into Coke? So Edgar. I am doing this with Dougie on

game days. Yeah. And on Sunday, this is my first time making my own money. Right. I like this. Felt good.

I like this. Get him my own money. It ain't nothing compared to the money they just give me, but I like it. Right. Sunday morning, he's like,

yo, I'm gonna go through my newspapers. Are you going to do my own? Yeah, yeah, cool. So, you know, his window and my window are across the courtyard from one another, third floor or whatever.

So his bedroom, my bedroom across the floor. Yo, yo, yo. And he called me, you know, get up. It's like 5.30 at the morning. We go over to our

161st Street and that's where the newsstand is, whatever. And we sit like chicken hogs and wait for the guy that throw the newspapers or Sunday newspapers, which was like this thick, right? Throw them off the truck and these bundles. You throw them off the truck. If we're able to get to that shit before the guy who works in the store comes out and grabs it, we got free money. So we're going to, because the paper itself was like a dollar.

And we would sell them for $2 or $250. but the average person would give us three, four dollars. You know, because it's kids. And, you know, money goes a lot further. And so people were more free and giving that, you know, working class people. Whenever we couldn't get it, we would just, you know, pay for the paper, whatever, then go sell them. But so, you know, we go, we go to the buildings and we go inside the buildings and, you know, we're selling the paper, whatever. And I see some other kid in the building, sell the paper.

Hmm. Then we go to another building in the neighborhood. And these are buildings right around us. Yeah. Our building had a hundred and something apartments in it. Yeah. Huge building.

These are enormous Bronx. Enormous Bronx buildings. Buildings, yeah. So I go into a couple of buildings with them, whatever, and I see other kids and they're selling papers or whatever. And who knows how long they've been doing it. Who knows how long they've been dispersed, particularly people that they're going to have been buying the paper.

I don't care about none of that. You don't sell in this building anymore. This is our building. And I take over the buildings in our immediate space. Right. Right. And this is just, to me, this just makes sense for some reason. So, to that becomes the thing. So now, you know, we get a year later, whatever, and, you know, Edgar's mom comes into contact with this Colombian guy, whatever, whatever.

And, you know, and I'm a kid that is in the clubs and shit like that, whatever. So it was like, you know, I sniff and I know people who sniff, obviously. So, yeah, get some of the cold. Right. Start going around, going to clubs and selling coke and like that. And it just grows from there. So first, Dougie introduces me to getting my own money. The seed for all the things I do in the way that I get this money

have already been planted in everything that has come into my life up to this point. Literally, and trains since you were an infant. Right. And then the drugs come in very casually and unofficially like, you know, sniff a little, sell a little, you know. And then my mother sees me and she's like, what, you got some coke? And they're like, yeah, I got some coke. I got it from candy.

That was, I got it from candy. And she's like, well, you know, you know what you're doing. You know how to, you know, cut it and all that, whatever, whatever. Because I was selling it pure. Right. You know how to cut it and whatever. I said, no, you can make some money. Go get you some lactose.

And, you know, you take, say you got seven grams here. Take that seven grams and put, say, 14,000. grams on it. The Coke was very, very good. You could put it two on it. Wow. Okay. So seven grams turns into 21 grams. Right. Right. Wow. And a gram is $100. Yeah. So. There you go. 2100 right there. And I only, you know, paid like, like, like she wasn't charging us nothing for us. I probably, I probably went and gave her like $200, $300. Wow. Thank you, Ken. Yeah. But there's some more. Yeah. Because she's getting the blow for free. free. Because she's got the super plug.

Right. And she's telling me, she's like, you know, like, keep, you know, keep Eger with you and, you know, like, because she knows that I come from. She lived, they lived on the sixth floor and we lived on the third. You know what I come from? You know, she's the street. She knows I come from. So she knew I had the background or whatever. And she knew that her son didn't.

She knew her son was more so he was super smart, super smart. Like you could walk down the street with Egan and be like, oh, Eger, how much is $3,400 plus $7,900? times that by three. And as you're saying it, he's answering it. Wow. Like drugs, though.

Like genius. Oh, really? Like drugs. It's just like his mother father, like drugs. You know, you know, weed, then Coke, then angel dust, you know, like that there, whatever. But, yeah, that, and that was how it. The genesis. Matriculated into, you know, becoming, whatever.

Okay. So what was your goal? What was your goal with drugs? As a little kid, you saw the damage that drugs did to black people in your community. But of course, you get older and you get numb to that. So what were your goals in the game when you first got into it? To be the best that my family had produced, to at some point take the leadership position. And at a point I was being groomed for that.

And when you say leadership position, you mean like where your mom was at or even higher? Higher. Okay. If what happened with my uncle hadn't happened with him, then I would have eventually taken position where he was. Getting it from either Italians or... He would have put me, you know, I mean, he was such a proficient guy mentally that I couldn't see him actually stepping all the way back until he was probably 75 or something like that. But I would have been plugged into the people. have been managing and I would have just come to see him in Long Island right and you know

and dropped his bag off or whatever whatever and you know told him what's going on and you know he counseled me whatever yeah that's just how it is he just would have been pure wholesale yeah or you know running things like like he like he did like he had crews all over the fucking place yeah I was just one yeah I was just one what happened to your uncle this is butch yeah he got he got picked up um The French mob leader, Leon, Fad Leon, he gets popped and tells on everybody, including my uncle, whom he had never met, which is why he still sitting in prison because he claimed he had. He claimed he had been given some directives from him to dispatch some individuals, but he hadn't.

He had never spoken to him. And that got his 501K torn up, but he had a deal, he had a deal. But he's the one, I mean, of course, the feds have known about my. uncle forever and ever. But they couldn't get anywhere near him. And then Leon said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I dealt with Bush Cassidy. And he told me to do this, that in the other, whatever, whatever. And then he found out that he lied.

So he had to go back to prison, even though he didn't get out. Right. Like, that, that blew his deal. So he knows if there's anything else he lied about, but he lied about that. And his lying is what got his deal torn up. I see. So he sits in prison for the rest of his days with that jacket. Wow.

Yeah. So they arrested my uncle. Right. He knew for a year that they were coming. Because as soon as they found out that they were telling, that Leon was telling, his lawyer told him immediately. So he knew for a year that they were coming, you know. And when they came, you know, they couldn't make the case that they wanted.

So they hit him with the tax evasion, you know, and took several million. And he did like seven years. Mm-hmm. But did him go into prison fuck up the plug, though? Him going to prison. Like, how did that screw things up for your ascendancy in the heroin game? It caused us to have to disband. Like, because obviously they were looking for me.

But they didn't give, he didn't give somebody in your family his connect, knowing he was going to go away? No. Because I don't think that, I don't think that he thought he was going to go away. I mean, this is a very, very intelligent man. It's a very educated man. This man has a degree in law, you know, from the street, not, you know, from going to prison and becoming a, you know, prison, what they call a jailhouse lawyer. He has a law degree from being in the street. He was a super kingpin at the point in which he got a law degree, you know, and a degree in psychology and a degree in the business and a degree in sociology.

I mean you're saying? So he didn't have the common level concerns that people would far less information in education would commonly have those type of situations. You know, so he, in his mind at least had, in my opinion, an idea that, you know, even the worst case scenario,

he's still going to be to do what need to do. You know what I mean? Like, you know, to be able to, you know, put us in contact with whoever needs to be gotten in contact with in order for us to be able to facilitate things that wouldn't be, that's not a, That's not a long shot at all.

But it sounds like he didn't do that. But he didn't do that because once he got in there, he learned the kinds of things that you can only learn from that side of it. No matter how many people you've dealt with who have had these sort of situations that has conveyed information about these situations to you. Until you get on the other side of that and really see the subtle nuances that just don't get communicated, you don't really know what it is you're contending with. When he got in there, he realized what he was contending with. And one of the things that he said in a conversation that we had shortly, I think got arrested, right? So when he gets arrested, I get a call.

I was in my home of Virginia Beach. I had just moved there maybe three months before. And nobody knew I was there. Nobody knew I'd left Jersey. And nobody knew where I lived in Jersey. So once I moved from Jersey to Virginia Beach, nobody had any idea that I had even done that as far as anybody's concerned. I was still in Virginia Beach, I mean, in Jersey, including him.

No one. No one knew. Right. My mother, she knew. No one else. Right. And so I'm out there with my younger cousin, L.A., and, you know, I'm trying to get him together or whatever. I was like, come on here. You get with me for a few days, whatever, and we chill out. So we go to this club called Picasso's, which was very popular in the Virginia Beach back of the days. And we're getting on our way back to the crib. It's about, the sun is up, you know. I was always going to, I was. I always going to. I was. I was. when a guy who partied to the sun came up. Like, that was a regular, you know. And so we're at the gas station, and I get a page, my pager. So I see the code, it's my uncle's code, triple seven, and I see 911. There was a rule within our family, you know, put 911 as a code in the pager under no circumstance.

Right. And so when I seen that, I was like, all right, something's really not right. He would never do that. Right. You know, so I call him and it's my cousin, his son. It's Mark and Mark says, yo, they got him. So I'm like they got him. So there was a thing going on with the individuals whom Leon had claimed he was told to, you know, tap on and push a button on or whatever.

There was a thing going on actively at that time with these individuals. So when he said they got him, I was like, the little. kids got them what do you tell me he said no to people and everything dropped like my whole inside is felt because the thing i had always knew could happen i'd been a prize of that since i was a child this could happen you know and as a child i created you know in my mind the contingencies that needed to be put in place in order for me to be prepared for that you know potentiality but up until So at this point, I just want to point out for everybody, nobody in your family, all of these drug dealers, nobody ever did a bid. Nobody ever got locked up. Nobody got, not for no drugs.

Yeah, not for drugs. Right. Guns and, and in violence. Yeah. Which is bullshit, right? It's mostly bullshit. Mostly bullshit. Yeah.

And nobody did no major time, no shit like that. My mother didn't do any time. Never. You know what I mean? And this was a big deal. Your uncle. June was just one of her victims. You know what I mean?

Right. So, like, you know, it's in my. In my reality, being in the street and operating at that level was not synonymous with the, you're going to go to jail shit. I had no reason to think that if I did everything that I was supposed to do according to the rules and guidelines of this lifestyle, that I would be going to jail. It wasn't a foregone conclusion like most criminals and most drug crews, they know that if they play this game long enough, they're going to go down. You guys didn't operate with that kind of thinking because there was no need to up until that point. That's right. So I thought that when I heard the first time I heard a guy say something, I was about 19 years, I heard a guy say something that was basically, I know I'm going to die or go to jail.

I was like, wait, wait, if you sound like you, you believe that there's no way you can end up any other way, but in prison or dead. And he's like, yeah, I was like, I would never have started doing this if I thought that. Right. I would never have done that. Because then it's a suicide mission. Right. Like, what? I'm not doing that.

I would never do that. Right. I believe that if I did what I was supposed to do it. Yeah. Then I would be fine. Right. Right. And I was.

So I guess when your uncle got locked up, though, you had already been in the game for so many years. Yeah. This was 1995. He was going to game for 15 years. So then why did you not join the heroin that was going on since your, if your uncle was Butch Cassidy, why did you not get down? Initially? Yes.

initially. Because I wasn't even really thinking about it. Right. You know, at 13, you know, I'm a kid with a good life. Yeah. Like, I wasn't thinking about it. Like, you know, it's an inevitable. It's a foregone conclusion I'm going to get in it.

Whatever, but I'm not thinking about it now. And nobody, nobody's saying, hey, man, you got to start earning. Everybody's doing that. My mother, I'm not in the household where, you know, my mother's going, you know, you got to start contributing to the household, whatever. My mother never said that. She never said, you know, you got to start paying rent or the, she never said no shit like that.

There's plenty of money. Yeah, never something like that. Okay. So I bought $600 silk. She bought me a $600 silk set, like we call a leisure suit from A.J. Lester. So I could go to one of my girlfriends who I met during the time I was doing newspapers, her high school prom. You know what I mean?

Like, that's what it was. I didn't have to, I didn't have to even think about it. Right. I didn't get into it because it wasn't the chic shit. Right. Okay, it was the sheesh shit. Of course. And I'm a chic young dude.

Yeah. Right. When you're an adolescent, you want to be cool. Right. So I'm like, I'm not, I'm not thinking about none of that. Okay. So let me ask you this. Sorry.

Sorry. So did you see a, as we're moving into 81, 82, you're going around to these black bars and hip places in Harlem and clubs where a lot of these old heroin kingpins are probably some of your customers and normal people and stuff. And the people who work for them and their neighbors. Sheik people. People that in 81 that can afford $100 for some Coke. It was a lot of people. It was relatively few people just consistently.

