August 22, 2023 • 49 mins
Young Thug was raised off one of south Atlanta's most notorious streets, Cleveland Avenue. But when the national Bloods gang infiltrated that part of the city in the early 2000s, that street became known as Bleveland Avenue. We meet a reformed gangster turned street minister and a gang unit detective from the Atlanta Police Department who offer us two very different perspectives on the area.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Full Conto. Polly lives in Morningside, a quiet and afflute
neighborhood that buds up against the Lanta Botanical Garden. In
May twenty twenty one, his wife sends him on an
air and less than two miles away in Buckhead.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It was the first day of really nice warm weather.
It was the week after schools had let out, and
you know, my kids were driving me nuts at at home,
and my wife said, before you do something you know
that you'll regret. Well, why don't you go to home
depot and get some potting soil.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
This home depot is part of a mixed use development
called Lindbergh. Next to the store's entrance is an apartment
complex called The Peninsula, boasting a rooftop pool, and on
this night, it's the place to be. A party invite
on Instagram lures about two hundred people to that rooftop.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
As I'm driving in, I mean, there are kids everywhere.
They're they're wearing bathing suits, they've got beach balls, they've
got towels.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Typically this would be a rather wholesome sight in Atlanta,
but again. This school party is taking place in twenty
twenty one in Georgia. All adults ages sixteen and up
have just become eligible for the COVID nineteen vaccine.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And I thought, boy, I hope that somebody is watching
out for these kids, because there's a lot of young
people here and there was a kind of pent up
energy throughout, you know, the entire pandemic. People were stuck
in their houses, they couldn't go out, and this was
clearly like a you know, re free kind of a mentality.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So Polly is in line in the Home Depots garden Center,
potting soil in hand when you hears some loud, popping
noises coming from outside the store.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's gunshots. So Polly waits until the gunfire dies down.
Then he walks out into the parking lot and calls
nine one.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
To one.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
And I said, I will want emergency at forty seven
zero eighty was sad Or said the emergency. Yeah, I'm
at the home Depot in Lindbergh and there's gunfire here
in number black nails running through the parking lot.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
The rooftop hoole party has broken out into a fight.
But TAPOLLI doesn't know that there was.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
No security at the Peninsula that was stopping anyone from
going in. Pushing and shoving match between a couple guys
spills over into the lobby, that spilled over into the
parking lot. They ran for their guns in their cars
started shooting at each other.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
I see four kids, I call them kids. They're probably
in their twenty just ran away from the parking lot
of the Peninsula apartment building right at that time.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It turns out that some of the young people who
were running across the parking lot that were trying to
get away from the initial gunfire were actually part of
the altercation. And a car come blazing out of the
garage of the Peninsula and stops, and the shots.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I think came from the parking garage that's there. I
count one, two, three, four, five, sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
One of the guy in the passenger seat kicks the
door open, pulls out of forty five and just starts
firing randomly.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Is that of a gun out of a gun out
of a car?
Speaker 6 (03:04):
They start shooting back.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I heard like two bullets whiz right past my year,
which is a very creepy sound.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Time to Poullie watches as a bullet lodges itself in
his forearm, shattering a bone.
Speaker 6 (03:22):
Back here in Georgia.
Speaker 7 (03:23):
Man says he was in the wrong place at the
wrong time when he was shot outside a home.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Depots that shouldn't happen in Lindbergh and this Fox five report,
one of his first interviews about the incident, to Polly
stresses that his story shouldn't alarm viewers.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
So Polly says, although we are seeing a spike, crime
is not where it once was ten to fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
He, of all people would know.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I'm professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the Andrew
Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
To Paulli has studied street violence and the attitudes of
those who perpetrate it since the year two thousand. He
does so by actually interviewing those who commit crimes to
better understand why.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I work in a lot of the neighborhoods that are
traditionally viewed as quote unquote problematic. I'm going to use
the quote unquote thing because I keep one to remind
people these are actually neighborhoods where people live on a
daily basis, and not everyone who lives in these places.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Are criminals or gang members.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But clearly there are issues in these neighborhoods, and the
behaviors that you see amongst individuals in those neighborhoods is
just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole bunch
of other stuff that we should be focused on.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
His research is meant to offer a nuanced understanding of
why street violence happens in Atlanta. But after he was
shot at that home depot, no matter how many times
he insisted that he was simply at the wrong place,
wrong time, the irony of a scholar who studies violent
crime becoming a victim of violent crime made it's probably
an unwitting symbol for how even Atlanta's richest neighborhood wasn't safe.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
That neighborhood is Buckhead.
Speaker 9 (04:58):
The increased violence sparking call from an Atlanta neighborhood to
break free from the city amid a surgeon crime.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
At the time, there was a small, increasingly vocal movement
for Buckhead to secede from the city of Atlanta. It
was spearheaded by Bill White, a New York transplant who
had relocated in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
We are going to be forming Buckhead City. We are
going to establish our new police force, and we're going
to bring Buckhead City back to safety and prosperity. And
that's the best way that we can honor the sacrifices
that are going on in our beautiful community.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
White said that he represented residents who felt they weren't
seeing much of a return for their taxpayer dollars, not
in their public schools, public works, or crucially, their police force.
White supporters argued that Buckhead needed its own police force
to eradicate crime.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
A couple things happened that really irked me, and that
was that some of these Buckhead secessionists started using me
as an example and saying, oh, look, you know, here's
this white, middle aged professor who lives in a nice name,
and if it could happen to him, it could happen
to anyone, but.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
To Polly has done the research in Atlanta, the odds
of something like this happening to someone like him are minuscule.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So if you're young, if you're black, if you're male,
this is the number one way you die between the
ages of fourteen and twenty four.
Speaker 6 (06:22):
That's where the emphasis should really be.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I mean, the people in Buckhead aren't the ones that
should be complaining about violence is the people live in
South Atlanta, because that's where the homicides take place, that's
where the murders take place. And if you want to
talk about your tax dollars not providing you a return
on investment in safety, it's the people who are in
South Atlanta. And make no mistake, you may be poor,
but you're still paying taxes if you live down there.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's been the case for a long time. Tapolli says
that between the mid nineties and late two thousands, when
the Atlanta Housing Authority raised Jonesborough's South and all of
the city's other housing projects, police figured that crime would disperse.
But that's not what happened.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
One of the things that I warned the police department
about was, Hey, they're getting rid of all the public housing,
and you guys think that these folks are going to
move to you know, Clinton County and College Park and
all that, but a lot of them are going to
end up in Cleveland Avenue. And there are already guys
there on Cleveland Avenue doing their own business, selling their
own stuff, you know, in their own.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
Sort of provincial gang sets.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
And it's going to create some violence there, and they
kind of poop pooed and said, na, na, No, they're
all going to disperse and we're going to fix the
crime problem in Atlanta by doing this.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
Turns out they were wrong.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
What exactly is gang activity like in Georgia neighborhoods like
Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Experts say it's unlike what you've heard about gangs before.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And police argue that young folks stance in the city
shows just how complicated these dynamics are.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I'm music journalist Christina.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Lee, and I'm crime and politics reporter George Cheaty.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
This is King's slime.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
The prosecution of Young Thug and Yazel. You probably know
about Bloods and Crips, two rival street gangs that started
(08:19):
in Los Angeles. Both gangs have a presence in Atlanta,
and they operate in sets. There's no such thing as
a generic Blood or Crip. Gang members belong to groups
like the Piru Bloods or the Roman Sixties Crips, which
then have local chapters. Atlanta has lots of gang sets
with roots in New York, Chicago and other places Gangster Disciples,
(08:42):
six Money, Murder, nine Tray, But gang life in Atlanta
is different. Here are two views, the inside perspective.
Speaker 10 (08:52):
Chuck c from the Throwback Boys Atlanta's South Side Zone
three jone Borough.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
South, and the law enforcement I'm.
Speaker 11 (09:01):
Investigator Kimberly Underwood been again to take for the last
fourteen years.
Speaker 12 (09:05):
Here that Alena Police apartment.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
First, a man who has led a full life. His
real name is Emery Cordell Carter, but he still goes
by his rapp bilias Chucksy. For interview, he has on
a black Miami heat cap, square glasses, and a Chris
White polo shirt buttoned all the way up. A goal
tooth flashes when he smiles. In his home stadio, he's
(09:27):
flanked by photos and memorabilia of a Throwback Boys, his
Atlanta rap group that found some regional success in the
early two thousands. Their signature song was called Stacks on
Deck Deck.
Speaker 10 (09:45):
There's a lot of people in the record business, but
they haven't made a record right so this was our
record right here.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But he's also surrounded by the more pedestrian trappings of
the North Carolina suburb he now calls home. A store
b painted sign is propped up next to a lava lamp.
It reads Live, Laugh, Love.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
What I live, live, love and laugh.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And the words faith and love are spelled out in
block letters over a window.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Chuckxy used to be a gangster dealing drugs in the street.
He's a street minister now.
Speaker 10 (10:18):
I'm fifty, right, So I got a long history, right.
I used to be, you know, heavy in the streets.
That's why I do street ministry because you know, God
brought me out of streets just to send me back
to the streets to let the other people know that
they can come out too.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
He's grown into a keen observer not just of the street,
but of Atlanta's musical legacy. He also co hosts a
podcast called Atlanta Rap History, which makes him uniquely qualified
to speak on the issues we are delving into and
one of the few people who feel safe doing it
because I'm out of it.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Detective Underwood, however, is still very much in the middle
of it.
Speaker 11 (11:00):
I was one of the hand selected people that were
volunteered to come over here and handled this problem back
in two thousand.
Speaker 12 (11:09):
Who volunt told you, Uh, the commander's here at the
Atlanta Police Department.
Speaker 11 (11:15):
Like, I grew up in Atlanta, but I had no
idea what gangs were so I had to learn because
I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Okay, I've never work.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Weird Atlanta's police headquarters in the office of Captain Ralph Wolford,
Assistant commander of the Special Enforcement Section of the Atlanta
Police that includes the city's gang unit. While we're getting
settled in the room, we noticed a poster board attached
to a filing cabinet behind us in the credit room.
(11:54):
It has the names and background details of six gang members.
I recognized two of the names from the FNNYSL indictments.
And the fact they got Kilvin wants on a thing
speaks too to know is what they're private, that's not
that's been there forever, and they didn't just put that up.
