Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation TV Movie 2011 1h 24m

Name: Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation TV Movie 2011 1h 24m
Uploaded: 2026-10-31T01:36:20+00:00
Duration: 1 h 23 min 27 s
Channel: Jerome
Description: A look at the rise of crack cocaine in urban America in the 1980s and it's influence on popular culture, especially in hip-hop music.

00:00:06crack has become america's drug of choice a potent inexpensive highly addictive form of cocaine it

00:00:12is an uncontrolled fire it's been more than 25 years since crack hit the streets of america

00:00:21man when i first saw it i was still tracy merrill i wasn't even iced tea yet it looked to

00:00:27me like

00:00:27broken pieces of hard rock candy i never used it and i never sold it but i watched it consume

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00:00:35generation ram

00:00:46now it's not the barbecues

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00:02:36the story of hip-hop and the crack generation

00:02:41growing up in new york city

00:02:43you know between brooklyn and staten island and any of those five boroughs you know it was rough life in

00:02:48my age of growing up

00:02:49there was a lot of crime poverty drugs guns hip-hop

00:02:54so

00:03:02at the age of nine i recall me and my cousin jizza leaving staten island catching the ferry boat going

00:03:07all the way up to the bronx just to go to a block party

00:03:11like

00:03:14the

00:03:17and

00:03:19the

00:03:19and the djs is playing all these great beasts and he's scratching the record

00:03:26the

00:03:26rappers on there a dip dip dive so socialize clean out your ears and you open your eyes and young

00:03:33girls is just dancing with you and you're doing the freak and the whopping

00:03:37I was blown away by the experience.

00:03:42Man, I was the same way.

00:03:44Hip-hop changed and saved my life. It was a whole new

00:03:48culture, and it comes right from the streets.

00:03:53It jumps off as an alternative to the elite clubs

00:03:56like Studio 54, where the drug of

00:04:00choice is cocaine. When

00:04:04cocaine came around, it was the rich white people's drug, and you

00:04:08couldn't get it anyway.

00:04:11In the black community, it's the players and the street hustlers that first get involved

00:04:16with cocaine. It's a sexy thing to be able to say, hey, we doing blow.

00:04:20And from the time hip-hop starts exploding on vinyl in the early 80s,

00:04:24cocaine is fly, and the glamour of it shapes the culture.

00:04:29White lines.

00:04:30Vision, dreams of passion.

00:04:32Blowing through my mind.

00:04:34And all the while, I think of you.

00:04:36Cocaine was the cute drug.

00:04:37Like, before you get hooked on cocaine,

00:04:39you actually have a good time.

00:04:41A couple of lines, you know, the dealer,

00:04:43he's your man.

00:04:46Just look at the early names

00:04:48like Curtis Blow, and you know

00:04:50blow is fly.

00:04:53LL Cool J recently

00:04:54revealed something that I never knew.

00:04:57He was thinking initially

00:04:58of calling himself J Ski.

00:05:00He's like, I was 14 at the time,

00:05:02and I really didn't want to insinuate

00:05:04you know what. It wasn't until

00:05:06that very moment that I realized

00:05:08Ski, as in

00:05:10snow, as in

00:05:12blow. There's Joe Ski

00:05:14Love, Cool Rock Ski, there's

00:05:16a whole bunch of skis.

00:05:18Get higher, baby.

00:05:20Get higher, girl.

00:05:22Get higher, baby.

00:05:24Come on!

00:05:26Cocaine is crazy expensive

00:05:28in the beginning. 80, 90,

00:05:30100,000 dollars a key.

00:05:32People are already smoking it back in

00:05:34the 70s and calling it freebase.

00:05:35But the process of making it is a

00:05:37complicated ritual involving ether.

00:05:40People had enough of

00:05:41high school chemistry back when they had

00:05:43high school chemistry. They didn't want to necessarily do that when they got

00:05:46high. If you were able to

00:05:48sell it already made up, whoever

00:05:49figured that out, they were going to make

00:05:52hundreds of millions of dollars very quickly.

00:05:54That was really the genius of Freeway

00:05:56Rick. Freeway Ricky

00:05:58Ross grows up porn illiterate in

00:06:00South Central LA. By the

00:06:02early 80s, he's a rising player

00:06:04in the drug game when he learns how

00:06:06to simplify the freebasing process

00:06:08by using baking soda instead

00:06:10of ether.

00:06:12People would come and buy the

00:06:13powder and they didn't have their

00:06:14cooking utensils. They didn't have the

00:06:16stuff to cook the powder. So the idea

00:06:18came to me to have it what we

00:06:20called ready rock. What that

00:06:23meant is that they could start smoking immediately.

00:06:25Freeway isn't the first person

00:06:27to rock up cocaine, but he

00:06:28becomes legendary for spreading

00:06:30the know-how far and wide.

00:06:32What I probably was is the guy that

00:06:34taught the most people how to rock it

00:06:36up. By the early 80s, the price

00:06:38of cocaine is falling fast.

00:06:40And Freeway's mass-produced

00:06:42ready rock is putting a whole new

00:06:44twist on the game.

