Interesting Articles from the RAP world. A Where are they know type deal.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Bone Thugs with the two most iconic rappers.
So crazy to think they recorded tracks with both of these guys during that beef.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
R.I.P. No Limit's 'Magic'
(AllHipHop News) Former No Limit Records rapper Mr. Magic perished in a car crash on Friday (March 1), in Mississippi.
According to reports, the tragedy happened in Hattiesburg, where the deadly car crash claimed the lives of Mr. Magic, born Awood Johnson and his wife, Chastity.
The couple’s 12-year-old daughter survived the crash, according to the Times-Picayune.
A number of artists associated with No Limit Records tweeted out condolences to Mr. Magic and his family.
“RIP to my brother, Mr. Magic and his wife,” Mystikal tweeted. “God bless their families.”
Mia X was supposed to perform with Mr. Magic on Friday, when she received the tragic news.
“I looked forward tp performing and laughing with you on friday but God chose you to be with him,” Mia X said. Chasity was the LOVE of your life so God decided that she should join you. I know yall are in a better place but all of us who loved yall are shocked and hurt.”
Magic released three albums for No Limit Records, before leaving the label and forming the Body Headbangaz featuring Roy Jones Jr.
In 2004, the group hit the charts with the single “I Smoke, I Drank” which also featured Atlanta rap artists YoungBloodZ on the remix.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Shock G Explains why Saafir is bound to a wheelchair
Written by: Shock G
Last year, a close friend asked me “Why is Saafir in a wheelchair?” and with a sigh, all I could muster was “It’s complicated” because it really is. Months later, he asked me a 3rd time, so I shot him this email below:
Saafir’s sitch is the gradual result of a series of events..
Here’s a ruff timeline:
1992:
Survived TWA plane crash at JFK scheduled for Frisco. Engine blew during take-off, skidded-out sidewayz off the runway, came to a stop, and after a few seconds, burst into flames:
Saafir was the first one off, but he jumped before the slide fully inflated and wound up jolting his lower back as his feet hit the ground beneath the thin material. It was a Boeing DC-10, so it was hella high-up (..like jumping from a 3rd floor apt balcony).
Afterwards he refused hospital assistance (“I’m aight”) ..in a hurry ta catch the next plane back to the bay.
Saafir
1994:
At a d.u. photo shoot in Jack London Square (oakland) for Rappages mag, showing-out for the writer & photographer, he jumped onto the metal steps of a moving train that was goin faster than he anticipated. So when he jumped back off 2 blocks further, he hit the street with a snap, causing him to run violently faster than humanly possible for the first few steps to keep from scrubbing on camera, ha. He pulled it off, but it looked craaazy, and for the rest of that day he kept holdin his lower back and whispering ”Damn, I think I fucked my back off again blood”.
1994 thru 1999:
He popped hella ecstasy without drinking the required water to protect the spine from dehydration.
2000:
While on Up in Smoke Tour w/Xzibit, horseplayin around backstage he hurt it again while kickboxin wit da homies. He could barely stand up from the pain. So Nzazi Muhammed (Digital Underground’s fitness & witch doctor) came & met him backstage, gave’m acupuncture & some massage therapy which immediately got him movin around again. This became one of Saafir’s classic stories, how Z made him lay on the concrete and had him screamin in pain right in front of Dr.Dre, Ras Kass and everyone while he worked on him, and how he jumped up afterwards in disbelief, and with a huge teary-eyed smile told Z, “Damn blood, u really fixed my back!! For the first time in 5-years the pain is gone!! Wow man, thanku man, thanku!!!”
2000 to 06:
Does two more Up in Smoke tours w/Xibit.
Back pain gradually returns & increases over the years, resulting in several doc visits & consultations.
2007:
His first spinal operation for “cartilage deterioration” and “nerve damage” on a few specific vertebrae. Afterwards, against doctors’ advice to “take it easy and stay off your feet while you heal”, he continued to do shows & hustle in the street.
07 thru 09:
Music biz real slow, so to pay his rent he starts grindin his prescription back-pain meds (oxys & roxys, high $treet demand) while he breathes thru the pain “like a soldier”.
Meanwhile, in addition to back pain, his right leg gradually begins to go numb from the toes upward, until he has to walk (and perform) with a cane:
Early 2011:
Numbness reaches his knee on right leg, left leg first signs of numbness in the foot. After several doc visits & diagnosis’s, still no solid explanation or solution. “Scar tissue around his lower spine is swelling and pressing against the nerves that control the legs” is the general assessment.
Late 2011:
Can’t walk at all on his own anymore, begins using a wheelchair. Loses his own place, and hasta move in with an ex-gf who he doesn’t get along with but was the only place he could go. They barely get along, the scene is usually tense. Meanwhile, his X & molly abuse continues, and without ever drinking water (their nightly ritual is to x-out before they fuck and crash-out). He continues to ride-out the pain (“Blood, I’ma soldier”) while flippin his pain meds for cash.
Also worth a mention, and since ever, Saafir is a sugar junkie (skittles & soda), only eats junk food, and has been chaining Newports since the early 90s. He recently told me he hasn’t eaten a vegetable in over 10 years, and most of his meals come from either the Arco Mini-market, 7-Eleven, or the Wendy’s nearby their deep-east oakland apartment.
Feb 2012:
He reveals to Money-B his sitch, which spreads thru the crew & shocks all of us. None of us had any idea, and we’re all hurt & pissed that he waited this long before he told anybody.
March 2012:
I go visit him, our first in-person meeting in over 10-years. His apartment is small, dark, cluttered & filthy. Cig butts fill every ashtray, empty soda bottles & fast-food cups everywhere. When our eyes met, it took all my strength to push down the urge to cry, and we met w/big smiles & hugs. But later when I was alone, I had ta pull the car over and dump tears for 10-minutes straight.