(12:17):
That's interesting as hell. In the late nineties, Detective Underwood
joined APD is a beat cop in Atlanta's Police Zone three,
which includes Cleveland Avenue. She didn't move to the department's
fledgling gang unit as a detective in two thousand and nine.
Underwood knows the city's gang history well and how it
has captured the public's attention.
Speaker 11 (12:39):
Back in the eighties, when the crack epidemic hid Atlanta,
we had gangs that came together but they were drug gangs.
Speaker 12 (12:45):
So BML was one of the biggest.
Speaker 11 (12:47):
Groups that came to Atlanta and it was mainly the
drug sales.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
BMF the Black Mafia Family, was a notorious cocaine gang
that started in Detroit by the nineties and it made
its way to Atlanta.
Speaker 11 (13:02):
They came together to sell drugs and they might do
stuff like the prostitution or the look.
Speaker 12 (13:07):
Of houses, or the gambling or whatever.
Speaker 11 (13:09):
But the violence actually started from our groups.
Speaker 12 (13:12):
In Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Around the crack eponemic, BMF formed a promotional agency and
music label called BMF Entertainment. It was connected with artists
like jay z Ti and Young Gez before the DEA
broke it up and arrested its leaders in two thousand
and five. At its height, BMF brought elephants, tigers, and
ice sculptures to its club parties. The agency would also
(13:36):
literally advertise its services with billboards that read the world
as BMFS. But most of Atlanta street gangs aren't quite
this flashy or disconnected.
Speaker 12 (13:50):
We look at hybrids mostly.
Speaker 11 (13:52):
Back when I started in two thousand and nine, most
of my hybrid gangs were from different parts of Atlanta.
Speaker 12 (13:57):
May it be back when we had public housing. We
had like the.
Speaker 11 (14:01):
Boring Homes or the Mechanicsville or Carver homes. Each of
those neighborhood had hybrid games, which were mainly neighborhood based
groups that came together and sometimes they call themselves a
gang and sometimes they didn't, but we, you know, looked
at them as games because they were doing the criminal
gang activity.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
What exactly were we talking about when we're talking about
a hybrid gang?
Speaker 12 (14:24):
Non traditional?
Speaker 11 (14:25):
Our traditional games been around since gag ships started back
in the sixties seventies. What happen your crypt bloods, vice lords,
you know, all the traditional games, So they're not traditional.
So that's why we call them non traditional hybrid, meaning
that they don't have the same rules regulations.
Speaker 12 (14:43):
Sometimes colors, like traditional games.
Speaker 11 (14:45):
Are not going to mix and match identifiers, which hybrids will.
The hybrids and the non traditional a little bit more
reckless because they don't have that leadership.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Police sing Zone three is full of different hybrid gangs.
Speaker 11 (14:58):
A lot of our blood sets here derived from the
United Blood Nation out of New York, New Jersey.
Speaker 12 (15:05):
So we have our Sex Money, Murder.
Speaker 11 (15:06):
Bloods Our nine Trey bloods Our one to eight trays
and all that. So to me, Atlanta is dominated by
bloodscripts are very.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Far and few that dominations even impacted. How Locals like
Chuck c refer to Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 10 (15:21):
In the City of Atlanta, south Side Zone three Cleveland.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Avenue, Cleveland Avenue. Yes, yeah, that's real.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Like people walk around, I mean they talk about Cleveland Avenue.
They call it Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yes.
Speaker 10 (15:36):
From I seventy five to Jonesboro Road, that part of
Cleveland Avenue will be called Cleveland. Now tell us white
because it's dominated by blood sets, and bloods don't use
the word see, they use the word b. So they
replace anything that starts with the sea Cleveland. Now they
replace it with the beat Bleveland.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
Now.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
The Fulham County District Attorney Fannie Willis used the term
Bleveland herself in a press conference about this case.
Speaker 8 (16:07):
Me and the mayor and the police chief have talked
about the fact that Cleveland in our community is referred
to as Cleveland, that it is somewhere where just violence occurs,
where they're marking up territory as blood territory is horrible.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Just before bloods came to dominate Atlanta, though police say
that a hybrid gang named Raised on Cleveland or Rock
Crew emerged in Zone three.
Speaker 11 (16:32):
So I do know that the safe mindy murdered blood
sits it go over to Cleveland and organize my Rock
Crew members.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
When discussing Atlanta's story gang history, that Rock Crew is
where Young Thug fits into all this. There's a YouTube
video from the same year Detective Underwood joined the APD
Gang Unit two thousand and nine.
Speaker 13 (16:59):
Look.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It shows an adolescent named Little Jeff hanging out with
a group of friends in the parking lot of a
city park. Little Jeff sits on the dented hood of
what appears to be a silver Ford escort.
Speaker 13 (17:14):
Good Jeff.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Right, In case you missed that, Little Jeff's friends call
him the King of White Boy Swaggon for his clothing choices.
In the video, will Jeff is wearing tight jeans, sat
down low in a red varsity jacket with white sleeves
that reads BAMA on the left side of his chest.
(17:37):
His smile flashes a mouthful of crooked teeth before he
starts his retort.
Speaker 6 (17:45):
Know, take camera fall and he.
Speaker 8 (17:47):
Don't got to kill it.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Little Jeff is Jeffrey Williams before he would take the
name Young Thug. The camera pans over to another man
in the group, sitting on a stone wall on the
edge of a playground.
Speaker 10 (18:02):
Yeah, we died every day, right hill Man?
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Did you catch that?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
He said? Of the Rock Crew. Chuck Cy, Atlanta Police,
and the District Attorney's indictment all say that young thugs.
Gang ties go back to his teenage years when Detective
Underwood first encountered him.
Speaker 12 (18:26):
He was a young thug when I met him. He
was Jeffrey Williams. He was a part of a hybrid game,
Rock Crew.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Detective Underwood says the gang unit would follow Rock Crew closely.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
Back when I started the investigations, we had a lot
of ATM thefts around the Cleveland Avenue neighborhood. We knew
for a fact that Rock Crew were in both, and
uh it's rumors that you know, they used the proceeds
from the actual uh ATM thefts to get into the
studio and blow up so that the chrominal activity starts,
(18:58):
and then they build their way up because you have
to put money into.
Speaker 12 (19:01):
The studios to actually, you know, become rappers for.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
What it's worth. That is what I've heard in past
interviews I've done with Dune Deal. He told me that
he wouldn't charge Young Thug for studio time off Spring Street.
That's how much Done Deal believed in his potential. Regardless,
Young Thug's early mixtape output would boast those same affiliations
that Investigator Underwood found in song after song Jungle off
(19:27):
a debut mixtape. I came from Nothing, Rock Crew, Zan
Man Rock achieve.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Rat your beat like go Rock Crew.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Harley Curtains, go harder than y'all rock? What's pad with
that our bars? Then you'll make my time? And in Stoner,
that breakout radio hit that he recorded with Done Deal
from episode.
Speaker 11 (19:58):
One front of What's r O Bam Lewie.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
R ob in this song is referring to Rock Crew
when they were calling themselves raised on Bleevelingdon SMM is
sex money murder? Why s L is what we're talking
about now? All of them, please say, for gangs, and
all of them are allegedly Bloods affiliated. Chuxy doesn't just
(20:33):
understand street life. He's lived it. He's not just an
expert on Atlanta rap history either, He's a part of it.
And on top of all of that, he's intertwined in
Young Thuck's personal story.
Speaker 10 (20:46):
I knew him as a kid, his lile jeff right,
because his dad is my friend.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
His dad is a close friend of mine.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
In fact, Young Thug's dad, Jeffrey Williams Sr. Used to
be a road manager for the Throwback Boys, and Chuck
was tight with the whole family.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
I actually lived with them at a certain amount of time.
And he was a kid, and he wanted to get
into this rap thing. You know, if you look back
at the pictures right, you could see that he was
just a regular average kid. But once he started making music,
people started to gravitate tours.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That house was packed to the brim. Young Thug is
one of eleven siblings.
Speaker 10 (21:28):
When I was staying over there, he was probably about
ten or eleven. Most street people are naturally good guys,
and most street people are especially good guys in the
house around their mom.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
So my relationship with him was a lot of in
the house around the mom. So he was a very
very good kid, you know, bright.
Speaker 10 (21:49):
Kid, mischievous once he got outside and got with his friends,
but for the most part, he was a good guy.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeh.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
By then, Trouble had also found the younger Jeffrey Williams,
or he found trouble. He told Rolling Stone magazine in
twenty fourteen. Quote, I was going to school, so my
dad and mom would keep buying me clothes. But when
I got out, I did what I wanted to do,
fighting all kinds of stuff unquote. In that same interview,
(22:21):
young Thug claimed he got into a fight with a
teacher at his middle school and broke the teacher's arm
took his ass out because he asked, He's quoted as saying.
He says he was kicked out of middle school and
spent the next four years in a juvenile detention facility
from seven am until six in the evening, and that
he was out in the streets by the time he
(22:42):
was eight or nine years old, which is a typical
age for kids in Zone three to group up.
Speaker 10 (22:46):
According to Chuck c it starts in the elementary school
because it's about the people that I'm going to school with, right,
we form in a bond.
Speaker 13 (22:56):
Right.
Speaker 10 (22:56):
See, people think gangs is a hate thing, when gangs
is actually a love thing. Right, Meaning these are my friends.
I grew up with them, I love them, We're brothers.
So if you mess with him, then you messing with me. Right,
So then this follows you, This follows you on. Then
we move up sixth grade. Now it's not necessarily about protection,
(23:18):
but now we're trying to get us some money. Right,
So now we're a different type of gang. Right, we'll
hust what you would call a hustler gang. Right, we're
trying to get money high school. Now we're not about
necessarily fighting because you bothering us. But now we're fighting
for territory. Right, you can't sell here. There's a lot
of money to be made here, so we go take
(23:38):
this over.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
In this particular part of Atlanta rap history, though, concerning
Young Thug, dividing lines between sets got even more dotted complicated,
especially when individual rappers allegedly tied to various Atlantic blood
gangs began to achieve super stardom. One of those breakouts
is Ray Seawan from an Atlanta neighborhood called Summer Hill.
(24:03):
Bennett became the rapper Wyfen Lucci Young Thug and Lucci
came up in the music industry at the same time.
Their local clicks Wyfed in Summer Hill, Ysl and Cleveland
Avenue were friendly and social.