00:06:46When it showed up in Oakland, it was

00:06:48called rock cocaine. The way it came

00:06:50out was that, did you know, you can

00:06:52actually have $10 in smoke cocaine?

00:06:54The word went around the street like, I can

00:06:56get high like the rich folks on a budget.

00:06:59Nobody really knows who starts calling it crack

00:07:02to begin with. Some say it's because

00:07:04hustlers crack off the pieces of

00:07:06a larger rock before selling it.

00:07:08Others say it's the sound that the rock

00:07:10makes when you hit it in the pipe,

00:07:12or the crazy effects it has on your

00:07:14brain. For Staten

00:07:16Island teenagers Robert Diggs

00:07:18and Corey Woods, the

00:07:20drug will change the course of their

00:07:22lives.

00:07:24To my memory, crack

00:07:26might have hit around 1984.

00:07:29I remember my cousin

00:07:30Dirty was hanging out and

00:07:32you know, he's going to get some weed.

00:07:33He's like, hold on, we're going to get some crack too.

00:07:35I'm like, what the is that?

00:07:37Now he put the crack in the weed.

00:07:39And we did it.

00:07:42We smoked it.

00:07:43People would mix the reefer with the crack

00:07:45and crush it up and

00:07:47this is the next level of doing it fly.

00:07:50At the same time, crack enters

00:07:52the lives of teenagers

00:07:53Louis Freese and Calvin

00:07:55Codazar Broadus, kicking it

00:07:58in the hoods of L.A.

00:07:59I mean, we'd party with that all the time.

00:08:01I mean, none of us would hit no pipes.

00:08:04We were always weed heads, so we'd put it in our

00:08:06weed and smoke it.

00:08:07The first time I became aware of rock cocaine

00:08:10was when I spent a summer at one of my

00:08:12homeboy's house, J-Dawg, in North Long Beach.

00:08:15He was hustling.

00:08:16And I seen the little rocks in his hand.

00:08:18I'm like, man, what is that?

00:08:19He's like, money.

00:08:23Crack cocaine couldn't have hit the hood

00:08:25at a worse time.

00:08:27The recession of the early 80s

00:08:29is really starting to bite.

00:08:32Money is blowing at a record high.

00:08:36People coming, people going,

00:08:38people want to die.

00:08:40By some estimates, 75%

00:08:42of the black youngsters ages 16

00:08:44to 19 are out of work.

00:08:47There was a lot of poverty,

00:08:48a lot of hard times, a lot of people struggling.

00:08:51We need breaks somewhere

00:08:52and nobody seems to want to give young people a break.

00:08:55The government's policies of tax breaks

00:08:57for the rich and cutbacks

00:08:59for the poor are devastating.

00:09:01We had the team post.

00:09:02We had the CEDA program.

00:09:04When Reagan came in office here for a couple years,

00:09:06he cut all that out.

00:09:07Money is the key to end

00:09:09all your woes.

00:09:11Your ups are down, your eyes

00:09:14and your lows.

00:09:15Won't you tell the last time that love

00:09:17bought your clothes?

00:09:19It's like that.

00:09:20And that's the way it is.

00:09:23You are a teenager and perhaps barely that.

00:09:25You live in an inner city ghetto.

00:09:28You probably have dropped out of school.

00:09:30And you have a chance to earn

00:09:31a thousand dollars a week selling crack.

00:09:33What do you do?

00:09:34You sell crack.

00:09:36You know, I started off on the right foot,

00:09:38trying to, you know, have the right job

00:09:39and selling candy and newspapers

00:09:41and working at Lucky's.

00:09:43And it just seemed like, you know,

00:09:44all of my homies around me was making more money selling dope.

00:09:48The collapse of the inner city economy

00:09:50has created a new way of life,

00:09:52an economy based on drugs.

00:09:54One of my homies offered me a sack.

00:09:56And once I got involved in the crack game,

00:09:59it just seemed like my life blossomed.

00:10:01You can't find yourself a job,

00:10:03you gonna pump drugs.

00:10:04You know what I'm saying?

00:10:05By the time I'm 16,

00:10:06I'm now a guy who's slinging crack.

00:10:09That's the only way, you know,

00:10:10you get money in your pocket.

00:10:11You know, we wear fair babies.

00:10:13You know, if I had anything to do

00:10:14any criminal activity

00:10:15and I could make some money

00:10:16to go buy me some sneakers,

00:10:18I wanna know what I gotta do.

00:10:20You know what I mean?

00:10:21When your family's eating,

00:10:22when you got a roof over your head,

00:10:23you got a car to take you from A to B,

00:10:25and you got five grand in your pocket.

00:10:28It's hard to justify not doing it.

00:10:31The Jungle Creed says

00:10:33the strong must feed on any prey at hand.

00:10:36You're either predator or victim.

00:10:38For these kids getting into the crack game,

00:10:40the predator who becomes their role model

00:10:42is Tony Montana.

00:10:44Me, I want what's coming to me.

00:10:46Well, what's coming to you, Tony?

00:10:48The world, Chico.

00:10:51And everything in it.