By now paralyzation had reached his hips, no feeling in either leg, can’t wiggle a toe or flex any leg muscles. It took us 2-hours to dress him and get him into the car, and then another 2 to get him situated in bed after our food & pharmacist run.
After the visit, I jump onboard full throttle in search of anyone who can help, any medical solution..
April 2012:
shock & Saafir
We zero in on the Laser Spine Institution in Scottsdale Arizona who propose a procedure with a 90% success rate. After reviewing his med records, requesting several new MRIs, and a slew of financial form clearances, they accept his case. We negotiate the appointment for late May, and began the surgery-prep processes at home.
May 26, 2012
I fly out with him as caretaker.
On day 2 of the 7-day process, after many tests, they apologetically announce they can’t help his situation. “Our type of procedure can’t treat his type of injury” was their only explanation, “We’re extremely sorry you traveled this far..” and they reimbursed us 15k of the 20 we spent to make it happen.
June 2, 2012
Saafir returned to his gloomy home situation in oakland devastated, exhausted & defeated. All of our hope was in that trip to AZ.
2012 to present:
Still searching for a doctor or a procedure that can help.
Still living off skittles, soda, chips and 7-Eleven burritos.
Still chain-smokin Newports
Still got them roxys fo’ya!
Tim Dog... Dead or Alive?
A Mississippi woman is claiming that a popular 1990s rapper faked his own death to get out of paying her thousands of dollars.
On Feb. 14, rapper Timothy Blair, better known as "Tim Dog," reportedly died from a seizure following a battle with diabetes. Rolling Stone reported this news via a report from The Source, but that link is now disabled. Southaven, Miss., native Esther Pilgrim may know why such news disappeared. She is claiming the rapper actually faked his death to swindle her out of $32,000.
Two years ago, Blair pleaded guilty to grand larceny for defrauding Pilgrim, KABC previously reported. The two met through an online dating site and he scammed her into thinking he needed investors to restart his music career. This left Pilgrim with $32,000 in credit card debt. A judge ordered him to pay her $19,000 in restitution within the five years of his probation period.
Pilgrim told CBS Memphis affiliate WREG earlier this month that Tim Dog could owe upwards of $2 million to other people he allegedly scammed around the world. Pilgrim received the payments from Blair up until he was reported dead. After he died, she couldn't find any information surrounding the circumstances of his death, like witnesses or a location. She also claims there is no death certificate.
Pilgrim is not the only one who thinks the rapper faked his own death. Prosecutor Steven Jubera, who helped get Blair convicted in 2011, filed a petition to have Blair's probation revoked and there is now a warrant out for his arrest.
“I need proof,” Jubera told WREG this week. “I need a death certificate showing that’s he’s dead because as far as I’m concerned, he’s alive.”
Journalist Drew Millard, who works for Vice's music section, Noisey, looked into thestory of the East Coast rapper's death and came up with more dead ends. Despite the cluster and chaos, Millard says "the issue of Tim Dog’s life or death needs to be resolved as soon as humanly possible in order for both his victims and family to have closure."
“In the eyes of the law, until he is proven dead, they have to treat him as if he is alive. And he is in contempt of court because he has not been making his monthly payments," Pilgrim told Millard. “It’s not really about the money. This affected me long term -- financially, emotionally, physically, everything.”
Bronx-born Blair rose to fame in 1991 with the track "F**k Compton," a diss at West Coast rappers Dr. Dre and N.W.A., Rolling Stone notes. His name has been dropped in tracks by Eminem and Nas.
November, 1989. 'Helter Skelter' only possible because of....
One of, if not, my very favorite albums "Helter Skelter" which I own on CD & Cassette. Would love to own it on vinyl, anyways, had it not been for this car accident, it never would've been. To me, it's a trip to think that, I wonder where The DOC would've gone had this never have happened. Because many people forget that his debut album went PLATINUM. Story via LA Times 1995.
The D.O.C. was riding high, literally and figuratively, as he drove his brand-new sports car west on the Ventura Freeway toward his Calabasas home late one November night in 1989.
Only a day before, the promising rapper with a seemingly limitless future had completed work on a video for his just-released debut album, a work that would eventually sell more than 1 million copies. Celebrating, he had spent the night partying with a girlfriend.
"I was the [best]," the D.O.C. says. "And then, \o7 boom!"\f7
The D.O.C., who acknowledges that he had been drinking, fell asleep at the wheel, his car veering wildly off the freeway. The rapper, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown out the rear window, slamming face first into a tree.
A blossoming career seemed finished almost before it had started: The accident severed his vocal cords, turning his once-forceful voice into a tortured wheeze.
Six years later, however, rap fans will be surprised to learn that the D.O.C., 27, has resurfaced with a new album, "Helter Skelter," which will be released in January on Giant Records.
A single from the album, "Return of Da Livin' Dead," is due in stores on Halloween, which seems appropriate because the rapper's voice has a spooky essence, lending an eerie feeling to the futuristic-sounding "Helter Skelter."
"It's different, it's weird, it's crazy," the D.O.C. says of his voice during a phone interview from his home in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Ga.
"But it's \o7 cool.\f7 It's real dark. I like that. That's the part that makes it cool because you don't really have to act. It's all natural. You get sort of a natural vibe that almost makes it feel like it's \o7 always \f7 Halloween."
What do his friends think?
"I've heard some say they love it," he says, "but I've heard others say they'll never be able to get used to it. I know they're going to love the album, though. . . .
"Most women will probably say, 'I like it, it's sexy.' I get that a lot. That's actually what kind of helped me decide to rap again--after all the women started . . . stroking my ego. Because I had really lost a lot of confidence in myself."
Confidence wasn't the only casualty of the near-fatal accident.
"My face was really [messed up]," he says. "Apparently, it was the size of a big ol' watermelon. That's what I was told."