Speaker 10 (24:17):
Once upon a time, at one time, Zone three we
was a close knit group we was very close knit.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Lucci and Thug was friends at.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
One time, but today that era in Atlanta's rap history
feels like a distant memory.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
As I was keeping up with Atlanta's rap scene, I
figured that the beef between Young Thug and Wife and
Lucci was strictly social media antics, and most music journalism
outlets would pinpoint the beef's origins to twenty seventeen, when
Young Thug released his album Beautiful Thugger Girls. This is
the album featuring Young Thug on the cover hunching over
an acoustic guitar that ultimately paved the way for the
(24:55):
country trap direction that Lil nas X took with his
own breakout song Road. But at the time, Young Thug
was so proud of how that collection of music turned out,
he tweeted that he was the next Tupac Shakur.
Speaker 10 (25:09):
Y fan.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Lucci immediately fired back, saying that Tupac never would have
worn a dress, referring to that Alexander Draconne dress that
Young Thug wore on the cover of his previous album, Jeffrey.
There was more petty back and forth, like when Young
Thug said that he slapped Wife and Lucci on site
when wife and Lucci claimed to have slept with Young
(25:29):
Thug's longtime girlfriend, or when Lucci was showing off his
latest jewelry hall on Instagram and Young Thug commented that
his kid's collection was better than this shit. There were
more heated exchanges, like in twenty nineteen, when Lucci took
issue with Young Thug's song just How It Is. Young
Thug raps about an incident taking place at Atlanta's Posh
(25:51):
Lennox Square Mall.
Speaker 11 (25:53):
Ladning to tried me almost got pop in as the
cops has been since they know while.
Speaker 13 (25:58):
Have been.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
But wifan Lucci insisted on Instagram that Young Thug was
lying and almost shitted himself instead. What Young Thug posted
next was the sort of comment that sent shot faced
emojis flying in the group text that if he didn't
like how Lucci treated his mother and kids quote, I
would have been killed you.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Police say there was an even longer build up to
the FN and YSL indictments and that the street war
wasn't exclusively between its marquee artists. Martinez Arnold, the rapper
YSL a Little Duke commanded YSL defendant was arrested for
allegedly shooting at Atlantic Small employee named Michael Castellini on
September eighteenth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 9 (26:43):
You can see quite a few Atlanta Police officers right
outside of the mall area. They have put police tape up.
We are getting reports that there were shots fired somewhere
in this area.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
We are all He.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Pleaded guilty to reckless conduct on the case. APD claims
the shooting was the results of an ongoing fight between
Arnold and wife and gang affiliates. Then another wise self defendant,
Jamaican Garlington, got shot at the nightclub owned by the
rapper TI called Club Crucial. And on January fifth, twenty fifteen,
a Monday night, a man named Kenneth Copeland was fresh
(27:21):
out of prison. He headed to Club Crucial. He reportedly
pulled out a water cash, which would have been a
red flag to any rivals inside the building.
Speaker 10 (27:31):
It was about posturing, about saying I'm better than you.
I got more people than you, I have more Jerry
than you. We bring out money. That's where you get
the term stacks on deck, meaning my money is on me.
I got the stacks on me. We in the club
showing our money right, Because this is how we show
our enemies that we're bigger and.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Better than them.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Police say that Kelvin Watts attempted to rob Copland that night,
tried to take his whole stack. Copeland is an alleged
YSL affiliate known as lil Woody. Watts, known as Shelle Kel,
is allegedly part of another blood set, the Englewood Family,
which police suspect is connected to YFN. Watt's name does
(28:19):
not appear in the YSL indictment, and Copeland's name only
once briefly, however, in and aff of David for a
search warrant filed in twenty sixteen. APD gang unit investigators
say they quote believe this altercation at Club Crucial incited
the gang war unquote, and that gang war led to
(28:40):
Donovan Thomas's death.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Chuck c agrees, I would definitely say that was the first.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Domino music journalists would take much longer to wonder whether
the tensions between young Thug and wife and Lucci weren't
exclusively between them. In August twenty twenty, Lucci says that
at Lenox Mall, he ran into a YSOL artists Diamante Kendrick,
the rapper Yack Gotti, But then in the parking lot,
without warning, Yakgtti posed for Instagram standing on the trunk
(29:09):
of Lucci's blue Mercedes Maybach as a playing King of
the Hill. He'd even use that same picture as single
artwork for his twenty twenty song in the Coup. At
the time, there seems to be no good explanation for
what yak Gotti did today. However, the YSL indictment says
that this social media stunt was an act between rival gangs.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
The indictment also points to instances where this rivalry could
have turned deadly once more, like in Fulton County jail
were three jailed YSL defendants Khalif Adams, Tbekian Garlington and
Jaden Myrick allegedly attempted to stab Yfn Lucci, their fellow
inmate with a shank. Or two weeks later, when two
(29:53):
more YSL defendants behind bars, Christian Eppinger and Antonio Someone,
allegedly conspired to try I had to kill wife and
Ulucci one more time, though not without seeking young thugs
permission first. If the indictments check out, they would speak
to a phenomenon that vulcan to polly.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
Is observed when it comes to gangs.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I mean, there's definitely a kind of an ethic of
you know, you've got to respond no matter what to
any form of being dissed or any kind of disrespect
that comes from a business deal to gone bad, et cetera,
et cetera. So I mean the problem is that their
method of engaging in social control has to do with
using violence and force, and it's inevitable that it's going
(30:35):
to spread when you've got combatants that don't see a
bright future for themselves and know that, you know, it's
a killer be killed.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
Kind of a world out there.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I've lived in Atlanta for half as long as Vulcan too, Polly,
I'm not nearly as well versed in later crime, the
data gaps that exist when exploring that issue and the
way that Atlanta can actually prevent crime and not just
prosecute it.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Thousands of people show up a Grady every year with
gunshot wounds and knife wounds, and most of them survive,
partly because Grady is so damn good at what it does,
but also because you know, sometimes the flesh wound's just
a flesh women not all of them stay there very long.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the folks
that get shot can't wait to get out, And why
(31:29):
is that? It's because they want to get out and
find the person who shot them and retaliate. Doesn't it
make sense that we have programs that are an intervention
right there at the hospital right.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yet, when we interviewed to Paula this past spring on
campus at Georgia State, I was struck by how much
his basic understanding of Atlanta overlapped with my own as
someone who's covered the local hip hop scene. There are
respective research. We both come to know Atlanta as the
nation's capital for income inequality for the past decade. At
least depending on what study you read, Atlanta's top income
(32:03):
brackets make anywhere between nine to twenty times more than
the city's lowest income brackets. Experts say that Atlanta has
the dubious honor of having the highest inequality of any
major city in the US because of its quote entrenched
racial disparities. You need a car to navigate its frustrating
sprawl that was by design.
Speaker 13 (32:24):
We're going to get a brand, huge system of highways, roads,
and streets in this country.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Interstates built in the fifties and sixties, literally bulldozed through
black communities.
Speaker 13 (32:34):
Over this network, you'll be able to drive from border
to border or coast to coast without ever seeing a traffic.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Stoplight leading to wife light that has concentrated middle class
living to just outside Atlanta city limits.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
It will really unite all of our United States, and.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So for communities like Cleveland Avenue, economic opportunity literally feels
out of reach.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Do you know Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 6 (33:01):
I know Cleveland Avenue really well. Actually I spent a
lot of time there.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
You know, Cleveland Avenue is a really interesting example of
a place that has always been problematic because of where
it's located.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
It's, you know, the south of the city. It's sort of.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Cut off from a lot of the roots of commerce
that we might be more interested in.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
The prout of empty land there.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
It was always low grade, violent, low grade problematic because
of its location and the lack of investment in that area.
But I think that the removal of public housing accelerated
all of that. The assumption was, well, you force people
to move, what you'll end up doing is disrupting the
territories that these individuals have for drug selling.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
And it did work at the beginning, as you would expect, right.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I mean, if you disrupt the normal patterns of behavior,
you're going to get a drop in criminal activity. But
what happens is it bounces back up again in places
where you don't expect it. So you've actually imposed a
kind of a whack a mole situation on yourself.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
To Polly's work entails, among other noble endeavors, interviewing non
incarcerated individuals to understand what might motivate them to commit
a crime. He talks to people on the street and
in the street game. He pays his interview subjects for
their time. It's through this work that he's come across
and studied and written about this attitude that has become
(34:23):
so pervasive in rap music in recent years, what scholars
call a sense of futurelessness, or accepting that you'll likely
die young.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I've done this, i'd say, probably one hundred times, and
it has never failed to come out with the same result.
I can give you fifty bucks right now, I'll tell
you what, though, you come back here in a month,
I'll give you two hundred. Not once, not once, has
one of them said yeah, I'll come back in the month.
And when I've asked them why not. They've said, I
want that money today. I don't even know if I'm
going to be around in a month.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
That short term outlook pushes many of these individuals to
look for a quick and easy ways to make money.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
So you're either going to be an independent operator on
the street, hustling day to day to day to day
to day, or you know, here's a group of people
that you can connect with, you can identify with, that
seem to have a kind of a plan. There's some
positive reinforcement in there. You're learning by watching their lives
and you're saying, hey, you know, they're kind of making it.
They're driving around with a nice car, They've got some
(35:23):
jewelry on, they got some girls, they're.
Speaker 6 (35:26):
Spending time at the club. I like doing those things.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
In places like Cleveland Avenue, the opportunity to speak with
to Polly for research might not be enough reason to
see a bright future for yourself. And with that sense
of futurelessness abound, victims like Donovan Thomas become perfect examples
of that system of retaliation and counter retaliation. To Polly
was referencing earlier when talking about Grady Hospital.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I ripped you off, you shot at me, that my
boys go to your neighborhood, they shoot at you, back
and forth and back and forth. And when I've described
this to an inciated audiences, one of the first things
that some people say is, good, let him kill each other.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
I mean, if they do, then we don't have to
worry about arresting him, we don't have to spend money
on cords.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
It's a very kind of harsh, kind of kind of
attitude that they have about this. What I point out
to them, however, is the fact that they are trapped
in this cycle of retaliation and counter retaliation with each
other does not mean that other people can't get hurt.
You know, if you and I have a beef, I
rip you off, then you retaliate against me. Then I
get pissed off at you, or maybe you kill me,
(36:33):
and then my cousin gets pissed off. Now we've drawn
my cousin in, and maybe he comes after you. But
now you know that I'm after you, so you make
sure that you walk around with three or four of
your friends. Now we brought your three or four friends in,
and then you take a shot at my house. Well,
it turns out it's not my house. It turns out
at my aunt's house, and you know, the bullet hit
my three year old niece or my aunt or something
like that. So these third parties get drawn into the
(36:54):
conflicts whether they In some cases they want to because
it's about sticking together and protecting your friends, your cousins
and your brothers. In other cases, it's you catch a bullet.