Right. Right. Now, when did you see the free base start to come around? I first was introduced to it when I started working. working in the shooting gallery, my family shooting gallery in my block in 15th Street. And I was 15 then, right? So I'd already been selling coke for a couple of years. And they had a shooting gallery.

My family had a shooting gallery, which is a place where people came to buy and then use heroin right there to place. And the shooting gallery at the time was being run by a guy named T. T was an older black dude who It was a spitting image for the Jerome character that Martin played on the show Looked just like him Wow Look just like him Only his voice wasn't so gravely

His voice was like More nasally You know like people who use heroin Tempt tend to have like he because he was a heroin sniffer Right Right Right And he was the person that introduced me to the

the pipe. Like this was back when the pipe was a pipe, a whole thing, the stack, the bowl, the stem, not just the stem shit that came around 85,

six or so, whatever, whatever, right? So T was running the spot, right? He and his wife, they were living in my grandmother's apartment that I grew up in,

the 235, was on the 15th Street. And as part of, you know, their pay, they had, they got to live there for free. Right.

And then you, you come down those five flights of stairs, go right across the street, literally right across the street. And go into this abandoned building, 262. And on the second floor, there's this apartment set up with lights and gas and heat and everything. The buildings are abandoned. Right.

And so many buildings in Harlem. And then you just take over. And just take it over. Yeah. Right. And so he had the pipes, the torches, and that was his little sideline thing. Right. Right.

My family did not fuck with cocaine. Right. Right. And except like it was a party favor. Right. Everybody sniffed. Yeah. Nobody so.

But not commercially. Right. Everybody was on heroin. Yeah. That's where the money was at. And historically, that's where our wealth came from. So he, T. When I was brought in, I think, I don't know, I don't know whether they wanted to, like, phase him out or not.

But they trained me to be dominant. So I realized later when I was able to look back at this stuff and be analytic about it through some degree of clinical understanding, social understanding, whatever type. They knew what I would do. It wasn't long before I pushed them out. Right. Right. So what I would do, what he would have me do is sit there. All the customers were people that he had brought along.

He was from Connecticut. All of his customers were white. and they were all kinds of like one was a fireman another was a pilot another one was Marine Gary was a Marine Um

Um Um And he had tree top He was about Your height Um And then he had this other guy Danny and his girl

Danny was a con man Super, super clean looking Like you would buy anything from this mother He's the kind of guy You would let in your house You know what I mean super clean, grimy dopey. Right.

You know. And what is your function working at this shooting gallery? I come in after I get out of school, which I went to school on 35th and St. Lucas Terrace Music and on. Yeah. So I get on the train, go to stops, 125th, 116th, get off 116th, work on the 15th street, walk in the 15th street, walk in, go upstairs, you know, get the work, get the work, get the work, go across the street, sit up there from four until 12, every day. except Sundays and just you know

Oh, you're pitching? Yeah, I'm sitting there and I got my work or whatever and they're sitting, they come in and you know I'm sitting to do my homework and how many you want and they get two bags

you know and we're still in we're still this is 81, 82 we're like one of the few crews in all of Harlem that are still selling $50 quarters right. Nobody's selling $50 quarters.

Okay, So how would the heroin trade evolved until that to that point? At this point, comparative to the time I came up in, it had all but disappeared. Contrary to what people believe, fentanyl is not at all new. Right. No. Fentanyl would introduce, we introduced like every eight to ten years since I was a kid. How so?

It's the holy grail. You can cut it a hundred times. You can sit it open in the closet. Come back a month later. they're still kicking, oh, this is the shit. And then several people would die, and then they disappear. Right, right? So during this period, this kind of thing was kind of happening.

And at the same time, what was really at the foundation of how the dope game had started to, like, break down. Unbeknownst a lot of people, people at the higher end of things have been free basing for eight, nine years now. Oh, wow. right shit that long so yes uh shout out the gusto um the the created owner of the rooftop skating rink right roller disco on 55th street so gusto had a spot called 404 uptown um cherry hill and um this was like 74 74 75 these guys he was selling um cooked coke base um he was making $100,000 every 12 hours. Wow.

Off a base. Right. That was the beginning of the end. Wow. So by 82, all of these old heroin kingpins are now fiends. They're kind of addicts. And, you know, frankly. But who else are the guinea's going to give dope to, though?

Right. They trust these guys. They know these guys. These guys have taken pensions for them and all. Like, who are they going to trust? Right. So these motherfuckers are still getting access. And today just start really blowing the fucking bag.

They're still getting access. Right. Right. So, sorry, you're working this spot because this is a fascinating, this is a fascinating story that kind of shows you how Coke shoves heroin addicts out of the way and takes over. So you're working this shooting gallery. I'm sorry, we go down, we go down these roads because it's so fascinating. So you're working at the shooting gallery. You're doing, why are you doing your homework?

Because I got to do more. That's very responsible. I know your mom never taught you, told you to do it. I mean, I understood what I was responsible for. It's like, okay, you're going to do this, but you're going to do this. Right. I mean, you still have to be responsible. You've got to be responsible.

You know what I'm saying? So I'm sitting there. They come in, they start, you know, they start coming in and they cop and they'll sit there and they're talking and they're shooting. And sometimes they might say, hey, hey, Amari, can you get me over here? Can you get me over here? Wow. And I'm like, you guys fight off, right? and I would shoot them in the neck.

And I go and I, you know, I let them, they'll draw it up. You know what I'm saying? You know, the dope was good still. And it was like, it's not taking 60s at this point, you know. I mean, it's coming from Bush Cassidy. So it's probably taken, at this point, probably taking a 40. Because when I got the Baltimore, it was taking a 23 when I was getting from me. Why did the purity keep being diluted as the years one of?

Because of the amount. of interdiction that there was and the amount of people had to be paid Right, right Along the 80s now You can't just do whatever you want Right, right, right So the French connection is fucked shit up

Yeah That shit really fuck things up Because there was so much Uh publicity around it That, you know, All these different motherfuckers, Warren commission All these motherfuckers started like being like, So they're doing and Klaus Barbie is bringing

And all these people are getting And because how are the blacks getting the, like it's starting to, you know, so things started really like people, people are greedy, so people will always take the chance to get, but you have more people to pay. Yeah. From the point of origin to the, you know, commercial point. Yeah. You got more people to pay. And it's still coming from, stretch it. It's still coming from Southeast Asia, right? Southeast Asia, um, Afghanistan, Afghanistan, right? Yeah. So, um, you still, you got a lot of, lot of people to pay, you know what I mean? And, you know, the routes are always changing.

They'll go through, you know, this, you know, part of the world and come around. Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole other set of people to pay. Yeah. Who knows what they're talking about. And they're hip to what's been happening with the last route, whatever, whatever, and the kinds of, you know, new levels of interdiction that they have going on, whatever, whatever.

So it's like, yeah, we need this or whatever. So it's like, well, in order for us to do that. Because at the point at the grower point, the price, they never really made more money. No. you know what I mean? It's still just growing up the ground over here. Right? It's getting it out of those points became more difficult.

Right. Right. Because there was less corruption and people were, there were people, I guess, were starting to realize that this is more destructive than it seemed. Right. You know? So, you know, then you start having people who were more along the lines of trying to do the right thing and stop it, whatever.

So that means that now, you know, you have to really look hard to find somebody's willing to take the risk and whatever, whatever. So price goes up. Price keeps going up. Price keeps going on. Quality keeps going down.

Right. So by the time it gets to the States, you know, what was taking a 60, because I was like, there's no in the world that the earth is producing a less potent product. No. So somebody somewhere along the way

is doing something that they weren't doing before. And at the point at which you're still, the business is growing, expanding in terms of the clientele, more people are using, more people are buying, more money is being made, but the quality is going down. People start saying, somebody, somebody starts saying, well, shit, these motherfuckers will buy anything, it seems. You know, they seemed at some point that was a standard, but that standard is kind of lessening, a lessening, lessening, lessening, because people are being introduced to a lesser and lesser quality at their point of inception. So they don't know.

Right. They have no fucking idea. But do you think that also created less long-term addicts? Because there, people, when you're- The game is 80% mental. So people are addicted here. Okay. They're addicted here.

Heroin, of course, it attaches itself to your hemoglobin. Like, that's a physical addiction. But largely, especially cocaine, cocaine is a psychological addiction. So why do you think that, do you think there were less heroin addicts in the 1980s in New York? Or do they just go somewhere else? No, no, no, they were definitely left. Less? Why?

Because motherfuckers was getting on cocaine. Okay. There were definitely less. And there was a period, a lot of people were getting, like the, the culmination of the adverse impact of heroin was around 79, 80, whatever. It's like, yo, this is a scourge. Right. This is a scourge.

Epidemic. It's an epidemic. So, you know, a lot of people started moving away from it and getting off of it and whatever have, you know. Right. And other things would be becoming very popular or more popular or alternatives or whatever. So did you think you think junkies got clean by moving to Coke? I saw it. I saw it.

I witnessed it firsthand. So you're working at a shooting gallery because it's taking us 20 minutes to get through the story. But you're working at a shooting gallery and you start to see customers passing your spot where you're selling dope out of and going up to the freebase spot. and I'm trying to tell my uncles and Steve, this is fucking happening. I'm here in real time. Yeah. This is happening.

Yeah, that cocaine shit about me, part with that cocaine shit, goddamn party favor. I'm like, listen to what I'm telling you. Yeah. It's happening. People who had been hardcore heroin addicts for 20 years had not been able to be stopped by, you know, programs and all kinds of shit, whatever, whatever,

incarceration. And these are hardcore heroin addicts. And these are people whom I'd gotten introduced to as clients in this particular situation. Yeah. Right. And I shot in their neck and behind their ankles, behind their knees, whatever. These are hardcore dophines. And then one day, they come and they might stop by and say what's up, whatever, and grab a bag.

But then they're going to go upstairs, right? To Cuba. Yeah. Kubai was a dude who had come and was getting money. It was a connect, co-connect, whatever, whatever, and partying and hanging out and having, you know, all the access to the world of cocaine and smoking. You got a lot of people don't know that prior to the whole crack epidemic here in the States, they had the Pastellas epidemic in South America. It was the same exact thing. People selling up all this shit, stealing every goddamn thing.

It already happened. Right. In South America. All over South America. Right. Right. So these guys been on that shit. That's how it got here because you had international businessmen who were being introduced to it over in South America.

You had the big stars like, say, the Isley brothers and, you know, all those guys. Yeah. They are being introduced to it by. You know, they're moving around in different parts of the world and whatever, whatever, and they're being introduced to it, you know. And this is the next level of shit. This is some elite shit. You know, like people, I don't know how commonly people hear about the parties where they'd be like these big bowls full of, you know, olders of cocaine, you know, cooked and uncooked. Right.

You know, and that's how it got, you know, trickled into the underworld because you got high-end performers. you know, black people who had a lot of money and who are they commonly hanging around? Other black people with a lot of money just happens to be street money. Right. That's who they're partying with. That's who they're in Leviticus with,

then 54 with, then, you know, all these other places, you know, where they're coming together, whatever, you know? And after our spot's huge, right? And so these guys are, you know, come on over, man, party, hang out whatever, and you know, hotel or wherever it is. And they're free-basing.

So somehow this cooked cocaine morphs slowly into crack cocaine. Well, the cooked cocaine is crack cocaine. Crack is just a word that the news made up because of what it looked like. Right. By the time they got wind of it, these chips, you know, these, if you look at a wall in a building, abandoned building, whatever, a tattered building, and you see the spaces between the paint, you know, and it looks like. like somebody took something out of the wall. That's where they got the name from. That's right.

It's like they took a bit. So it's a crack. Took a crack out the wall. Okay. So with that, though, but then how did the price go from a rich man's high? I'm smoking cooked cocaine to I'm buying a $2.00 yellow top in Harlem. How did that economy of scale occur? Horrifically. During this time, remember, cocaine is $60,000 a kid. Grama cut is $100.

Right. And very few people have it. Right. Now, while this has happened, in South America, you've got guys like the Choas, right? And, you know, later on, Pablo and Griselda and these. You got these people who are essentially in a kind of a war with the United States. but they don't have armies and artillery and, you know, that kind of thing. They've got this stuff that grows in their country that Americans love to consume.