His injuries required 21 hours of plastic surgery, and he spent 2 1/2 weeks in the hospital. He couldn't speak for about a month.
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't [messed] up," he says. "I went through all the mental anguish."
Friends and colleagues told him that because his voice was so ragged, he should forget about ever performing again.
They advised him to concentrate on the songwriting skills he had developed while working on several of the seminal albums in gangsta rap history, including Eazy-E's "Eazy-Duz-It" and N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton."
And for several years the D.O.C., whose real name is Tracy Lynn Curry, took them to heart.
"I thought it was over," he says. "I thought my role had been defined--I'd be in the background. I'd write for people and help them do the [recording]."
Eventually, though, vocal training helped him regain what's left of his voice, and he continued to work with Dr. Dre. The respected producer had discovered the Dallas-born D.O.C. when the rapper was only 18, inviting him to Los Angeles to make records.
After the accident, the D.O.C. worked on Dre's "The Chronic" and Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Doggystyle."
But he ended his association with the pair last year. Relocating to Atlanta, he hooked up with a young producer from Texas, Erotic D, and convinced himself that he should make a comeback album.
"The [stuff] I was writing wouldn't sound right coming from anybody else," he says. "When you write for somebody else, you've got to write from their standpoint. You can't really write from your own point of view."
Still, the D.O.C. was nervous about making the album.
"I wasn't absolutely, positively sure I could do it without Dre," he says. "I never really felt apprehensive because of my voice because after a while I'd gotten used to it, so I figured it would only be a matter of time before everybody else got used to it."
It's not easy. On "Helter Skelter," the D.O.C. at times makes Tom Waits sound like Sam Cooke. Listening to his scratchy voice, you find yourself craving a lozenge.
"To be honest, when I first heard him rap, I was thrown off," says Erotic D in a separate interview. "I heard other people saying, 'The lyrics are the [best], but his voice is [awful].' I didn't look at it like that. I looked at it like, 'This is going to be a lot of work.'
"At first, you couldn't catch a lot of the words because he was feeling sorry for himself. He wasn't really trying to work his vocals. He was pampering himself."
But after a few weeks in the studio, the producer said, the D.O.C. regained his confidence.
With the album completed, the rapper now regards his trials and tribulations over the last several years as a message from above.
On the cover of his first album, "No One Can Do It Better," the D.O.C. was pictured standing next to a statue of Jesus. The lettering under the statue reads: "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."
"When the kids saw that on the album cover, they thought I was referring to me," the D.O.C. says. "And then, after awhile, your record is [a hit] and everybody loves you and so I started saying, 'Well, maybe I am the King of Kings.'
"And I think God was like, 'Hold on, son. You're getting a little before yourself. Sit down.' And he took the vocal cord because he knew that's what would make me sit the [expletive] down for a minute and really think about things."
The D.O.C. was riding high, literally and figuratively, as he drove his brand-new sports car west on the Ventura Freeway toward his Calabasas home late one November night in 1989.
Only a day before, the promising rapper with a seemingly limitless future had completed work on a video for his just-released debut album, a work that would eventually sell more than 1 million copies. Celebrating, he had spent the night partying with a girlfriend.
"I was the [best]," the D.O.C. says. "And then, \o7 boom!"\f7
The D.O.C., who acknowledges that he had been drinking, fell asleep at the wheel, his car veering wildly off the freeway. The rapper, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown out the rear window, slamming face first into a tree.
A blossoming career seemed finished almost before it had started: The accident severed his vocal cords, turning his once-forceful voice into a tortured wheeze.
Six years later, however, rap fans will be surprised to learn that the D.O.C., 27, has resurfaced with a new album, "Helter Skelter," which will be released in January on Giant Records.
A single from the album, "Return of Da Livin' Dead," is due in stores on Halloween, which seems appropriate because the rapper's voice has a spooky essence, lending an eerie feeling to the futuristic-sounding "Helter Skelter."
"It's different, it's weird, it's crazy," the D.O.C. says of his voice during a phone interview from his home in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Ga.
"But it's \o7 cool.\f7 It's real dark. I like that. That's the part that makes it cool because you don't really have to act. It's all natural. You get sort of a natural vibe that almost makes it feel like it's \o7 always \f7 Halloween."
What do his friends think?
"I've heard some say they love it," he says, "but I've heard others say they'll never be able to get used to it. I know they're going to love the album, though. . . .
"Most women will probably say, 'I like it, it's sexy.' I get that a lot. That's actually what kind of helped me decide to rap again--after all the women started . . . stroking my ego. Because I had really lost a lot of confidence in myself."
Confidence wasn't the only casualty of the near-fatal accident.
"My face was really [messed up]," he says. "Apparently, it was the size of a big ol' watermelon. That's what I was told."
His injuries required 21 hours of plastic surgery, and he spent 2 1/2 weeks in the hospital. He couldn't speak for about a month.
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't [messed] up," he says. "I went through all the mental anguish."
Friends and colleagues told him that because his voice was so ragged, he should forget about ever performing again.
They advised him to concentrate on the songwriting skills he had developed while working on several of the seminal albums in gangsta rap history, including Eazy-E's "Eazy-Duz-It" and N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton."
And for several years the D.O.C., whose real name is Tracy Lynn Curry, took them to heart.
"I thought it was over," he says. "I thought my role had been defined--I'd be in the background. I'd write for people and help them do the [recording]."
Eventually, though, vocal training helped him regain what's left of his voice, and he continued to work with Dr. Dre. The respected producer had discovered the Dallas-born D.O.C. when the rapper was only 18, inviting him to Los Angeles to make records.
After the accident, the D.O.C. worked on Dre's "The Chronic" and Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Doggystyle."
But he ended his association with the pair last year. Relocating to Atlanta, he hooked up with a young producer from Texas, Erotic D, and convinced himself that he should make a comeback album.