I caught a bullet. I'm that third party. I'm the leakage.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Studio time, on the other hand, points to brighter, more
hopeful prospects.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I would say at least half the guys I talked
to think that there's a future in music for them,
and that when I asked them what do you need
the money for, you know, they'll talk about I gotta
pay bills or I just want to go out to
the club.
Speaker 6 (37:23):
But a lot of them will say I got to
buy studio.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Time, and so you know, there's clearly something aspirational about
the music industry for them.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Done Deal, the producer who worked with Young Thug from
episode one told us this the.
Speaker 10 (37:36):
Group of people that I've worked with, almost fifty to
sixty percent of the people that came to my studio
at the beginning became something in the music industry.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Really Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Polly thinks that statistic could use a caveat.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
The number of people who can get attention from someone
like him who does hold the keys is tiny. When
you say fifty or sixty percent, it's it's not fifty
or sixty percent of everyone who wants to be successful.
It's fifty or sixty percent of the people who are
able to make it to him. And then whether the
fifty or sixty percent is realistic or not, and what
(38:11):
it means to have set you know, say I made
it does make me. It mean that you have a
hit song, hit album, that you've you've got the length
of your career, you know that. I think that needs
to be kind of unpacked a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
But regardless of what the actual statistical likelihood is, that
hope just has to be high enough for people to
chase it. Both to Polly and Chucksy have seen how
a success story like Young Thug can be highly motivational.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Nonetheless, the guys who are down from that area, you know,
they do see him as like there's a guy who
made it and now people are trying to tear him down.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
And what else did you expect him to do. They're like, yeah,
I know that.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
You know he's breaking the law and all this kind
of stuff, but he's trying to get his I got
nothing but love for him, is what I hear.
Speaker 6 (38:56):
A lot of those guys say.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Man, Young Thug is the young people's champ. He's known worldwide.
Speaker 10 (39:02):
Young Thug as the artist, is known worldwide, but in
the city of Atlanta, Southside, Zone three, Bleaveland Avenue, he's
the people's champ.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
In twenty fourteen, the city of Atlanta got a homegrown
instant classic. That song was called Lifestyle.
Speaker 12 (39:24):
Didn't sit just littless.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Just as Pospamorial Day, Lifestyle was the first song my
neighbors in Southwest Atlanta played as they fired up the grill.
The song remains a summer anthem in the city, as
it was for the country when it first dropped. It
became a top twenty hit in a matter of months.
It would eventually go platinum, and its success would officially
certify Young Thug as the future of Atlanta. Rap Here's
(39:50):
Joe Coscarelli, culture reporter for The New York Times, who
you heard from in episode one.
Speaker 14 (39:55):
Because of the rise of streaming and the way YouTube
is working at the time, lifestyle becomes as you hit,
and it's this crossover success. So Young Thug, all of
a sudden, is not only this underground curio, but he's
also a mainstream hit maker. And it's at that moment
that I think Young Thug is able to really brand
his own business.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Lifestyle is built to Rich Gang, which bears some explanation.
Rich Gang is the brainchild of a label impresario, Brian
Birdman Williams. Williams and his brother, Robert Slim. Williams had
previously co founded one of Southern hip hop's most influential labels,
Cash Money. From cash Money came Young Money, an imprint
(40:36):
founded by Lil Wayne, cash Money's most well known signee
and Young Thug's musical idol. Rich Gang isn't a group
with a set lineup. It's more like a franchise that
has featured members of a growing Southern hip hop dynasty.
The first iteration of Rich Gang was a sprawling collective
that featured Nicki Minaj, but at the time, Rich Gang
was a duo featuring Young Thug and another Atlanta rapper,
(40:59):
rich homy Kwan. That's how a Memorial Day weekend that year.
As seen in a whirlwind video recap on World Star
Hip Hop, Young Thug ends up a border yacht in Miami.
Birdman presents him with two chains the words rich gang
spelled out in glittering gems. Young Thug is grateful. You
can hear him shout out to a Birdman's signature hits
(41:21):
number one Stunna and one hundred million in the process.
Speaker 10 (41:24):
Yeah, I mean we're getting a real deal, special shot
stunham Man.
Speaker 6 (41:28):
He didn't say without him and won't be written on
this wall fuddy yet, Yeah you.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
His thank you speech continues, we won't be read.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
I got one of the biggest bloods in America.
Speaker 13 (41:41):
Georgia.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
It's hard to make out, but Young Thug says, quote,
I've got one of the biggest bloods in America with me.
Young Thug then extends his arm and pushes the camera
to his right to focus on the man sitting next
to him on his cell phone. That man is Donovan Thomas.
Thomas looks into the lens and flashes what appears to
(42:05):
be several gang signs. What business did Donovan Nutt Thomas,
the man who reportedly said Thug had me killed moments
before he passed. Possibly have a board that yacht, depends
on who you ask. Before Thomas died, he helped jumpstart
wife and Lucci's music career. That bond is why in
(42:26):
twenty seventeen, Lucci named his debut EP, Long Live Nut.
This is what Lucci told me at the time. So
I've heard you say long Live Nut. I know he
was a long term frint of yours, but who exactly
was he?
Speaker 15 (42:39):
Nut was one of my closest friend named schel He
and Jed that's his brother. And he was a big brother.
And basically you know that was just like a big
brother at all.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Man.
Speaker 15 (42:51):
You know, shall like boy nut Loy You me with,
oh you gotta go meet nut Bro, stuff like that,
Matt Nutt nut racking with all my old the news
everything that. It was like, you know, he just made
me feel like all that start already.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
So he was telling you this before like you officially
released anything?
Speaker 15 (43:09):
Yeah, right, like before I dropped anything. Man, he tell
me like why you're gonna be rich in ten months.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
But, as police alleged, their connections run even deeper than music.
Speaker 11 (43:24):
The yn is like an umbrella abundant Inglewood family, which
is a traditional game.
Speaker 12 (43:29):
Donaldan Thomas was an Inglewood family.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Blood Chucky tells us that Donovan Thomas was in prime
position within these factions. Unlike Investigator Underwood, Chuckxy actually knew
Thomas before he died.
Speaker 6 (43:43):
So where does.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Donovan Thomas fit in all of this?
Speaker 13 (43:46):
Man?
Speaker 4 (43:46):
Rest in peace?
Speaker 10 (43:48):
He was the big home, no kidding anybody that had
anything to do with the Red Side.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
He was the big home. He was the one that
got the blessing from California.
Speaker 6 (43:58):
Wait what do you mean by that?
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Oh?
Speaker 10 (44:01):
I hope I ain't saying too much, but listen. So
blood is a LA thing, right, Blood is an LA thing.
Blood was anything that was anti crypt came together informed
bloods in the early in the seventies.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
Right.
Speaker 10 (44:17):
So, so the whole term blood comes from LA. So
to be official, right, to be official, you have to
be blessed from somebody from the motherland, which is La. Right,
Nut was blessed from the motherland right to be able
to plant the flag in Alemna.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Above all else, Donovan Thomas was a connector. An Investigator
Underwood thinks that Thomas was a connector till the very
end of his life, even tried to de escalate the
beef between younger thug and wife and Luci.
Speaker 11 (44:52):
He was one of those guys that took care of
the neighborhood. He made sure kids had haircuts, He made sure,
you know, kids had tennis.
Speaker 12 (44:59):
Shoes and that kind of stuff. And from the rumors
and the street communitey I heard that he was one
of those guys that tried to squash the beef. He tried,
he knew that it was beef. He knew that it
was brewing.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Once upon a time, such mutual connections might have been
enough to diffuse the tension between these rising rap stars.
After all, they repped for Zone three. What happened instead
is that the death of Donovan Thomas split Atlanta's blood
sets into two warring factions, those who sided with Thomas
and YFN and those who sided with hys L.
Speaker 11 (45:36):
Unfortunately, there are two blood sets, but they started this
long standing beef because the murder of Donovan Thomas.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Neighborhood ties can run deeper, family ties even deeper, but
in the current state of Atlanta's gang wars, blood ties
can't compare. In this case, the same man who sat
next to young Thuck abort that yacht would die the
next year, allegedly by thugs doing. Whenever I talk to
(46:06):
people about Donovan Thomas, he's had this real sense of
Thomas is a person like everybody seems to want to
describe him as soft spoken, affable, friendly, And I can
imagine people reacting very strongly because he get killed on
the street corner.
Speaker 10 (46:24):
Yeah, because it's a love thing. Man, And my son
has his name tattooed on him because he loves him.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
That's right. Chuck C's son has Donovan Thomas' nicknameing Dona's temple, and.
Speaker 10 (46:37):
My son has r ip nutt right here tattooed on
his face. This is my son, right, This is he's
my son.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
He has the same name as me.
Speaker 10 (46:48):
He's the in recording there card of the third he's
my son, but he has another man's name tattooed on
him because of the love that he has for this man. Right,
And the same with the other people. Well that's out there.
They have love for this guy. So when they see
the person that took away they loved one, anger comes in.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Right.
Speaker 10 (47:09):
If I'm angry and I'm intoxicated and I have a weapon,
I'm liable to make a bad decision.
Speaker 4 (47:16):
So it's not like this was some.
Speaker 10 (47:20):
Ingrown hatred, right, it was an incident that happened, and
when this happened, then something else have to happen.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Then something else have to happen.
Speaker 10 (47:28):
Then something else has to happen, because then the streets
retaliation is a musk.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Next, on King Slime, we dig deeper into what is
already shaping up to be the longest, craziest criminal trial
that Georgia has ever seen.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Is what makes this trial particularly extraordinary. We speak to
attorneys from both sides of the YSL trial, public defenders
who say that YSL isn't a gang. At Fulton County
(48:09):
District Attorney Fannie Willis, it's.
Speaker 8 (48:11):
So interesting you talk about snitche everybody hard right till
they sitting in the seat.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Gets King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Heirloom Media.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
It's written and produced by George Cheaty, Christina Lee, and Tommy.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Andres, mixing sound design and original music by Evan Tyre
and Taylor Chapogne.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
The executive producer and editor is Tommy Andres.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Fact checking by Kaylin lynch Our. Theme music is produced
by dun Deal Special Thanks to the Atlanta news outlets,
eleven Alive, WSBTV, Atlanta News First and Box five, and
Chuck C.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
And the Throwback Boys for the use of their song
Stacks on Deck.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Full Conto. Polly lives in Morningside, a quiet and afflute
neighborhood that buds up against the Lanta Botanical Garden. In
May twenty twenty one, his wife sends him on an
air and less than two miles away in Buckhead.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It was the first day of really nice warm weather.