So they start sending that in greater and greater numbers. Well, what happens when a supply increases? The value of supply goes down. It goes down. There you go. Right. So, you know, in 80, there was a lot. lot less cocaine, a lot less people

aware of it, a lot less people who could afford it. And then by 82, 83, there's a good deal more, right? But people aren't at this level, they aren't smoking it. Because like I said, putting water anywhere into your cocaine is like, you know, like are you out of your fucking mind?

It's a sin, right? Only people at that level who have access to that amount, you know, and have access to this. process which involves ethel alcohol, which is highly volatile and explosive. Like, there could be a cloud of ethel alcohol right here in front of us.

You wouldn't smell it. You wouldn't see it. But light a match. The air would explode. Not the, like people have seen, you know, it's go, fooof, but this would go, boom! That's how Richard Pryor called fire. Right. Right. So,

when, now these, these points are important. The amount of cocaine being produced and pushed into the country, as like, it's just like narco-terrorism. It's like, oh, United States doesn't want to, you know, continue to give us the support, you know, the monies or whatever, whatever, for us to build up infrastructure or whatever. They don't want to do it?

Oh, well, the only way we can make money is if we said cocaine. You guys love it, so we're going to send a whole bunch of it to you. And in fact, Pablo's idea was destroy America's youth. Right. By sending this shit, you know? Right. So you got all this cocaine starting to come in at mass amounts. Then you have the process of,

cooking it, having been simplified down to bacon soda. When I got introduced to it, when tea introduced me to it, it was bacon soda. And so how he introduced me to it was people would smoke or whatever have you. He had the bowl of the pipe, the whole pipe. And there were certain rules. Like when you put the crack in or the base in the top and you take the torch and I charge you a dollar for the use of the pipe and a dollar for use of the torch. And you take the torch and you burn it down and you smoke it whatever. and it fills up the bowl.

Now, after two or three days of that, that bowl, that's just a clear piece of glass, is opaque now because it's covered with the residue of the cocaine. So then he taught me to take and put the coat a little bit out, like take the pipe apart, put a little bit of alcohol outside the bowl, switch it around. It clears all of the cocaine off of the sides,

poured onto a mirror and light that. And then it burns off and you've got the pure Coke, uh, paste left. Right. You know I mean? And so, you know, you scrape that up and then, you know, you take a little, little bottle and you know, recook that, whatever, whatever. And that's even more potent. Oh, shit. And so this was called basse. Yes. In South America. That's right. That's right. So, you know, this, this is how people can consume it. And he's like, you know, like they might buy, since I didn't have cocaine from my family, I would go down the block to the corner to the, to the bar,

Godfather, his name was also Butch, people used to get them confused all the damn time because of the name. But he would have some coke. So I'd buy some coke from him, right? They'd give me, somebody said, give me some Coke, whatever.

So I'd get $50 from them, go down the block, buy half from them, come back, cook it for them, charging for cooking it, then charge it from the pipe and the torch, right? And then, you know, then you couldn't turn the thing down like that, to try to bring the oil back down

so you could burn it again. Like, so it would build up, whatever. Unfortunately, it would take a lot of that stuff that scraped up and I would take it to school and sell it to kids in school. Wow. And this seemed to be a bane of your

time in the crack game was always a supply issue. Because I don't think your family ever got into it. I think they left it alone. They didn't until much later. Right? Did Butch? Did Uncle Butch? Yes. Much later, though. Okay. Much later. What are we talking? But he stayed on

the heroin shit. He never gave up hair on. Never. Never. He stayed on it. Because he understood the economy. The economics of right of course right and so but it seems like a supply when you were i'm talking about when you ran crack crews throughout the city you know i'm kind of just jumping ahead because i want to get to baltimore um you know throughout high school from 15 to 18 you're running crack spots you know in Harlem and in the bronx and everywhere in between queens queens you ran with that's right you were over there hustling with you know the the kingpins and the street bosses over there

but it seems like your big problem was supply. Like you couldn't find a really steady connect. Yeah. And there's, I mean, there was so much coke out there that it wasn't really a major concern because there's so much coke out there.

So I could, I could always find somebody to buy, you know, a key from, a couple keys from. That was not difficult because I'd been around so long, you know what I mean,

that once I began to focus on it, it wasn't that, difficult. But having that supplier, like having, you know, a supplier like my family, right. With the heroin would have made a tremendous difference, you know, in the in common opportunity. Right. And you were just too young to have those, right, like, you know, those direct Dominican or Colombian, you know, I got 100 keys coming on Thursday kind of, thank goodness. Right. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Well, that's what unique, as we know, unique mecca. He was that generation a little bit older than you.

He's a couple years older than you and he's already real hard. He just turned 60. What's that? Yeah, he did. He just turned 60. Yes. Looks great for 60. For what he's been through? Yes, absolutely. Fantastic. You're fucking right. But he was a guy that was dealing with like $8, $10,000, $12,000 kilos.

25 or 30 a day. He got down to Miami and well, I mean, it kind of started in the heights. So, but how did you, I guess, what's separate that from kind of your side of the game. Was it just age or he just had... Well, I mean, I think it had a lot to do with the fact that he was aware of

Dominicans before I was because he was smoking. Right. He's one of those early smokers. Right, right. You know what I mean? So he was robbing them. He knew where the Coke was because he was robbing them. He was sticking them up for the Coke.

Yeah. And he was smoking. So he was hip to, you know, the smoking aspect of it, which would become a major part of, you know, being able to make a bunch of money in the Coke game. Right. So he had been introduced in an intimate way to the, those components that would make up the major part of the opportunity in that space later on. Right. Right.

So, you know, working in the weed spots and what they called the gates back in the day, that gave a certain level of exposure. and then smoking that gave him a certain level of exposure about something that was that was forthcoming that nobody really knew about right right right the ground floor right and then you know the fact that he was running in places and stealing a bunch of cocaine from people and he knew what the people was that had the cocaine so at the point of which he started thinking about the opportunity of putting this stuff that I'm using from these people that I'm taking it from in this place where I'm operating weed from is like right so once he got out of jail the first time he was old enough and clean enough to realize how these things could be brought together to create an opportunity. All of it is just kind of an accident, just like a lot of businesses, legal or illegal. A lot of it is just an accident of when you're born and where you're born. That's right. You know? So you didn't have the cocaine tutelage mentorship that you had in the dope space, the heroin space.

That's right. That's right. So during the period. Do you regret not just like moving up in your family's heroin operation and just steering clear of all the everything that came with the crack era, which was a lot of really bad. No, it's no way because there was a point where it just

wasn't happening in the dope game. The heroin shit? It just wasn't happening. Well, we haven't got to Baltimore yet. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we haven't got to Baltimore yet. But it wasn't happening. It wasn't happening. Like, I stopped selling heroin in 1982, 83. Wow. And

went back to strictly cocaine, but at this point, because I'm of the early generation. Like, remember, now I'm selling it. It's not even crack yet. Right. You know what I mean? So I'm hip to it and I'm ground zero with it. And once I started seeing people who had been hardcore heroin addicts for 10 and 15 years

walking past us and going up to Cuba's and buying from him, and Kuba was up there to squatting. He just, you know, he just, he had the craft. He knew how to cook. He knew the Coke and all, whatever, whatever. So he was he was he was like a You know It's like this seems like a Somalié for crack

He was a connoisseur Yes he was It was Somalier, that's right So you know When I started seeing that happening I was like I've been around heroin addicts On my life

Yeah right I knew what that was I knew what the depth of that was In terms of addiction Right So when I saw that And I was like yo This motherfucker can't even stop

To get in He just went straight up, got it. And these are not people who are going to go trance-trancing around, trancing around, you know, Harlem looking for dope to buy from other places. Yeah. They were only there because they knew T from Connecticut. And T told him, come on down, you're safe here, you're good here, whatever. I've got a space for you to do your thing and all that, whatever, and good. So it wasn't like they were like, oh, we'll go to see Cuba, buy a Pascovario, go see Cuba, get some coke, and they go somewhere else by heroin.

They weren't getting heroin. They'd stopped. Wow. Not everybody, but a few hardcore motherfuckers. And a lot of times, you know, they loved me. So they would sit there, like the things I learned from these people, the exposure between music and art and these people, the exposure I got to the world, enabled me to expand my mind, expand my horizons, you know, still well-insconced in his life,

but able to think beyond it, think beyond these circumstances, very comfortable and very high-end restaurants and so forth, whatever. Very, very comfortable. Whereas you would never see any other black kids in there at all. No. You know, a lot of times any other black people. Right. Because they just didn't feel like they were supposed to be in these places. Yeah, you had a driver. Yes. Throughout much of your career. Yes. You're 16 years old. Yeah, living a life of a 35-year-old married man, you're raising

four stepchildren or, you know, kids that are not biologically yours. Yeah, you're certainly sexually active. I think you've got now two kids of your own by 16 or 17. I got two kids my own. Carvario Jr. or who? Carvario Jr. is born when I was 17. Yeah. But I had a son,

another son who was born 32 days before him that I did not know was my son. Right. Right? His mother said it, but I wasn't certain of it and I had impregnated her the day I met her on the bed with my cousin LA. And she was a virgin. Oh, man. But he was

telling me how, you know, I was like, you just sleep with any girl that you come upon, like this is, that's willing or whatever. He said, yeah. I said, me, that's not, right? I don't, why you do that? I don't do that.

And he came up under me. So it's like, you can see me do shit like that. Why are you doing that? Like, I gave him his first girl he ever had sex with. It's like, so I know where you started. Like, why do you do that? He said, you don't do it because you can. I said, well, you man, I can't.

There's nothing to that. I said, point out any girl right now. I will bet her right now. It's to show you how not special it is. And he pointed out my son's mom. Turned to be my son's mom. Met her, talked to her a few hours later. I had it up on the concourse in my mother's apartment.

She got pregnant. She got pregnant. But who knew? You know what I mean? Who knew? And my son, Cavario's mother, was already pregnant. So he was born weeks late. My other son was born a couple of months early.

So he ended up being born before the woman who was pregnant already. Right. It was crazy. I was like, nah, that can't be, man. How can he be born? But he was born prematurely. And I said, well, how much he weighed? It was seven and a half pounds.

I said, you know, premajorably. That's not my kid. Yeah. And plus, you know, she had a really bad reputation for not telling the truth. Right. Right. So it was, no, that she heard her do. But no, this is Sabrina.

Oh, okay. And when she hears that I just said her name, she's going to bug the fuck out. I think I ever said her name in public before. But, yeah, so, you know, I had kids. And I had another kid that I didn't know about at all. You know, my daughter who just turned 40. you know and um so yeah i mean no hyper super active so you were and i had a girl who's living with me in my mother's house and i was 16 and she was 24 right right you know i mean yeah right right

right so you're you've already you're you've already lived like five lifetimes by the time you're 16 17 years old um you're back and four did you graduate high school no okay but you had a fun time what you did. Oh, I had a great time. What's cool with Dana Dane and, uh, not Douggy Fresh, but Slick, Slick Rick. Slick Rick. DeShina Arnold.

It's called Carl Payne. Yeah. So you have these, yeah. And these are like, these are like hip, affluent. Like there's more to Harlem than just dope. Like it's, there's so much talent there. There's so much. Harlem is, it's like the capital of all that is cool.

Yeah. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Style, attitude, behavior. Right. You know, um, those things, the foundation knows, like the boogie down brought the hip-hop culture and, you know, brought together those components, you know, graffiti and the breakdancing.

And I'm, you know, in the original of all those things, you know, I was brought in, you know, in the late 70s into the graffiti thing, you know, seduce and crane and all those guys, whatever guys who respect the graffiti writers in the Bronx, you know. Saw 1-67, Bayer 167, magnificent artists. Magnificent artists. Their abilities were mind-boggling. Pating the trains. Their black books were like some Picasso shit, right? And then, you know, the breakdancing thing, you know,

Prince Thunder Rock, Nelson Martinez, who, you know, I would say is like the first real dance superstar, you know, like wherever we went, people followed us around in hopes that we would bustle move or something like that. So, you know, so that's what's happening in the Bronx

in terms of what would become the most pervasive culture, you know what I mean? Hip hop. Right, hip hop. And now, but I'm,

you know, but I'm back and forth, you know, every day, I'm back and forth. So I'm in Harlem and I'm doing my thing in Harlem.

And that's where the underground aspect of it, that culture, with the, with the flyness and all that kind of shit, that's what that's coming from. And it's feeding this other culture.

That's why a lot of the early rappers dressed like the early drug dealers. Right. That's right. Right? Because they were the ones that money. The other suits, MC boots, gold chains, you know what I'm saying?

