Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information.
Speaker 2: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
Speaker 2: story about power, about a stick up kid who became
Speaker 2: a king and a crime kingpin who wanted to stay
Speaker 2: in the game. It's a story about music moguls who
Speaker 2: wanted to be gangsters and gangsters who wanted to be
Speaker 2: music moguls. About reputations in the street and assumed identities
Speaker 2: on the stage, about mixtapes, attempted murder, and four FBI
Speaker 2: raids in one day. This is a story about Kenneth
Speaker 2: Supreme McGriff, the Lorenzo Brothers, jah Ruhle, and most importantly,
Speaker 2: Curtis Jackson aka fifty Cent. It's a story about great music,
Speaker 2: like that clip I played for you at the top
Speaker 2: of the show that wasn't great music. That was a
Speaker 2: preset loop for my melotron called gold Chain Cha Cha
Speaker 2: MK one. I played you that loop because I can't
Speaker 2: afford the rights to Lose yourself by eminem But why
Speaker 2: would I play you that specific slice of Moms spaghetti Cheese?
Speaker 1: Could I afford it?
Speaker 2: Because that was the number one song in America on
Speaker 2: January third, two thousand and three, and that was the
Speaker 2: day the federal agents raided the offices of Murder Inc.
Speaker 2: Records looking for dirty Money. Four days before, the hip
Speaker 2: hop label's main adversary, fifty Cent, released a single in
Speaker 2: the Club, which would become the biggest song of the year.
Speaker 2: On this episode raids, stick Up Kids, Crime, Kingpins, Music Moguls,
Speaker 2: Mixtape Wars, Attempted Murder, and Part two of our story
Speaker 2: on fifty Cent. I'm Jake Brennan and this this Disgraceland.
Speaker 2: If you happen to have a copy of Eric being
Speaker 2: Rakim's classic nineteen eighty seven debut album Paid in Full,
Speaker 2: go grab it and turn it over. There on the
Speaker 2: back cover you'll see a small picture of nine guys
Speaker 2: posing outside the Jacob Javit Center in the Hell's Kitchen
Speaker 2: neighborhood of Manhattan. There's Eric B with the giant gold
Speaker 2: medallion hanging from his neck, and there's Rakim aka the
Speaker 2: God MC and yeah, I know it's crazy, he's actually smiling.
Speaker 2: And then there's the rest of their crew, real guys,
Speaker 2: a mixture of rappers, hustlers and stickup men, including the
Speaker 2: kid crouched in the bottom right hand corner with the
Speaker 2: red Adida's hat and the thick gold rope chain. If
Speaker 2: you know anything about hip hop, especially the foundational years
Speaker 2: of the nineteen eighties, that chain will look awfully familiar
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 1: But more on that in a minute.
Speaker 2: This kid with the Adida's hat and the gold rope chain,
Speaker 2: they all called him fifty cent, But he's not the
Speaker 2: fifty cent you're thinking of. That is not Curtis Jackson,
Speaker 2: who was just twelve years old when Peydon Full, this
Speaker 2: record that we're talking about with the photo on the
Speaker 2: back was released. Incidentally, it was the first record that
Speaker 2: he ever bought. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This
Speaker 2: fifty cent, the og fifty cent. The dude on the
Speaker 2: back of Peyden Full was a guy named Kelvin Martin, who,
Speaker 2: despite his vertically challenged five foot two frame, was at
Speaker 2: the time one of the most prolific and feared stick.
Speaker 1: Up men in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter if you were John Dillinger or Billy
Speaker 2: the Kid or Tony fucking Montana, if you were a pimp,
Speaker 2: a dealer, a doper a rapper, you could be he
Speaker 2: has sworn enemy or his good friend if you saw
Speaker 2: fifty coming, you crossed the street because chances were you
Speaker 2: were gonna get robbed. And that's if you were lucky.
Speaker 2: With a three fifty seven magnum in one hand and
Speaker 2: a cold forty five in the other. Fifties reputation preceded him.
Speaker 2: He had no fear, no regrets, and at only twenty
Speaker 2: three years old, he lived by a code that protected
Speaker 2: himself above everything and everyone else. Some said he shot
Speaker 2: down some of Brooklyn's biggest hustlers and a hail of
Speaker 2: bullets like a Western gunslinger of old, just to make
Speaker 2: sure that reputation of his was kept spit shined in
Speaker 2: air tight. Some even said that he stole the gold
Speaker 2: rope chain right off of LLL Coolj's neck, LLL's iconic chain,
Speaker 2: and that LLL was relieved of said chain by the
Speaker 2: persuasive force of fifties twin long barreled revolvers. Whether or
Speaker 2: not that particular story is true, it's hard to say.