"The [stuff] I was writing wouldn't sound right coming from anybody else," he says. "When you write for somebody else, you've got to write from their standpoint. You can't really write from your own point of view."
Still, the D.O.C. was nervous about making the album.
"I wasn't absolutely, positively sure I could do it without Dre," he says. "I never really felt apprehensive because of my voice because after a while I'd gotten used to it, so I figured it would only be a matter of time before everybody else got used to it."
It's not easy. On "Helter Skelter," the D.O.C. at times makes Tom Waits sound like Sam Cooke. Listening to his scratchy voice, you find yourself craving a lozenge.
"To be honest, when I first heard him rap, I was thrown off," says Erotic D in a separate interview. "I heard other people saying, 'The lyrics are the [best], but his voice is [awful].' I didn't look at it like that. I looked at it like, 'This is going to be a lot of work.'
"At first, you couldn't catch a lot of the words because he was feeling sorry for himself. He wasn't really trying to work his vocals. He was pampering himself."
But after a few weeks in the studio, the producer said, the D.O.C. regained his confidence.
With the album completed, the rapper now regards his trials and tribulations over the last several years as a message from above.
On the cover of his first album, "No One Can Do It Better," the D.O.C. was pictured standing next to a statue of Jesus. The lettering under the statue reads: "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."
"When the kids saw that on the album cover, they thought I was referring to me," the D.O.C. says. "And then, after awhile, your record is [a hit] and everybody loves you and so I started saying, 'Well, maybe I am the King of Kings.'
"And I think God was like, 'Hold on, son. You're getting a little before yourself. Sit down.' And he took the vocal cord because he knew that's what would make me sit the [expletive] down for a minute and really think about things."
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The Short Rise, and Hard Fall of an Anchorage Gangsta Rapper
The short rise and hard fall of an Anchorage gangsta rapper
I smoked blunts with Joker the Bailbondsman. Hell, I
smoked a lot of blunts with Joker the Bailbondsman. I smoked so many blunts
with Joker one time at his bullet-pocked crib in Mountain View that I convinced
myself he was going to shoot me. Part of my problem was classic stoner
paranoia. Part of it was that I was wearing a San Bernardino County Sheriff‟s
Deputy uniform in a roomful of poseur gang bangers. The rest was that Joker
had just pulled a pistol and half-jokingly threatened to bust a cap in my ass.His
exact words were, “You put any of that shit I just said in my article and I will most
definitely bust a cap in your peckerwood ass.”Before I explain the sheriff‟s
uniform allow me to break down the context and meaning of the above
statement.“My article” as Joker put it, was a cover story about him later published
in the December 7-13, 2000 edition of the Anchorage Press, a feature length
character sketch of an aspiring hip-hop mogul who rapped about shootouts on
Boniface and selling drugs to “clients in Deadhorse.” Technically it was my
article, not his, since I was the one reporting and writing it. But I don‟t quibble
over semantics when there‟s a gun in my face, so I let it slide.“That shit I just
said” referred to a 20-minute long, rambling, heavy-lidded soliloquy in which
Joker detailed his purported masterminding of a multi-city narcotics trafficking
operation along with his designs to become “the kingpin of coke in Anchorage,
A-K.”Mind you, this was during an interview with a journalist whose microcassette
recorder was positioned amidst marijuana stems, a half-full 40-ounce bottle of
Olde English and three hollow-point bullets on a side table not six inches from
Joker‟s elbow.Homeboy was on the record, bragging about dealing drugs. And I
was sitting there in my cop suit. I‟d purchased it and put it on at Value Village on
my way to interview Joker, thinking it‟d make a sweet Burning Man costume. And
it does. But for interviewing the self-designated godfather of Anchorage gangster
rap it was less than idealWhich brings us back to my peckerwood ass.I‟m pretty
sure the Society of Professional Journalists has a rule or two against smoking
blunts with interview subjects, which is one of many reasons I don‟t belong to the
Society of Professional Journalists. Yet by all but the most conservative ethical
standards of journalism I could have virtuously quoted every single word Joker
said about slinging this and chopping up that.Instead, I wussed out. I didn‟t print
a word of that shit he said. I just hinted at his criminality.Joker has fashioned
himself into [a] Dr. Dre for the 49th state. He owns his own record label, his own
recording studio… He drives a white Mustang packed with boxes of CDs and
posters and stickers and fliers and T-shirts [Uzis on the front, name on the
back]…If you‟re wondering where the money for all this paraphernalia is coming
from, well, don‟t even go there. —“Joker the Bailbondsman: The Blunt Truth,”
December 2000.I didn‟t go there, simply because I didn‟t think bringing the heat
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
down on Joker would be such a triumph of investigative journalism that it justified
the risk, having already learned the hard way that antagonizing wannabe
gangster rappers is a risky business. But that‟s another story. Not long after I
finished my story on Joker I moved out of the state and more or less forgot about
him, except for a few occasions over the years when I channel-hopped past one
of his videos on BET (the best of them depicts Joker and his posse cruising with
Cal Worthington in the driver‟s seat of a Lincoln Continental). Then came April 14
of this year, when I was alerted by several friends to a news brief in the
Anchorage Daily News headlined “Local rapper gets 10 years for dealing drugs.”
It reported that 33-year-old local rap artist Sean Sullivan had been sentenced to
a decade in federal prison after being convicted of two counts of distributing
crack cocaine and one count of attempting to distribute crack cocaine. The final
sentence read: “Prosecutors say Sullivan also is known by his recording name
„Joker the Bailbondsman‟ and has recorded songs and videos including „Money
in a Ziploc Bag‟ and „Sex Money Murder Drugs.‟”Subtlety has never been one of
Joker‟s strong points. A few weeks before I interviewed him in 2000, he called
the station line at KFAT and threatened to “bring the pain” if KFAT didn‟t start
playing his tracks. Later that year he showed up for a photo shoot carrying five
handguns, which he insisted on posing with for images to accompany “his”
story.He wanted to be known as a gun-toting badass, a ghetto superstar, a hood
from the hood. But he wasn‟t from the hood. Not even close. Before he
transformed into Joker the Bailbondsman, Sean Sullivan was a privileged kid
growing up in a safe neighborhood. He didn‟t have to deal drugs to survive.