00:10:53I think Scarface was such an influential movie

00:10:55because it's the movie that we all saw

00:10:57during that period of our dreams

00:10:59of American success.

00:11:01We admire this rag, the Richard story,

00:11:03even though it was painted in blood.

00:11:05You know, he came from Cuba with nothing.

00:11:07He took over the world.

00:11:10You're gonna move up.

00:11:11You're gonna move up fast.

00:11:13He went from there to being a multi-millionaire.

00:11:16It was a movie that made us feel like we,

00:11:18coming from nothing,

00:11:19could actually become something,

00:11:21and the world was ours.

00:11:22It spoke to the generation at that time

00:11:24who was living their life.

00:11:25There was no other way for us to see

00:11:27of getting the American dream

00:11:28besides selling drugs.

00:11:30There's the standard American dream.

00:11:32You have a family.

00:11:33You try to be successful,

00:11:34live your life peacefully, free.

00:11:41Then there's the other American dream,

00:11:43anti-establishment, anti-everything,

00:11:46but my pockets.

00:11:47Shout out to my new friend.

00:11:51That movie just basically guided us

00:11:53on how to be a hustler.

00:11:56It's just everything about Scarface.

00:11:59It's like a big commercial to sell cocaine.

00:12:01One of the kids blown away by the movie

00:12:03is AZ Faison.

00:12:05AZ will rise almost overnight to become

00:12:07one of the biggest cocaine dealers in Harlem.

00:12:10And this cocaine will be turned into crack

00:12:13from one end of 125th Street to the other.

00:12:15I'll never forget one day,

00:12:18the first of the month was falling on a Friday.

00:12:21And that's payday, that's check day,

00:12:23and people get high on the weekends.

00:12:25I had bottled up maybe $30,000 to $40,000 of a coke.

00:12:28Not thinking that it would sell all that day,

00:12:30and it all went within a couple of hours.

00:12:32That's when I said, yo, this is serious.

00:12:35Then after that, the sky was the limit.

00:12:39With crack cocaine in their pockets,

00:12:41Ronald Reagan as their president

00:12:43and Tony Montana as their hero,

00:12:45the crack generation will ride a whirlwind

00:12:47through the 1980s that will change America forever.

00:13:04The crack spread into inner-city neighborhoods of New York, L.A., Oakland, and Miami.

00:13:09The kids slinging it see first-hand how powerful the drug can be.

00:13:13When the crack came in, it was a whole different ball game.

00:13:17It was more addictive, it seemed.

00:13:19People were doing much crazier things to get their hands on it.

00:13:23Every time that I look, one of my friends is getting hooked.

00:13:28After a while, we started seeing people get strung out,

00:13:30people that we really looked up to.

00:13:34Now, I've seen people to cocaine forever,

00:13:37and I've never seen it affect them the way smoking cocaine does.

00:13:41For a lot of people, crack is definitely more potent and dangerous.

00:13:46You will put the crack in the bowl, you get your nice torch,

00:13:49and you put it on there, and you hit it.

00:13:51Oh, man, the feeling is the best feeling that I have ever felt.

00:13:55The only thought was to get more money, to get more of it.

00:14:00Because you never got enough.

00:14:02All you're trying to do is catch the first high that you received.

00:14:06It's like you're chasing something that you never catch up with.

00:14:09Just chase that one hit, just chase it all night.

00:14:11Then the nights turn into days, then weeks.

00:14:14Then you start hocking off stuff, selling stuff.

00:14:16By now, kids like RZA, Raekwon, Snoop, and Be Real

00:14:20are deep into the hustle and can see why crack is the perfect product.

00:14:25While we was in that business, I remember when the first of the month

00:14:28people would come around, and the crackheads would line up on the crack spot.

00:14:33Taking their checks, their food stamps.

00:14:35I remember having a thousand rounds of food stamps.

00:14:37It made the crack people do, like, go steal and rob and stuff,

00:14:42take people bites and stuff.

00:14:44Crack, as soon as you hit it, man, the devil hits you like,

00:14:46Hey, where you been? I want to roll with you.

00:14:50I'm gonna be with you.

00:14:52Hey, get up. Just sell that. You'll get it again.

00:14:57So you're at the dope man's house with a hot V8 engine on your back,

00:15:02three in the moment with your eyes bucked back like this, trying to sling it.

00:15:06Police arrested these teenagers who were so desperate for crack,

00:15:10they were selling stolen $20,000 cars for $100 each.

00:15:14As the crack trade started taking off, some of the things that I observed

00:15:17were parents not caring about their kids, putting the crack first.

00:15:23I really, really got hooked to the point where I would leave my son in the house,

00:15:28and I would go around the corner and cop, and then when I come back,

00:15:32my son is standing on the stoop 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning by himself.

00:15:36He was like three years old.

00:15:38In L.A., they call them strawberries and New York skeezers,

00:15:43girls who'll do anything to hit the pipe.

00:15:47I used to mess around with guys, just to get money.

00:15:51Prostituting myself, I didn't, oh my God, I didn't like it.

00:15:55But I did because I had a problem.