Speaker 2: LLL COOLJ, for one, had his own reputation to maintain.
Speaker 2: Ll was hard as hell, so ll wasn't saying shit.
Speaker 2: But plenty of others saw fifty cent again, the original
Speaker 2: fifty cent pull a piece and lived to tell. On
Speaker 2: one particular afternoon, every liquor store owner on a long
Speaker 2: stretch of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn heard the front door
Speaker 2: of the shop open in the jingle of that little
Speaker 2: bell go dangling, and looked up from behind the counter
Speaker 2: to see not a customer but this short stack of
Speaker 2: menace cocking one pistol and then another, and then that face,
Speaker 2: not Fifty's actual face, but the face of the Halloween
Speaker 2: masks that fifty was wearing, the count from Sesame Street,
Speaker 2: or maybe it was a Rich Nixon mask or something
Speaker 2: like that. And by that time the store owner was
Speaker 2: way ahead of them, popping open the registered drawer and
Speaker 2: hand in the mass neighborhood menace all of his cash
Speaker 2: but fifty cents exploits, his crimes, his unwavering code in
Speaker 2: which he got rich or died trying again. I'm still
Speaker 2: talking about the original fifty cent. It made him a
Speaker 2: lot of enemies. It all came to an inevitable end
Speaker 2: in October of nineteen eighty seven, just months after Payden
Speaker 2: full hit the shelves. This time the barrel was aimed
Speaker 2: at fifty cent, multiple shots fired, one to the back
Speaker 2: of his head, the plume of gun smoke, the scattershot
Speaker 2: rhythm of sneakers tearing astown several flights of stairs, and
Speaker 2: then hitting the pavement and fading into the night. They
Speaker 2: found fifty cent bleeding out on the seventh floor stairwell
Speaker 2: in an Albany Projects building in Brooklyn. He was rushed
Speaker 2: to the hospital and then moved to the ICU. Four
Speaker 2: days later, he was dead. Word of Fifty's death rippled
Speaker 2: through the streets of Brooklyn, through every liquor store that
Speaker 2: he ever held up, and to the ears of every person.
Speaker 1: He ever double crossed.
Speaker 2: But by the time that word spread one borrow over
Speaker 2: to Queen's, the streets were reckoning with even bigger news.
Speaker 2: Kenneth Supreme McGriff was being released from prison and coming
Speaker 2: home after serving eight years of a twelve year sentence. Preme,
Speaker 2: as he was better known, was a ruthless gangster and
Speaker 2: the leader of the Supreme Team, a notorious criminal organization
Speaker 2: and crack cocaine distributor based in Queen's. Unlike the last
Speaker 2: time Pream got out of the joint, this time was
Speaker 2: going to be different. At least that's what was believed
Speaker 2: to be true by the FEDS, who are continuing to
Speaker 2: monitor Prem's every move. It was suspected that Supreme had
Speaker 2: entered the increasingly lucrative world of hip hop by striking
Speaker 2: up a relationship with a brand new record label, and
Speaker 2: that he was using that label to launder.
Speaker 1: His drug money.
Speaker 2: Murder Incorporated Records was named after the cold blooded triggerman
Speaker 2: of the Syndicate, the infamous organized crime group from the
Speaker 2: mid twentieth century, the one we're talking about here in
Speaker 2: Queen's was founded by the Lorenzo brothers, Chris and Irv.
Speaker 2: Though they wanted to be known around town, Chris and
Speaker 2: IRV Gotti, a nickname bestowed upon them by none other
Speaker 2: than Jay Z. So here's a record label whose very name,
Speaker 2: as well as the nicknames of its owners, gave a
Speaker 2: wink in a nod to gangsters both passed and present.
Speaker 2: And again this is alleged by the Feds. They were
Speaker 2: being bankrolled by the deep, dirty pockets of the Queen's
Speaker 2: drug lord Kenneth Supreme McGriff. Little future IRV Goddis growing
Speaker 2: up in Queen's growing up in the shadow of the
Speaker 2: supposed Preme and Lorenzo partnership, were inspired by the sheer
Speaker 2: magnitude of this new endeavor by a record label that
Speaker 2: wanted to be bigger than the streets, like the rapper
Speaker 2: joh Ruhle, who was one of Murder Inc's first and
Speaker 2: brightest stars. But not every kid in the city looked
Speaker 2: up to the Lorenzo's and to prem with that kind
Speaker 2: of awe. One such outlier was Queen's native Curtis Jackson.