When he went to Wendler Junior High in 1990 he sported a high-top fade, like
Kid from Kid „n‟ Play. That‟s not gangster. Earlier this month I spoke by phone
with Brandi Alfaro, who grew up in Anchorage but now lives in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. She was friends with Joker throughout his adolescence and dated
him for about a year when they were both in their early teens. She told me that
he used to hang out at Skateland, always carrying an album he‟d recorded,
showing off the picture of himself on the cover, talking about how he was going to
be a big hip-hop star when he grew up. That‟s not gangster either.Somewhere
along the line from Skateland to Mountain View, Sullivan invented, and then
became, Joker. And by inhabiting his own hype, he engineered his own
downfall.Joker was born and raised in Anchorage, but he‟s a product of the urban
jungles in his mind, described to him in bedtime stories by Tupac and Biggy and
Ice-Cube, et. al. He was 10 years old when Straight Outta Compton went
platinum. Now he emulates. —“The Blunt Truth”Given our history together, I
wasn‟t exactly shocked to learn that Joker was going to prison for dealing crack.
But I was curious to find out just how close he‟d come to achieving kingpin
status. So I looked up the indictment, pre-sentencing memos, Anchorage Police
Department reports, FBI interview transcripts and various other court and law
enforcement documents related to United States of America vs. Sean A.
Sullivan.From them I drew four conclusions:1) Joker never rose to higher than a
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
mid-level dealer.2) Joker should have spent less money on rap videos and more
on lawyers.3) Joker is no snitch.4) Joker is one of the unluckiest crack dealers
ever to sling a rock.The last of these findings I based solely on the outlandish
story of how Joker got busted. It begins on the morning of January 29, 2004,
when a man named Allen Busey showed up at Tyson Elementary School to
confront several children about a fight they‟d recently picked with Busey‟s
children. The school administrators called the cops. Busey, who was wearing a
dark hooded sweatshirt, fled the scene. The responding APD officer at first
decided to locate Busey and issue him a trespass warning. But then APD
dispatch advised that Busey was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant for
assault and trespassing, information which turned out to be inaccurate. Planning
to arrest Busey, Officer Luis Soto rendezvoused with a second officer outside an
apartment complex on Price Street in Mountain View where Busey lived. They
were about to go in when they received an emergency call and started returning
to their patrol cars.Right then Joker exited the building wearing a gray hooded
sweatshirt.He was 26 years old, 5‟11” and weighed 190 pounds. Busey was 45
years old, 5‟9” and weighed 191 pounds. Beyond the color of their skin, and their
heights and weights, the two men shared little resemblance.Even so, Officer Soto
approached Joker yelling “Allen, Allen!”Despite all the time and money Joker had
spent trying to get famous, he was about to get popped because a police officer
couldn‟t tell one black guy in a hoodie from another.It‟s his life and he‟s starring in
it. The props are all here…even the bullet hole in the wall over his head. There‟s
another in the kitchen and two more in the bedroom. Someone shot the hell out
of Joker‟s place, firing through the windows from the street below…Joker says
the list of suspects is long. “The higher you climb, the more people you leave
behind, and the more jealous they get.” —“The Blunt Truth”According to
police reports and court documents, this is what happened next:Ignoring Officer
Soto, Joker hopped in his car, which was parked on the street. Soto drew his
service revolver. Joker raised his hands but did not comply with Soto‟s orders to
step out of the vehicle. Soto then used his nightstick to break the window. Joker
took his foot off the brake and began to pull away. Officer Soto opened fire,
shooting five bullets into the car. Somehow Joker wasn‟t hit. But he got the
message. He killed the engine and stepped out with his hands up.If Joker had
just said, “I‟m not Allen” and produced identification to prove it, or even if he‟d just
gotten out of the car the first time Soto ordered him to, he might still be smoking
blunts in his recording studio. But his split-second decisions that fateful day were
guided by the unsettling fact that he was in possession of 50 grams of crack
cocaine and 80 grams of powdered cocaine, which the police were about to
find.Joker‟s lawyer tied up the case for a year and a half by challenging the
legality of the search. Then in June 2005, according to a sentencing
memorandum, “the defendant indicated he wanted to cooperate with the United
States.”In other words, Joker offered to become a confidential informant working
for the federal government. “During a debriefing, the defendant provided the
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
names of numerous individuals in the Anchorage drug world, including names of
individuals then under investigation,” the sentencing memo reveals. “However,
the defendant stated that because these individuals knew that he had been
charged in federal court, they were hesitant to deal with him.”To provide Joker
with the cover he needed to get back in the dope game, the feds dismissed the
charges against him on evidentiary grounds. “Once the defendant‟s case was
dismissed, he stated that he needed a „cooling off‟ period so that drug traffickers
would trust him again.”One year later, Joker had still provided no useful
information, despite having appeared in rap videos with drug traffickers targeted
by the federal government. Then in October 2006, the FBI cultivated a different
informant who admitted to buying half-ounces and ounces of crack from Joker on
more than 50 occasions since Joker had agreed to become a snitch.Joker was
trying to play the feds. That‟s not smart. But it is gangster.“I know if I‟m going to
make it in this game, I need to have both a business persona and a street
persona. I‟m a capitalist…I just want to be young and rich. That‟s my whole thing
in this.” —“The Blunt Truth”Last November 16 a squadron of federal agents
raided Joker‟s house. By that time, he‟d moved from Mountain View to a cookie
cutter two-story duplex on Mountainman Loop, just off Dowling Road near the
New Seward Highway. They busted down the door with a battering ram and
caught Joker as he ran out of the first floor bathroom. Agents found a wet plastic
bag on the floor of the bathroom next to the toilet. It tested positive for cocaine
residue.Next the agents searched the garage, which had been converted into a
recording studio. They found and catalogued six cell phones, two pagers,
“suspected marijuana,” boxes of video film, stacks of Joker the Bailbondsman
CDs, a box of .38 special blank rounds, two 12-gauge shotgun slugs and a
Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic assault rifle, fully loaded.In the downstairs TV
room, agents found two more cell phones and $4,062.55 in cash stuffed in a
pants pocket. In Joker‟s desk they discovered “possible marijuana blunts,” rolling
papers, a digital scale, and “Western Union receipts with the defendant‟s name.”
