Rap can be a dangerous game – even in Australia

old inner Western suburbs. In those days it had stockyards and sheep selling pens and all that sort of stuff, and you could smell a cattle and the sheep when you live there. It was like a little country town. Had pepper trees around the sale yards and you could hear dogs barking all that sort of stuff. Now and again cattle would jump out of the yards and run down the streets. Which is another story. But I used to drive in from Kensington to my then place of work,

which was on the Spencer Street side of town. It was about a five minute.

common shortcut if you lived out that way. Langford Street was interesting. This shortcut just dove on the west side of the North Melbourne footy Ground because sometimes in the evenings you'd be driving down there and you would see someone standing at the front of unallegedly empty warehouse an old brick joint, and it'd be somebody having a smoke and looking a bit.

used to happen sometimes in Langford Street, North Melbourne. But I'm here to say that times change and so do crimes, because these days in Langford Street, North Melbourne, forty years later, we have a different scene altogether. Ollington's Two Up School has gone to God.

And sometimes the cash might be cash that they obtained in some naughty way, and they attend the rave and they might buy or sell certain substances. I'm not sure, but possibly and certainly some of those same people might get along to another event a few blocks away up in Racecourse Road, up in Newmarket, Racecourse Road, new Market or South Kensington if.

one way to put it. And among those vibrant multicultural aficionados of the martial arts and the boxing and pugilism, a lot of colorful people who like to bet on the results, who like to see who else is there, who like to rub shoulders and stare down other people that they don't like, and so sometimes we have trouble at the fight nights and occasionally.

but they do have a go. It was one of these young fellows, a young bloke called Pell Bedong now pell Bedong Pell is his correct name. It's not a nickname. His nickname is, or was, sadly, Peasy, and Peas is no longer with us because he was shot in the early hours of a recent Saturday morning a few weeks ago,

just around Halloween. We've often advised our listeners that nothing good happens after two am, and I have to say that it's not improved by an extra hour, because pas was found shot dead in Langford Street, North Melbourne at three point fifteen on this particular Saturday morning, and whatever had happened to lead PZ to be shot dead had happened shortly before that in or about Langford Street, North Melbourne, which tells us that that old shortcut through from Kensington

to the city still attracts its share of skulduggery and crime and all the rest of it. In fact, there was a time when a very well known and notorious figure had some building so like old army huts or similar down at the Arden Street end of Langford Street. And this fellow was a neo Nazi, and he was a neo Nazi who actually converted to Islam, which was an intriguing transition, but I guess we can all transition

if we want to. And he ran these sort of army hut things and he would take in I think officially what he was doing was taking in perhaps ex prisoners and offering them a place to stay. I think unofficially what he was doing was running a gathering point.

are still looking for the shooter or shooters. The reaction to his death is a little intriguing, it seems to me. On the night it happened, this is after three o'clock in the morning, so we're talking the hours before dawn on a Saturday morning, the police who gathered at the scene were I won't say besieged, but I'm tempted to use that word. They were certainly forced to line up a line of police around the crime scene to protect the crime scene from the throng of angry young people.

These would be rap fans or the sort of people that go to raves where rappers perform, and they were very agitated and very angry and upset that their friend, mental mate, relative, whatever, mister Bidong was no longer with us and the police. And I don't think they can be blamed for this. They have been blamed for it,

but I don't think it's fair. The police thought that they were looking after a murder scene, a crime scene, and that had to be preserved at all costs so the forensic people could get there and check what was left. You know, the bullet shells, blood, you name it, DNA, all that stuff, all the clues, and so they stood in a line and protected the crime scene despite the fact that a couple of dozen of these young people were there milling around.

a very good look. The police have been criticized from some quarters for not stopping the brawls and the fights, but I think in the circumstances, it was one of those situations where they were damned if they did, and they were damned if they didn't, because we all know that as soon as the police moved in on that gathering of brawling young men, mostly that they would have to be forcibly detained and forcibly arrested, and that would mean that they would be filmed by various people media

or otherwise forcibly handcuffing young African men, and that those images would be used against the police as some sort of suggestion or proof or evidence that the police are a terrible, wicked, bullying, racist group of people, which is probably deeply unfair to the police, but that is the situation in which they have to work, and so their choice was not to do anything active against the agitated young people, but to get on with the investigation, which I think.

entire community. But the dead man's brother, whose name is Bidoon Bedon, came out pretty strongly and said that wasn't a good thing to do. He said that such warnings against retaliation spread a false narrative, is what he said, a false narrative that African youths were violent thugs and so on and so forth. I reckon he probably overstated the case a bit, but anyway, that was his case to state it as he saw fit, And of course he is a grieving, concerned relative of the dead man.

