Magic City

by Trick Daddy

  34

  Thug Holiday

  DESOTO WAS THE PLACE TO BE FOR FELONS IN FLORIDA. Back then, Desoto was the Madison Square Garden of prisons. A bunk at Desoto was like making it to the major leagues. The prison was close enough to Miami to know what went on in the streets. Family members could make the short trip for visits.

  For me it ended up being a homecoming of sorts. Black, Tronne, Melvin, and my older brother Cedric met me at check-in. Cedric had the same DNA that Hollywood and I had inherited. Our veins pumped a hustler’s blood. More than half my brothers have served time in prison. Cedric got jammed on a drug-trafficking charge. He was considered one of the older hustlers in the streets. I was happy to see those guys. I didn’t get to spend much time with Ced growing up. We ran into each other on the streets, but he was making his money and I was making mine. Tronne was locked up for armed robbery. Prison forced a much needed reunion party.

  That’s how prison goes. My life and that of the brothers’ I shared space with amid those walls forever intertwined. We bumped into each other along the way and formed lifelong bonds. There’s no room for pride when someone’s forced to use a toilet a yard away from another man. Prison is the truest fraternity. We didn’t share pledges and Greek letters. We shared life and death.

  On many occasions I would have died in there if not for Black, Ced, Tronne, or another one from my crew. Guards would have found me in a cell with my guts ripped open. I depended on my band of brothers. We shared commissary and everything else. At Desoto we ran the yard. Black, Melvin, and Ced had already earned their stripes. I still got into fights nevertheless. I was too volatile. The slightest cold stare or mean glance sent me upside someone’s head. I spent more time in confinement than I did on the yard. I used to spend 180 days at a time in the box. We were bored out of our minds down there. Breakfast came in at 4 a.m. Lunch was served at 10:30 a.m., then dinner at 3 p.m. We were left starving with nothing to do for hours. We got creative to pass the time. One inmate could sing. Another inmate pretended to be a human beat box, and one inmate quoted Bible scriptures.

  Each person was given his time of silence to perform. We couldn’t see each other, but we could hear each other. The only thing that interrupted that moment was a flushed toilet. I remember a couple of inmates whose throats were slit over flushing the potty. That time in confinement was the most sacred moment for any convicted felon, if there was such a thing in prison. We called it riding the bars.

  When it was my turn, everyone took extra notice. In fact, inmates started giving up their time to me. I rapped. My verses were laced with the real-life pain we suffered through. I rhymed about the friends I saw die in the streets. Their blood-soaked corpses evoked memories.

  A couple months before, word had reached me that my childhood friend Darryl had been shot to death. He was set up by his right-hand man, who told Darryl’s supplier that Darryl was ripping him off. It wasn’t true, but in the dope game someone always tried to knock a friend out the way to get to the top. My other playground friend O’Sean suffered a similar fate, but ended up paralyzed before he passed away. The bullet inched its way to his heart over time. As the news came in about my deceased comrades, it gave me more material to rap about. I couldn’t cry. Rapping was the best way to express my pain.

  “Trick, my homeboy used my baby mama to set me up!” one inmate would yell from his cell. “Can you lace something for me, bruh?”

  My rhymes became prison therapy. I was narrating our lives. Soon word spread throughout the cellblock that the wild inmate Trick had a way with words. Black brought inmates who wanted me to pen love letters to folks back home. Others asked me to write appeal letters. I started rapping in the yard and on the cellblock. Even the guards gathered around to hear me spit. When anyone from my crew phoned home, they held the phone in the direction of where I was rapping. I had become an in-house MC.

  “Bruh, you should start writing down your raps,” Black told me. Ced agreed. It was the only thing besides busting heads that came natural to me, so I gave it a shot. Before long, we were sending my songs to Hollywood. He began promoting events and was planning on getting a record label off the ground with his partner, Ted. Their group, Nu Vibes, wasn’t making any waves. Wood still wanted me to be the face of the label.