00:15:58One man suggested to me that I go to the stroll,

00:16:01and I was like, stroll, what's that?

00:16:03And he goes, no, you're kidding, you know what that is.

00:16:05And I was like, no, I don't.

00:16:07And he said, that's where the prostitutes walk, you know, they stroll.

00:16:10I was like, prostitute?

00:16:12And finally, one day, I went.

00:16:15And I got high to forget it, and I did it to get high.

00:16:20My best piece of sex I had at 16

00:16:22was this beautiful 25-year-old girl.

00:16:25That was a crackhead.

00:16:28I got my rocks together because I went and kicked it with her.

00:16:32Gave me the best for a small piece of crack rock, yo.

00:16:40And she was beautiful at that time.

00:16:42But no more than 12 months later to 18 months later,

00:16:45she was ugly as a monster.

00:16:48Destroyed.

00:16:49Sucked up.

00:16:50Sucked in.

00:16:55Crack can be a wicked drug.

00:16:58And that's why hip-hop comes up with the slogan,

00:17:01Crack is Whack.

00:17:02It's a sight you can't miss.

00:17:04You may have even wondered who did that and why.

00:17:07Graffiti artist Keith Haring did it, and this is why.

00:17:11Really, this mural came after going through a personal experience

00:17:14with a friend who wanted to quit doing crack.

00:17:17I mean, I think it's affecting everyone.

00:17:20Crack stay back.

00:17:21Crack stay back.

00:17:21Crack attack.

00:17:22I say the Dom is a waste of time.

00:17:24If crack is whack to us,

00:17:27now the media gets a hold of it,

00:17:29and the trippin' really begins.

00:17:30It is flooding America.

00:17:32Crack.

00:17:33Possibly the most addictive drug known to man.

00:17:36It might just as well be called Crack of Doom.

00:17:38This new affliction's powerful, y'all.

00:17:41Some say it is worst of all.

00:17:43The effects of crack can be dramatic,

00:17:45and this leads to the most sensational reporting.

00:17:49This is it.

00:17:50The drug so powerful,

00:17:51it will empty the money from your pockets,

00:17:53make you sell the watch off your wrist,

00:17:56the clothes off your back.

00:17:58Or kill your mother.

00:18:01Yep.

00:18:01That's what we're saying.

00:18:02Anybody you put in front of this camera

00:18:04that says we didn't exaggerate

00:18:06is kidding themselves for trying to kid you.

00:18:09But we did it for reasons we thought were the best reasons.

00:18:12We really did think it was a very different drug.

00:18:16We started getting shot at.

00:18:18Agents were told they had to wear bulletproof vests on every rate.

00:18:23That life comes with guns and violence and death.

00:18:27Shootouts were after for who controlled this neighborhood,

00:18:30who controlled that block.

00:18:31A narcotics agent calls its rapid spread phenomenal.

00:18:34I made a decision that we should talk to the public about it.

00:18:37I felt they had a right to know,

00:18:39and that was probably the beginning of the massive media coverage.

00:18:45Its use has reached epidemic proportions.

00:18:47People officials call it an epidemic.

00:18:49You start to hear words like epidemic.

00:18:52You start to hear words like plague.

00:18:54And it fed the public imagination.

00:18:57At this point, crack is still only in a few neighborhoods of a few big cities.

00:19:02Most people in America had no idea what crack was.

00:19:06They'd never seen it.

00:19:07But the news media was writing about this plague before the plague, as it were, ever really took hold.

00:19:15By the summer of 86, crack is the biggest story since Watergate.

00:19:20You couldn't pick up a newspaper in the mid-80s where the word crack wasn't on every page.

00:19:25I mean, you'd hit the sports page.

00:19:26It would be Yankees 4, crack 3.

00:19:28Tomorrow, the weather's gonna be 80 degrees with a slight chance of crack.

00:19:32You know, it's just crack, crack, crack.

00:19:34That's what the media does, man.

00:19:36They take something and they run with it for the controversy of it so that they can get the numbers

00:19:41in the ratings.

00:19:42From the beginning, there are plenty of white people smoking crack.

00:19:45It was really the first time I smoked it that I knew I didn't want to stop.

00:19:49Everybody I used with was white.

00:19:51You know, they didn't get caught because they had money.

00:19:53More money than me.

00:19:54They weren't in the street yet.

00:19:55But the media focuses almost exclusively on the black neighborhoods.

00:20:00Drug dealing has reached epidemic proportions among young black men here.

00:20:04How old are you?

00:20:05Six days, sir.

00:20:06Our television sets were saturated with images of, you know, black men in handcuffs.

00:20:12It fed into the worst fears that people had, not just about the drug, but about who the drug was

00:20:19associated with.

00:20:20The idea of a threat coming from black America relative to crack cocaine was to create a sort of massive

00:20:30hysteria.

00:20:31It's going nationwide, especially among the young.

00:20:33If smaller cities don't have a crack crisis now, they will soon.

00:20:37Now it's spreading across the nation.

00:20:39Crack has become America's drug of choice.

00:20:43And perhaps the exclamation point on all of that was the death of Len Bias.