It was the week after schools had let out, and
you know, my kids were driving me nuts at at home,
and my wife said, before you do something you know
that you'll regret. Well, why don't you go to home
depot and get some potting soil.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
This home depot is part of a mixed use development
called Lindbergh. Next to the store's entrance is an apartment
complex called The Peninsula, boasting a rooftop pool, and on
this night, it's the place to be. A party invite
on Instagram lures about two hundred people to that rooftop.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
As I'm driving in, I mean, there are kids everywhere.
They're they're wearing bathing suits, they've got beach balls, they've
got towels.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Typically this would be a rather wholesome sight in Atlanta,
but again. This school party is taking place in twenty
twenty one in Georgia. All adults ages sixteen and up
have just become eligible for the COVID nineteen vaccine.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And I thought, boy, I hope that somebody is watching
out for these kids, because there's a lot of young
people here and there was a kind of pent up
energy throughout, you know, the entire pandemic. People were stuck
in their houses, they couldn't go out, and this was
clearly like a you know, re free kind of a mentality.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So Polly is in line in the Home Depots garden Center,
potting soil in hand when you hears some loud, popping
noises coming from outside the store.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's gunshots. So Polly waits until the gunfire dies down.
Then he walks out into the parking lot and calls
nine one.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
To one.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
And I said, I will want emergency at forty seven
zero eighty was sad Or said the emergency. Yeah, I'm
at the home Depot in Lindbergh and there's gunfire here
in number black nails running through the parking lot.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
The rooftop hoole party has broken out into a fight.
But TAPOLLI doesn't know that there was.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
No security at the Peninsula that was stopping anyone from
going in. Pushing and shoving match between a couple guys
spills over into the lobby, that spilled over into the
parking lot. They ran for their guns in their cars
started shooting at each other.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
I see four kids, I call them kids. They're probably
in their twenty just ran away from the parking lot
of the Peninsula apartment building right at that time.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It turns out that some of the young people who
were running across the parking lot that were trying to
get away from the initial gunfire were actually part of
the altercation. And a car come blazing out of the
garage of the Peninsula and stops, and the shots.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I think came from the parking garage that's there. I
count one, two, three, four, five, sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
One of the guy in the passenger seat kicks the
door open, pulls out of forty five and just starts
firing randomly.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Is that of a gun out of a gun out
of a car?
Speaker 6 (03:04):
They start shooting back.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I heard like two bullets whiz right past my year,
which is a very creepy sound.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Time to Poullie watches as a bullet lodges itself in
his forearm, shattering a bone.
Speaker 6 (03:22):
Back here in Georgia.
Speaker 7 (03:23):
Man says he was in the wrong place at the
wrong time when he was shot outside a home.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Depots that shouldn't happen in Lindbergh and this Fox five report,
one of his first interviews about the incident, to Polly
stresses that his story shouldn't alarm viewers.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
So Polly says, although we are seeing a spike, crime
is not where it once was ten to fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
He, of all people would know.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I'm professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the Andrew
Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
To Paulli has studied street violence and the attitudes of
those who perpetrate it since the year two thousand. He
does so by actually interviewing those who commit crimes to
better understand why.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I work in a lot of the neighborhoods that are
traditionally viewed as quote unquote problematic. I'm going to use
the quote unquote thing because I keep one to remind
people these are actually neighborhoods where people live on a
daily basis, and not everyone who lives in these places.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Are criminals or gang members.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But clearly there are issues in these neighborhoods, and the
behaviors that you see amongst individuals in those neighborhoods is
just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole bunch
of other stuff that we should be focused on.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
His research is meant to offer a nuanced understanding of
why street violence happens in Atlanta. But after he was
shot at that home depot, no matter how many times
he insisted that he was simply at the wrong place,
wrong time, the irony of a scholar who studies violent
crime becoming a victim of violent crime made it's probably
an unwitting symbol for how even Atlanta's richest neighborhood wasn't safe.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
That neighborhood is Buckhead.
Speaker 9 (04:58):
The increased violence sparking call from an Atlanta neighborhood to
break free from the city amid a surgeon crime.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
At the time, there was a small, increasingly vocal movement
for Buckhead to secede from the city of Atlanta. It
was spearheaded by Bill White, a New York transplant who
had relocated in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
We are going to be forming Buckhead City. We are
going to establish our new police force, and we're going
to bring Buckhead City back to safety and prosperity. And
that's the best way that we can honor the sacrifices
that are going on in our beautiful community.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
White said that he represented residents who felt they weren't
seeing much of a return for their taxpayer dollars, not
in their public schools, public works, or crucially, their police force.
White supporters argued that Buckhead needed its own police force
to eradicate crime.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
A couple things happened that really irked me, and that
was that some of these Buckhead secessionists started using me
as an example and saying, oh, look, you know, here's
this white, middle aged professor who lives in a nice name,
and if it could happen to him, it could happen
to anyone, but.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
To Polly has done the research in Atlanta, the odds
of something like this happening to someone like him are minuscule.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So if you're young, if you're black, if you're male,
this is the number one way you die between the
ages of fourteen and twenty four.
Speaker 6 (06:22):
That's where the emphasis should really be.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I mean, the people in Buckhead aren't the ones that
should be complaining about violence is the people live in
South Atlanta, because that's where the homicides take place, that's
where the murders take place. And if you want to
talk about your tax dollars not providing you a return
on investment in safety, it's the people who are in
South Atlanta. And make no mistake, you may be poor,
but you're still paying taxes if you live down there.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's been the case for a long time. Tapolli says
that between the mid nineties and late two thousands, when
the Atlanta Housing Authority raised Jonesborough's South and all of
the city's other housing projects, police figured that crime would disperse.
But that's not what happened.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
One of the things that I warned the police department
about was, Hey, they're getting rid of all the public housing,
and you guys think that these folks are going to
move to you know, Clinton County and College Park and
all that, but a lot of them are going to
end up in Cleveland Avenue. And there are already guys
there on Cleveland Avenue doing their own business, selling their
own stuff, you know, in their own.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
Sort of provincial gang sets.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
And it's going to create some violence there, and they
kind of poop pooed and said, na, na, No, they're
all going to disperse and we're going to fix the
crime problem in Atlanta by doing this.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
Turns out they were wrong.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
What exactly is gang activity like in Georgia neighborhoods like
Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Experts say it's unlike what you've heard about gangs before.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And police argue that young folks stance in the city
shows just how complicated these dynamics are.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I'm music journalist Christina.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Lee, and I'm crime and politics reporter George Cheaty.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
This is King's slime.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
The prosecution of Young Thug and Yazel. You probably know
about Bloods and Crips, two rival street gangs that started
(08:19):
in Los Angeles. Both gangs have a presence in Atlanta,
and they operate in sets. There's no such thing as
a generic Blood or Crip. Gang members belong to groups
like the Piru Bloods or the Roman Sixties Crips, which
then have local chapters. Atlanta has lots of gang sets
with roots in New York, Chicago and other places Gangster Disciples,
(08:42):
six Money, Murder, nine Tray, But gang life in Atlanta
is different. Here are two views, the inside perspective.
Speaker 10 (08:52):
Chuck c from the Throwback Boys Atlanta's South Side Zone
three jone Borough.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
South, and the law enforcement I'm.
Speaker 11 (09:01):
Investigator Kimberly Underwood been again to take for the last
fourteen years.
Speaker 12 (09:05):
Here that Alena Police apartment.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
First, a man who has led a full life. His
real name is Emery Cordell Carter, but he still goes
by his rapp bilias Chucksy. For interview, he has on
a black Miami heat cap, square glasses, and a Chris
White polo shirt buttoned all the way up. A goal
tooth flashes when he smiles. In his home stadio, he's
(09:27):
flanked by photos and memorabilia of a Throwback Boys, his
Atlanta rap group that found some regional success in the
early two thousands. Their signature song was called Stacks on
Deck Deck.
Speaker 10 (09:45):
There's a lot of people in the record business, but
they haven't made a record right so this was our
record right here.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But he's also surrounded by the more pedestrian trappings of
the North Carolina suburb he now calls home. A store
b painted sign is propped up next to a lava lamp.
It reads Live, Laugh, Love.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
What I live, live, love and laugh.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And the words faith and love are spelled out in
block letters over a window.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Chuckxy used to be a gangster dealing drugs in the street.
He's a street minister now.
Speaker 10 (10:18):
I'm fifty, right, So I got a long history, right.
I used to be, you know, heavy in the streets.
That's why I do street ministry because you know, God
brought me out of streets just to send me back
to the streets to let the other people know that
they can come out too.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
He's grown into a keen observer not just of the street,
but of Atlanta's musical legacy. He also co hosts a
podcast called Atlanta Rap History, which makes him uniquely qualified
to speak on the issues we are delving into and
one of the few people who feel safe doing it
because I'm out of it.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Detective Underwood, however, is still very much in the middle
of it.
Speaker 11 (11:00):
I was one of the hand selected people that were
volunteered to come over here and handled this problem back
in two thousand.
Speaker 12 (11:09):
Who volunt told you, Uh, the commander's here at the
Atlanta Police Department.
Speaker 11 (11:15):
Like, I grew up in Atlanta, but I had no
idea what gangs were so I had to learn because
I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Okay, I've never work.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Weird Atlanta's police headquarters in the office of Captain Ralph Wolford,
Assistant commander of the Special Enforcement Section of the Atlanta
Police that includes the city's gang unit. While we're getting
settled in the room, we noticed a poster board attached
to a filing cabinet behind us in the credit room.
(11:54):
It has the names and background details of six gang members.
I recognized two of the names from the FNNYSL indictments.
And the fact they got Kilvin wants on a thing
speaks too to know is what they're private, that's not
that's been there forever, and they didn't just put that up.
(12:17):
That's interesting as hell. In the late nineties, Detective Underwood
joined APD is a beat cop in Atlanta's Police Zone three,
which includes Cleveland Avenue. She didn't move to the department's
fledgling gang unit as a detective in two thousand and nine.
Underwood knows the city's gang history well and how it
has captured the public's attention.