Bombers. They all got that from us. Because they got it from my generation of young drug dealers who were influenced by the previous generation of, you know, the main drug dealers, you know. Right. Which that's out of Harlem. Right. The drug dealer, big drug, Guy Fisher is from the Bronx. He's not from Harlem.

Right. He didn't become Guy Fisher until he got to Harlem. And then, you know, assimilated that style and attitude and whatever, whatever. Malcolm X did not become Malcolm X until he came to Harlem. That's right. You know, is Detroit Red or whatever. So these things, the way they coalesced to create what became popular culture, what is today popular culture. You know, it started in the grimyest parts of things, you know what I mean?

It's the bottom of every damn thing, you know. And I was ground zero. Yeah. Ground zero for all of it. Yeah. And you had, it's like, yeah, you were living two worlds, you know, like you'd be down shopping in midtown. And you're, yeah, you're probably around white people. All the time.

You know, there's black people back then. Now it's a lot different. But like, I'm sure there were black people in Harlem that live 10 blocks away from, you know, the upper west side where Jewish women that are professors are hanging out in cafes and they would never meet any white people though. Yep. Like they were that isolated. That's right. They didn't come up.

White people didn't come above Hunt M. It's crazy, but there's a whole different. Dangerous. Right. No, I know. I know. It's wild. But you,

you just, you were just lived a very, very rarefied life, even as a street guy. But yet you were also in the trenches. Like you were putting in these 12-hour shifts. That's right. I want to cut to one of your most successful,

probably your most successful crack spot. while you were still in New York. You're in the Bronx. You're running this thing really, really professionally and sophisticated. And you even keep a bag of ones for your pitcher. So if fiends come and they're a dollar short

and they're buying a $10 bottle and they only got nine, you would like say, hey, no sweat. I'll make it up. Right. Cool shit like that that you learn from your mom. Treat the customers well. I provided an experience, not just a service.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're doing whatever, 10, 15, 20 grand a day in these spots. Have you forgotten about the dope? And have you seen the potential of growing in the cocaine business to where you could become the equivalent of Uncle Butch, but on the Coke side? Like, what are your ambitions? Yes.

Yes. I've forgotten about the dope. I mean, it just wasn't trend. Now, are there people making money with dope? Yeah. You know, Hispanics had become very prominent in the dope space. Right. You had, you had tango and cash, which I'm pretty sure was fentanyl fueled.

Wow. Right. Boy, George in the Bronx. George with obsession. He had a strong dope connect. He was getting it from the Chinese gangs down in China. He called him. fried rice

called him fried rice that's what he's his connect was right he referred to him as fried rice

from from from what I was told in terms of what he was as far as he was willing to share anything

like they never knew who his connect was they never knew who George's connect was you know but they know

he knew he ever got was that he referred to him as fried rice right you know I mean

so he knew was a Chinese connect so somehow in the 80s those Chinese gangs from down

and lower Manhattan Chinat the Chinese are the ones behind fent of fent

right exactly So it precisely. So somehow they had a connect in Southeast Asia that made their availability of the smuggling. They made it pretty seamless. And they became the connect. Right. Because what they were, they were in the 80s, what the Italians were in the 70s. Yes, right.

Yeah. That's right. So like Bump, for instance, Ronnie Bump, he was getting it from the Italians and at a point from the Chinese at the same time. Right. Which is why he always kept it, was kept a lot of it. And it was always very good. He said, man, no Chinese motherfucker. He said, one thing about the Chinese, though, no, no, no.

C or D. Buy it. Yeah, buy it. Okay. He said, but, you know, shit is taken 60, 65. He said, good as a motherfucker. But now here you are selling, selling crack, running a crack spot. What did you hate about it the most?

It's an interesting question. It wasn't an other to ask me what I hate it about the most. Like, what is the hardest part? This is not an easy thing. Even though there's customers everywhere, there's competition everywhere. That's not that, you know, for me, competition was nothing. For me, that was nothing because I had so much repertoire. I had so much in my tank.

Like I said in the book, I've forgotten more about the game of death than most of the time or opportunities to learn before their time is up. And their opportunities are no more. It's the truth. I hit the street, having forgotten more about the shit than most of the cats would last long enough to learn. Right. Right. So I was never worried about competition, right? Once I knew what you were doing

and how you were doing it, I knew how to outdo you, no problem, you know. So the worst part about it was dealing with those personalities on a daily basis. You know, people who are, they're sick. Addiction is a sickness, right? Psycho-emotional sickness.

So, and it manifests itself, that sickness manifests itself in so many different ways. It's not just like you come and you cop. It's not the supermarket. You just come and you cop and you leave most of the time. Although I did get to a point where I had disciplined.

playing my clientele to that. You know, I was very, very no nonsense. But nobody got hurt or robbed or killed doing business with me on either side. Right. Right. Not going along with the guidelines that I had said. Right. So the difficulty came in with dealing with these personalities, bro.

Like the games and the bullshit and the degrees that people would go through. Like people would make you a damn near beat them to death. Right. You know, before they'd be honest and forthright, you dig? And dealing with that because I wasn't in it for anything other than the money. I was not in it to, you know, bolster myself or anything like that, whatever, whatever. I was always honest. I was always a guy that, you know, I would say, you know, guy buys, you know, you buy a for half a joint for me, whatever, whatever.

And I'll tell you, you know, this is my price. Always had top quality shit, you know, so my price would not be like everybody else's a price. So it's like, you know, this is my price. Well, songs only charging this. I said, well, this shit can't do what my shit can do. Right? You can cook my shit. You can shoot my shit.

You can sniff my shit. It's going to perform like it's supposed to no matter what. So I charged this. And I paid this for it. So I'm only making this off of it. You know what I mean? And I always told the truth. But because people were so accustomed to being lied to, they never believed me.

So people would be like, yo, why are you telling me about that? I say, don't believe me. You think I'm lying. Yeah. But I practiced telling the truth. I always told the truth. Right. Right.

So in dealing with people who were lying all the damn time, and I'm being forthright, and I didn't understand, you know, things like people are being the way they are because of whatever they've been through. They're not sitting there going, I think Carvario's stupid and I can get over. They're not assessing me and incorporating me into this idea. I got nothing to do with it. I'm just a witness of the baby.

I'm not the cause. I didn't know that. So back then, I'd be like, who you think you're playing with? Who you think you're trying? And, you know, I would do what comes next. Not out of anger or disdain or lack of regard, but just because this comes next. You did that. And as a response to that, training dictates, I do this.

But I hated to do anything other than give you what you ask for, get my money, and go out of my business. Yeah. I never, I just didn't like the bullshit, you know. and that was the part, managing myself within that and not being drawn into, you know, constant punitive behavior all the time. Yeah, and when I read your book, you dealt constantly like the crews,

the people that were working for you. Clearly, none of them had been raised by wolves, have been raised by people in the game. So they're kids, you can't really blame them, but they're ghetto kids. So they're short-sighted. They live for today, right? And so they just are always,

He's always fucking up. A lot of them are. A lot of them are addicted, too. Yes. A lot of people got addicted to smoking cry. A lot of young. And I did not know. That was a big thing.

I did not know. Yeah. Right. And a lot of them are what they would call special ed, which is why they're floating around in the street and not in fucking school. Right. You know, so a lot of the people you're pooling from in order to create your crews are people with learning disabilities and behavioral problems. I never even thought of that. I never even thought of that, right?

So, you know, I'm trying to get them to comport to some type of a discipline, steady type of behavior, whatever. And these motherfuckers can barely sit still. Right. You feel me? So I had to use, I had to be very, one, I had to be very attentive, right? And two, I had to be very heavy-handed. It's like either you sit here behind, this door, do not open this door for anyone. Even the girl that says she'll suck the skin off of it. Okay? You do not open this door at all until I come and say, okay, come out or I let you out. Because at a certain point, I start locking motherfuckers in. Right. You're behind the door, and there's a lock, a padlock on the other side.

It was for two reasons. One, to keep you from being talked out of the door so somebody could rob you or whatever, or not rob you, but they could have just because she didn't or didn't. set you up, don't mean the next time she won't, you know, and also when the police would come in the building and be looking for the cracks spot, whatever, whatever. The last thing they would think is there's somebody behind this door locked in this apartment with a bunch of drugs selling drugs. They would look and see a padlock on the door. Okay, that's just somebody locked out there. You know, because that's what they would do back in those days. When you didn't pay your rent,

the landlords would padlock your door. Right. So you couldn't get in. So seeing padlocks was a common thing. Yeah. So they didn't pay any attention. So you had this, like it was the sophistication, I mean, I just don't think you see it now, even with places in the Bronx that are still getting money like that. Like, you would have a, there was a girl working for you. And when the customer would walk in, she would, she would give them, she would be like a bouncer at a club. She would read them the rules. Like no, no asking questions. What were the rules?

No talking. Yeah. I'm talking. Your money talks. How much you got? Give me the money. Count the money. I don't know how many you want.

We have $5 in nominations. So if you got $10, motherfucker, you want two cracks. You've got to tell me that. You don't have to say anything. Right. So wearing a wire and all that kind of shit, whatever, that shit won't work. There's no talking here. Right.

So count the money. So when they open the door, close the door, push them to the corner. So it can't be seen in the window that got the fiberglass window and it's got the vent and the metal grading, whatever, whatever. It's the steel door and concrete buck and all that. There's no ramming this. You're not getting, you got a tank maybe, with a ram on the front, like they're doing LA, whatever. You're not getting it.

Yeah. So you stand in that corner, so you're out of sight. I stand over here. And none of this, hold it up and tapping it on that type of shit. Take it, throw it in your mouth or throw it in your pocket. What are you going to do? And you hit the button. And the person across the street that's doing a lookout,

they'll hit the button. It's like, beep. that means the customer's ready to come out. And then beep, that means it's clear to come out, out the door. No words. Yeah, just little earpieces that you're using. Yeah, and the air pieces were just for that beep. I glued the talk button so they couldn't talk.

Because there was a time where I was sitting in an apartment across the street, the girl I was messing with. She lived in an apartment that was facing my building where I was rocking out of. And there was a, no, I was upstairs in the building, inside the building. And there was somebody who had a baby monitor. And I could hear my people on the walkie-talkies talking on the baby monitor. Oh, Jesus. Well, I could hear the person in the baby monitor.

Whoever they were, I could hear their transmission from their baby monitor on the walkie-talkie. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, first I was like, all right, no one talking on these things. Like, yo, you good, no, that, none of that shit. And of course, you couldn't rely on people to do that. No. Just use the button. You couldn't rely on that.

You couldn't, you couldn't expect them to follow the direction without you being able to say, stay on this line. Yeah. Because these motherfuck have developmental problems. Right, right. So a lot of them born to alcoholics, not born to drug addicts and so like that, right? This is, this is 83, 82, 80, no, 84, 85. So these are the kids who were born in the late 60s like myself, 70, the latest whatever, and their parent was on the other side of the bag.

That's right. Right. So these kids were fucked up. So, you know, you had to do everything you could to stop them from behaving outside of your lines. So I had to glue the button to keep them from being able to talk. And all you could do was beep. And so that's how, you know, operated that situation. And you came, and that spot was rocking for like a couple of years.

For years. And thousands and thousands of transactions. And it never got rated. Nope. You caught a humble over a couple of vials. You took it to the box. You beat the case. We're going to let them go read about that.

Right. But what ultimately made your fortune in the game, fortune is relative, but I'll call it, like your biggest run in the game was out of town. Yeah. And that's what I think, dealers really started to do from New York in the 80s because the competition was just crushing. It was just, it was, there was so competitive.

There was so much Coke. Yes. Could you tell us what were the most popular out of town spots that New York crews would shoot off to to get money back then? My first foray out of town was in 1986 to D.C. Okay. Yeah, D.C. was obviously a huge spot. So D.C.

Super dangerous. Yeah. Super dangerous. But those places weren't as dangerous for me, like Richmond, Virginia and all those Boston and Boston. They weren't as dangerous for me because I have my wits about me. Right. The dangers are people who don't have any savvy.

Yeah. And most guys didn't have no savvy. They had no sophistication, you know? Very basic aberrations, which is, you know, fine to a degree. if you're in an environment that you grew up in and people around that know you and stuff like that and they're kind of like you are because they grow up in the same environment

but if you go someplace where people are completely fucking different and you don't know how to assimilate to a degree not to like lose your identity but to a degree where you're not you're not abrasive you know then you're going to draw problems to yourself and most dudes

did not have that humility that's right sorry to take it out of your mouth but that's the world they didn't they didn't have the humility they go hey I'm from New York

whatever and you know a lot of them a lot of those guys that went out of town were guys that were nobody at home right

and they they put on like they assimilated these different aspects of personalities that they had heard of coming to contact with in New York

and they created this podge of a character person. And then they acted that out in this place when nobody actually knew who they were. Right. Yeah, it's a really quick way to get killed. Oh, yes, it is. Very efficient.