He described his brother predictably enough, as a gentle soul, kind, lovely and all that good stuff, which tends to be the sort of phrases most of us use about the recently departed. He also seemed totally at a loss to explain why his brother was shot. He seemed to have no idea. He couldn't explain anything about it except the interesting proposition that he didn't think there would be any retaliation. Now, I don't know how he could not know anything about

it and then predict there'd be no retaliation. I'm not sure why he knows a little bit but not the rest. It's intriguing, but it did remind me a little bit

of a scene with another group of people. Twenty five years ago, a fellow called Carl Williams was shot in the belly in a small park out in the Western Suburbs, and he was shot in the belly by the late Jason Moran, who became the late Jason Ran mainly because he did shoot Carl Williams in the belly, because it led to retaliations funnily enough, and Carl Williams was probably saved, as we've observed here before, by the fact that his diet consisted heavily of red rooster and other fried products,

which gave him a large padding around his stomach. When Jason Ran produced a small twenty two pistol and shot him in the belly. The small slug, which is capable of killing you if it hits you in the right spot, the small slug did not penetrate his belly sufficiently to injure him in any vital organ. Didn't get his liver, didn't get his heart or his life. It just lodged in his guts. And so he was able to very lucky man at that stage. It was his twenty ninth birthday.

He was able to walk off, walk home, bleeding from the belly. And when he got to a hospital where I think his mother drove him when she noticed the bleeding, the doctors removed the twenty two bullet and then they called the police and they interviewed Carl Williams. He got amnesia. Now this is a very rare side effect of a bullet wound. He got amnesia and he couldn't remember how

he been shot or who by. And he said, as far as seeing you, he was walking down the street when he felt a sharp pain and noticed some blood on his T shirt and he said, sorry, doctor and officer and detective, I just don't know what happened or who shot me. And I didn't even realize I'd been shot. Now, I don't believe Carl. I think Carl was telling absolute porkies. And there's no doubt he covered his memory soon afterwards because he engaged a very willing hit man to go

out and shoot the Morans. And in fact, the entire Underworld War is our listeners will know because they've heard it so often. The entire Underworld War was essentially begun by Carl Williams's revenge attacks on the Moran family and all their supporters and friends and hired guns and all the rest of it. Why am I bringing that up.

I'm bringing it up because my feeling about the shooting of our rapper mate is that possibly someone somewhere and knows exactly why that has happened, and knows probably who's done it or who's ordered it, and that indeed it will lead to retaliations, probably retaliations gunplay, unless certain people are detained, arrested and locked up before all the bad things can happen. That is our prediction here at Life and Crimes. Interesting stuff about the connection between rappers and gangsters.

We know that the rap culture is inextricably entwined with gangster culture. In the gang culture in America, not just the West Coast, but also the East Coast, where gangs are very big deal gang members in the cryps and these other big gangs, these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, thousands of them, probably not only on the streets and in the tenements and in the bars and all the rest of it, but in jail where the

big gangs dominate the American jails. And they divided fairly well along ethnic lines in many ways, and they they all are very fond of harming each other and often

killing each other. And the rapper culture is tied into that in such an extraordinary way that two of the biggest rappers in America, two of the sort of pioneers of rap, who sold extraordinary numbers of what we say records, but you know, extraordinary numbers of their songs, were a guy called the Notorious Big, Notorious Big Biggie Smalls, I think,

real name Christopher Wallace. He was a big, fat guy who was very good at English when he was at a private Catholic school in Brooklyn, and he was able to write rap songs and make them up on the spot. And I'm a very fluent and very good. He had a good voice and a good brain, but sadly he also did a lot of drug dealing and that got him involved in that whole sort of scene, and he ends up being a bitter enemy of another rapper from the West Coast.

And we've seen that in our very own North Melbourne in recent times. Interesting point here there is another Sudanese rapper in Melbourne, a guy who rejoices in the rap moniker of BBG Smoky. Now BBG Smoky has another name, surprisingly the one on his passport or his driver's license or whatever. And his other name is Sean Deng, and Sean Deng is a tall, skinny fellow who's a pretty good at spitting out the rap lyrics. If anybody wants to look up Sewan Deng's that is BBG Smokey's main video,

you will find that there is. It's very sort of la You actually think you're looking at something shot in a luxury suburb of Los Angeles. That's what it looks like, the sort of big white Spanish style luxury home, and parked out in front of it all these very ostentatiously gangsterish cars. There's a I think a Lamborghini. There's various luxury Jeeps or decked out. There is a gold platedd Harley Davidson, and many Mercedes and all these things. And

some of these cars. Now, this was actually shot in Melbourne because this guy's I think he records in Collingwood so he's in a suburban boy and the cars he used to do that promotional song video were supplied by members of or associates of what we call the Notorious Crime Family in cf. The Notorious Crime Family is a Middle Eastern crime group headed by let's say, a guy

called George Morogi. George Morogi is in jail and has been for a while, for a very long time, for thirty years whatever, because he hunted down and shot a rival drug dealer a while back, and he was caught, convicted, locked away. But it is said that he conducts from inside jail a massive international drug dealing network which involves friends, associates, relatives and so on.

p Z Bedong is a matter for him. Maybe he should study the acknowledged godfather of the form, the late Coolio, whose rap classic Gangster's Paradise includes one warning line that can be repeated in a family newspaper, whereas most rap lyrics cannot be because they are very very violent, and very sexist and very misogynist. And in fact, most rap lyrics make the Taliban look like methodist feminist missionaries. Here's

the line, the warning line from Coolio. You better watch how you're talken and where you're walkin, or you and your homies might be lined in chalk.