BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family

by Shalhoup, Mara

  befriended one of the resident drug dealers, O-Dog, and both the dealer and his hood proved fertile material for the rapper. Jeezy gives shout-outs to O-Dog in several tracks, including his early hit “Air Forces,” and the neighborhood serves as a backdrop for a number of other songs. The streets around Boulevard—characterized by brick low-rises sequestered by iron gates and crowds of boys squatting on the lawless corners—were as real to Jeezy as any he’d known in Macon. And he’d known a few.

  Meech, who was O-Dog’s boss, grew well acquainted with Jeezy—though perhaps a tad too late. Meech was generous with the rapper, paying Atlanta club DJs to play his yet-unheard tracks and lending him cars and jewelry for various video shoots. But Jeezy did not join BMF Entertainment’s roster. By the time the label was incorporated in early 2004, Jeezy, who was twenty-six at the time, was running his own company, Corporate Thugz Entertainment, which sold tens of thousands of his mixtapes. He’d also hooked up with Atlanta mixtape gurus DJ Drama and DJ Cannon, who ran the production team Gangsta Grillz and would soon release Jeezy’s wildly popular street album, Trap or Die. (Trap being a synonym for the drug game.) Jeezy also had buy-in from two major labels. Jeezy, along with three other rappers, was part of the collective Boyz N Da Hood, which had inked a deal with P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Entertainment. And as a solo artist, Jeezy had just signed with Def Jam.

  But as far as Meech and the rest of BMF were concerned, Jeezy was one of them. Jeezy wasn’t resisting. Outside the Westin on the night of Bleu’s listening party, Jeezy draped an arm around Bleu and declared, “This is my mutherfuckin’ homeboy, Bleu DaVinci. It’s love, man. It’s family, dog.”

  Meech placed his bets on Bleu because he had to, but it was Jeezy who supplied the soundtrack for BMF’s ascent. When Meech and his crew rolled around Atlanta in their Bentleys and Lambos and Ferraris and Maybachs, Jeezy’s tracks were pumping through their speakers. That was back when few outsiders would’ve recognized the rapper’s shrewd and disillusioned rasp. But soon—a full year before his major-label debut in the summer of 2005—Jeezy’s verse began floating from the rolled-down windows of other, more modest rides, not just in Atlanta but in Miami, New York, and L.A., too. His sound, a heady mix of dark cinema, guttural grunts, and world-weary observations, was catching on. Jeezy was making it. And Meech (and J-Bo and Ill and Bleu and O-Dog) were along for the ride.

  All five of them appear as characters in the video for Jeezy’s first major-label single, “Over Here,” filmed in Miami at the South Beach mega-strip-club, Teasers. In one scene, Meech lets a handful of bills cascade over the cleavage of a beautiful dancer. In another, dozens of models lounge around a rooftop pool where it’s raining money, and several onlookers wear T-shirts printed with the title of Bleu’s single, “We Still Here.” The video for “We Still Here,” incidentally, was more polished than Jeezy’s. The camera work was more sophisticated, the choreography more professional. But there also were telling similarities. Both videos make abrupt transitions from colorful scenery and an upbeat tempo to a darker, slower vibe. And after the transition, both videos cut to shots of a silver Bentley and silver Rolls-Royce, with Meech hovering in the background.

  BMF’s influence extended beyond Jeezy’s video and into the clubs where he performed. The act of “making it rain” cash—a practice that BMF claims to have originated—helped build crowds into a frenzy during Jeezy’s shows. Sometimes those performances would take place at the strip clubs BMF frequented, and the raining bills would have the added effect of energizing a mass of naked, clamoring girls. And as with Bleu, Meech and his crew often would stake out a place of authority. They would position themselves onstage alongside Jeezy. Meech occupied a spot in the middle, either next to or just behind the rapper, and J-Bo, Ill, O-Dog, and Bleu formed the periphery. (O-Dog would receive a special nod from those onstage when his name cropped up in one verse or another.)