Speaker 2: When it came time for Curtis to level up from
Speaker 2: hustling on the streets to hustling on the airwaves, he
Speaker 2: did so not by ligning himself with the likes of
Speaker 2: Murder Inc. The Lorenzo's Pream, and even Sean Puffy Combs.
Speaker 2: In the eyes of Curtis Jackson, these guys didn't represent
Speaker 2: what was real. They weren't the streets. They repped that
Speaker 2: Hubris life. They were all corporate bullshit, so far removed
Speaker 2: from the streets that they may as well have been
Speaker 2: living in a castle in the sky. Curtis was the opposite.
Speaker 2: He was the fly in the ointment, the nail and
Speaker 2: the tire, the stick up kid fucking up your corporate machinations.
Speaker 2: When it came time to assemble a crew, he called
Speaker 2: it g unit, not g as in gangster, but as
Speaker 2: in gorilla, as in a scrappy, independent group that battled
Speaker 2: much larger, stronger forces. And when it came time to
Speaker 2: take a stage name, Curtis Jackson didn't look to the
Speaker 2: Gambino family for inspiration, as Chris and herv Lorenzo did. Instead,
Speaker 2: Curtis Jackson took up the mantle of the city's ultimate
Speaker 2: stick up kid. For his first commercial single, how to Rob,
Speaker 2: released on Columbia Records in nineteen ninety nine, Curtis Jackson,
Speaker 2: now fifty cent, gave a wink in a nod to
Speaker 2: his new name in his place in the hip hop hierarchy. See.
Speaker 2: The single was included on the soundtrack of the film
Speaker 2: Into Deep, which starred none other than LLL Cooljay himself,
Speaker 2: long since rumored to be one of the victims of
Speaker 2: the og. Fifty in LL's face was featured on the
Speaker 2: singles artwork.
Speaker 1: It was genius.
Speaker 2: Unlike the late Kevin Martin the original fifty cent, the
Speaker 2: new fifty cent had no beef with LL coolj. His
Speaker 2: beef was with these new corporate gangsters, the Lorenzos, the Preams,
Speaker 2: and the Puffies. Mostly for the little guy with the
Speaker 2: rough voice that was now putting Murder Inc On the map.
Speaker 2: It all began with a stick up. One of Curtis
Speaker 2: Jackson's now fifty cents friends flashed his piece and told
Speaker 2: Joe Rule to fork over his chain. Joh got this
Speaker 2: rumble deep down in his gut, a feeling that fell
Speaker 2: somewhere between embarrassed and insulted.
Speaker 1: What the hell was he going to do? He slowly
Speaker 1: peeled the chain.
Speaker 2: From around his neck and handed it over. The Next
Speaker 2: time he saw fifty, Joe gave him all kinds of shit.
Speaker 2: The fuck fifty thought he didn't rob jow It didn't matter.
Speaker 2: It was fifty's guy who did it, so it might
Speaker 2: as well have been fifty himself. Fifty tried the water
Speaker 2: under the bridge thing, but John didn't see a bridge,
Speaker 2: he saw wall. And then he started talking shit to
Speaker 2: anyone who would listen, and the gist was always the same.
Speaker 2: Fifty cent was a fake rapper. This is when fifty
Speaker 2: was on the come up, when he was trying to
Speaker 2: establish himself. He couldn't be derailed by some wanna be
Speaker 2: gangster running his mouth.
Speaker 1: But if Jow Rule wanted to.
Speaker 2: Fight, then a fight was what fifty cent was going
Speaker 2: to give him some say the fifty cent didn't fight fair,
Speaker 2: but fairness had nothing to do with it. Fifty cents
Speaker 2: played by the rules of a dead man. March twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: two thousand, Midtown, Manhattan. The small studio inside the Hit
Speaker 2: Factory was loud as hell. Fifty was rhythmically bobbing his
Speaker 2: head up and down, lost in the music and letting
Speaker 2: the deep bass of this.
Speaker 1: Track wash over him.
Speaker 2: He worked out a verse in his head, the rhymes
Speaker 2: coalescing into that trademark smooth casual flow. A small but
Speaker 2: mighty crew looked on a couple of dudes sitting on
Speaker 2: the couch, heads not in sync, and an engineer working
Speaker 2: the board. The track ended, and fifty cent told the
Speaker 2: engineer to rewind it and started from the top again,
Speaker 2: but this time hit recording fifty was ready. He stepped
Speaker 2: up to the mic and began to rap his verse
Speaker 2: while the music played. His debut album for Columbia, Power
Speaker 2: of the Dollar, was scheduled for release in four months
Speaker 2: in July, but fifty was already thinking three steps ahead.