Speaker 11 (12:39):
Back in the eighties, when the crack epidemic hid Atlanta,
we had gangs that came together but they were drug gangs.
Speaker 12 (12:45):
So BML was one of the biggest.
Speaker 11 (12:47):
Groups that came to Atlanta and it was mainly the
drug sales.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
BMF the Black Mafia Family, was a notorious cocaine gang
that started in Detroit by the nineties and it made
its way to Atlanta.
Speaker 11 (13:02):
They came together to sell drugs and they might do
stuff like the prostitution or the look.
Speaker 12 (13:07):
Of houses, or the gambling or whatever.
Speaker 11 (13:09):
But the violence actually started from our groups.
Speaker 12 (13:12):
In Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Around the crack eponemic, BMF formed a promotional agency and
music label called BMF Entertainment. It was connected with artists
like jay z Ti and Young Gez before the DEA
broke it up and arrested its leaders in two thousand
and five. At its height, BMF brought elephants, tigers, and
ice sculptures to its club parties. The agency would also
(13:36):
literally advertise its services with billboards that read the world
as BMFS. But most of Atlanta street gangs aren't quite
this flashy or disconnected.
Speaker 12 (13:50):
We look at hybrids mostly.
Speaker 11 (13:52):
Back when I started in two thousand and nine, most
of my hybrid gangs were from different parts of Atlanta.
Speaker 12 (13:57):
May it be back when we had public housing. We
had like the.
Speaker 11 (14:01):
Boring Homes or the Mechanicsville or Carver homes. Each of
those neighborhood had hybrid games, which were mainly neighborhood based
groups that came together and sometimes they call themselves a
gang and sometimes they didn't, but we, you know, looked
at them as games because they were doing the criminal
gang activity.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
What exactly were we talking about when we're talking about
a hybrid gang?
Speaker 12 (14:24):
Non traditional?
Speaker 11 (14:25):
Our traditional games been around since gag ships started back
in the sixties seventies. What happen your crypt bloods, vice lords,
you know, all the traditional games, So they're not traditional.
So that's why we call them non traditional hybrid, meaning
that they don't have the same rules regulations.
Speaker 12 (14:43):
Sometimes colors, like traditional games.
Speaker 11 (14:45):
Are not going to mix and match identifiers, which hybrids will.
The hybrids and the non traditional a little bit more
reckless because they don't have that leadership.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Police sing Zone three is full of different hybrid gangs.
Speaker 11 (14:58):
A lot of our blood sets here derived from the
United Blood Nation out of New York, New Jersey.
Speaker 12 (15:05):
So we have our Sex Money, Murder.
Speaker 11 (15:06):
Bloods Our nine Trey bloods Our one to eight trays
and all that. So to me, Atlanta is dominated by
bloodscripts are very.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Far and few that dominations even impacted. How Locals like
Chuck c refer to Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 10 (15:21):
In the City of Atlanta, south Side Zone three Cleveland.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Avenue, Cleveland Avenue. Yes, yeah, that's real.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Like people walk around, I mean they talk about Cleveland Avenue.
They call it Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yes.
Speaker 10 (15:36):
From I seventy five to Jonesboro Road, that part of
Cleveland Avenue will be called Cleveland. Now tell us white
because it's dominated by blood sets, and bloods don't use
the word see, they use the word b. So they
replace anything that starts with the sea Cleveland. Now they
replace it with the beat Bleveland.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
Now.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
The Fulham County District Attorney Fannie Willis used the term
Bleveland herself in a press conference about this case.
Speaker 8 (16:07):
Me and the mayor and the police chief have talked
about the fact that Cleveland in our community is referred
to as Cleveland, that it is somewhere where just violence occurs,
where they're marking up territory as blood territory is horrible.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Just before bloods came to dominate Atlanta, though police say
that a hybrid gang named Raised on Cleveland or Rock
Crew emerged in Zone three.
Speaker 11 (16:32):
So I do know that the safe mindy murdered blood
sits it go over to Cleveland and organize my Rock
Crew members.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
When discussing Atlanta's story gang history, that Rock Crew is
where Young Thug fits into all this. There's a YouTube
video from the same year Detective Underwood joined the APD
Gang Unit two thousand and nine.
Speaker 13 (16:59):
Look.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It shows an adolescent named Little Jeff hanging out with
a group of friends in the parking lot of a
city park. Little Jeff sits on the dented hood of
what appears to be a silver Ford escort.
Speaker 13 (17:14):
Good Jeff.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Right, In case you missed that, Little Jeff's friends call
him the King of White Boy Swaggon for his clothing choices.
In the video, will Jeff is wearing tight jeans, sat
down low in a red varsity jacket with white sleeves
that reads BAMA on the left side of his chest.
(17:37):
His smile flashes a mouthful of crooked teeth before he
starts his retort.
Speaker 6 (17:45):
Know, take camera fall and he.
Speaker 8 (17:47):
Don't got to kill it.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Little Jeff is Jeffrey Williams before he would take the
name Young Thug. The camera pans over to another man
in the group, sitting on a stone wall on the
edge of a playground.
Speaker 10 (18:02):
Yeah, we died every day, right hill Man?
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Did you catch that?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
He said? Of the Rock Crew. Chuck Cy, Atlanta Police,
and the District Attorney's indictment all say that young thugs.
Gang ties go back to his teenage years when Detective
Underwood first encountered him.
Speaker 12 (18:26):
He was a young thug when I met him. He
was Jeffrey Williams. He was a part of a hybrid game,
Rock Crew.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Detective Underwood says the gang unit would follow Rock Crew closely.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
Back when I started the investigations, we had a lot
of ATM thefts around the Cleveland Avenue neighborhood. We knew
for a fact that Rock Crew were in both, and
uh it's rumors that you know, they used the proceeds
from the actual uh ATM thefts to get into the
studio and blow up so that the chrominal activity starts,
(18:58):
and then they build their way up because you have
to put money into.
Speaker 12 (19:01):
The studios to actually, you know, become rappers for.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
What it's worth. That is what I've heard in past
interviews I've done with Dune Deal. He told me that
he wouldn't charge Young Thug for studio time off Spring Street.
That's how much Done Deal believed in his potential. Regardless,
Young Thug's early mixtape output would boast those same affiliations
that Investigator Underwood found in song after song Jungle off
(19:27):
a debut mixtape. I came from Nothing, Rock Crew, Zan
Man Rock achieve.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Rat your beat like go Rock Crew.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Harley Curtains, go harder than y'all rock? What's pad with
that our bars? Then you'll make my time? And in Stoner,
that breakout radio hit that he recorded with Done Deal
from episode.
Speaker 11 (19:58):
One front of What's r O Bam Lewie.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
R ob in this song is referring to Rock Crew
when they were calling themselves raised on Bleevelingdon SMM is
sex money murder? Why s L is what we're talking
about now? All of them, please say, for gangs, and
all of them are allegedly Bloods affiliated. Chuxy doesn't just
(20:33):
understand street life. He's lived it. He's not just an
expert on Atlanta rap history either, He's a part of it.
And on top of all of that, he's intertwined in
Young Thuck's personal story.
Speaker 10 (20:46):
I knew him as a kid, his lile jeff right,
because his dad is my friend.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
His dad is a close friend of mine.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
In fact, Young Thug's dad, Jeffrey Williams Sr. Used to
be a road manager for the Throwback Boys, and Chuck
was tight with the whole family.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
I actually lived with them at a certain amount of time.
And he was a kid, and he wanted to get
into this rap thing. You know, if you look back
at the pictures right, you could see that he was
just a regular average kid. But once he started making music,
people started to gravitate tours.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That house was packed to the brim. Young Thug is
one of eleven siblings.
Speaker 10 (21:28):
When I was staying over there, he was probably about
ten or eleven. Most street people are naturally good guys,
and most street people are especially good guys in the
house around their mom.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
So my relationship with him was a lot of in
the house around the mom. So he was a very
very good kid, you know, bright.
Speaker 10 (21:49):
Kid, mischievous once he got outside and got with his friends,
but for the most part, he was a good guy.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeh.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
By then, Trouble had also found the younger Jeffrey Williams,
or he found trouble. He told Rolling Stone magazine in
twenty fourteen. Quote, I was going to school, so my
dad and mom would keep buying me clothes. But when
I got out, I did what I wanted to do,
fighting all kinds of stuff unquote. In that same interview,
(22:21):
young Thug claimed he got into a fight with a
teacher at his middle school and broke the teacher's arm
took his ass out because he asked, He's quoted as saying.
He says he was kicked out of middle school and
spent the next four years in a juvenile detention facility
from seven am until six in the evening, and that
he was out in the streets by the time he
(22:42):
was eight or nine years old, which is a typical
age for kids in Zone three to group up.
Speaker 10 (22:46):
According to Chuck c it starts in the elementary school
because it's about the people that I'm going to school with, right,
we form in a bond.
Speaker 13 (22:56):
Right.
Speaker 10 (22:56):
See, people think gangs is a hate thing, when gangs
is actually a love thing. Right, Meaning these are my friends.
I grew up with them, I love them, We're brothers.
So if you mess with him, then you messing with me. Right,
So then this follows you, This follows you on. Then
we move up sixth grade. Now it's not necessarily about protection,
(23:18):
but now we're trying to get us some money. Right,
So now we're a different type of gang. Right, we'll
hust what you would call a hustler gang. Right, we're
trying to get money high school. Now we're not about
necessarily fighting because you bothering us. But now we're fighting
for territory. Right, you can't sell here. There's a lot
of money to be made here, so we go take
(23:38):
this over.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
In this particular part of Atlanta rap history, though, concerning
Young Thug, dividing lines between sets got even more dotted complicated,
especially when individual rappers allegedly tied to various Atlantic blood
gangs began to achieve super stardom. One of those breakouts
is Ray Seawan from an Atlanta neighborhood called Summer Hill.
(24:03):
Bennett became the rapper Wyfen Lucci Young Thug and Lucci
came up in the music industry at the same time.
Their local clicks Wyfed in Summer Hill, Ysl and Cleveland
Avenue were friendly and social.