Elsewhere they came up with yet another cell phone, another baggie with
cocaine residue and a box of .45 caliber ammunition.According to an FBI report,
“After being arrested, the defendant ominously asked agents if the charges
against him would be dismissed if the informant who had made the purchases
was „unwilling or unavailable to testify.‟”But there would be no testimony or trial,
because Joker pleaded guilty early this year. Then he kept quiet about his
looming incarceration except for a single oblique reference in a February 27 post
to his MySpace page: “Did you know that the U.S. government is lockin up
niggas like they is crazy??? If you in HIPHOP you can make a difference. We
have to make our voices be heard. We have to change the laws!!! We ain‟t
powerless. We have to let Congress know we mean business. I‟m tired of
selective drug enforcement in this nation.”And the federal government was tired
of Joker the Bailbondsman selling drugs and rapping about it.Assistant U.S.
Attorney Frank V. Russo, the lead prosecutor in the case against Joker, says
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
Joker “was on my radar screen” as soon as Russo arrived in Alaska in 2002.
“We knew he was a pretty significant street-level dealer,” says Russo. “We didn‟t
target Sean Sullivan because he was Joker the Bailbondsman. We targeted him
because of his associates and the amount of drugs he was dealing,” says Russo.
“But once we entered the sentencing phase, his music and his persona became
a relevant concern. Just as a criminal defense attorney will bring up a
defendant‟s good deeds before the sentencing judge, I brought up the fact that in
this case the defendant had been espousing drug propaganda to the
community.”One week before Joker was sentenced, Russo submitted a blistering
pre-sentencing memorandum. “The defendant‟s stable family history offers no
excuse or explanation for his criminal behavior,” he wrote. “Moreover, the
defendant had an opportunity rarely afforded to defendants charged in federal
court… He had the connections and the personality to be a successful
cooperator, and work off or down the charges against him. Instead he chose to
sell drugs in order to support his music career, favoring the drug traffickers that
appeared in his music videos over his own family. “Ironically, in these videos, the
defendant glorifies drug trafficking with provocative lyrics proclaiming its
profitability and bragging about carrying firearms.” When the judge gave him ten
years at the sentencing hearing, Joker freaked out and had to be subdued by two
Deputy United States Marshals.“Ten years came as a shock to him,” says Russo.
“The hearing finished with him pinned down on the floor. On his way out of the
courtroom he called me a chump. He said, „Are you happy now, chump?‟ I‟d
already told him it was nothing personal.”It‟s hard to understand how Joker
couldn‟t have known he was looking at ten in the pen considering one of the
videos he produced and circulated on the internet in 2006, when he was
supposed to be a federal informant. Titled “Product,” it shows Joker cooking and
sorting crack cocaine while foretelling his own bleak future.“When it‟s time for
sentencing, you know the judge won‟t bend,” he raps. “You‟re caught with crack
and guns, a mandatory minimum ten.”Word.
CREDIT: David Holthouse
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
Pictured: Joker & Lil Wayne
I smoked blunts with Joker the Bailbondsman. Hell, I
smoked a lot of blunts with Joker the Bailbondsman. I smoked so many blunts
with Joker one time at his bullet-pocked crib in Mountain View that I convinced
myself he was going to shoot me. Part of my problem was classic stoner
paranoia. Part of it was that I was wearing a San Bernardino County Sheriff‟s
Deputy uniform in a roomful of poseur gang bangers. The rest was that Joker
had just pulled a pistol and half-jokingly threatened to bust a cap in my ass.His
exact words were, “You put any of that shit I just said in my article and I will most
definitely bust a cap in your peckerwood ass.”Before I explain the sheriff‟s
uniform allow me to break down the context and meaning of the above
statement.“My article” as Joker put it, was a cover story about him later published
in the December 7-13, 2000 edition of the Anchorage Press, a feature length
character sketch of an aspiring hip-hop mogul who rapped about shootouts on
Boniface and selling drugs to “clients in Deadhorse.” Technically it was my
article, not his, since I was the one reporting and writing it. But I don‟t quibble
over semantics when there‟s a gun in my face, so I let it slide.“That shit I just
said” referred to a 20-minute long, rambling, heavy-lidded soliloquy in which
Joker detailed his purported masterminding of a multi-city narcotics trafficking
operation along with his designs to become “the kingpin of coke in Anchorage,
A-K.”Mind you, this was during an interview with a journalist whose microcassette
recorder was positioned amidst marijuana stems, a half-full 40-ounce bottle of
Olde English and three hollow-point bullets on a side table not six inches from
Joker‟s elbow.Homeboy was on the record, bragging about dealing drugs. And I
was sitting there in my cop suit. I‟d purchased it and put it on at Value Village on
my way to interview Joker, thinking it‟d make a sweet Burning Man costume. And
it does. But for interviewing the self-designated godfather of Anchorage gangster
rap it was less than idealWhich brings us back to my peckerwood ass.I‟m pretty
sure the Society of Professional Journalists has a rule or two against smoking
blunts with interview subjects, which is one of many reasons I don‟t belong to the
Society of Professional Journalists. Yet by all but the most conservative ethical
standards of journalism I could have virtuously quoted every single word Joker
said about slinging this and chopping up that.Instead, I wussed out. I didn‟t print
a word of that shit he said. I just hinted at his criminality.Joker has fashioned
himself into [a] Dr. Dre for the 49th state. He owns his own record label, his own
recording studio… He drives a white Mustang packed with boxes of CDs and
posters and stickers and fliers and T-shirts [Uzis on the front, name on the
back]…If you‟re wondering where the money for all this paraphernalia is coming
from, well, don‟t even go there. —“Joker the Bailbondsman: The Blunt Truth,”
December 2000.I didn‟t go there, simply because I didn‟t think bringing the heat
Pictured: Cal Worthington (Appeared in a Joker The Bailbondsman video)
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
down on Joker would be such a triumph of investigative journalism that it justified
the risk, having already learned the hard way that antagonizing wannabe
gangster rappers is a risky business. But that‟s another story. Not long after I
finished my story on Joker I moved out of the state and more or less forgot about
him, except for a few occasions over the years when I channel-hopped past one
of his videos on BET (the best of them depicts Joker and his posse cruising with
Cal Worthington in the driver‟s seat of a Lincoln Continental). Then came April 14
of this year, when I was alerted by several friends to a news brief in the
Anchorage Daily News headlined “Local rapper gets 10 years for dealing drugs.”