  Ted, though, wasn’t sure I was a wise investment. My track record showed that all I seemed to be dedicated to was landing in prison. It was a hard pill to swallow. Long ago I had given up on myself, so I couldn’t expect people to jump on my bandwagon. That wagon always seemed to be leaning off a cliff. I was determined nonetheless and kept writing. I had finally found something to hold on to. I always decided to be the best at what I set out to do. If I was going to be a rapper, I planned to be the coldest emcee. Things were looking up for me. Then the night of June 22, 1994, swept in like a hurricane.

  35

  Thugs Don’t Live Long

  IT WAS POURING RAIN THAT DAY. PASSING SHOWERS are customary during Miami summers. The sun emerges after about fifteen minutes of thundering, but that day the rain didn’t stop. I’ll never forget how violently the sky roared that night. I was boxing with someone from the crew. The sparring kept us in shape. My name blared over the in-house intercom. I was being called into the main office, then I caught a glimpse of Ced racing across the yard toward me. He nearly ran over everyone in the cafeteria as he made his way toward me.

  “Watch out, bruh!”

  Inmates were yelling at Ced to be careful, but he kept on running like a bat out of hell. I made my way down the stairs to meet him. When our eyes connected, I knew. He didn’t have to utter a word. Things were getting crazy in the streets. The younger hustlers out there weren’t respecting the game like back in the day. Dudes were straight setting each other up. Bodies were left cold and crumpled all over the Beans. Things were crazier than when I’d been out there trapping. The chain of events gave me the intuition to understand that Ced was about to confirm my deepest fear. In prison we got the news of anything happening in the streets before the cops made it to the scene. We even knew what was about to happen before it popped off. Incidents that occurred in prison often trickled out into the streets. By now Black and the rest of the crew were gathered at the top of the stairs.

  Ced paused to catch his breath. “You wouldn’t believe what happened, bruh,” he said.

  “Wood,” I replied.

  Ced nodded.

  I can’t explain the anguish that took over me. Imagine breathing without a heartbeat. Picture standing without legs. Then you fall down inside. The world around you ends. Every feeling at your core turns cold. You’re left empty inside.

  I didn’t want to believe Hollywood was gone. Those who’ve lost a loved one can relate. Denial offers a bit of momentary peace, but then the horror sinks in. Wood wasn’t coming back. They say the hardest men aren’t supposed to cry. I cried so much that night even the guards felt sorry for me. Black tried consoling me.

  Hollywood’s rep made him a target. He had everything every dope boy wanted, but he was the type to give you the shirt off his back. Violence was his last resort. Someone wanted to take the king off his throne. Word on the street was that Hollywood and his right-hand man, Fatso, got ambushed. Three rivals armed with AR-15 assault rifles converged on them while they were parked at the corner of Northwest Twenty-fifth Avenue and 152nd Street. The attackers emptied more than fifty rounds through the windshield. I don’t even know if my brother had time to pull his gun. I still wish I was there. I’d probably have died alongside my brother. It would have been the best way to go.

  I stood there as pain consumed me. It subsided to anger. Then I was overcome with rage. I grabbed the shank I kept in the grooves under the toilet and searched for anyone I thought might have had a hand in Wood’s death, but the fighting didn’t ease my pain. It didn’t make sense. Cutting somebody wasn’t going to bring Hollywood back. He was gone. All I could do was go to the chaplain to get permission to attend Wood’s funeral. I asked to be able to atte
nd with some dignity, but the warden wasn’t having it. I arrived at Wood’s funeral dressed in my jailhouse suit shackled from head to toe. The large crowd that gathered showed just how much Hollywood was loved. They tried hard not to stare at his shackled younger brother. Miami had lost a prince.

  I sat next to Ted. I looked at my brother’s corpse in that coffin and realized that I had to make a change. This mess I called my life wasn’t cutting it. Rap was going to be my best shot out. I would have to make it so.

  I turned to Ted. “Bruh, I’m gonna be on the straight and narrow. I’m not going back to prison when I get out.”

  It didn’t matter if Ted believed me. I wanted out of the madness that just stole my heart. I wanted the world to see who Hollywood was. He could live through my rhymes. I wanted the world to see how we lived in the streets of Miami. If I offered folks a lens to see what we were dealing with, then maybe things could change. My dream was to become a street journalist. I knew rap could give me that opportunity.

