50 Cent Pt. 2: Federal Raids, a Stabbing in the Studio, and a Dead Man’s Game

raids in one day. This is a story about Kenneth Supreme McGriff, the Lorenzo Brothers, jah Ruhle, and most importantly, Curtis Jackson aka fifty Cent. It's a story about great music, like that clip I played for you at the top of the show that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melotron called gold Chain Cha Cha MK one. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Lose yourself by eminem But why would I play you that specific slice of Moms spaghetti Cheese?

on fifty Cent. I'm Jake Brennan and this this Disgraceland. If you happen to have a copy of Eric being Rakim's classic nineteen eighty seven debut album Paid in Full, go grab it and turn it over. There on the back cover you'll see a small picture of nine guys posing outside the Jacob Javit Center in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. There's Eric B with the giant gold medallion hanging from his neck, and there's Rakim aka the God MC and yeah, I know it's crazy, he's actually smiling.

And then there's the rest of their crew, real guys, a mixture of rappers, hustlers and stickup men, including the kid crouched in the bottom right hand corner with the red Adida's hat and the thick gold rope chain. If you know anything about hip hop, especially the foundational years of the nineteen eighties, that chain will look awfully familiar to you.

fifty cent, the og fifty cent. The dude on the back of Peyden Full was a guy named Kelvin Martin, who, despite his vertically challenged five foot two frame, was at the time one of the most prolific and feared stick.

He had no fear, no regrets, and at only twenty three years old, he lived by a code that protected himself above everything and everyone else. Some said he shot down some of Brooklyn's biggest hustlers and a hail of bullets like a Western gunslinger of old, just to make sure that reputation of his was kept spit shined in air tight. Some even said that he stole the gold rope chain right off of LLL Coolj's neck, LLL's iconic chain, and that LLL was relieved of said chain by the

persuasive force of fifties twin long barreled revolvers. Whether or not that particular story is true, it's hard to say. LLL COOLJ, for one, had his own reputation to maintain. Ll was hard as hell, so ll wasn't saying shit. But plenty of others saw fifty cent again, the original

fifty cent pull a piece and lived to tell. On one particular afternoon, every liquor store owner on a long stretch of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn heard the front door of the shop open in the jingle of that little bell go dangling, and looked up from behind the counter to see not a customer but this short stack of menace cocking one pistol and then another, and then that face, not Fifty's actual face, but the face of the Halloween masks that fifty was wearing, the count from Sesame Street,

or maybe it was a Rich Nixon mask or something like that. And by that time the store owner was way ahead of them, popping open the registered drawer and hand in the mass neighborhood menace all of his cash but fifty cents exploits, his crimes, his unwavering code in which he got rich or died trying again. I'm still talking about the original fifty cent. It made him a lot of enemies. It all came to an inevitable end in October of nineteen eighty seven, just months after Payden

full hit the shelves. This time the barrel was aimed at fifty cent, multiple shots fired, one to the back of his head, the plume of gun smoke, the scattershot rhythm of sneakers tearing astown several flights of stairs, and then hitting the pavement and fading into the night. They found fifty cent bleeding out on the seventh floor stairwell in an Albany Projects building in Brooklyn. He was rushed to the hospital and then moved to the ICU. Four

days later, he was dead. Word of Fifty's death rippled through the streets of Brooklyn, through every liquor store that he ever held up, and to the ears of every person.

going to be different. At least that's what was believed to be true by the FEDS, who are continuing to monitor Prem's every move. It was suspected that Supreme had entered the increasingly lucrative world of hip hop by striking up a relationship with a brand new record label, and that he was using that label to launder.

Though they wanted to be known around town, Chris and IRV Gotti, a nickname bestowed upon them by none other than Jay Z. So here's a record label whose very name, as well as the nicknames of its owners, gave a wink in a nod to gangsters both passed and present. And again this is alleged by the Feds. They were being bankrolled by the deep, dirty pockets of the Queen's

drug lord Kenneth Supreme McGriff. Little future IRV Goddis growing up in Queen's growing up in the shadow of the supposed Preme and Lorenzo partnership, were inspired by the sheer magnitude of this new endeavor by a record label that wanted to be bigger than the streets, like the rapper joh Ruhle, who was one of Murder Inc's first and brightest stars. But not every kid in the city looked up to the Lorenzo's and to prem with that kind of awe. One such outlier was Queen's native Curtis Jackson.

When it came time for Curtis to level up from hustling on the streets to hustling on the airwaves, he did so not by ligning himself with the likes of Murder Inc. The Lorenzo's Pream, and even Sean Puffy Combs. In the eyes of Curtis Jackson, these guys didn't represent what was real. They weren't the streets. They repped that Hubris life. They were all corporate bullshit, so far removed from the streets that they may as well have been living in a castle in the sky. Curtis was the opposite.