It was, if you did it right, though, it was very profitable. Like, Unique would tell us, you know, he would get, he would buy keys in Washington Heights for like $8,000 and sell him down in D.C. for like $25,000, this is wholesale. That's crazy. And that's not even that far away.

It's an hour and a half, two-hour train ride. Three-hour train ride. Three-hart train ride. Three, well, it's three to Baltimore, four to D.C. Okay. Okay. So, so, but Baltimore is, how do you end up choosing Baltimore as a spot? Like initially.

Well, make sure that I answered the question, which cities are people going to? Oh, yeah, yeah. Boston, D.C., Baltimore. The Carolinas. Most immediately, most immediately. The Carolinas come in the, the latter part of the 80s early, early to mid 90s. Because most people are just going to like, you know, places that are like just a few hours.

Off the train stop, basically. What about Philly? Or was Philly too grimy? Philly was too grimy and too close, too much like you're in fucking New York. Right. You know, plus, you're still dealing with the offshoots of Sam, and Bo Baines and all the guys with black mafia, you know, which are very vicious, very, very vicious. Like most likely Tracy was killed dealing with one of those, one of their constituents.

So there's really no way you could just take over a block in South or West Philadelphia and start serving without getting shot at. No, no, no, no. So you just have to. You're going to be bagged. Yeah, for sure. Right. Fucking with Philly like that. So you just have to dump wholesale and get the fuck out.

That's what I would have done. Yes, yes, I'm a pussy. That's what you... I don't want no funk. Yeah, well, you know, Pussy's last longer. They do. You know what I mean?

I was very scared for you when you went to Baltimore. I mean, you know, rightfully so. I've seen the wire. And it's all accurate. It's all accurate. It's all accurate.

I was there during that time. It's all accurate. It's the most accurate thing that's ever been depicted about that lifestyle anywhere. All accurate. The corner was my, that was my block.

That was my crew. New York G. That was my lieutenant. Those people, some of them played themselves. They worked for me on that plot. That was Monroe and Fayette. That's the corner. And that's the super, that is Baltimore's version of the triangle. That's where most of the dope traffic in the city is at, right?

The west side, a lot of people would argue this. Of course, they're very competitive east side, west side, whatever. East side made a lot of money. You know, Eastside was very strong with the 30s and the 60s. Westside was very strong with the dimes. You know what I mean? I never really saw a West Side, not at the point I got there. I got there in 89 to answer your question of how I got there.

I got there initially because I was standing out in front of my mom's building with my cousin, L.A. And this guy who's passed now, he died badly. He was walking down the street, a guy named JD. He's walking down the street down, coming up to the conference. course. He lived around the corner. So we're standing in front of my mom's building. Our mom, our mom's middle. His mom lived on the fifth floor on the third floor. And he goes, yo, yo, JD down in Baltimore getting money. So JD's like, you know, local pussy. So it's like, doing what? Where? So he says, yeah, he down there in Baltimore getting money. Yo,

you know, make him tell us where the spot is at. I was like, he comes walking. I walk up. I say, yo, what's up, Jake? He's going on. I said, yeah, man, I heard you down in Baltimore get some money. He's like, oh, yeah. I grabbed him by his collar, shoot him up in the air, hold him up in the air, like, where the block is, man. He goes, uh, it's, uh, mom, Emerson and Monroe.

I said, okay, Edmondson and Monroe. Okay, got it. All right. Later, go on much of his business. So he goes down the corner, about 15 minutes later, he comes back around. He said, it's Edmondson. They pronounce it Emerson, but it's Edmondson.

Edmond Cinema because there's another street called Emerson and Real, which is he said it the way that they say it. Right. You know, E-D-M-O-N-D-S-O-N. They pronounce E-M-E-R-S-O-N, you know, the Baltimore accidents, unlike anything. It's horrendous. Horrendous. It's just, ugh. Fucking I remember this.

Yeah. It makes me hate the city. Sorry. I mean, he said it. Yeah. He said it. He said it. He said it.

It's shitty. It's not the South. Fucking grammar. Believe me, there's an articulation. There's a reason. for that and you I had to find it out and I was shared it with you I had to find it out I was like what the what the fuck

do you talk like that? Right? But because it wasn't like that in Philly wasn't like that in Trenton. I'd spend childhoods in Trenton. I'd spend childhoods in Charlotte, North Carolina and stuff like that and the deep south whatever. Nobody talked like that. And nobody. D.C. didn't talk like that. Philly didn't talk like that. D. D.C. is here. Philly is here. Baltimore's right in here. Right. Why do you talk like that? Philly had its accent.

Yeah. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. You know. But you could tell it was like Southern influence weather. Right. But nobody talked like this, this guttural thing that they had going on here. Yeah. And it was very interesting how someone who moved there when they were a small child or somewhere else, they were the wife of a guy who used to work for a guy to work for me. And they told me she was very smart.

And it was Goldie. Very, very smart. She's a heroin addict. But she was very, very smart. Got caught up out there, whatever. And she told me what happened, how that happened. So initially, Baltimore being a, It was all about the harbor.

Like that's the whole thing is built around that harbor. So it was a very powerful harbor. A lot of people came from different places. And there were a lot of people from a lot of Irish soldiers. A lot of Irish soldiers. Okay.

Right? And so they began to settle the place. Right? So they're the ones who set up the housing and then the schooling, stuff like that. You know, this Irish, whichever. So as time went on and black people started to migrate there, whatever, whatever. They went to schools that were ran by Irish people, whatever, whatever.

And the way that the, I guess, the southern dialect kind of coalesced with the Irish dialect, it turned into, you know, this lazy kind of guttural, you know, like pigeon. And pigeons perfect. Yeah. You know what I mean? And dog is Doug. Yeah. And Tuesday is Tuesday.

I got red top to you. And ye. Yeah. You know, they like threatened words. They start them out and then it's fall off in the middle of them. And that's, they're down. You know what I mean? And she said the teacher was correct there.

She said you. And the teacher would go, it's yee. You know what I mean? She's like, oh, okay. It's yeah. Yeah. but yeah that's well those hillbillies need to stop inbreeding and get some people from other cities moving in you better stop that fuck that accent out of existence anyways sorry about that oh god you better stop yeah it was one of the hardest parts about watching the wire but i mean yeah it was it was more difficult being in it yeah every time i went to baltimore i went to culture shock every time yeah so first time after getting this information from right um what's his name um jady um he comes back around the corner and tells me this This is what it actually, I guess he went around the corner and told somebody,

Yo, Cabario just snatched me up and made me tell him what he said. You did you tell him. So, yeah, I told him, but I didn't really tell him the right name, whatever, whatever. They probably said, you better go back around and tell him, bro. But it sounds like you were really hot to get out of New York because you immediately saw the opportunity and bullied this guy for the info. Right. And you've already been stabbed, which is a wild story that you'll read about in the book.

Right. But it sounds like you were like ready to like for new shit. I was always like that. I was always like that. I heard it was somewhere. I had no problem going there. You know, whether it was a block in the Bronx or all the way, I ain't no problem going there.

I went anywhere because I knew how to handle myself. Right. You know what I mean? And while somebody else was trying to get it in their mind what they might or should do, I had reflexes. Right. So while you're trying to figure out what you should do next, I'm doing it by reflex, you know?

So I had already been to DC in 86, didn't like the way that they got down. It was too much violence and just mindlessness. You know, there was a guy getting killed every day, you know? And it was ridiculous. It's like, how do you get money out here like this? Right. But there was something in particular that I saw that it made me be like,

fuck this way, so I'm not on this like. And I've been coming to D.C. since the 70s to visit my family. So I knew D.C. Right. I walked into a building one late night in the winter in 86 when we got there. I was out there with a young man who was a school friend of my nephews. Name was Dave. Dave was like, yo, you know, we out here, you know, getting this money, whatever,

whatever, but, you know, supplies a problem, whatever, because they're nobody, right? So I said, well, let me see what you got going on. So I'm doing really well over there in the spot you saw my 149, right? 160, fit for Walton Avenue. And I was like, you know, I'll take this little foray out there and see what's going on. So we go and we, you know, moving around and we see, we go into this projects. It's like 11 o'clock in night. And it's like, you know, the lights, half the lights around, whatever.

And we walk up on the parking lot And coming out of this dark doorway I hear What you need? What you get? What you need? What you need? I got it for you?

And I look and it's a eight-year-old kid. Yeah. Got to be eight. That no more than eight. Wow. And he's got a slab in his hand. And I mean, little ass hand.

It's a $50 slab. They didn't sell their shit in a bag or a bottle or no shit like that. It was like a naked slab of crack in his hand. Jesus. And I was like, who the fuck gave this kid drugs to sell? Like, I'm ready to snap out.

All right. You know what I mean? Like, this really got me. And that, along with the mindless violence every damn day. Yeah. I was like, man, fuck this. They ain't about no money, man. It's about no fucking money.

This is stupid. And then not just went back to the wrong. Yeah. Right? So, here comes 89, this happens with JD. You know, at this point, between that first move and this move, there had been like some severe Coke scares, droughts, right? Wow. A $5 bottle, next year you know, I'm selling it for seven, still shit is getting dry and dry.

Now it's 10. Now it's 15 same bottle because it's like it's harder and harder and harder to find something. They had this constantly happening, you know. and it was to keep the price from falling any fucking further. Because what was in 80, 60,000 was now, you know, by 87. 8,000, 10,000. 13 on average. Yeah.

Right. And so it really, they were trying to stop it from plummeting. So every now and then they were just, and most of the connects were in Queens at this point. And they were the Colombians. and they were feeding the Dominicans in Washington Heights. That's right. Right. And so whenever they said, hold up, they would just hold up.

Yeah. You know? And if you know it's coming, then you know, you know how you got to behave because it's about to be very dry, whatever. And so whenever there was a big bust, you know, and they announced a big bust, you know, so many kilos get busted, whatever, whatever, and it was always the biggest bust ever. Every one was bigger than the previous one. which told you something.

Yeah. Right. And so whenever there was a big bus, they would be like, okay, in a couple weeks it's going to drive up. And Bush would always tell me this. He would teach you on to read the newspaper and know what's going to happen. Yeah. Right.

Wow. And so this was one of those periods where it was like just really crazy. You know, we was rocking, but it was like, it's tight. Yeah. So we figured, you know, go to Baltimore, get more for the buck. Yeah. And so about three, four days later, we're standing out in front of my spot on 65th and Walton Avenue. About 8 o'clock in the morning.

And a guy whom I had known from much earlier in life whose father was a major guy, and he grew up a ghetto prince as well. But unlike me, he was not given insights into the game and all or whatever, whatever. So he knew where it came from. He didn't know anything about the game. So his father gets busted and he, you know, has to start fucking around. First of you know, people looking out for him whatever at a certain point. You get a certain age. Motherfuckers like, you know, you know, do something.

Yeah. So, but he don't know shit about shit. So, you know, he starts taking things and he's not responding well to not being the kid who's like the center of attention, which was what kids like us were. We were sent their attention around our peer group, right? Because we had everything. So he's not doing well, not being that. And, you know, I don't know whether he had some kind of preexisting mental condition or what the fuck it was.

But it became apparent to me that his mind wasn't right. So he happens up. I hadn't seen him in some years at this point. And he happens up coming across the block. And I was like, yo, what's gone? You know, it's a long time. It's happening. And he's looking dishevel.

and kind of dirty, whatever. I was like, come on, not you too, smoking that shit. He's like, no, no, man. I just got off a bus from Baltimore. You know, I was down there. I went down there with some guys. So guys had him going and getting packages from friends of his fathers.

And then they would dupe him out of the package because he wasn't built for it and his mind wasn't, you know, as strong as it needed to be. And so this happened. He went down to Baltimore. Some guys, he always get some work, got down there, and they take the work and abandon him. So now he's stuck down there.

No money, no means. means to get back. So he meets a young woman who helps him out, you know, sees him. She's going to do the the Baltimore's station, their equivalent to Grand Central, whatever. And he's out there and she's, here's a story, gives him a couple of dollars, whatever, cool. And then before he could get out in there, he gets arrested for breaking into a car. and he calls her, she gets him, and then takes him and puts him on a bus and sends him back.