00:20:48Just 48 hours after becoming the number one draft choice of the world champion Boston Celtics,

00:20:53Bias collapsed of an apparent heart attack on the University of Maryland campus.

00:20:56Here he is celebrating and he dies of a cocaine overdose.

00:21:00No doubt that shook people up.

00:21:02Leonard Bias was a very healthy individual.

00:21:05The cocaine killed him, period.

00:21:06That's correct.

00:21:07The dramatic warning that in fact cocaine kills.

00:21:11Even the young and the strong can be his victims.

00:21:14No one actually knew what kind of cocaine he was taking,

00:21:17but because he was an African American, the assumption was that it was crack cocaine.

00:21:22A specialist in sports medicine speculated what could have occurred.

00:21:26Somebody substituted crack a very potent form and he thought he was getting lower doses than he was given.

00:21:33Crack, cocaine, whatever had been involved.

00:21:36For the media, the facts didn't matter very much.

00:21:40An autopsy will eventually show that Len Bias ingested cocaine powder,

00:21:44but the public will always think he was killed by crack.

00:21:48Because it was so geographically close to the capital,

00:21:51it kind of had greater reverberations than perhaps it otherwise would have.

00:21:54So I remember members of Congress saying, we've got to do something.

00:21:58Larger numbers of our citizens are suffering and dying from this threat to our national security

00:22:04than any nuclear warfare, any chemical warfare waged on any battlefield.

00:22:08All of this placed right into President Ronald Reagan's hands.

00:22:12Already four years into a mounting war on drugs, he seizes the moment to address the nation.

00:22:18Today, there's a new epidemic.

00:22:21Smokable cocaine, otherwise known as crack.

00:22:24It is an explosively destructive and often lethal substance which is crushing its users.

00:22:30It is an uncontrolled fire.

00:22:34With election day approaching and polls showing that drug abuse is the public's number one concern,

00:22:40today's voting became a contest to determine who could be toughest on drug traffickers.

00:22:45The Republicans in the White House led the way,

00:22:47but Democrats were up there yelling and screaming and pushing for tougher laws.

00:22:52Tip O'Neill was the Speaker of the House.

00:22:54And he said, you know what, we're going to start punishing crack more than we punish powder.

00:23:00Chemically, they're indistinguishable, but you should be punished a lot more for crack.

00:23:05There should be no mercy on them.

00:23:07So he said, I think that the disparity should be 25 to one.

00:23:11So for every one gram of crack, you should get the same punishment as 25 grams of powder.

00:23:18The Republicans said, no, we're the tough on crime people.

00:23:22We think it should be 50 to one.

00:23:24Tip O'Neill said, 75 to one.

00:23:26Republicans said, no, 100 to one.

00:23:30That's how drug policy gets made.

00:23:33We're getting tough on drugs and we mean business.

00:23:35For those who are thinking of using drugs, we say stop.

00:23:38And for those who are pushing drugs, we say beware.

00:23:42The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 mandates a five year minimum sentence for a mere five grams of crack.

00:23:50It means that first time nonviolent offenders will be sentenced to decades in prison for selling or possessing small amounts

00:23:58of the drug.

00:23:59It was really very much about demonization.

00:24:03Every society needs its boogeyman.

00:24:05In the 1980s, it became the crackheads, the drug dealers.

00:24:10And the rhetoric was essentially that anybody involved in this was less than human, was a devil, was somebody who

00:24:16needed to be destroyed.

00:24:20The drug war now escalates more dramatically than ever before.

00:24:24And in the crosshairs will be those kids selling crack on the inner city street corners.

00:24:30Drugs didn't fall in the hood in 82 and 84.

00:24:32Boy, they've been in the neighborhood.

00:24:34But the point was, if we didn't have no other means of doing anything possible to ourselves, that was easier

00:24:39to turn to.

00:24:40And it was more prosperous because we made money.

00:24:42And who cares about going to jail?

00:24:44Because when we go to jail, we're going to be in there with our homies anyway.

00:24:47This is the new crack generation.

00:24:49And the soundtrack of their experience will be hip hop.

00:24:57By 1986, as the hustles of the crack generation get deeper into the game, they're finding that dealing can be

00:25:04just as addictive as the drug itself.

00:25:07They do it for the drugs and money.

00:25:09Big money.

00:25:10Money that buys jewelry, new clothes, status.

00:25:13Literally in my neighborhood, half a million dollars a day was going through Park Hill projects.

00:25:18No lie.

00:25:22We were young, making this money every day.

00:25:26Big dealers like AZ Faison, who have money to burn, become trendsetters.

00:25:31And everybody in the hood is watching.

00:25:33Because you see dudes, they get rich.

00:25:35They get rich hecka fast.

00:25:36They have flashy cars, hecka beats, big fat ropes, all the girls.

00:25:41And you be like, yeah, I want that too.

00:25:43I believe our crew was like the people to follow.

00:25:47People love the hood star.

00:25:50It's inevitable that the worlds of hip hop and crack will collide.

00:25:54Who had money to loan a kid who wanted to make a demo?