It reported that 33-year-old local rap artist Sean Sullivan had been sentenced to
a decade in federal prison after being convicted of two counts of distributing
crack cocaine and one count of attempting to distribute crack cocaine. The final
sentence read: “Prosecutors say Sullivan also is known by his recording name
„Joker the Bailbondsman‟ and has recorded songs and videos including „Money
in a Ziploc Bag‟ and „Sex Money Murder Drugs.‟”Subtlety has never been one of
Joker‟s strong points. A few weeks before I interviewed him in 2000, he called
the station line at KFAT and threatened to “bring the pain” if KFAT didn‟t start
playing his tracks. Later that year he showed up for a photo shoot carrying five
handguns, which he insisted on posing with for images to accompany “his”
story.He wanted to be known as a gun-toting badass, a ghetto superstar, a hood
from the hood. But he wasn‟t from the hood. Not even close. Before he
transformed into Joker the Bailbondsman, Sean Sullivan was a privileged kid
growing up in a safe neighborhood. He didn‟t have to deal drugs to survive.
When he went to Wendler Junior High in 1990 he sported a high-top fade, like
Kid from Kid „n‟ Play. That‟s not gangster. Earlier this month I spoke by phone
with Brandi Alfaro, who grew up in Anchorage but now lives in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. She was friends with Joker throughout his adolescence and dated
him for about a year when they were both in their early teens. She told me that
he used to hang out at Skateland, always carrying an album he‟d recorded,
showing off the picture of himself on the cover, talking about how he was going to
be a big hip-hop star when he grew up. That‟s not gangster either.Somewhere
along the line from Skateland to Mountain View, Sullivan invented, and then
became, Joker. And by inhabiting his own hype, he engineered his own
downfall.Joker was born and raised in Anchorage, but he‟s a product of the urban
jungles in his mind, described to him in bedtime stories by Tupac and Biggy and
Ice-Cube, et. al. He was 10 years old when Straight Outta Compton went
platinum. Now he emulates. —“The Blunt Truth”Given our history together, I
wasn‟t exactly shocked to learn that Joker was going to prison for dealing crack.
But I was curious to find out just how close he‟d come to achieving kingpin
status. So I looked up the indictment, pre-sentencing memos, Anchorage Police
Department reports, FBI interview transcripts and various other court and law
enforcement documents related to United States of America vs. Sean A.
Sullivan.From them I drew four conclusions:1) Joker never rose to higher than a
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
mid-level dealer.2) Joker should have spent less money on rap videos and more
on lawyers.3) Joker is no snitch.4) Joker is one of the unluckiest crack dealers
ever to sling a rock.The last of these findings I based solely on the outlandish
story of how Joker got busted. It begins on the morning of January 29, 2004,
when a man named Allen Busey showed up at Tyson Elementary School to
confront several children about a fight they‟d recently picked with Busey‟s
children. The school administrators called the cops. Busey, who was wearing a
dark hooded sweatshirt, fled the scene. The responding APD officer at first
decided to locate Busey and issue him a trespass warning. But then APD
dispatch advised that Busey was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant for
assault and trespassing, information which turned out to be inaccurate. Planning
to arrest Busey, Officer Luis Soto rendezvoused with a second officer outside an
apartment complex on Price Street in Mountain View where Busey lived. They
were about to go in when they received an emergency call and started returning
to their patrol cars.Right then Joker exited the building wearing a gray hooded
sweatshirt.He was 26 years old, 5‟11” and weighed 190 pounds. Busey was 45
years old, 5‟9” and weighed 191 pounds. Beyond the color of their skin, and their
heights and weights, the two men shared little resemblance.Even so, Officer Soto
approached Joker yelling “Allen, Allen!”Despite all the time and money Joker had
spent trying to get famous, he was about to get popped because a police officer
couldn‟t tell one black guy in a hoodie from another.It‟s his life and he‟s starring in
it. The props are all here…even the bullet hole in the wall over his head. There‟s
another in the kitchen and two more in the bedroom. Someone shot the hell out
of Joker‟s place, firing through the windows from the street below…Joker says
the list of suspects is long. “The higher you climb, the more people you leave
behind, and the more jealous they get.” —“The Blunt Truth”According to
police reports and court documents, this is what happened next:Ignoring Officer
Soto, Joker hopped in his car, which was parked on the street. Soto drew his
service revolver. Joker raised his hands but did not comply with Soto‟s orders to
step out of the vehicle. Soto then used his nightstick to break the window. Joker
took his foot off the brake and began to pull away. Officer Soto opened fire,
shooting five bullets into the car. Somehow Joker wasn‟t hit. But he got the
message. He killed the engine and stepped out with his hands up.If Joker had
just said, “I‟m not Allen” and produced identification to prove it, or even if he‟d just
gotten out of the car the first time Soto ordered him to, he might still be smoking
blunts in his recording studio. But his split-second decisions that fateful day were
guided by the unsettling fact that he was in possession of 50 grams of crack
cocaine and 80 grams of powdered cocaine, which the police were about to
find.Joker‟s lawyer tied up the case for a year and a half by challenging the
legality of the search. Then in June 2005, according to a sentencing
memorandum, “the defendant indicated he wanted to cooperate with the United