Now, she's from New York, but she grew up there. She's Puerto Rican and Black. So when I see him and I'm something, you just came from Baltimore, that's crazy. We're about to go to Baltimore. And he goes, oh, you got to holl up my girl. So I say, you got to put me in contact with her. So we go to the phone, put about $2 per the court is in the phone.

He calls her. He introduces me to her. Her name is Moa, Mona. Harmonita is a real name. What's they call her? So he introduces me to her. I tell her my name is Steve. And I'll be coming down in a couple of days.

She's like, you come on, I got you. I'm going to show you around, whatever, whatever. I know exactly what I'm looking. I'm looking for Monroe and Edmondson, right? But when I say Monroe and Edmondson, she's hearing, like, I don't really know what Monroe and Edmondson is. There's Monroe on Emerson and there's somewhere else in Emerson. Right.

So we get down there. I tell everybody, don't bring IDs. Don't ask me why. Nobody bring IDs. We get on the Amtrak. We go down to Baltimore. I bring two apes. I bring 250 grams of crack cooked up.

We get there. We meet with her. And, you know, she takes us. She has to get a hotel room. We out on Frankfurt Boulevard, which is like way east. And we don't have an idea of where anything is in proximity anything else. Right. So we're far, far, far, far, far, far from the block, which is cool because it's safe and it's not likely anybody's going to try to follow you from his, it's clear across the other side of town. The people from the west don't go east.

Don't go east. They got a thing. Are you guys strapped? No. He brought no guns. Oh, okay. But I didn't rely on guns. No.

I didn't rely on them. Hold on I carried them. I didn't rely on them. Your story is one of really an absence of violence. Like all the violence you experienced for the most part was in your childhood when you weren't. when you weren't even in the game. Yep. It was just witnessing what you saw around you.

But when you were in the game, it was a tight ship. That's right. And really no violence. That's right. Anyways, go ahead. So she has to get the hotel room for us because nobody has any ID. So we get the hotel room. We go in, stash a few things, whatever.

And then we say, okay, take us to this block. Now, she knows a way around the city really well because the guy who she has her son by, She has a daughter and a son. They're very young, maybe six and nine, something like that. The guy's a cab driver. So she's ridden with him many times. And she knows all the neighborhoods. She's written in the car with them.

So she knows everything is. So we get in the call with her and she takes us around, whatever. And we're trying to find Monroe. So she knows what Monroe is. That's on the east side. It's a vein that goes from like north, I guess, north to south. No. Yeah, yeah, because east to west is this way.

so it goes north to south, right? We ride around Monroe and we come around the blocking and Monroe down to Pulaski back up back up this street and you know, back around. And I stop. I said, wait, hold on a second. What does that say right there?

And she goes, I'm looking. It says E-D, M-O-N-D, S-O-N. That's Edmondson. This is what the fuck I asked you for. She goes, oh, Emerson. I said, Mufgo, that's Edmondson. This is what I'm looking for. There you go. There you go.

So we get out, you know, I go and I sit around for bed and I see somebody and I go, I give you $100, let me sit some of your house. $100? Yeah. This is it something? Oh, okay. Sit the drugs in there.

Right. You know, I tell my guys, I look around right on the corner, Edmond cinema, right in the intersection, I go, you stand over there, you stand over there, you go down the block over there, right? So now we have this crossways where it's like, the transaction is going to happen here. But we've got view of everything coming from that direction,

everything from that direction of a block, that direction for a block, that direction for a block. So by the time the police get here, we've got a blocks warning. They shouldn't even see you, let alone catch you. Right. right and of course this is all structural stuff from my own upbringing that's right so this is this this this this is well-worn neuro pathway you know neuropathy in my mind my mind is structured

this way for this type of thing so and i'm loving it i'm seeing alleys you know alleys in the in the hood uh in new york like that you know alleys you have abandoned lots right you know alleys these are structures that have streets between them that are not necessarily for cars car could come through but this alleys sneaking around. Yeah, you could sneak around in here and whatever. Well, I loved it. Yeah.

You know? So we're out there for maybe a day. And one of the guys who came down who carried the shit was a guy named Dave. Dave was the brother, girl named Donna that my cousin, LA used to deal with Craig O and other guys, you know, people from the neighborhood. He had just gotten off of drugs.

He's trying to get, that's what he wanted to get out of town. He's got myself off a crack or whatever, whatever. So he was a recovering addict. This is 89 now. Heroin in New York had all but vanished, right? So nobody's thinking heroin at all. I'm standing on the corner of Pulaski and Monroe. And I'm looking across the street at a girl standing in front of the underground,

which is a club that Little Melvin had it, but he, at that. this point when i was in jail okay and i'm watching her she's got these big bangle gold earrings no fly girl shit right you know uh gold chain um and she's wearing a custom louis Vuitton jumper wow he's got a louishton bag licekin girl long hair whatever and i can see her wavering back and forth so i'm standing across the street and i'm looking and i'm like and dave walks up and goes, what's up, Bob?

What you're laughing? I said, a girl that looked like she on dope and shit. There he goes. They're all on dope.

And I was like, what? He said, they're all on dope. Everybody hits on dope. I said, what the fuck is you talking about?

There ain't nobody. There ain't no young black people using no goddamn dope in 1989. He said, Bob, they're all on dope. Wow.

And then I thought about it and I thought about what I'd been seeing all day. And when I put it into the context of this information, I was like,

Oh, shit. They are on, though. Wow. What the fuck? I said, man, your niggas got me out here selling fucking cocaine and Michael's got a warehouse full of fucking heroin. Yeah. Wow.

It was like you were, that was your destiny. It's so weird. The heroin prince. And now fate has brought you back to it after a decade. So, what is it about black people? Why was heroin a big cultural thing in Baltimore? and it's dead in New York. Like, how can hot girls

going to clubs beyond heroin? Because New York was always a decade ahead of any place south of Bergen County. That makes sense. What did you get south

of Bergen County? Everybody told like this. Everybody from down said. Everybody told like this. Yeah. That makes sense. Everybody. It was the country.

It was the country. D.C., The country. Trent, New Jersey, the country. You know what I mean? It was all country. So Baltimore just was living in New York of 1979? No, 1974.

Right. So seriously. Dofine's everywhere. Dauphine's everywhere. Bus drivers are doffin. Cabraves is a doffin. The mailman's a doffin. Teachers are dopeine.

Wow. So did you see this as your... Granddaughters are doffin. But it was like weed. Right. Just like it was for... bumping them generation. Right.

It was like, you know, weekend, party, you know, it's got a little chippy. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know, but it was back to business after that. There's no stigma around it. Right, there was no stigma. So they didn't know, you know,

girls went the guy, and I heard a lot of young guys got caught up with taking them pills behind the same kind of concept. Oh, I'm going to think with the dope dick, because, you know, you're on his heroin, and they could have sex for, you know, more longer than they could not. Right. Right.

So attractive girls like that one. Yeah. Just like with Shameka and the young guys, Shaameka ultra-attractive girl who is in the upper echelons of the underworld. Younger guys are influenced. They want to be attracted to her. And, you know, so she can influence and whatever. And a lot of guys the same way in Baltimore, you know, all these years later.

Right. So I said, okay, we got her finishing shit so we can get fuck out of here. So I can go back and, you know. So did you feel like, oh, this is it. This is my chance. to really get rich in the game. I didn't think like that. This is it.

This is my chance to really get rich. I know, oh, this opportunity here gets some money. Get some money here. I don't know. This is, how old are you? 38. Okay. That's kind of an advent of your generation

as a result of the hip-hop influence through which my world got interpolated to you. Get rich. We think about getting rich. My wasn't really thinking about getting rich. This is life. But surely you had an exit strategy. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

You had no exit strategy. No. You thought because you'd never been arrested hardly. No. And nobody else either. This is what we do. Wow. This is what we do.

This is what we do. This is what we always going to do. This is it. Whatever else we do will be, you know, fed from this. This is what we do. Wow. You know, this is it. So you thought you were going to be a dope dealer all of your working life.

Yeah. Yeah. I was good at it. I had never done anything else. Your mom had basically done it until she retired. That's right. And I brought her back out of retirement in 86. Right.

She was selling Coke. Right. You're serving your mom. And when she came back out of it, I learned more from her. When she got active again, I learned more from her. And now, okay, at this time in 89, Uncle Butch hadn't even gone down yet. No, no, no. That would be six years later.

Right. Okay. So now you got the plug and you got the strip. So, right. So now we're going to bring these two things together. Let's bring it home. All right. So I'm kind of thinking maybe I kind of made it already clear that I was begging them to give me Coke back when I was in the shooting gather.

Yeah. So every time I went to go get the package, like get on the on the bus, go up Linux Avenue to 130 second Street to McDonald's right there. You know what I'm saying? Go inside McDonald's. Get my bag with my joints in it. That's what you call the quarters, the joints, whatever. and each time it was like, you know, oh, there's going to be some coconut.

Each time, oh, it's going to be coconut. And it was never in there, right? They were highly resistant to it, right? They'd like, don't get distracted. Just focus on this. It's what's that. It'll come back, right? So now, here we are at 89.

Now, by 80, 85 or so a couple of these things. I think now there's a little more cocaine, you know, focus or whatever, but heroin was still the mainstay. But he's grabbing, he's getting more coke. So when I initially start working with my uncle, I'm buying a couple of keys. Right.

Because I'm going through a, it's 86. I'm going through a scab. Anybody who was around the 86 would tell you, it was one of the worst droughts. Droughts. Bro, it was terrible. It was a terrible drought.

So, you know, I find, Finally, you know, I go to my uncle and I'm like, I need some coke, you know, I got some coke, whatever. So I spend, you know, I spent like, first I spent 19,000 with them. And then I spent like 38,000 with them. And then after that, it was like, hold your money here. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so just, you know, start rocking like that or whatever.

And, you know, I wasn't all gung-ho about getting involved with my family. family because of the stringentness of the structure. Like my cousins were like in the fucking military. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like the demand on their time and their liberty was ridiculous. You could be at a movie theater or whatever. You get a page in the middle of the movie.

You got to get up, leave her, put in a cab, and go. And, you know, obviously I'm hearing about this because they're complaining to me about it all the time. So I was like, I don't want to be bothered. And when I was younger, Bernard I used to be like, you, be careful of that motherfucker. He's goddamn dangerous.

Talking about my uncle. You know what I mean? Butch. Right. You know, and Bernard was kind of, he was kind of schizophrenic or whatever,

so he was kind of crazy, you know, brilliant. Money-making motherfucker. Butch called him, you know, King Midas. He's everything touched

the motherfucker and turn the gold. He's the one that innovated putting a stamp with a name on the dope bag. Wow. Is that true?

That's true. He's the first one in New York. He's the one that innovated that. Wow. Put the stamp on the dope bag. Prior to him, it was your bag's color and the tape on it.

Right. Yellow bag, green tape, white bag of red tape, yellow bag of blue tape, you know, shit like that. So what ended up being your stamp in Baltimore? First and foremost, Hamel. Because empty hammer was hot at the time. Now, okay, so I felt that that needed to be put in some kind of context, you know. My resistance, their resistance, and then my resistance later, getting re-eneraldinger. involved with them or whatever, right?

Because they really controlled you, you know? So I was used to being my own age. A freelance. Right, freelance. Right. So, okay, now, you know, I'm dealing with, you know, my uncle since this 86 shit where I, like, I need coke, whatever, I buy the coke from him. Here we are in 89 now. And, and I'm not touching heroin.

He's still doing with it. I'm not fucking with heroin because I'm in New York and it's like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm a cold. A poke dealer, you know? So we go out there, this happens. Now, I'm like, yo, we're going to finish your shit, come right back and rock out. But I leave one or two of my guys, right? When I get a certain amount of bread, I leave and, all take care of rest of it, whatever.

And, like, some of the work with Stash. And my partner, my childhood friend, who was a person. partner mine in the Bronx had 149 initially before I got rid of him Crazy E. Remember my crazy E? And my son's mom, Kavarra's mom, her nephew, Demetrius, who was out of Charlottesville, which is a place that I made a lot of money out because that was a place you could go. And 125 grams might be, you might make like, you know, out in Baltimore, 125 grams at the time might have got you, say, five or six thousand, maybe a little, more.

Charlottesville, you get you $30,000. That's insane. Brick money. Yes. Of 125 grams. Nothing. Yes.