Speaker 10 (24:17):
Once upon a time, at one time, Zone three we
was a close knit group we was very close knit.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Lucci and Thug was friends at.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
One time, but today that era in Atlanta's rap history
feels like a distant memory.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
As I was keeping up with Atlanta's rap scene, I
figured that the beef between Young Thug and Wife and
Lucci was strictly social media antics, and most music journalism
outlets would pinpoint the beef's origins to twenty seventeen, when
Young Thug released his album Beautiful Thugger Girls. This is
the album featuring Young Thug on the cover hunching over
an acoustic guitar that ultimately paved the way for the
(24:55):
country trap direction that Lil nas X took with his
own breakout song Road. But at the time, Young Thug
was so proud of how that collection of music turned out,
he tweeted that he was the next Tupac Shakur.
Speaker 10 (25:09):
Y fan.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Lucci immediately fired back, saying that Tupac never would have
worn a dress, referring to that Alexander Draconne dress that
Young Thug wore on the cover of his previous album, Jeffrey.
There was more petty back and forth, like when Young
Thug said that he slapped Wife and Lucci on site
when wife and Lucci claimed to have slept with Young
(25:29):
Thug's longtime girlfriend, or when Lucci was showing off his
latest jewelry hall on Instagram and Young Thug commented that
his kid's collection was better than this shit. There were
more heated exchanges, like in twenty nineteen, when Lucci took
issue with Young Thug's song just How It Is. Young
Thug raps about an incident taking place at Atlanta's Posh
(25:51):
Lennox Square Mall.
Speaker 11 (25:53):
Ladning to tried me almost got pop in as the
cops has been since they know while.
Speaker 13 (25:58):
Have been.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
But wifan Lucci insisted on Instagram that Young Thug was
lying and almost shitted himself instead. What Young Thug posted
next was the sort of comment that sent shot faced
emojis flying in the group text that if he didn't
like how Lucci treated his mother and kids quote, I
would have been killed you.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Police say there was an even longer build up to
the FN and YSL indictments and that the street war
wasn't exclusively between its marquee artists. Martinez Arnold, the rapper
YSL a Little Duke commanded YSL defendant was arrested for
allegedly shooting at Atlantic Small employee named Michael Castellini on
September eighteenth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 9 (26:43):
You can see quite a few Atlanta Police officers right
outside of the mall area. They have put police tape up.
We are getting reports that there were shots fired somewhere
in this area.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
We are all He.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Pleaded guilty to reckless conduct on the case. APD claims
the shooting was the results of an ongoing fight between
Arnold and wife and gang affiliates. Then another wise self defendant,
Jamaican Garlington, got shot at the nightclub owned by the
rapper TI called Club Crucial. And on January fifth, twenty fifteen,
a Monday night, a man named Kenneth Copeland was fresh
(27:21):
out of prison. He headed to Club Crucial. He reportedly
pulled out a water cash, which would have been a
red flag to any rivals inside the building.
Speaker 10 (27:31):
It was about posturing, about saying I'm better than you.
I got more people than you, I have more Jerry
than you. We bring out money. That's where you get
the term stacks on deck, meaning my money is on me.
I got the stacks on me. We in the club
showing our money right, Because this is how we show
our enemies that we're bigger and.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Better than them.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Police say that Kelvin Watts attempted to rob Copland that night,
tried to take his whole stack. Copeland is an alleged
YSL affiliate known as lil Woody. Watts, known as Shelle Kel,
is allegedly part of another blood set, the Englewood Family,
which police suspect is connected to YFN. Watt's name does
(28:19):
not appear in the YSL indictment, and Copeland's name only
once briefly, however, in and aff of David for a
search warrant filed in twenty sixteen. APD gang unit investigators
say they quote believe this altercation at Club Crucial incited
the gang war unquote, and that gang war led to
(28:40):
Donovan Thomas's death.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Chuck c agrees, I would definitely say that was the first.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Domino music journalists would take much longer to wonder whether
the tensions between young Thug and wife and Lucci weren't
exclusively between them. In August twenty twenty, Lucci says that
at Lenox Mall, he ran into a YSOL artists Diamante Kendrick,
the rapper Yack Gotti, But then in the parking lot,
without warning, Yakgtti posed for Instagram standing on the trunk
(29:09):
of Lucci's blue Mercedes Maybach as a playing King of
the Hill. He'd even use that same picture as single
artwork for his twenty twenty song in the Coup. At
the time, there seems to be no good explanation for
what yak Gotti did today. However, the YSL indictment says
that this social media stunt was an act between rival gangs.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
The indictment also points to instances where this rivalry could
have turned deadly once more, like in Fulton County jail
were three jailed YSL defendants Khalif Adams, Tbekian Garlington and
Jaden Myrick allegedly attempted to stab Yfn Lucci, their fellow
inmate with a shank. Or two weeks later, when two
(29:53):
more YSL defendants behind bars, Christian Eppinger and Antonio Someone,
allegedly conspired to try I had to kill wife and
Ulucci one more time, though not without seeking young thugs
permission first. If the indictments check out, they would speak
to a phenomenon that vulcan to polly.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
Is observed when it comes to gangs.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I mean, there's definitely a kind of an ethic of
you know, you've got to respond no matter what to
any form of being dissed or any kind of disrespect
that comes from a business deal to gone bad, et cetera,
et cetera. So I mean the problem is that their
method of engaging in social control has to do with
using violence and force, and it's inevitable that it's going
(30:35):
to spread when you've got combatants that don't see a
bright future for themselves and know that, you know, it's
a killer be killed.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
Kind of a world out there.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I've lived in Atlanta for half as long as Vulcan too, Polly,
I'm not nearly as well versed in later crime, the
data gaps that exist when exploring that issue and the
way that Atlanta can actually prevent crime and not just
prosecute it.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Thousands of people show up a Grady every year with
gunshot wounds and knife wounds, and most of them survive,
partly because Grady is so damn good at what it does,
but also because you know, sometimes the flesh wound's just
a flesh women not all of them stay there very long.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the folks
that get shot can't wait to get out, And why
(31:29):
is that? It's because they want to get out and
find the person who shot them and retaliate. Doesn't it
make sense that we have programs that are an intervention
right there at the hospital right.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yet, when we interviewed to Paula this past spring on
campus at Georgia State, I was struck by how much
his basic understanding of Atlanta overlapped with my own as
someone who's covered the local hip hop scene. There are
respective research. We both come to know Atlanta as the
nation's capital for income inequality for the past decade. At
least depending on what study you read, Atlanta's top income
(32:03):
brackets make anywhere between nine to twenty times more than
the city's lowest income brackets. Experts say that Atlanta has
the dubious honor of having the highest inequality of any
major city in the US because of its quote entrenched
racial disparities. You need a car to navigate its frustrating
sprawl that was by design.
Speaker 13 (32:24):
We're going to get a brand, huge system of highways, roads,
and streets in this country.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Interstates built in the fifties and sixties, literally bulldozed through
black communities.
Speaker 13 (32:34):
Over this network, you'll be able to drive from border
to border or coast to coast without ever seeing a traffic.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Stoplight leading to wife light that has concentrated middle class
living to just outside Atlanta city limits.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
It will really unite all of our United States, and.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So for communities like Cleveland Avenue, economic opportunity literally feels
out of reach.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Do you know Cleveland Avenue.
Speaker 6 (33:01):
I know Cleveland Avenue really well. Actually I spent a
lot of time there.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
You know, Cleveland Avenue is a really interesting example of
a place that has always been problematic because of where
it's located.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
It's, you know, the south of the city. It's sort of.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Cut off from a lot of the roots of commerce
that we might be more interested in.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
The prout of empty land there.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
It was always low grade, violent, low grade problematic because
of its location and the lack of investment in that area.
But I think that the removal of public housing accelerated
all of that. The assumption was, well, you force people
to move, what you'll end up doing is disrupting the
territories that these individuals have for drug selling.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
And it did work at the beginning, as you would expect, right.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I mean, if you disrupt the normal patterns of behavior,
you're going to get a drop in criminal activity. But
what happens is it bounces back up again in places
where you don't expect it. So you've actually imposed a
kind of a whack a mole situation on yourself.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
To Polly's work entails, among other noble endeavors, interviewing non
incarcerated individuals to understand what might motivate them to commit
a crime. He talks to people on the street and
in the street game. He pays his interview subjects for
their time. It's through this work that he's come across
and studied and written about this attitude that has become
(34:23):
so pervasive in rap music in recent years, what scholars
call a sense of futurelessness, or accepting that you'll likely
die young.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I've done this, i'd say, probably one hundred times, and
it has never failed to come out with the same result.
I can give you fifty bucks right now, I'll tell
you what, though, you come back here in a month,
I'll give you two hundred. Not once, not once, has
one of them said yeah, I'll come back in the month.
And when I've asked them why not. They've said, I
want that money today. I don't even know if I'm
going to be around in a month.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
That short term outlook pushes many of these individuals to
look for a quick and easy ways to make money.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
So you're either going to be an independent operator on
the street, hustling day to day to day to day
to day, or you know, here's a group of people
that you can connect with, you can identify with, that
seem to have a kind of a plan. There's some
positive reinforcement in there. You're learning by watching their lives
and you're saying, hey, you know, they're kind of making it.
They're driving around with a nice car, They've got some
(35:23):
jewelry on, they got some girls, they're.
Speaker 6 (35:26):
Spending time at the club. I like doing those things.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
In places like Cleveland Avenue, the opportunity to speak with
to Polly for research might not be enough reason to
see a bright future for yourself. And with that sense
of futurelessness abound, victims like Donovan Thomas become perfect examples
of that system of retaliation and counter retaliation. To Polly
was referencing earlier when talking about Grady Hospital.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I ripped you off, you shot at me, that my
boys go to your neighborhood, they shoot at you, back
and forth and back and forth. And when I've described
this to an inciated audiences, one of the first things
that some people say is, good, let him kill each other.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
I mean, if they do, then we don't have to
worry about arresting him, we don't have to spend money
on cords.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
It's a very kind of harsh, kind of kind of
attitude that they have about this. What I point out
to them, however, is the fact that they are trapped
in this cycle of retaliation and counter retaliation with each
other does not mean that other people can't get hurt.
You know, if you and I have a beef, I
rip you off, then you retaliate against me. Then I
get pissed off at you, or maybe you kill me,
(36:33):
and then my cousin gets pissed off. Now we've drawn
my cousin in, and maybe he comes after you. But
now you know that I'm after you, so you make
sure that you walk around with three or four of
your friends. Now we brought your three or four friends in,
and then you take a shot at my house. Well,
it turns out it's not my house. It turns out
at my aunt's house, and you know, the bullet hit
my three year old niece or my aunt or something
like that. So these third parties get drawn into the
(36:54):
conflicts whether they In some cases they want to because
it's about sticking together and protecting your friends, your cousins
and your brothers. In other cases, it's you catch a bullet.