00:25:57Who had money to loan a kid who wanted to press up 12 inches?

00:26:00It was often the local drug dealer.

00:26:04If it wasn't for drug dealers, I wouldn't have a career.

00:26:06I was rapping at the age of 14, 15.

00:26:10We were selling music to drug dealers when I was 16.

00:26:14Because we figured, where's all the cash?

00:26:17It's on the turf where they sell drugs.

00:26:20I remember the first time we did it.

00:26:22We pulled up.

00:26:23You guys want to buy some music?

00:26:24They're like, music of what?

00:26:25Me and my buddy right here, we rap.

00:26:27You want to buy your rap for it?

00:26:29Like, just listen to it.

00:26:31Pop in the cassette.

00:26:32Young brother's my age, making dollars so long.

00:26:35Drop a brand new binge, would it say?

00:26:37See him drink and go in, call him big bang bang.

00:26:40Then this one guy, he just goes, eject, grabs the tape.

00:26:44How much you want for it?

00:26:45Give me five bucks.

00:26:46Five bucks, walks away.

00:26:47Everybody else is like, I want one.

00:26:52I've never had to get a job in my life, because of drug dealers.

00:26:57Not only are the dealers funding rappers, they're inspiring them as well.

00:27:02Driving in my car down the avenue.

00:27:05Telling you to chase at the north and green.

00:27:07Turn around, see the fly young lady.

00:27:10Pull through the car when bought my Mercedes.

00:27:12In 1985, Schoolie D comes out with PSK.

00:27:16What does it mean?

00:27:17A track reflecting the hustler lifestyle.

00:27:20It was real menacing.

00:27:21And that was the thing that I noticed about it.

00:27:23That when I played it, I felt cool.

00:27:25That was actually the first record that talked about drugs as a means to get over and get out.

00:27:32PSK, we're making that green.

00:27:34People always say, what the hell does that mean?

00:27:38Rappers became like reporters.

00:27:41And what you heard from these rappers was different than what you saw on NBC Nightly News or ABC or

00:27:48CBS.

00:27:49What you heard from the rappers was what they saw in the streets.

00:27:52This is K-R-S-1.

00:27:55Been to a crack dealer by the name of Peter.

00:27:59Had to buck him down with my 9mm.

00:28:01Their records just start referencing the crack game as a culture.

00:28:05You listen to an album like Clarino Minded, BDP.

00:28:07They was talking about being drug dealers.

00:28:10How tough they are.

00:28:11My 9mm go bang.

00:28:19This attitude became part of our culture.

00:28:23So you always be with that big gold cherry.

00:28:25Why come with that big gold cherry, yo?

00:28:27You know what I mean?

00:28:27They look like the drug dealers look.

00:28:29Thinking of a master plan.

00:28:31This ain't nothing but sweat inside my hands.

00:28:33So I dig into my pocket all my money spent.

00:28:36So I could debuff still coming up for length.

00:28:38So rappers wanted to be drug dealers.

00:28:40Drug dealers wanted to be rappers in a way.

00:28:42Rock him number one.

00:28:43That's my favorite rapper.

00:28:45When paid in full drop, it was on.

00:28:47I was in the street.

00:28:48If we jump in the rented car, this is what we was throwing on.

00:28:50This is what's making us feel good.

00:28:52For small time dealers like RZA and Raekwon, the music hits home.

00:28:57They can relate because they're living it.

00:29:00I got on the gold cherry.

00:29:02I got on some Gucci sneakers.

00:29:03I have a little four finger ring I picked up.

00:29:05I mean, I'm going to other neighborhoods trying to talk to girls.

00:29:08Going to other neighborhoods for rap battles and DJ battles.

00:29:11Kind of kid I was.

00:29:12Cause I don't like to dream about getting paid.

00:29:14So I dig into the books of the rhymes that I made.

00:29:17Soon as a test to see if I got pulled.

00:29:20Hit the studio.

00:29:21Cause I'm paid in full.

00:29:22Paid in full turns Eric B and Rock Kim into icons of the street.

00:29:26And the new status symbol is the big gold dookie chain.

00:29:37If you got a big chain, I'm like, who's that?

00:29:40He got a big chain.

00:29:41He got a big dookie rope.

00:29:42We used to say call it the big dookie rope.

00:29:44With the LL's and the run DMC's, you know, seeing those guys with it.

00:29:49And once Saul and I was able to purchase ours, we knew we were on our way.

00:29:53I would have did anything for one of them back then coming up.

00:29:56It definitely made us all feel like it was a form of being successful, but still being from the projects.

00:30:03What really embodied visually the uprising of the crack era was the designer labels, MCM, Gucci, Versace.

00:30:13You know, there was a place called Dapper Dan that used to be on 125th street.

00:30:18And this guy was an African immigrant who could take any kind of logo and make spare tire covers, slip

00:30:25covers, coats, sneakers, shoes.

00:30:32We used to vend on the sidewalk.

00:30:34Then we got our first little store.

00:30:36We started out with the b-boy look, the whole rough street look.

00:30:39I asked him to make me a vest.