Speaker 2: You had to be prepared if you wanted to blow
Speaker 2: up without selling out. Take that wrap money don't shake
Speaker 2: hands with it. The song how to Rob, in particular,
Speaker 2: was all the rage, with emphasis on the word rage.
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be a joke, a piece of
Speaker 2: cutting satire, but more than a few of the forty
Speaker 2: or so famous rappers and singers, the fifty cent fantasized
Speaker 2: about taking for all they were worth in his lyrics,
Speaker 2: they weren't laughing, No one could take a joke. Jo
Speaker 2: Rule wasn't included in that song, but fifty cent made
Speaker 2: sure the murder Ink Star didn't feel left out. The
Speaker 2: string of diss tracks that fifty was releasing straight to
Speaker 2: the streets in advance of his major label debut put
Speaker 2: jaw Rule in the crosshairs, and then fifty cent took
Speaker 2: aim with the guy that the FBI and the NYPD
Speaker 2: thought was really in control of. Murder Inks Perse Strings,
Speaker 2: one of the songs from Fifty's upcoming Power of the
Speaker 2: Dollar album, Ghetto Kuran, leaked and soon it could be
Speaker 2: heard pouring from speakers throughout the Five Burroughs. The track
Speaker 2: aired the Dirty Laundry of the Supreme Team and of
Speaker 2: Kenneth Prema m griff and this was something that you
Speaker 2: just didn't do. The door to the small hit factory.
Speaker 2: Studio flew open, and three men walked inside, jaw Rule, Chris,
Speaker 2: Lorenzo and another murder ink rapper, Ramel Gill aka Black Child.
Speaker 2: They weren't there to check out the new ship fifty
Speaker 2: was working on. Fifty stopped rapping right away and took
Speaker 2: a step back as the uninvited visitors came out him fast.
Speaker 2: If only he had some of that Kelvin Martin hardware
Speaker 2: on him. Someone hit the lights and the whole room
Speaker 2: descended into chaos. Fifties boys were up off the couch,
Speaker 2: up from the engineer's chair, jumping into the fray. Fists
Speaker 2: swung in the darkness. Lorenzo or Jos Someone was coming
Speaker 2: at fifty now, knuckles out, so fifty cent retaliated wild
Speaker 2: quick stabs of self preservation.
Speaker 1: Then the scuffle.
Speaker 2: A pair of hands grabbed one of the speakers to
Speaker 2: the top of the recording console and lobbed it through
Speaker 2: the air. It slammed Lorenzo right in the head. He
Speaker 2: screamed in pain and also because it pissed him off.
Speaker 2: The blood gushed down the side of his face. Fifty
Speaker 2: Cents stumbled tried to catch his breath. Black Child flashed
Speaker 2: a knife. Fifty sot gleam in the darkness, like it
Speaker 2: was winking at him, this all knowing, all seen beacon
Speaker 2: of impending doune about.
Speaker 1: To all fuck up.
Speaker 2: Black Child lunged forward, jabbed, and sunk the knife right
Speaker 2: into Fifty's chest. Fifty howled. The pain consumed him, breathing in,
Speaker 2: breathing out. It hurt like fucking hell. He slumped to
Speaker 2: the floor, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed tight, while Lorenzo, Black
Speaker 2: Child and jah Rule scurried out the same way they'd
Speaker 2: come in. Minutes later, fifty cent was in the back
Speaker 2: of an ambulance, racing down the streets of Midtown to
Speaker 2: Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, where doctors treated his gaping chest wound,
Speaker 2: along with a partially collapsed a long Two months later,
Speaker 2: after getting back on his feet, fifty cent was shot
Speaker 2: nine times by an unknown would be assassin and nearly killed.
Speaker 2: It was the totality of these two incidents, happening so
Speaker 2: quickly back to back, that cemented fifty cent not only
Speaker 2: as authentic, but dangerous, So dangerous and so hot the
Speaker 2: Columbia Records got cold feet. He may have survived those
Speaker 2: nine bullets he took outside his grandmother's house in Queen's
Speaker 2: but he wouldn't survive his first relationship with a major label.