  Dressed in matching black, often reeling from the euphoric high of top-notch ecstasy, Meech and his crew basked in the glow of their mini-kingdom. They were brothers in wealth, prosperity, and power, and they held court over one of the hottest scenes in hip-hop. Joining the hundreds of people spread before them in the audience, they chanted Jeezy’s lyrics in unison with the rising star:

  Two record deals, the radio still won’t play me,

  But I don’t give a fuck, ’cause it’s the streets that made me.

  Though Jeezy’s all-but-certain success would do nothing to legitimize BMF Entertainment, it was no small consolation that the rapper, by mere association with Meech, was raising BMF’s profile. But there was something else about Jeezy, something more intangible, that made him invaluable to Meech. Jeezy delivered a high that no amount of pure cocaine could match. Looking back at his decade-long run as a drug kingpin, Meech says that nothing—not the money, not the respect, not the notoriety—was more exhilarating than one thing: “pushing Jeezy.”

  Within weeks of the parties that Meech threw for Bleu (but couldn’t attend), the boss was back on the scene. Six months had passed since he was charged with the murders of Wolf and Riz, and the conditions of his bond—both the house arrest and the ankle monitor—were finally lifted. There was little for which authorities could continue to hold him. The evidence was slim, an indictment nonexistent.

  One of Meech’s first orders of business as an unfettered man was to celebrate his thirty-sixth birthday. It was not an intimate affair. In June of 2004, he rented an entire mega-club, Compound, on Atlanta’s industrial West Side. The twenty-five-thousand-square-foot space included two ultramodern buildings, one with a dance floor ringed by plasma TVs, the other featuring a VIP loft with an elevated bed and movie projector. The club’s sprawling courtyard, which could accommodate nearly one thousand people on its own, was anchored by a forty-foot reflecting pool and Zen rock garden. Compound was the epitome of posh, Atlanta’s destination for celebrity birthdays and parties thrown by the likes of Porsche and GQ. But Meech’s birthday party blew those others away.

  The courtyard was adorned with six-foot-tall white neon letters that spelled M-E-E-C-H. BMF Entertainment’s insignia was carved in a massive block of ice. Half-naked models wore painted-on bikini tops—and might have been the focal point, if not for the $100,000 in rented wildlife. (The party’s theme, according to printed invitations, was “Meech of the Jungle.”) The club’s patio was graced by an elephant, an ostrich, a few zebras, and a pair of lions. Revelers gawked as the big cats paced restlessly in their cages.

  Meech was making up for lost time, and he was promoting his label hard. In his brother’s eyes, however, a lifestyle like that was sure to attract the attention of the feds, and he was right. In a van parked outside Compound, two men kept as close a watch on the party as they dared. One of them, DEA agent Harvey, knew more about BMF than any law enforcement officer in Atlanta. The other, the Atlanta Police Department’s detective Burns, was doing his best to catch up with Harvey’s knowledge of the crew.

  Had Meech been aware of his uninvited guests, his likely response would have been, Bring it on. Meech felt safe from harm—protected by a crew that he believed would never turn on him, and insulated by a business acumen that hadn’t failed him yet. He figured he’d discovered the recipe for invincibility: Don’t keep the company of snitches, don’t sell to the feds, don’t talk on the phone, and don’t put anything in your name. Simple.

  But to Terry, it wasn’t so straightforward as that. Terry’s crew was separate and distinct from Meech’s, and by the time Meech’s birthday rolled around, neither boss had much of a say in what the other did. It wasn’t as if Terry could come in and squash the partying and the flaunting and the lifestyle geared toward grabbing attention. The people doing the partying were answering only to Meech, and Meech was encouraging the debauchery. All Terry could do was sit back and hope that the partying didn’t spiral too far out of control. In the meantime, he kept the reins tight on his own crew.