00:30:41It was a bulletproof Louis Vuitton vest.

00:30:44In the beginning, Dapp's customers are local drug dealers like AZ.

00:30:49I had a van and I wanted a Gucci wheel cover to ask Dapp and he made it happen for

00:30:56me.

00:30:57We do tire covers for Jeeps and everybody wants their own statement written on the back of the Jeep.

00:31:06Okay, if I'm not allowed to go down to Gucci on Fifth Avenue, I'm going to take that logo and

00:31:12I'm going to assign it to myself.

00:31:14I am this new crack generation. I make money.

00:31:18Reagan tried to circumvent who I was. It didn't work.

00:31:22Now I may have killed some of my own to get there, but I'm here now.

00:31:27No apologies. No excuses. Give me my Gucci.

00:31:33Pretty soon rappers start waiting outside to see what the hustlers are wearing when they leave the store.

00:31:38That fashion that my man Dapp bought to the streets, I was one of the first rappers to bring it

00:31:43to the entertainment business.

00:31:45But I was doing what the streets was doing there.

00:31:47Dapp styles everywhere.

00:31:49Eric B and Rakim, Salt and Pepper, Run DMC, MC Light, Biz Marquee, The Fat Boys, Big Daddy Kane, Boogie

00:31:57Down Productions and LL Cool J.

00:31:59That was all part of the game and identifying like, oh, you coming up, you doing your thing.

00:32:06As the growing rap scene in New York adopts this style rooted in the crack culture, the focus shifts to

00:32:12the hood to L.A., where gangs are spreading.

00:32:15And this new equation of street capitalism and crack is about to produce a new form of hip hop that

00:32:21will revolutionize the industry.

00:32:23You put the dot on your target and you blow the s**t out the mother s**t.

00:32:32In the hoods of L.A. where I grew up, crack is spreading all through the early 80s along with

00:32:38hip hop.

00:32:41This is the era of the big ballers.

00:32:44And nobody is bigger than Freeway Ricky Ross, who by the mid 80s has become like the Walmart of crack

00:32:51in L.A.

00:32:52Freeway Rick out here in Los Angeles was the guy.

00:32:56What's up, young Dale?

00:32:57What's up, Rick?

00:32:59I went from buying what we used to call an 8-track, which was 3 grams, to buying 100 kilos

00:33:06at a time.

00:33:06When Freeway first starts out, it takes him a week to flip those 100 keys.

00:33:11Now he can do it every day.

00:33:13And the money he makes is crazy.

00:33:15My property was probably worth like 8-10 million dollars.

00:33:19Anything I wanted to do, I just did it.

00:33:20So I would go to Aspen, Colorado, you know, 3-4 times a year.

00:33:23Freeway buys up houses, businesses, a record label, even a movie theater, but manages to stay off the radar of

00:33:31the L.A.P.D.

00:33:34This guy was on so big of a level, but you never saw it.

00:33:38It was like a myth that you heard about.

00:33:41In the game, it's always about your connect.

00:33:44I was getting my drugs from a group of guys that were from Nicaragua.

00:33:48They had drugs cheap and in abundance.

00:33:50Freeway drops prices, hooks up a lot of people in the game, and operates as rock houses like fast food

00:33:57chains.

00:33:57I can remember when Crack Cocaine used to empower homies like us as jobs, like McDonald's.

00:34:02From 9 to 5, that was your shift.

00:34:05And you go and you work the dope house.

00:34:07That's what you did.

00:34:07Your mother knew you did it, your grandmother, your kids, and they would come out and get lunch money after

00:34:11school.

00:34:12Everybody was in the game one way or another.

00:34:15Grandmothers, grandfathers, and the gangs got involved too.

00:34:18They started selling.

00:34:20I was ready to be a gang member.

00:34:21I was ready to sell dope.

00:34:22I was ready to do everything.

00:34:23But you see, it's you.

00:34:24Why?

00:34:25Why were you ready to do that?

00:34:26Because this is the population that we in, you know.

00:34:28Everybody is a product of their own environment.

00:34:30That's true.

00:34:30You're going to do what is being done around you.

00:34:33Like, we was young.

00:34:34We watched the guys older than us doing their thing.

00:34:36We won't take out the money too.

00:34:38There's been crips and blood since the early 70s.

00:34:41What Crack does is multiply and divide the scene up into more than 300 sets and 50,000 gangbangers.

00:34:49It spreads them out everywhere and sets them off against each other.

00:34:53There's not a black gang in the city or the county that's not involved in narcotics.

00:34:58So, you know, it's hand in hand.

00:35:00The teenage Snoop Dogg is a member of the Rolling 20s Crips.

00:35:08My teenage years with me selling crack and having a relationship with my homeboys.

00:35:13Getting in shootouts.

00:35:14Getting beat up.

00:35:15Beating people up.

00:35:17Getting my drugs stole from me.

00:35:19You know, doing all types of scandalous activities.

00:35:22Getting in the mix.

00:35:25You know, all of that was fun to me because I was young and I was thinking that I ain't

00:35:31gonna live the C21 anyway, so I might as well live it all the way up.