Speaker 2: Columbia pulled Power of the Dollar with no intention to
Speaker 2: release it, or any other fifty cent album for that matter,
Speaker 2: And right at the moment when he was supposed to
Speaker 2: be blowing up by executing that stick up strategy, by
Speaker 2: taking that rat money instead, fifty cents dead man game
Speaker 2: left him dead in the water.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this word word word.
Speaker 2: Murder.
Speaker 1: Inc.
Speaker 2: Made sure to hit fifty cent while he was down.
Speaker 2: IRV God He went live on Hot ninety seven's The
Speaker 2: Star and Buck Wywe Morning Show. IRV told all in
Speaker 2: New York that fifty cent had gone soft, that fifty
Speaker 2: had turned tail, that fifty cent was a rat. So
Speaker 2: fifty cent you're never gonna believe this went and got
Speaker 2: himself in order of protection against IRV Gotti and Jah rule.
Speaker 2: This is what IRV Gotti told Pot ninety seven that
Speaker 2: fifty cent was essentially acting like a little bit. That's
Speaker 2: him talking, not me. Also him talking, a guy does that.
Speaker 2: He makes himself all cozy with the NYPD. That guy
Speaker 2: is not authentic, and that guy is essentially a fucking snitch,
Speaker 2: per IRV God he's thinking, But fifty cent was no snitch,
Speaker 2: IRV God. He was only half right, whether he knew
Speaker 2: it or not. There was in order of protection, but
Speaker 2: it had been issued by the NYPD on behalf of
Speaker 2: fifty cent. And no matter how much IRV Godi and
Speaker 2: Crys Lorenzo and Prem tried to discredit their rival, their
Speaker 2: strategy continued to backfire, only adding to fifty cents suddenly
Speaker 2: larger than life profile, which in turn was how one
Speaker 2: of his mixtapes ended up in Eminem's Walkman, and then
Speaker 2: to a million dollar deal with m in Doctor Dre's
Speaker 2: hip hop Empire. And so as fifty cents debut album
Speaker 2: was once again back in the pipeline, being prep for
Speaker 2: an early two thousand and three release, he doubled back
Speaker 2: to respond to the guys who had left him for
Speaker 2: dead and were now trying to bury him alive.
Speaker 1: To be clear here, I'm not talking.
Speaker 2: About the guy who shot him nine times, as fifty
Speaker 2: would make known on the track many Men Wish Death
Speaker 2: from his debut album, Get Rich or Die, Trying the
Speaker 2: shooter was a stick up kid from four Green named
Speaker 2: Darryl homo Baum, who was killed just weeks after he
Speaker 2: tried to ice fifty Cent. When I say left him
Speaker 2: for dead and we're now trying to bury him, I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the shit that went down at the Hit
Speaker 2: Factory and the subsequent slandering of fifty cents name on
Speaker 2: the airwaves. But as usual, fifty was three steps ahead
Speaker 2: of his antagonists. Just weeks after IRV God he called
Speaker 2: fifty a snitch. In December of two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: fifty Cent, in his rap trio G Unit, released an
Speaker 2: independent mixtape titled The Future Is Now. One of its
Speaker 2: standout tracks was I Smell Pussy, and it flipped IRV
Speaker 2: Gotti's script by calling out IRV Ja Rule and the
Speaker 2: guy who stabbed fifty cent Black Child by their names,
Speaker 2: as in I Smell Pussy is that U IRV?
Speaker 1: I Smell Pussy is that Jujah Rule.
Speaker 2: Fifty Cent didn't go after preim on this particular track,
Speaker 2: but the notorious crack Kingpin was having enough problems of
Speaker 2: his own. Earlier in the year, Supreme had pleaded guilty
Speaker 2: to a weapons possession charge, and he was currently out
Speaker 2: on bail and awaiting sentencing, and the shocking recent murder
Speaker 2: of run DMC's jam Master J had brought more unwanted
Speaker 2: attention from the cops in some of Jay's close friends,
Speaker 2: friends like fifty Cent, who was mentored by jam Master J.
Speaker 2: They weren't going out of their way to say that
Speaker 2: Preme hadn't had anything to do with the shooting, and
Speaker 2: so as g units I Smell Pussy kept the cold
Speaker 2: December streets of New York City red hot.
Speaker 1: Pream was laying low down in Miami Beach.
Speaker 2: He checked into the Lowe's Hotel under an alias, paid
Speaker 2: with cash, and then quietly slipped into a room with
Speaker 2: walls as white as the outfits at a Sean Combe's
Speaker 2: Labor Day party. But his quiet reprieve didn't last long.