  Tupac Shakur was doing it. Everyone on the cellblocks was really feeling that cat. His music had a message. He was taking the ghetto’s pain to the mainstream. Over in Houston the rapper Scarface was doing much the same thing. They were both emcees whose blueprint a brother like me, going from the pen to the mike, could use as a guide in the fog.

  I began writing as soon as I got back to my cell. The lyrics that spilled out on the page were the things that weighed heavy on my heart. I didn’t edit or rewrite anything. I was pouring out my soul. In addition to Hollywood, I had already lost five of my closest homeboys while locked up. So it was evident that brothers in the streets didn’t live long. I began to write:

  Now picture me as a killer

  Young black dope dealer I’m doing this one for my niggas

  Who ride for this

  Who even lost they life for this

  And them niggas who survivin this

  They don’t live that long

  Those are lyrics from the song “They Don’t Live That Long.” Titles came later. I wrote what I was feeling at the time. Most times I was venting.

  By the time I finished, I had written about four hundred songs. I mailed the notebook to Ted so he could know I was serious. I spent the rest of my days at Desoto focused on rapping. I promised the inmates in Desoto that I’d take our stories to the mainstream. They believed in me. Life is ironic. I had sought all my life to find somewhere I belonged. Love had eluded me all these years. I found it in those prison walls, among brothers I’d have died for.

  “Let the young homeys know this isn’t the place, bruh,” Black would say. “They don’t gotta take this fall.”

  36

  Rags to Riches

  I HAD NOTHING WHEN I WAS RELEASED ON JANUARY 25, 1995. I looked around and was alone. The state had taken two and a half years of my life. Wood wasn’t there to pick me up. I caught the bus and headed to the Beans. The corners were worse than I had imagined. Liberty City was on fire. The corners mirrored a scene from a Wild West cowboy movie.

  My homeboy Big C and his former right-hand man, Tiny, were at war. They had taken over the streets together when the older hustlers went down. Liberty City belonged to Big C’s Zombie Squad. They had to cosign anything going down in the neighborhood, but Tiny started robbing the crew. He dressed up in a disguise and robbed his own crew’s dope hole. Big C figured out his former partner’s ill-hearted scheme and all hell broke loose. They had the Feds all over America on their asses. The FBI labeled Fifteenth Avenue running through the Beans the most dangerous strip in the United States.

  I wandered the corners for a while. It was tempting, but I couldn’t go back there. My palms sweated, craving to clutch the powder. Even Big C wanted me to take the rap game global. I couldn’t get a day job, but I had managed to make a cassette with my songs. I gave it to a couple of homeboys to blast in their rides. Lil Nut was one of the few friends who wasn’t dead or locked up yet. He bumped the tape in his car. Everyone thought it was ice-cold. Then I saw a flyer for a talent show Uncle Luke was hosting at the Pac-Jam. The grand prize was a recording contract to become part of the new 2 Live Crew.

  I planned to win. No one was going to take what I believed was mines away from me. I even told all my friends I was going to win. They took it with a grain of salt. People were sure I’d be back behind bars within the month. That night, the Pac-Jam was filled to capacity. Everyone showed up. From the Beans all the way down to Homestead, folks wanted to see if the rumors about my skills on the mike were true. I had to deliver.

  After the dance group No Good But So Good performed, it was my turn. Most people recount some story of lightning and thunder moving through their bodies during their moment of truth. I didn’t experience that grand epiphany. After the shoot-outs, prison riots, and murdered friends, nothing on this planet could have spooked me. Luke played “Captain D’s Coming” and I waited. Then I ripped my verse. I didn’t even finish the verse before the crowd erupted. People went crazy. Luke nearly had to shut the club down. Finally.

  I wouldn’t say I cried, but the moment was retribution. All my life, I couldn’t catch a break. I’m just a skinny kid from the Beans who was trying to find his place in a fucked-up world. That’s it. In life most people just need one shot. They just need an opportunity for someone to throw them the rock. The ball always seemed to sail clear over my head. You can’t knock a man for turning down the wrong alley if all the other routes have roadblocks.