He was the fly in the ointment, the nail and the tire, the stick up kid fucking up your corporate machinations. When it came time to assemble a crew, he called it g unit, not g as in gangster, but as in gorilla, as in a scrappy, independent group that battled much larger, stronger forces. And when it came time to take a stage name, Curtis Jackson didn't look to the Gambino family for inspiration, as Chris and herv Lorenzo did. Instead, Curtis Jackson took up the mantle of the city's ultimate

stick up kid. For his first commercial single, how to Rob, released on Columbia Records in nineteen ninety nine, Curtis Jackson, now fifty cent, gave a wink in a nod to his new name in his place in the hip hop hierarchy. See. The single was included on the soundtrack of the film Into Deep, which starred none other than LLL Cooljay himself, long since rumored to be one of the victims of the og. Fifty in LL's face was featured on the singles artwork.

Joe Rule to fork over his chain. Joh got this rumble deep down in his gut, a feeling that fell somewhere between embarrassed and insulted.

Fifty cent was a fake rapper. This is when fifty was on the come up, when he was trying to establish himself. He couldn't be derailed by some wanna be gangster running his mouth.

while the music played. His debut album for Columbia, Power of the Dollar, was scheduled for release in four months in July, but fifty was already thinking three steps ahead. You had to be prepared if you wanted to blow up without selling out. Take that wrap money don't shake hands with it. The song how to Rob, in particular, was all the rage, with emphasis on the word rage.

It was supposed to be a joke, a piece of cutting satire, but more than a few of the forty or so famous rappers and singers, the fifty cent fantasized about taking for all they were worth in his lyrics, they weren't laughing, No one could take a joke. Jo Rule wasn't included in that song, but fifty cent made

sure the murder Ink Star didn't feel left out. The string of diss tracks that fifty was releasing straight to the streets in advance of his major label debut put jaw Rule in the crosshairs, and then fifty cent took aim with the guy that the FBI and the NYPD thought was really in control of. Murder Inks Perse Strings, one of the songs from Fifty's upcoming Power of the Dollar album, Ghetto Kuran, leaked and soon it could be

heard pouring from speakers throughout the Five Burroughs. The track aired the Dirty Laundry of the Supreme Team and of Kenneth Prema m griff and this was something that you just didn't do. The door to the small hit factory. Studio flew open, and three men walked inside, jaw Rule, Chris, Lorenzo and another murder ink rapper, Ramel Gill aka Black Child. They weren't there to check out the new ship fifty

was working on. Fifty stopped rapping right away and took a step back as the uninvited visitors came out him fast. If only he had some of that Kelvin Martin hardware on him. Someone hit the lights and the whole room descended into chaos. Fifties boys were up off the couch, up from the engineer's chair, jumping into the fray. Fists swung in the darkness. Lorenzo or Jos Someone was coming at fifty now, knuckles out, so fifty cent retaliated wild quick stabs of self preservation.

come in. Minutes later, fifty cent was in the back of an ambulance, racing down the streets of Midtown to Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, where doctors treated his gaping chest wound, along with a partially collapsed a long Two months later, after getting back on his feet, fifty cent was shot nine times by an unknown would be assassin and nearly killed.

It was the totality of these two incidents, happening so quickly back to back, that cemented fifty cent not only as authentic, but dangerous, So dangerous and so hot the Columbia Records got cold feet. He may have survived those nine bullets he took outside his grandmother's house in Queen's but he wouldn't survive his first relationship with a major label.

Columbia pulled Power of the Dollar with no intention to release it, or any other fifty cent album for that matter, And right at the moment when he was supposed to be blowing up by executing that stick up strategy, by taking that rat money instead, fifty cents dead man game left him dead in the water.

him talking, not me. Also him talking, a guy does that. He makes himself all cozy with the NYPD. That guy is not authentic, and that guy is essentially a fucking snitch, per IRV God he's thinking, But fifty cent was no snitch, IRV God. He was only half right, whether he knew it or not. There was in order of protection, but it had been issued by the NYPD on behalf of

fifty cent. And no matter how much IRV Godi and Crys Lorenzo and Prem tried to discredit their rival, their strategy continued to backfire, only adding to fifty cents suddenly larger than life profile, which in turn was how one of his mixtapes ended up in Eminem's Walkman, and then to a million dollar deal with m in Doctor Dre's

hip hop Empire. And so as fifty cents debut album was once again back in the pipeline, being prep for an early two thousand and three release, he doubled back to respond to the guys who had left him for dead and were now trying to bury him alive.

the airwaves. But as usual, fifty was three steps ahead of his antagonists. Just weeks after IRV God he called fifty a snitch. In December of two thousand and two, fifty Cent, in his rap trio G Unit, released an independent mixtape titled The Future Is Now. One of its standout tracks was I Smell Pussy, and it flipped IRV Gotti's script by calling out IRV Ja Rule and the guy who stabbed fifty cent Black Child by their names, as in I Smell Pussy is that U IRV?

his own. Earlier in the year, Supreme had pleaded guilty to a weapons possession charge, and he was currently out on bail and awaiting sentencing, and the shocking recent murder of run DMC's jam Master J had brought more unwanted attention from the cops in some of Jay's close friends, friends like fifty Cent, who was mentored by jam Master J. They weren't going out of their way to say that Preme hadn't had anything to do with the shooting, and so as g units I Smell Pussy kept the cold