Speaker 2: As Priam sat there alone, his hotel room door was
Speaker 2: busted down from the outside with a bang, and splintered
Speaker 2: wood paved the way for FBI agents in their trademark windbreakers.
Speaker 2: They grabbed Priam's arms and twisted them behind his back,
Speaker 2: locking his wrists and cuffs.
Speaker 1: What the fuck was it this time? Priam shook his head.
Speaker 2: He didn't know who did Jim Master Jay, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't him. Now it was the Fed's turned to shake
Speaker 2: their heads. They didn't care. They weren't here for that.
Speaker 2: They had pream on another weapons charge, one from a
Speaker 2: few years back when he brought a machine gun to.
Speaker 1: A shooting range.
Speaker 2: What's this, one of the agents wanted to know. We're
Speaker 2: rocking and rolling tonight, are we pream As he said,
Speaker 2: he was holding up a baggy of viagra and another
Speaker 2: baggie full of ecstasy that were found right there on
Speaker 2: the nightstand, next to a Murder Ink pager. And that's
Speaker 2: where the Feds were headed next, straight out of this
Speaker 2: Miami safe house and back to New York, where, not
Speaker 2: even a week later, the record company that they believe
Speaker 2: Preme Bank World was about to be taken down. January third,
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, Manhattan. Early, the elevator doors opened
Speaker 2: on the twenty ninth floor of the Worldwide Plaza building
Speaker 2: on Eighth Avenue. The surge of Federal agents and NYPD
Speaker 2: detectors came flooding out, vest strapped, tight weapons, locked and
Speaker 2: loaded warrant in hand. They crashed through the front door
Speaker 2: of Murder Inc's corporate offices and began to turn the
Speaker 2: place upside down. They seized computers, foxes of files, two
Speaker 2: way pagers, anything they could use to trace the dirty
Speaker 2: money back to Preme. Cut to New Jersey where more
Speaker 2: FBI agents and NYPD officers were raiding the house belonging
Speaker 2: to Cynthia Brent, Murder Inc's accountant, and then to Westchester County,
Speaker 2: New York. IRV Gotti's house raided, and then Wexford Terrace
Speaker 2: and Queen's the home of Joe Reagan, one of Prem's
Speaker 2: longtime associates, raided. All four places were raided simultaneously by
Speaker 2: the FEDS that morning, along with a fifth location, Chris
Speaker 2: Gotti's apartment at an undisclosed location. And then, with an
Speaker 2: affidavit filed with the US Attorney's Office, the United States
Speaker 2: Government officially made the claim that prim was the quote
Speaker 2: true owner quote of Murder Inc. And then he provided
Speaker 2: the Lorenzos in the label with muscle aka threats, violence
Speaker 2: and intimidation. Four days later, while job Rules Record Label
Speaker 2: was trying to peel the g men off their backs,
Speaker 2: fifty Cent pulled that G unit guerrilla move of his, swooping.
Speaker 1: In and taking that rap money. He hit Murder Inc.
Speaker 1: Where it really.
Speaker 2: Hurt on the charts and in the minds and hearts
Speaker 2: of the record buying public. His smash single in the
Speaker 2: Club was released on January seventh, two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: It spent nine consecutive weeks at the top of the
Speaker 2: Billboard Top one hundred and during its time in the
Speaker 2: number one slot as quick as a kelvin and liquor
Speaker 2: store stick up, and set a Billboard record as the
Speaker 2: most listened to song in radio history. Two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Chris and erv Lorenzo sat inside a federal courthouse,
Speaker 2: watching nervously as one of Prem's former close confidants walked
Speaker 2: slowly to the witness stand. The brothers were on trial
Speaker 2: for laundering more than one million dollars in drug proceeds
Speaker 2: through their Murder Inc.
Speaker 1: Record label.
Speaker 2: In total, nine individuals and two corporations have been charged
Speaker 2: with everything from racketeering to cocaine, heroin and crack trafficking
Speaker 2: to homicide. Chris and ear of Lorenzo considered it a
Speaker 2: win early on when a judge granted their request to
Speaker 2: try them separately from Prem, who they continued to maintain
Speaker 2: was in their orbit for street credit only but did
Speaker 2: not contribute financially to their business. If they were guilty
Speaker 2: of anything, they said, it was guilt by association, plain
Speaker 2: and simple. But even though Prem was not in the
Speaker 2: courtroom with them, you could nevertheless feel his shadow casting
Speaker 2: Paul over the proceedings. The allegations, The charges that the
Speaker 2: Lorenzos were facing were serious, career ending, life altering charges,
Speaker 2: and so as they watched while former Prime associate Joe
Speaker 2: Reagan sat down in the hot seat next to the.