  I closed my eyes.

  I’m in the first phase of my dream. Now please don’t wake me up. God, let this be a real dream. Everything in my life has been a nightmare. Please let this be real.

  Trick Daddy Dollars was born.

  The dream was as real as a heart attack. Things happened fast. Luke Records was the first independent label owned by an artist. A lot of folks believe that’s why the powers that be gave him so much trouble. As I mentioned earlier, a black man on top is a threat in America, but also some in the community felt he did a disservice to black women with songs like “Me So Horny” and “Pop That Coochie.” America hadn’t seen women getting down like that in music videos before.

  It isn’t our fault our women were blessed with curves. All I can say is that Luke gave this brother that opportunity I talked about earlier. Hell, he was the only person I could remember back then really doing anything charitable in the community. His football league gave a lot of kids an alternative besides robbing and dope dealing.

  But the censorship battles took their toll on Luke’s record label. Someone needed to resurrect the Miami sound in the mainstream. He had signed JT Money and Deboniar, who formed the Poison Clan. They were putting out some dope music. Miami needed to be put back in the forefront. Luke put me on the song “Scarred” and the rest is history. The song was a huge hit and brought Miami back to the forefront of hip-hop. Laying down my verse wasn’t much work because I took it from the material I wrote in prison. A year ago I was in a six-by-nine-foot cell. Now, I was rapping my behind off in a music video on MTV. I lived in Luke’s condo. The place sure beat a prison cell. I was on my way, but Luke’s legal troubles had his label going down in ruins. He had to let go of me and a couple of his other acts like Tre+6 along with several of his employees.

  Ted stepped in, his apprehension about signing me having dissipated. Now he knew I was a gold mine, so I became the face of Slip-n-Slide Records. Putting out my first album, Based on a True Story, was easy. The title was self-explanatory. Like my verse in “Scarred,” most of the songs were written in prison. Many of the records were dedicated to Hollywood. In fact, most of the songs on my first three albums were written in prison. It’s why people always tell me they feel the pain in my music. Those lyrics aren’t some scripted shit penned in some fancy recording studio. We got a distribution deal from an independent label called Warlock Records and hit the ground running.

  I wanted to bring my whole crew with me. This was their moment in the sun as much as it was mines. Dante came straight out o
f prison to hop in the studio and give us a song he had written in prison called “Killa Head a Body Head.” The song’s lyrics were some heartfelt gutter shit he was feeling in the cage. We sought out Tronne and Tater, but they were busy making major moves in the street. You could say I took that fork in the road, but we stayed close. Whatever they needed, if I could provide, I did. Ted’s plan was for me and another dope emcee named Buddy Roe to come out as a supergroup. Buddy Roe and me were like brothers from another mother musically. We were both raw and soon became connected at the hip. Then he got jammed for cocaine trafficking. That white girl is seductive indeed. Once again I hit a brick wall. Roe and I were like a two-headed monster. We had already laid down tons of tracks. The streets were going to be ours, but I sucked it up for what it was. Roe gave me his blessing to continue making music. In that moment I wanted to throw in the towel. Who was I kidding? Everyone and everything around me was reinforcing the truth.

  Trick is just a dope-dealing crook trying his hand at music. Soon enough folks would see the light and he’ll be back in the pen like all of his comrades.

  God gave me the strength to stay on track when Roe went in. Our street team pushed my records out the trunks of cars, flea markets, and even corner stores. Call it guerrilla marketing. Master P had done it. He showed America the power of the grassroots dollar. As Southern rappers we were already at a handicap. Any hip-hop not coming out of New York or California was deemed unworthy. The hip-hop elites didn’t think Southern rappers could be good lyricists and storytellers. Scarface was the only emcee thus far getting that kind of recognition. Goodie Mob, OutKast, and other Atlanta acts were putting in work and not getting the credit they deserved. The West Coast faced much the same hardships before they broke out the gate and were sitting on top of the hip-hop throne. Ironically, East Coast rappers were playing in our backyard, but not showing us any love.