I caught a bullet. I'm that third party. I'm the leakage.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Studio time, on the other hand, points to brighter, more
hopeful prospects.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I would say at least half the guys I talked
to think that there's a future in music for them,
and that when I asked them what do you need
the money for, you know, they'll talk about I gotta
pay bills or I just want to go out to
the club.
Speaker 6 (37:23):
But a lot of them will say I got to
buy studio.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Time, and so you know, there's clearly something aspirational about
the music industry for them.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Done Deal, the producer who worked with Young Thug from
episode one told us this the.
Speaker 10 (37:36):
Group of people that I've worked with, almost fifty to
sixty percent of the people that came to my studio
at the beginning became something in the music industry.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Really Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Polly thinks that statistic could use a caveat.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
The number of people who can get attention from someone
like him who does hold the keys is tiny. When
you say fifty or sixty percent, it's it's not fifty
or sixty percent of everyone who wants to be successful.
It's fifty or sixty percent of the people who are
able to make it to him. And then whether the
fifty or sixty percent is realistic or not, and what
(38:11):
it means to have set you know, say I made
it does make me. It mean that you have a
hit song, hit album, that you've you've got the length
of your career, you know that. I think that needs
to be kind of unpacked a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
But regardless of what the actual statistical likelihood is, that
hope just has to be high enough for people to
chase it. Both to Polly and Chucksy have seen how
a success story like Young Thug can be highly motivational.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Nonetheless, the guys who are down from that area, you know,
they do see him as like there's a guy who
made it and now people are trying to tear him down.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
And what else did you expect him to do. They're like, yeah,
I know that.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
You know he's breaking the law and all this kind
of stuff, but he's trying to get his I got
nothing but love for him, is what I hear.
Speaker 6 (38:56):
A lot of those guys say.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Man, Young Thug is the young people's champ. He's known worldwide.
Speaker 10 (39:02):
Young Thug as the artist, is known worldwide, but in
the city of Atlanta, Southside, Zone three, Bleaveland Avenue, he's
the people's champ.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
In twenty fourteen, the city of Atlanta got a homegrown
instant classic. That song was called Lifestyle.
Speaker 12 (39:24):
Didn't sit just littless.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Just as Pospamorial Day, Lifestyle was the first song my
neighbors in Southwest Atlanta played as they fired up the grill.
The song remains a summer anthem in the city, as
it was for the country when it first dropped. It
became a top twenty hit in a matter of months.
It would eventually go platinum, and its success would officially
certify Young Thug as the future of Atlanta. Rap Here's
(39:50):
Joe Coscarelli, culture reporter for The New York Times, who
you heard from in episode one.
Speaker 14 (39:55):
Because of the rise of streaming and the way YouTube
is working at the time, lifestyle becomes as you hit,
and it's this crossover success. So Young Thug, all of
a sudden, is not only this underground curio, but he's
also a mainstream hit maker. And it's at that moment
that I think Young Thug is able to really brand
his own business.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Lifestyle is built to Rich Gang, which bears some explanation.
Rich Gang is the brainchild of a label impresario, Brian
Birdman Williams. Williams and his brother, Robert Slim. Williams had
previously co founded one of Southern hip hop's most influential labels,
Cash Money. From cash Money came Young Money, an imprint
(40:36):
founded by Lil Wayne, cash Money's most well known signee
and Young Thug's musical idol. Rich Gang isn't a group
with a set lineup. It's more like a franchise that
has featured members of a growing Southern hip hop dynasty.
The first iteration of Rich Gang was a sprawling collective
that featured Nicki Minaj, but at the time, Rich Gang
was a duo featuring Young Thug and another Atlanta rapper,
(40:59):
rich homy Kwan. That's how a Memorial Day weekend that year.
As seen in a whirlwind video recap on World Star
Hip Hop, Young Thug ends up a border yacht in Miami.
Birdman presents him with two chains the words rich gang
spelled out in glittering gems. Young Thug is grateful. You
can hear him shout out to a Birdman's signature hits
(41:21):
number one Stunna and one hundred million in the process.
Speaker 10 (41:24):
Yeah, I mean we're getting a real deal, special shot
stunham Man.
Speaker 6 (41:28):
He didn't say without him and won't be written on
this wall fuddy yet, Yeah you.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
His thank you speech continues, we won't be read.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
I got one of the biggest bloods in America.
Speaker 13 (41:41):
Georgia.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
It's hard to make out, but Young Thug says, quote,
I've got one of the biggest bloods in America with me.
Young Thug then extends his arm and pushes the camera
to his right to focus on the man sitting next
to him on his cell phone. That man is Donovan Thomas.
Thomas looks into the lens and flashes what appears to
(42:05):
be several gang signs. What business did Donovan Nutt Thomas,
the man who reportedly said Thug had me killed moments
before he passed. Possibly have a board that yacht, depends
on who you ask. Before Thomas died, he helped jumpstart
wife and Lucci's music career. That bond is why in
(42:26):
twenty seventeen, Lucci named his debut EP, Long Live Nut.
This is what Lucci told me at the time. So
I've heard you say long Live Nut. I know he
was a long term frint of yours, but who exactly
was he?
Speaker 15 (42:39):
Nut was one of my closest friend named schel He
and Jed that's his brother. And he was a big brother.
And basically you know that was just like a big
brother at all.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Man.
Speaker 15 (42:51):
You know, shall like boy nut Loy You me with,
oh you gotta go meet nut Bro, stuff like that,
Matt Nutt nut racking with all my old the news
everything that. It was like, you know, he just made
me feel like all that start already.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
So he was telling you this before like you officially
released anything?
Speaker 15 (43:09):
Yeah, right, like before I dropped anything. Man, he tell
me like why you're gonna be rich in ten months.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
But, as police alleged, their connections run even deeper than music.
Speaker 11 (43:24):
The yn is like an umbrella abundant Inglewood family, which
is a traditional game.
Speaker 12 (43:29):
Donaldan Thomas was an Inglewood family.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Blood Chucky tells us that Donovan Thomas was in prime
position within these factions. Unlike Investigator Underwood, Chuckxy actually knew
Thomas before he died.
Speaker 6 (43:43):
So where does.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Donovan Thomas fit in all of this?
Speaker 13 (43:46):
Man?
Speaker 4 (43:46):
Rest in peace?
Speaker 10 (43:48):
He was the big home, no kidding anybody that had
anything to do with the Red Side.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
He was the big home. He was the one that
got the blessing from California.
Speaker 6 (43:58):
Wait what do you mean by that?
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Oh?
Speaker 10 (44:01):
I hope I ain't saying too much, but listen. So
blood is a LA thing, right, Blood is an LA thing.
Blood was anything that was anti crypt came together informed
bloods in the early in the seventies.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
Right.
Speaker 10 (44:17):
So, so the whole term blood comes from LA. So
to be official, right, to be official, you have to
be blessed from somebody from the motherland, which is La. Right,
Nut was blessed from the motherland right to be able
to plant the flag in Alemna.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Above all else, Donovan Thomas was a connector. An Investigator
Underwood thinks that Thomas was a connector till the very
end of his life, even tried to de escalate the
beef between younger thug and wife and Luci.
Speaker 11 (44:52):
He was one of those guys that took care of
the neighborhood. He made sure kids had haircuts, He made sure,
you know, kids had tennis.
Speaker 12 (44:59):
Shoes and that kind of stuff. And from the rumors
and the street communitey I heard that he was one
of those guys that tried to squash the beef. He tried,
he knew that it was beef. He knew that it
was brewing.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Once upon a time, such mutual connections might have been
enough to diffuse the tension between these rising rap stars.
After all, they repped for Zone three. What happened instead
is that the death of Donovan Thomas split Atlanta's blood
sets into two warring factions, those who sided with Thomas
and YFN and those who sided with hys L.
Speaker 11 (45:36):
Unfortunately, there are two blood sets, but they started this
long standing beef because the murder of Donovan Thomas.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Neighborhood ties can run deeper, family ties even deeper, but
in the current state of Atlanta's gang wars, blood ties
can't compare. In this case, the same man who sat
next to young Thuck abort that yacht would die the
next year, allegedly by thugs doing. Whenever I talk to
(46:06):
people about Donovan Thomas, he's had this real sense of
Thomas is a person like everybody seems to want to
describe him as soft spoken, affable, friendly, And I can
imagine people reacting very strongly because he get killed on
the street corner.
Speaker 10 (46:24):
Yeah, because it's a love thing. Man, And my son
has his name tattooed on him because he loves him.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
That's right. Chuck C's son has Donovan Thomas' nicknameing Dona's temple, and.
Speaker 10 (46:37):
My son has r ip nutt right here tattooed on
his face. This is my son, right, This is he's
my son.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
He has the same name as me.
Speaker 10 (46:48):
He's the in recording there card of the third he's
my son, but he has another man's name tattooed on
him because of the love that he has for this man. Right,
And the same with the other people. Well that's out there.
They have love for this guy. So when they see
the person that took away they loved one, anger comes in.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Right.
Speaker 10 (47:09):
If I'm angry and I'm intoxicated and I have a weapon,
I'm liable to make a bad decision.
Speaker 4 (47:16):
So it's not like this was some.
Speaker 10 (47:20):
Ingrown hatred, right, it was an incident that happened, and
when this happened, then something else have to happen.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Then something else have to happen.
Speaker 10 (47:28):
Then something else has to happen, because then the streets
retaliation is a musk.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Next, on King Slime, we dig deeper into what is
already shaping up to be the longest, craziest criminal trial
that Georgia has ever seen.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Is what makes this trial particularly extraordinary. We speak to
attorneys from both sides of the YSL trial, public defenders
who say that YSL isn't a gang. At Fulton County
(48:09):
District Attorney Fannie Willis, it's.
Speaker 8 (48:11):
So interesting you talk about snitche everybody hard right till
they sitting in the seat.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Gets King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Heirloom Media.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
It's written and produced by George Cheaty, Christina Lee, and Tommy.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Andres, mixing sound design and original music by Evan Tyre
and Taylor Chapogne.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
The executive producer and editor is Tommy Andres.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Fact checking by Kaylin lynch Our. Theme music is produced
by dun Deal Special Thanks to the Atlanta news outlets,
eleven Alive, WSBTV, Atlanta News First and Box five, and
Chuck C.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
And the Throwback Boys for the use of their song
Stacks on Deck.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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