Speaker 1: Judge, their pulses quickened.
Speaker 2: The prosecuting attorney asked John Reagan if he could recall
Speaker 2: the events of one day in particular, some five years earlier,
Speaker 2: May twenty fourth, two thousand. Reagan nodded his head. He
Speaker 2: had a mind like a steel trap. He remembered that
Speaker 2: day like it was yesterday. Reagan was no longer as
Speaker 2: close with Prem as he'd once been, and with the
Speaker 2: feared crime mogul now on the hook for a laundry
Speaker 2: list of offenses, including two murder for higher homicides, Reagan
Speaker 2: really didn't care what he said incriminated his one time ally,
Speaker 2: So Reagan began to talk. He recalled how Prem came
Speaker 2: by his auto garage in Brooklyn that afternoon. Pream had
Speaker 2: come all the way from Queen's and he had two
Speaker 2: other guys with him. Now, the reason that they went
Speaker 2: all the way to Brooklyn and the first place was
Speaker 2: to buy a bunch of stuff from stores. They're on
Speaker 2: a shopping spree, you could say. And it's not that
Speaker 2: Pream was in a shopping mood or anything. He just
Speaker 2: wanted receipts, pieces of paper to prove that he had
Speaker 2: been in Brooklyn during the afternoon and not in Queen's
Speaker 2: were just an hour before nine bullets ripped through fifty
Speaker 2: cents body. But of course Prem had actually been in
Speaker 2: South Jamaica Queen's that day. According to John Reagan's recollection,
Speaker 2: Reagan testified that Prem told him they'd just come from
Speaker 2: Queen's where fifty was shot coming out of his grandmother's
Speaker 2: house and then left to bleed out, just like the
Speaker 2: og fifty cent Kelvin Martin how he had led out
Speaker 2: on that seventh floor stairwell some thirteen years earlier. Now.
Speaker 2: John Reagan further said that while Preme ordered the hit,
Speaker 2: that he hadn't pulled the trigger, but that was one
Speaker 2: of the other two guys who showed up Reagan's garage
Speaker 2: that day and that dude's name was Robert's son Lyons. Again,
Speaker 2: this is alleged by John Reagan. But wait, you're thinking, Jake,
Speaker 2: you told us earlier that fifty Cent id'd Daryl Hamo
Speaker 2: Bomb as his shooter in a song. Yes, that's correct,
Speaker 2: and it's also true that the primary book that we
Speaker 2: used for researching this episode Ethan Brown's excellent Fat Cat
Speaker 2: fifty Cent in the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler
Speaker 2: also claimed quite definitively that the shooter was indeed Homo.
Speaker 2: The distinction of who the trigger man was exactly may
Speaker 2: not really matter in the end, because the big bombshell
Speaker 2: here in John Reagan's testimony was that prem was the
Speaker 2: one who'd been behind the attempted assassination of fifty Cent.
Speaker 2: It was not some random stick up kid. It wasn't
Speaker 2: some low key street beef for whatever. It was the
Speaker 2: mastermind of a New York criminal empire, the chief of
Speaker 2: the Supreme Team, the alleged muscle of a record label
Speaker 2: with which fifty Cent had been publicly feuding. So to recap,
Speaker 2: fifty Cent claimed Hama was the shooter in his song
Speaker 2: Many Men Wish Death At the Lorenzo Brothers two thousand
Speaker 2: and five trial, John Reagan testified that Robert's son Lyons
Speaker 2: pulled the trigger on behalf of Prem, who sat by
Speaker 2: and watched as fifty cent was sprayed with gunfire. Now,
Speaker 2: this was one man's testimony. This was talked from a
Speaker 2: guy who we can assume had fallen from grace and
Speaker 2: fallen out.
Speaker 1: Of favor with Prim at some point. So who knows.
Speaker 2: Perhaps John Reagan had something to gain from saying something
Speaker 2: like this, Perhaps that game was just to hurt Prem
Speaker 2: or to hurt the Lorenzos. It's important to note that,
Speaker 2: like many aspects of Prem's relationship with murder incorporated, this
Speaker 2: particular allegation has never been proven in a court of law.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Before the jury could hear John.