Wow. They were selling in Charlotte. It'd be like a 10th. You can make $120 of a gram. Right. You sell a person a corner like that. I don't know the fuck they were doing with that, but they were buying. So I leave

Crazy Ian Demetris there. These two cocksersers decide that they're going to steal what's left and act like they don't know what happen. Right. So I leave E down there and, you know, I bring the nephew back and, you know, go about your motherfucking business because I can't do anything to them. You know what I mean? Right. Of course. Right. So, um, so now, you know, I get, I focus back on because my spot in the Bronx is still popping. That's my foundation. So I meant fuck that shit, man. I'm, I'm, I'm making, you know, I'm making $15,000 a day here.

Forget about Baltimore. It's a beautiful about Baltimore. Then another Coke scare. It's a bad one, right? Now, in between this time, this guy named Billy from the Bronx, Billy Guy. He approaches me at Elis, which was a local eatery that a lot of hustlers went to in the Bronx on Morris Avenue, between 164, 165. And I see him in one day, whatever, Billy's a high-in kind of look at me, famous drug dealer kind of, mindset guy.

And so he's like, oh man, I'm down here. I'm out of town. He was in D.C. at the time. I'm out of town. I'm getting his money with him. He was like, this needs to need a strong connect, man. You know what I mean? And everybody wants to get with, like, we're the, we are the, the Lakers, you know,

or the Bulls. Yeah. You know what I mean? Bush Cassidy crew, that's the top tier of shit. Yeah. Classiest, strongest, you know what I mean, crew. So he's talking to me. He's trying to get me to let, you know, give him inroads, whatever, whatever.

But his style and so forth is like, bro, you talk too much and you do too much. You know what I mean? And if I bring you in, I'm responsible for you and what you do. So there's nothing about how you do what you do that. It makes me want to do that. So, L.A., who is, you know, just the wild one in our, like, and they called me wild child, but he was like the problem kid in our family. So L.A., of course, is like, shit, I'll bring him in. And he brings him in. So, of course, but L.A. is not a manager. Like, you know, he's not reliable. It's not responsible.

You know, he's spoiled. We all spoiled them, you know. So he's not responsible. not for any extended periods I'm, you know, he might go good for a couple of weeks, a few weeks, and then it's fuck up time, right? So I inherit Billy. So Billy's in Baltimore

on the east side, 21st, 22nd and a half in Barclay, it's the street. So I got to go see him and pick up. Now this is 90 now. Mm-hmm.

And I go out there, whatever, and I go see him and he's got this whole show he got going. on really ridiculous behavior. And, you know, we're leaving the spot and we're in this convertible BMW or whatever. And he, you know, he's like, oh, man, you need to come out here, man.

You know what I'm saying? I'll put you into a block, you know. Now, he had Monroe and Fayette, I know, he had Hollinson. No, no, what was it? The corner. So he had, he had the corner before, long before Ed and what you call it came. and he had that first before he went to 21st and a half in Barclay, 22nd and a half in Barclay.

So he was telling me, yo, I got this block. You can go that block. It's over back on the west side, right? Monroe and Fayette. So I was like, yeah, you know, whatever. I'm not, I've done the Baltimore shit, whatever. I'm not really all that depressed for it. Yo, I'm telling you kill that shit down, man, you know, like that.

So then it kind of gets kind of tight again with the cocaine. So then B.C. says to me one day, he said, man, it might be time to, because he's seeing now what Billy's doing, but he's not a fan of Billy's. Right. And, you know, Billy gives him the money as big-ass bricks like this, and his name is written all down the sides of it up the tops, across the tops and the bottoms. And, you know, B hates this. It's like, yo, why is he doing this? So I asked him, I say, yo, bro, like, he wants to know why you keep writing your name all over the money. He said, I don't want my money to get mixed up with anybody else's money.

I want to know what's coming from me and I'm doing whatever, whatever. I said, bro, he doesn't really see that money like that. You know what I mean? It comes. It goes where it needs to go. Then it goes somewhere else and never sees it. Like, it doesn't matter, but you need to stop it, right? So he's got a whole bunch of things going on that just don't fit with the way we do things, you know?

So B's like, it might be time if you to try that Baltimore thing again. So he says it's time for you try to Baltimore thing again. So he says it's time for you try to boliv. Baltimore thing again. It's time for you try to Baltimore thing again. You know, like when I said I was a zealot, this is my religion. It was like the fucking Christian crusades, man. Right. You doing what I'm saying? So I go back out to Baltimore and I take my man Carlos with me. I take a kid named Roy. He used to go to the school with us when I was like in the fourth grade. Square kid, really. Who surprisingly Carlos was like, oh, yes, my man Roy. Well, I said, no, he's a kid. Like, Roy's super square kid. this is kind of what's happening now. Kids like this are getting into it. Squares or good kids or whoever, you know,

however you want to characterize it. And, you know, and I take my lieutenant who'd been with me since like 86 TC. So we go down there. Do you have the dope yet? Yes. I take like, I take like 200 bundles.

Okay. And a bundle is 10 bags? A bundle is 10 bags, $100 each bundle. Okay. All right. It's like 200 bundles. And this is just for scouting. Just go around trying to find, you know, where we can set up, whatever, whatever.

So we go, we're moving around. I send, you know, you take so many to go that way. You take somebody to go that way. You take some money to go that way. You take some go that way. See what you find. So Roy, we're there for a few days. We tried a few different places, you know, gold in Pennsylvania.

These are names and intersections that people who've been around for any period of time would tell you, like, at a point, these places were fucking phenomenal in terms of earning. You know, so, you know, we're looking at these different places. and then one day, Roy says, yo, I found it. And it's Frederick and Calverton, right? So I go over there, look around, okay, cool. Give out a few more samples, get some reads, people like, oh, this shit is fucking phenomenal.

My God, this is incredible, right? And we do maybe four or five hundred that day. Next day we do about $1,500. and the next day we finish. Come back, this was like a Thursday. Come back the following Monday with another 200, 250 bundles. And finish that like by Thursday. Go home, chill out Monday morning, back on the train, on that 620, get to Baltimore, hit the block.

250 bundles goes in like 48 hours shoot back 500 bundles Monday Thursday done shoot back 800 bundles Monday Thursday done that's 80,000 bags

no 8000 bags 80,000 dollars 8,000 bags 8,000 bags and 48 hours wow then we start doing 500 bundles between the first, fourth, and 500. We're talking about 500 bundles a day.

Wow. 50,000. 50,000 a day. So we move from Frederick and Calverton. Yeah. Because now, you know, the lines are 50 and 60 people long. Calverton is a major thoroughfare. I mean, Frederick is a major thoroughfare.

So we have to, you know, and Calverton is like a side street. A little side street goes from like, um, Let me see, from Hollins, Calvents and Frederick, Hollins, Baltimore Street, and then the next street, and it kind of like ends. So we have to shift the traffic into this little alley, those lovely alleys they had, and sift into this alley now, right?

And this alley is between two buildings. And T.C. stand out there with a shock on this, broad daylight, like shock on this, on his hip like this, Like, you know, like it's some type of a chain gang. Rural, you know, Louisiana and some shit like that, right? You boys line up over there. Let's not have a failure in communication.

It's like it's fucking crazy. And then the traffic gets so crazy that we have to like put it now into a street called Boyd Street. This is a street with several row houses on it, you know, but it's not really a street. Like, sure, you can drive a car down it or whatever, but it's really an alley with homes on it. Yeah.

Right? and now we're in Boyd Street. I mean, just fucking just going crazy, you know. Slow days is 25,000. So, you know, between the fourth and the, and the 14th, 25, 30,000, you know. Then 15th, 50,000. Yeah. You know, for the next few days, you know, 40, 50,000, 30,000, like, you know.

So we're talking maybe like on an average month, 250,000 bags. of heroin? Yes. Oh my God. You made how much that summer? About three million. You made it. Was Uncle Bush happy? Was Bush like... But you got to realize something. We've been making and seeing millions of dollars for decades. It doesn't really mean anything. It's just business. But it is... It's yours, though. See, in hindsight, do you see... But it doesn't really... It's not... It's not... I'm just working. I'm just working. I'm just working. I'm just at my job.

I'm just working. I'm not thinking, oh, yeah, I'm going to, you know what I mean? I'd been spending money how I want to spend money since I was a little kid.

Right. My attitude towards money was pretty ambivalent. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's here. I've never not had it.

So I didn't, I was like, oh, I got money now, which is how a lot of my peers acted, which is why they acted the way they did. Right. But I'd always had it,

so I didn't act different. You acted like a rich kid. I acted like a rich kid. I acted like a rich kid. I acted like a rich kid. didn't mean anything. Didn't need to. Didn't need to.

So I just was just working and just doing what I was expected to do and carrying the mantle. You know? And so, you know, much, sorry to interrupt. Because we're going to cut soon. We're almost at four. And I want to save some stuff for the Patreon. Okay. Also, I mean, the intricacies of the environment in Baltimore and talking about how you organized

all that is, it's incredible for like a young. young, 22-year-old kid. And they can read about it in the book. Yep, absolutely. How much money do you think you made Uncle Butch? How much money did you deliver to Uncle Butch? Well, those eight years, six years in Baltimore. Well, this is the thing.

Everything I got, I brought back half. Right? So every hundred thousand, I made 50. And I would take my 50 and I would take 25 from myself. And I would give the other $2,000. to my crew. So Roy didn't make it very far. Roy was there for maybe a month or so.

Roy was greedy. It was greedy and sneaky, really unsuited for the life, you know? And that might come from being a, like a really, really poor kid. He was from, they were like Haitian or something like that. Because Carl, that's how him and Carl's Kenneth is Canadian, because Carl's was Haitian, you know.

Carlos brother Franz, who you read about, about when I came back and took 149 over, Crazy E. Franz, the one I ran off, that was Carlos' brother. Oh, okay. So that greed that he had gotten pushed out. So, you know, it was just T.C. And Carlos and somebody else, they'd probably be like, oh, don't fucking go with me.

Somebody else, I can't remember what it was. So you're a crew of four. So, yeah, so I give them the 25 to split amongst themselves. And I take 25 for myself. And then, you know, nobody ever pitched. You kept just the local kids. I wouldn't let them, I wouldn't let them pitch. Right.

Just the local kids went hand to hand. But, but, and they weren't kids. Like these people who were working with, like, older people who were, for the most part, heroin addicts. Oh, okay. You know, but they had a degree of functionality where they could, they could handle the business, whatever. And they were walking away with $2,000 a day. And that was a, that was the problem with my crew. It was like, you know, like, you know, you pay us basically what comes out to about a thousand, a little of $1,000 a day.

But I keep them like, all you're doing is, all right, when somebody's done with a couple of bundles, you take that money, you get more bundles, you know, but that happens inside a house off the street. Yeah. Right. And other than that, you're just watching. I wouldn't let anybody sit down, relax mind, relax ass and relax mine. So there's no leaning on cars, sitting on stoops. You got to walk the entire time. That way you don't get stopped. And, you know, oh, your lawyer. get arrested so he can fingerprint you and photograph you so we can put you in the archive. Like that type of shit, right? So I have these guys in as safer conditions

you can possibly be in. Right. You're right? And I'm paying you a thousand dollars plus a day. Plus I'm dealing with all of your security, food, and lodging. I cover all that. All you got to do is be here and show up and make sure that when they're done, they have more

work and make sure that when, you know, whatever got brought out, you know, in the morning that it might be 12,000, whatever. Now you got to go back to the mainstash, get more, drop that money off, come back, whatever. That's your job, whatever. So you're at risk at the point at which you're coming from that point to the block, and you're at risk when you are like in the house where the people who are making the sales come inside to transact that, you know what I mean, which is relatively low. risk unless somebody is working with the police and tells them that they're doing this with you.

Other than that, this is as safe as you could possibly be. Right. But they're watching guys. If we get a, there are rushes in the course of the day. And if there's a rush, a guy who's pitching and he's getting $20 off of each bundle, right? He might go through. So some people are walking up. People aren't buying bags.

They're buying bundles. Yeah. Right. A few people are buying bags. Most people are buying a bundle or two. Right. Because they're going to take this shit and they're going to sell it as is. somewhere else for $25.