  While Meech was planning his birthday blowout, Terry was bus
y handing out orders to his trusty managers, distributors, and drivers. Unlike Meech, Terry did issue orders over the phone, but he tried to keep the language vague. Speaking to one driver in June of 2004, Terry said to go ahead and deliver the “pants” (cocaine). Later, the driver asked whether he was supposed to hand over a “dime” (ten kilos), to which Terry answered yes. As for the destination, Terry said not to take the pants to “A-World” (Atlanta), but to go there and pick up some “mail” (drug money). Of course, the team of federal agents cycling through the calls could clearly see that something was up—and, as a result, Terry was drawing at least as much unwanted attention to BMF as Meech was.

  The growing divide between the brothers meant that Meech had to start operating on his own turf. Meech needed a network that, aside from the connect, was independent of Terry’s. The brothers already had their own crews. With the exception of Doc Marshall, who crunched BMF’s numbers for both brothers, Terry and Meech did not share employees. What Meech really needed were some properties of his own, to serve as stash houses. He quickly amassed three in Atlanta. One was a handsome, traditional home that sat far off the road on a wooded lot. The house was in a residential part of one of Atlanta’s wealthiest neighborhoods, Buckhead, and it was called “the Gate,” after the iron security gate that Meech had installed at the foot of the driveway. BMF associates from out of town often stayed there, but the real purpose of the house was to have a place to receive cocaine shipments from California. High-ranking managers, including J-Bo, broke down the arriving shipments into smaller loads and handed them over to the distributors. Meech seldom if ever showed his face at the Gate.

  Two other houses also served as temporary shelter for the big shipments, and few distributors were allowed there. In fact, only the most trusted insiders could visit those locations. One was a brick home in a sterile Atlanta subdivision. It was dubbed “the Horse Ranch.” The other, a classy town house, was called “the Elevator,” because there was a small glass elevator in the home. Once the brothers fell out—and Terry assumed control of the White House—Meech and J-Bo took up permanent residence at the Elevator.

  Unlike the White House, investigators were completely in the dark about the Elevator’s whereabouts. But while Meech’s living arrangement was shrouded in secrecy, his dominance in Atlanta was no mystery. Local cops and federal agents couldn’t help but speculate about what Meech was thinking, but one thing was clear: He was advertising his presence in a way that got everyone talking. At several Atlanta intersections, including ones at I–75 and at Peachtree Road, Meech announced his intentions from the sky. The testament of his power was printed in white block letters on a black twenty-by-sixty-foot expanse. The words were a nod to Scarface—a frequent source of Meech’s inspiration. In the film, Cuban-born drug lord Tony Montana looks to the Miami sky and sees a message ticking across the side of a blimp: THE WORLD IS YOURS. Likewise, the billboards that Meech placed around town declared, THE WORLD IS BMF’S.

  Of all the rumors being tossed around about Meech and BMF, it was the news of the billboards that really got Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Rand Csehy worked up. By mid-2004, Csehy (pronounced SHAY-hee) was used to cops coming to him with increasingly outlandish stories about the Black Mafia Family. But a drug dealer advertising on a billboard?

  Csehy had been with the DA’s Office for two years, and he loved the work. As part of the office’s narcotics division, he didn’t have to deal with the heartache of violent crime (victims weren’t his thing) or the monotony of theft investigations (not enough drama). Best of all, he got to work with a group of men he viewed as peers and equals. Csehy had close ties to the detectives who brought him their drug cases—some say too close. He knew that several of his coworkers frowned on his cozy relationship with the police, and as with all the other things about Csehy that caused a stir at the DA’s office, he didn’t care.

  From the hoops in his ears to his tattooed triceps, his heavy silver rings to his tattered jeans, Csehy looked more like a narc than a prosecutor. He possessed an undeniable excitability, an intensity betrayed by wide eyes that flashed an almost too brilliant blue. Csehy was passionate, and if that sometimes got him in trouble, so be it. He often caught flak for speaking too much of his mind to his boss, District Attorney Paul Howard. Then there was his chumminess with the cops—an affinity that dated back to his days at a suburban DA’s office. After moving from the small suburban office to the big city one, he found himself gravitating toward Atlanta’s narcotics investigators. He rode with them when they executed search warrants. He participated in their stings. He carried a gun. And after wrapping up a day’s work, he and some of the detectives would go out drinking—a ritualistic occurrence in the summer of 2004, when Csehy’s second marriage in three years was falling apart.