Speaker 2: Reagan's story, the defense attorney, the Lorenzo's attorney, made this
Speaker 2: argument to the judge, and I quote, this fifty cent
Speaker 2: artist is at the height of his popularity, and this
Speaker 2: is an explosive issue. It's fundamentally unfair. I believe this
Speaker 2: to be outcome determinative. This would be like a plot
Speaker 2: to assassinate Bob Dylan unquote. In other words, people would
Speaker 2: lose their minds if they knew that one of the
Speaker 2: biggest leaders of New York City organized crime, Kenneth McGriff
Speaker 2: aka Supreme aka Preme, put out a hit on one of
Speaker 2: the biggest rappers in the world.
Speaker 3: That it would be a quote unquote explain jo issue
Speaker 3: and that the public wouldn't be able to handle it,
Speaker 3: so the judge did not allow the jury to actually
Speaker 3: hear this explosive testimony from Joe Reagan implicating Kenneth's Supreme
Speaker 3: McGriff aka Preme as.
Speaker 2: The mastermind behind the assassination attempt on fifty Cent. Less
Speaker 2: than two weeks later, on December two, two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: Chris and IRV Lorenzo were acquitted of the federal charges
Speaker 2: against them, but despite this, their reputation was already damaged
Speaker 2: by the criminal allegations and by their ties to Preme,
Speaker 2: so much so that their careers and their murder and
Speaker 2: glabel were never the same again. Their beef with fifty
Speaker 2: Cent was never really squashed, and in the years that followed,
Speaker 2: Chris Lorenzo co founded Adventures, a digital distribution platform aimed
Speaker 2: to give artists.
Speaker 1: More control, and IRV Lorenzo eventually.
Speaker 2: Went into TV production before suffering a massive stroke and
Speaker 2: dying in early twenty twenty five. Supreme McGriff Akaapreme He,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, despite the jury not hearing the
Speaker 2: testimony from Joe Reagan incriminating him as the one who
Speaker 2: ordered the hit on rapper fifty Cent back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and.
Speaker 1: Five, was not so lucky.
Speaker 2: In February of two thousand and seven, following his own
Speaker 2: trial from murder conspiracy in drug trafficking, Kenneth Supreme McGriff
Speaker 2: was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Speaker 1: During his trial, he.
Speaker 2: Was asked by prosecutors about his role in the attempted
Speaker 2: assassination of fifty Cent. Preme straight up denied any and
Speaker 2: all involvement and said that the government and the media
Speaker 2: made the whole thing bigger than it actually was. But
Speaker 2: to the hip hop community at large, the prem fifty
Speaker 2: beef was an iconic conflict which shaped rap music in
Speaker 2: the early two thousands and helped define who fifty Cent was.
Speaker 2: Later that same year, as Preme began serving his life sentence,
Speaker 2: fifty Cent released his third studio album, debuted at number
Speaker 2: two on the bill Board Album chart, and within a
Speaker 2: month and a half it sold over one million copies.
Speaker 2: Fifty Cent called the album Curtis perhaps a surprisingly vulnerable
Speaker 2: move to acknowledge the person he was before he took
Speaker 2: a dead man's name as his own, a dead stick
Speaker 2: up man who led a nasty, brudish and short life
Speaker 2: of disgrace. I'm like fifty cent, who's still breathing, and
Speaker 2: who took that money without ever shaking hands with it.
Speaker 4: I'm Jake Brennan, and this his Disgraceland.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for rolling with me in this fifty
Speaker 2: Cent Part two episode of Disgraceland.
Speaker 1: Apple podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on. Listen.
Speaker 1: I want to know from you, guys.
Speaker 2: Six point seven nine h sixty sixty six three eight
Speaker 2: which hip hop star would you most want to sit
Speaker 2: down and have a drink with, chill out with, talk with,
Speaker 2: ask questions to share some stories.
Speaker 1: Is it fifty cent? Who is it somebody else? Let
Speaker 1: me know?
Speaker 2: It could be any hip hop star from any era.
Speaker 2: Not looking for rockstars, not looking for.
Speaker 1: Pop stars here, You're looking specifically for hip hop stars.
Speaker 1: Which one would you most want to hang out with?
Speaker 1: Let me know?
Speaker 2: Six one seven nine six six six three eight Call
Speaker 2: me with your answers. Leave a voicemail, send me a text,
Speaker 2: and you might hear yourself on the next episode of
Speaker 2: the After Party coming up right after this At disgracelampod,
Speaker 2: I'm the socials. You want to get at me on
Speaker 2: anything else? Scracelampod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I get to take off. Here come some credits.
Speaker 2: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
Speaker 2: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
Speaker 2: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
Speaker 2: If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank.
Speaker 1: You for supporting the show.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
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Speaker 2: a roller.
Speaker 3: He's a bad down man.