December streets of New York City red hot.

two thousand and three, Manhattan. Early, the elevator doors opened on the twenty ninth floor of the Worldwide Plaza building on Eighth Avenue. The surge of Federal agents and NYPD detectors came flooding out, vest strapped, tight weapons, locked and loaded warrant in hand. They crashed through the front door of Murder Inc's corporate offices and began to turn the place upside down. They seized computers, foxes of files, two way pagers, anything they could use to trace the dirty

money back to Preme. Cut to New Jersey where more FBI agents and NYPD officers were raiding the house belonging to Cynthia Brent, Murder Inc's accountant, and then to Westchester County, New York. IRV Gotti's house raided, and then Wexford Terrace and Queen's the home of Joe Reagan, one of Prem's longtime associates, raided. All four places were raided simultaneously by the FEDS that morning, along with a fifth location, Chris

Gotti's apartment at an undisclosed location. And then, with an affidavit filed with the US Attorney's Office, the United States Government officially made the claim that prim was the quote true owner quote of Murder Inc. And then he provided the Lorenzos in the label with muscle aka threats, violence and intimidation. Four days later, while job Rules Record Label was trying to peel the g men off their backs, fifty Cent pulled that G unit guerrilla move of his, swooping.

most listened to song in radio history. Two thousand and five, Brooklyn Chris and erv Lorenzo sat inside a federal courthouse, watching nervously as one of Prem's former close confidants walked slowly to the witness stand. The brothers were on trial for laundering more than one million dollars in drug proceeds through their Murder Inc.

and simple. But even though Prem was not in the courtroom with them, you could nevertheless feel his shadow casting Paul over the proceedings. The allegations, The charges that the Lorenzos were facing were serious, career ending, life altering charges, and so as they watched while former Prime associate Joe Reagan sat down in the hot seat next to the.

day like it was yesterday. Reagan was no longer as close with Prem as he'd once been, and with the feared crime mogul now on the hook for a laundry list of offenses, including two murder for higher homicides, Reagan really didn't care what he said incriminated his one time ally, So Reagan began to talk. He recalled how Prem came by his auto garage in Brooklyn that afternoon. Pream had come all the way from Queen's and he had two

other guys with him. Now, the reason that they went all the way to Brooklyn and the first place was to buy a bunch of stuff from stores. They're on a shopping spree, you could say. And it's not that Pream was in a shopping mood or anything. He just wanted receipts, pieces of paper to prove that he had been in Brooklyn during the afternoon and not in Queen's were just an hour before nine bullets ripped through fifty cents body. But of course Prem had actually been in

South Jamaica Queen's that day. According to John Reagan's recollection, Reagan testified that Prem told him they'd just come from Queen's where fifty was shot coming out of his grandmother's house and then left to bleed out, just like the og fifty cent Kelvin Martin how he had led out on that seventh floor stairwell some thirteen years earlier. Now.

John Reagan further said that while Preme ordered the hit, that he hadn't pulled the trigger, but that was one of the other two guys who showed up Reagan's garage that day and that dude's name was Robert's son Lyons. Again, this is alleged by John Reagan. But wait, you're thinking, Jake, you told us earlier that fifty Cent id'd Daryl Hamo

Bomb as his shooter in a song. Yes, that's correct, and it's also true that the primary book that we used for researching this episode Ethan Brown's excellent Fat Cat fifty Cent in the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler also claimed quite definitively that the shooter was indeed Homo.

The distinction of who the trigger man was exactly may not really matter in the end, because the big bombshell here in John Reagan's testimony was that prem was the one who'd been behind the attempted assassination of fifty Cent. It was not some random stick up kid. It wasn't some low key street beef for whatever. It was the mastermind of a New York criminal empire, the chief of the Supreme Team, the alleged muscle of a record label

with which fifty Cent had been publicly feuding. So to recap, fifty Cent claimed Hama was the shooter in his song Many Men Wish Death At the Lorenzo Brothers two thousand and five trial, John Reagan testified that Robert's son Lyons pulled the trigger on behalf of Prem, who sat by and watched as fifty cent was sprayed with gunfire. Now, this was one man's testimony. This was talked from a guy who we can assume had fallen from grace and fallen out.

to assassinate Bob Dylan unquote. In other words, people would lose their minds if they knew that one of the biggest leaders of New York City organized crime, Kenneth McGriff aka Supreme aka Preme, put out a hit on one of the biggest rappers in the world.

glabel were never the same again. Their beef with fifty Cent was never really squashed, and in the years that followed, Chris Lorenzo co founded Adventures, a digital distribution platform aimed to give artists.

Later that same year, as Preme began serving his life sentence, fifty Cent released his third studio album, debuted at number two on the bill Board Album chart, and within a month and a half it sold over one million copies. Fifty Cent called the album Curtis perhaps a surprisingly vulnerable move to acknowledge the person he was before he took a dead man's name as his own, a dead stick up man who led a nasty, brudish and short life

of disgrace. I'm like fifty cent, who's still breathing, and who took that money without ever shaking hands with it.