  Csehy made himself available to the police when they needed legal advice, and they, in turn, filled him in on the talk of the streets. At the time, there was a lot of talk about the Black Mafia Family, but not a whole lot of legal advice to hand out. That’s because the DA’s office had not landed a single indictment against the crew—in a town where hundreds of BMF associates were believed to be controlling the drug trade.

  When one cop came to Csehy with the startling revelation that the crew was advertising on billboards around town, the prosecutor was incredulous. He went to Buckhead to check it out. And he realized that, as with so many other rumors, the billboard wasn’t what people were making it out to be. The billboard was advertising a record label—in much the same way that Atlanta’s iconic neon yellow So So Def billboard graced I–75 on the south side of town. “What are we gonna do?” Csehy mused to himself. “Take down So So Def while we’re at it?” And so while the myth of the BMF crime syndicate was everywhere, the evidence to prove its existence was nil. In fact, there was only one person on the Atlanta police force with any institutional knowledge of BMF. He also happened to be Csehy’s best friend.

  Detective Burns had learned about the Black Mafia Family on a fluke. In 2001, after he was promoted from a patrol officer in the city’s most dangerous police zone to an investigator in the department’s elite organized crime unit, he was trying to squeeze information out of a suspect. The guy didn’t have the insight Burns was looking for; instead, he wrote down a name on a piece of paper and slipped it to the detective. The name meant nothing to Burns at the time. A year later, however, the name came up when Burns went undercover in a white-collar crime ring. An Atlanta company called XQuisite Empire was using the identities of innocent men and women to buy cars and homes for drug dealers. One of XQuisite’s employees was the same man whose name was printed on that slip of paper. And Burns soon began to suspect that XQuisite’s president, William “Doc” Marshall, played a significant role in a drug crew that called itself BMF.

  Burns’s impeccable work in the XQuisite investigation helped qualify him for his next career move: inclusion in a multiagency federal task force that was committed to rooting out drug kingpins. DEA agent Harvey helped out with the task force as well. And Csehy, who like Harvey was not an official member, served as its liaison to the DA’s office. Csehy would assist in obtaining search warrants and, hopefully, drafting affidavits seeking wiretaps on BMF associates’ phones.

  All three men—as well as a dozen others—were called together in the summer of 2004 to go over one of the task force’s primary initiatives: Target the highly secretive, seemingly impenetrable Black Mafia Family. To some in the room, the letters BMF meant nothing, and the term Black Mafia Family seemed almost comical in what it implied. But to Harvey and Burns, who were well ahead of the curve, and Csehy, who was catching up, the difficulty of the mission was obvious.

  The meeting made clear the need to nab a BMF associate on drug charges (most likely an associate on the organization’s lowest rungs) and persuade him to talk. The information would have to be good enough to set up an undercover buy and, from there, build a case for a wiretap. For that to happen, someone inside BMF would have to
get sloppy. Until then, the task force agents would watch the streets as closely as they could, hoping they might catch a break.

  FOUR FALLEN PRINCE

  For some reason, they took it to another level.

  -WILLIAM “DOC” MARSHALL

  Rashannibal “Prince” Drummond was a big kid who liked big parties. The aspiring musician with espresso-shaded skin and a wide smile had a knack for figuring out where the action was—and when he couldn’t find it, he’d create it. His most recent bash, a celebration for his twenty-second birthday the year before, lasted two full days. Prince treated every party like it was his last. And while he didn’t have the kind of money to do it up the way he hoped, he managed to pull off a lot with a little. That’s something he learned from his mother.

  Prince was the third of Debbie Morgan’s four children, and over the years, she’d scraped by to make sure they wanted for nothing. Debbie’s singsong lilt and sparkly black eyes, her close-cropped hair and petite frame, gave the impression of a woman eternally optimistic, perhaps bordering on naïve. But her pixieish looks masked a strong will. If she wanted something, she’d go after it with a fire that surprised those who mistook her peaceable nature for passivity.