States.”In other words, Joker offered to become a confidential informant working
for the federal government. “During a debriefing, the defendant provided the
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
names of numerous individuals in the Anchorage drug world, including names of
individuals then under investigation,” the sentencing memo reveals. “However,
the defendant stated that because these individuals knew that he had been
charged in federal court, they were hesitant to deal with him.”To provide Joker
with the cover he needed to get back in the dope game, the feds dismissed the
charges against him on evidentiary grounds. “Once the defendant‟s case was
dismissed, he stated that he needed a „cooling off‟ period so that drug traffickers
would trust him again.”One year later, Joker had still provided no useful
information, despite having appeared in rap videos with drug traffickers targeted
by the federal government. Then in October 2006, the FBI cultivated a different
informant who admitted to buying half-ounces and ounces of crack from Joker on
more than 50 occasions since Joker had agreed to become a snitch.Joker was
trying to play the feds. That‟s not smart. But it is gangster.“I know if I‟m going to
make it in this game, I need to have both a business persona and a street
persona. I‟m a capitalist…I just want to be young and rich. That‟s my whole thing
in this.” —“The Blunt Truth”Last November 16 a squadron of federal agents
raided Joker‟s house. By that time, he‟d moved from Mountain View to a cookie
cutter two-story duplex on Mountainman Loop, just off Dowling Road near the
New Seward Highway. They busted down the door with a battering ram and
caught Joker as he ran out of the first floor bathroom. Agents found a wet plastic
bag on the floor of the bathroom next to the toilet. It tested positive for cocaine
residue.Next the agents searched the garage, which had been converted into a
recording studio. They found and catalogued six cell phones, two pagers,
“suspected marijuana,” boxes of video film, stacks of Joker the Bailbondsman
CDs, a box of .38 special blank rounds, two 12-gauge shotgun slugs and a
Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic assault rifle, fully loaded.In the downstairs TV
room, agents found two more cell phones and $4,062.55 in cash stuffed in a
pants pocket. In Joker‟s desk they discovered “possible marijuana blunts,” rolling
papers, a digital scale, and “Western Union receipts with the defendant‟s name.”
Elsewhere they came up with yet another cell phone, another baggie with
cocaine residue and a box of .45 caliber ammunition.According to an FBI report,
“After being arrested, the defendant ominously asked agents if the charges
against him would be dismissed if the informant who had made the purchases
was „unwilling or unavailable to testify.‟”But there would be no testimony or trial,
because Joker pleaded guilty early this year. Then he kept quiet about his
looming incarceration except for a single oblique reference in a February 27 post
to his MySpace page: “Did you know that the U.S. government is lockin up
niggas like they is crazy??? If you in HIPHOP you can make a difference. We
have to make our voices be heard. We have to change the laws!!! We ain‟t
powerless. We have to let Congress know we mean business. I‟m tired of
selective drug enforcement in this nation.”And the federal government was tired
of Joker the Bailbondsman selling drugs and rapping about it.Assistant U.S.
Attorney Frank V. Russo, the lead prosecutor in the case against Joker, says
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
Joker “was on my radar screen” as soon as Russo arrived in Alaska in 2002.
“We knew he was a pretty significant street-level dealer,” says Russo. “We didn‟t
target Sean Sullivan because he was Joker the Bailbondsman. We targeted him
because of his associates and the amount of drugs he was dealing,” says Russo.
“But once we entered the sentencing phase, his music and his persona became
a relevant concern. Just as a criminal defense attorney will bring up a
defendant‟s good deeds before the sentencing judge, I brought up the fact that in
this case the defendant had been espousing drug propaganda to the
community.”One week before Joker was sentenced, Russo submitted a blistering
pre-sentencing memorandum. “The defendant‟s stable family history offers no
excuse or explanation for his criminal behavior,” he wrote. “Moreover, the
defendant had an opportunity rarely afforded to defendants charged in federal
court… He had the connections and the personality to be a successful
cooperator, and work off or down the charges against him. Instead he chose to
sell drugs in order to support his music career, favoring the drug traffickers that
appeared in his music videos over his own family. “Ironically, in these videos, the
defendant glorifies drug trafficking with provocative lyrics proclaiming its
profitability and bragging about carrying firearms.” When the judge gave him ten
years at the sentencing hearing, Joker freaked out and had to be subdued by two
Deputy United States Marshals.“Ten years came as a shock to him,” says Russo.
“The hearing finished with him pinned down on the floor. On his way out of the
courtroom he called me a chump. He said, „Are you happy now, chump?‟ I‟d
already told him it was nothing personal.”It‟s hard to understand how Joker
couldn‟t have known he was looking at ten in the pen considering one of the
videos he produced and circulated on the internet in 2006, when he was
supposed to be a federal informant. Titled “Product,” it shows Joker cooking and
sorting crack cocaine while foretelling his own bleak future.“When it‟s time for
sentencing, you know the judge won‟t bend,” he raps. “You‟re caught with crack
and guns, a mandatory minimum ten.”Word.
CREDIT: David Holthouse
Generated on 10/22/2009 12:15:57 PM, by The Anchorage Press
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