Somewhere else for $40. You should go into Virginia, going for $40. So a guy coming by, 40 bundles. If you're, like, if somebody comes and buys that,

then the person who they're dealing with on the street, they get the money. They bring it to my guy. My guy gives them the 40 bundles, whatever, and then, you know,

they take it to home, whatever. But they get that cut off of that. So my guys is like, yo, this motherfucker, this made fucking $2,000.

thousand dollars just now you know so yeah they might walk away with a little more money than you but um what is it also risking more than you are right and i don't have to worry about bailing you to fuck out of jail then my crew started doing those slick shit and when the russians would come get out the way let me sell it like shit like that creating detriment like i was saying earlier about managing people yeah that don't have all their fucking mind together you know me short-sighted that was the problem everything you did was the biggest problem was you didn't have the right help I didn't have people like me. Right.

I'd been looking for a person like me my entire career. I had a me like Obie. Obie was like me. Not his experience because he was in jail all that time. But Obie was like me. Obie did what I told him we needed to do him. He was my partner. You know what I mean?

This is my childhood friend from second grade. You know what I mean? Born the same day, three minutes apart, you know. But he was a, he listened. Right. But most people didn't listen. And they did. They didn't listen for very,

long because it required they be disciplined. And while everybody else is really nilly, like they having all the fun in the world, you know, you're being straight and focused and whatever, whatever, you know what I mean? Like, you know, everybody else is going to the ball and you just, you send a rellella, you clean it up. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's why

I'm shocked that you didn't go wholesale. Like, just try to kick back and find three guys. You know what? That would just buy everything from you and then be gone. You know what? Why? Because that level of operator has tends to draw a particular attention, right? Because, you know, they're a supplier.

At that time, the feds had a focus on that type of offender. Right. But these guys, by this time, were no more savvy than the dudes that I had operating on the street. You know what I mean? Yeah. They were just in a position somehow, some way, where they were able to either get their hands on some large sum of money, whatever, or they had people who would buy large sums, right? So they'd be a condu or whatever.

Right. But the thing is, you're on a certain radar. And I don't know how you're operating. I got no reason to believe that you're being especially clandestine or low-key or anything like that, whatever, whatever, not to draw particular attention to yourself. So if I'm selling bundles, then it just seems like I'm just this, you know, mid-level kind of guy, less attractive, you know? less attractive to a prosecutor, less attractive to, you know, an agent or a narcotics agent who's looking to make big scores because they're career oriented like anybody else. Sure. They want to name that people know.

Yeah. I prided myself on animity. Just you were always so low key. That was the biggest, that's what jumped out at me about the book was like you just blended in the whole time. That's it. You know? Invisibility. Animity is my greatest strength out there, man.

You know, the people who needed to know me knew me. But if I dealt with people who were like these high-end, high-profile guys who buy keys, whatever, whatever, whatever, then one, I'm giving you a product where you can potentially compete with me, which was something I learned better than to do from my predecessors. Right. Because everybody's getting a thing from dude. You know, Bump was telling me stories about how, you know, cats were getting like, you know, Kenny Bird. Sorry, Bird. Keene Burr was, you know, getting into it with maybe peanut at the time, Peanut King, Maurice Peanut King.

Shout out to the big homies. Because, you know, like, your thing is crushing my thing, whatever. It's like, this is the same thing. It's coming from the same person. It's about how you putting it together, you know? And I didn't want to create those types of dynamics. I'm out here. I have blocks.

I'm running shops. I'm not going to give somebody something to compete with me with. You want shit from me, body's bundles. Right. Bodies bundles. You know, spread hammer. Spread hammer. I see. You know, so in Hammer was a top-notch product.

I mean, there was a one time Carlos and him called me and said, yo, they got us in the newspaper. I said, what you mean? He said, there's an article about it's a newspaper. I said, what does it say? He says, says, Hammer, the best heroin to hit Baltimore in 20 years. Wow.

He said, what should we do? I said, get ready. Yeah, right, right. I'm sending another 800, 900 bundles right now. What? That's the best advertising ever. They're coming from Virginia. They're coming from D.C.

They're coming from Philly. They're coming from all over the fucking place. It's killing it. I mean, we're ringing in, in, inside the jails. Wow. A $10 bag is going for $50.

Wow. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it was way more beneficial and profitable and safe to deal with the bundles and keep things at that level

than to subject myself to dealing with some guy, which is what happened to bump and all the rest of them. Right. You're dealing with some fucking guy. And he's getting these large sums. That's right.

Yeah. He's getting these large sums from people, you know from from you and then he gets jammed up with bump it was like the guy he was given the large sums to wasn't even the guy who fucked it up

it was his brother who had never met him or seen him yeah but heard the name and was like this that's the guy the guy we're getting it from is this guy this is his name and we're talking about life numbers that's right talk about for heroin

on that scale we're talking about life in prison He took. Now, he accepted 32 years. That's the deal. Yeah. 32 years. You know what I'm saying? Do you think your Uncle Butch Cassidy,

who I really would love to meet some time and get him on the podcast? Oh, my God. You should have seen that night the Unique tried to get him to come on the podcast. Oh, my God, dude. Oh, my God. I have a video of it. It's the funniest thing ever. He's like, uh,

he looked at me. Like, I'm not responsible for what he just said. Yeah. Do you think is he one of the most, I mean, you are just statistically one of the most successful drug dealers that's ever lived? Just by virtue of being alive, have made millions and never did a bid. And I'm functional. And you're functional. You're not a dope.

You're not. Yes, exactly. Do you think your uncle Butch is one of the most. successful heroin dealers that's alive today? Absolutely is. I mean. Absolutely. At that level.

Absolutely. That longevity to have never got caught with any dope. I mean, it's, it will never exist again. Nope. When the feds grabbed him in the 32nd precinct, they kind of tricked him in coming to the 32nd precinct because they didn't want to try to grab him off the street because it would have turned into a major shootout, trying to grab him. He had already been kidnapped once before

by guys pretending to be the feds. Oh, wow. Right? So if they had tried that, they knew, they knew about that. They knew they had tried that, they would get rid the shreds. So under the auspices of a traffic offense,

you know, we're right there, like primarily we would be, we took over different places. Yeah. 22 West used to be on 135th Street between Lennox and Fifth, you know, the flash-in used to be on 155th Street and where the McCombie-Dam Bridge is, you know, leading off to the Bronx, and PJs. So these are places where we would meet up and essentially we took these places over. So at a certain point, all the regular patrons would leave, you know, at closing time, whatever, and we'd keep them over until 10, 11 o'clock in the morning the following day.

right and so this was like a primary location we gotten very close with the with the woman she's like family though it's Pat who owned the place right her and her husband Joe um and so they were at PJs and this was during the time where this thing was going on with those young guys they called themselves the young guns this whole thing that was going on with them whatever so um everybody was over there there was a AK 47 in the car um my uncle told his bodyguard of at that point, 30 years to move the car. And when he went to move it, the police pull the bottom. He did a U-turn. Police pull the bottom. And so he came out and said, that's my car, because he didn't have a driver's license. Herc, you know, they didn't have a driver's license. So it's like, oh, well, we just have a given a good ticket, whatever, whatever.

Do you mind coming over to the precinct? And he came over, you know, went over to the precinct, whatever, whatever. And when he walked in, he was sitting in and the feds walked in and identified himself. Special Agency. So it was a specialization. So, so. And the Fed says to him, you know, it's an honor to meet you. When I came onto the force, you know, to the agency 20 years ago, you were already a legend.

This is 1995. He said you were already a legend. And he was really Kaiser Soze. Like he was a guy. He didn't hang out. He didn't smoke. Didn't drink. He was in the martial arts exercise.

I'll tell you about all the degrees he had. I mean, between running the several laundromats and the liquor store and the record store, like he was a person who was living a real life, had real things to do, and had no time to be hanging out with a bunch of motherfuckers in the street. Right. Right. So, but his force was felt on the street. Yeah.

He was like, Kyta Zosa. It was the name you heard. Yeah. And when you heard BC or Butch Cassidy, whatever, whatever, there was only certain people who would dare to say. it, you know. And when you heard it, it was coming from a person of respect and regard. You know what I mean? So you didn't, like you never saw the guy.

You never saw him, you know? And so when they grabbed him, it was like a really big fucking deal. It was so difficult to keep his name out the papers. It's ridiculous. But that was always essential. Staying out of the paper was essential because once you get in the paper, then you become a political prize. Right.

Everybody wants to, you know, pursue the grace, the worst kinds of outcomes and whatever having. They were just interested more so on just trying to take what they could from him. Right. And they did. They got some millions from him. But he only did a little pinch. He did a little seven years, which is not nothing, but for what he was evolved in. Yeah, forget about it.

Forget about it. So you're going to have to go read his book. And you actually have three books. But I recommend starting with four. Actually. Four books. Well, you're coming out. You have the fourth that's ready?

No, I got four books. I got raised by wolves. Yeah. Then the next one was, get smart. It was a political fiction piece about how the mob, how and why the mob put the first black president in office. Okay.

Cool. And then old gangses and young guns, which is an anthology of the top ten stories I did in Don Devo, which represents the game, you know, the extremes, you know, all the extremes.

This one was the most violent crew. This was the most sophisticated. This one had the, most elaborate case. This one was the most flamboyant, you know, like, and how they all turned out. The real paid and full story,

you know, I'm the only person that's ever did an interview or story with Larry Hoover, not on him, you know, I knew Larry's mom and his wife and his children, you know, stuff like that.

Isaac Wright, I'm the one that put Isaac Wright's story to the forefront. Isaac Wright is this one that did this, 50 did the miniseries, on NBC, I think it was, called for Life. The guy who was committed as a kingpin went to jail for life, told himself law,

came back and got the prosecutor arrested, the judge arrested, the police arrested, prosecutor went on the run and killed himself when America's Most Wanted Live. And then, of course, he was exonerated and then he became what he is today, a major fucking lawyer. That's right.

That's in old gangsters young guns. That was in my sixth issue of Don Deva. And what's the fourth one? The fourth one is 50 critical quote. And this is a collection of 50 of the quotes that I've adapted throughout my life that enabled me to maintain a connection to those elaborate lessons that were given to me coming up. So they would say things to me and then I would turn them into like these little little ditties that would help me to remember things. You know, like the, what is it? This is show.

This is your business, not show business. You know, shit like that. Like little things like that. helped me to... They kind of anchored your character. So whenever I found myself in whatever situation you might find yourself in, in that life, and I had to determine what I should do here and now,

I thought back to a thing that I had been taught umpteen years before, and the thing that I created, a little duty I created, to kind of culminate that would come to mind. And there will be many times after a fact of doing something, I'd be like, yo, I, you know, guys be like, yo, I was crazy what you did. And I'd be like, yeah, I'm like,

how the fuck did I know what to do? How did I know what to do? But I knew what to do because of the consistency of them telling me over and over and over again. And I thought they were drunk or high. It's like, man, you told me that already. You told me that already. Over and over and over again.

But they were indoctrinating me to the point where it would become reflex. So 50 critical quotes is a culmination of that. And from that, I created an actual curriculum for the Mind Plug Academy, right? Which is really, it was born out of me teaching inside the South Carolina business after that whole thing that happened down in April 2018,

with Seven Brothers got murdered. Where can they find those books? www. themindplugacademy.com. Got it. And we'll have that link in the description. I recommend buying all the books. He's a tremendous writer.

if you want everything we talked about, but just in so much more detail, go to start with Raised by Wolves. It's just, it's like, it's an urban classic. I put it up there. It's an American classic. Fuck that.

That era is American history. Yes. And it's such a privilege to talk to somebody that was that entrenched in it whose life was ruined and also saved by his family. Do you ever think about that? Yes. Like your family actually saved your life.

They could have ruined it. Yeah. But they saved it with the lessons they imparted with you. And for you to get out of the game without a scratch, you owe them in the way. And my name intact. That's right. That's the most important thing of all. My name, my reputation's intact. That's why I can go anywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. By myself. Yeah. And I'm always respected and accepted. Cavario. Let's do this again, man. I look forward to it.

And we're going to talk on the Patreon for a little bit. So switch over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. And go check him out. And he's all over YouTube too. Yes. You can just. Yeah. I have my YouTube channel, which I don't do a whole lot on.

But it's a lot of stuff on there. Yeah. A lot of mind plug stuff and a lot of other things. But you won't find what I have anywhere else. Because people like myself with the do. degree of entrenchment that I had don't share it. And those that do don't have the degree of understanding beyond it to be able to deliver it in a way that it's relatable to people who are far removed from it.

You articulate it so my mom could read, my mom could read Raised by Wolves. Exactly. She'd be a little shocked, but she lived during the sex scenes. But, you know, this guy's dick game. That's all we're going to talk about on the Patreon. Navarro, thanks so much, brother. Thank you guys. Thank you.

Take care. Peace.