00:35:35Be Real belongs to 89th Street neighborhood family bloods.

00:35:39The crack was so easy to get rid of that the money looks like a floodgate.

00:35:45And with that comes rivalry.

00:35:48The killing today is not over who will control the neighborhood turf, but who will control the neighborhood cocaine.

00:35:54Now you have firefights between drug dealers and when you got money you can afford better weapons.

00:35:59Drug money has turned street gangs into small armies.

00:36:03Now you got an Uzi, a MAC-10 or eventually what the standard was was AKs.

00:36:09You'd begin hearing that rat-a-tat-tat sound where people would have open gun battles over corners.

00:36:1361, 13, 8, 61, drop by shooting just occurred one victim down, 53, 18 South Main.

00:36:19Here you go.

00:36:20This guy's got about four pints of blood laid on the sidewalk.

00:36:24Innocent people got shot.

00:36:26Little kids are getting hit.

00:36:27Melinda Johnson was just 15 when she was murdered.

00:36:30The victim of a random shooting by street gang members in South Central Los Angeles.

00:36:35You know, when I was living that particular lifestyle with the gangs and slanging, we were in another neighborhood who

00:36:42was friendly to us, like affiliates.

00:36:45You know, we ran into their rivals on the corner.

00:36:50We all start throwing up our gang signs to each other.

00:36:53One of the guys in the back seat hands the other guy the rifle.

00:36:58Shot at me three times in the last one.

00:37:02Ricocheted off the wall and came into my back here.

00:37:06My left lung totally collapsed and I fell right there on the ground.

00:37:11My friends rushed me over to Martin Luther King Hospital.

00:37:15IV in both arms.

00:37:16Right arm's a 14-gauge one.

00:37:18The emergency room was packed.

00:37:20Rival gangs, everything.

00:37:22He shot in the right thigh, in the right distal.

00:37:25There was this guy next to me with a shotgun wound to his stomach.

00:37:29He was crying so loud that I started to freak out.

00:37:32Like, oh my God, what the is going on in here?

00:37:35And that's when the police came to take me out to ask me the questions.

00:37:39So where are you from, homeboy?

00:37:40Where do they call you?

00:37:42Let's see your tattoos.

00:37:43Now I'm bleeding through my lungs, spitting up blood on the floor.

00:37:47And they're, like, grabbing my arms, looking at whatever tattoos that I might have.

00:37:52Totally not giving a f*** whether I'm dying or not, you know?

00:37:55But that's what it is, man.

00:37:57They look at you like you're the enemy.

00:37:59And you are.

00:38:01Okay! That's not necessary, man.

00:38:04Nothing brings down the heat of LAPD on your hood more than crack, gangs, and guns.

00:38:09There was a meanness, and there was a confrontational attitude to the police.

00:38:14They were, like, asking for a fight.

00:38:16That's the impression I got.

00:38:17And when I knew more about Darryl Gates, that kind of engagement was a big part of his philosophy.

00:38:22We do have a war here on gangs, and we're going to continue that war until it's finished.

00:38:27Maybe you can sum up L.A. Police Chief Darryl Gates in one single word.

00:38:32Bat-a-ram.

00:38:33Darryl Gates introduced a tank to roll through American neighborhoods, destroying people's houses in this pursuit of individuals in the

00:38:43crack trade.

00:38:44Police drove it into battle this week, smashing a gaping hole into a suspected rock house.

00:38:50Nancy Reagan, in this really famous event, rolled shotgun.

00:38:54Come on, man.

00:38:57Went through my pain.

00:38:59Oh, my God, man. Why is my family and everything in the grass?

00:39:03Look at my car.

00:39:05Crack cocaine was used as an excuse to justify this militarization of the police force.

00:39:15You see how it is yourself. Somebody could have actually got killed.

00:39:18If you don't want this battering ram to come through your house, don't deal dope.

00:39:22I remember when I first heard about the battering ram, you know, I go over there and I'm looking, I'm

00:39:26like, wow.

00:39:27Look what they done rigged up.

00:39:28So we moved all our houses upstairs.

00:39:32And Mr. Rockman, you better stop someday. Hang it up, homeboy, your house will pay.

00:39:38One of my homies, Toddy T, made a song about the battering ram, which was one of the biggest songs

00:39:41in the 80s.

00:39:43Toddy T captures the whole underground crime thing that was already bubbling in L.A.

00:39:48And it makes a big impact on me.

00:39:52By 1986, I've given up my hustle for the rap game.

00:39:57Six in the morning police at my door.

00:40:00Fresh Shadita squeak across the bathroom floor.

00:40:02Out my back lingo, I'll take my escape.

00:40:05Didn't even get a chance to grab my old school tape.

00:40:07Six in the morning probably was one of the most powerful gangster rap songs ever.

00:40:12About a dope dealer on the move, his come up.

00:40:15Got a knot in my pocket when he's the grand.

00:40:18Gold on my neck, my pistol's close in hand.

00:40:20He really sped us up to where we would start sleeping with one eye open now.

00:40:25Because we knew they would probably be coming at six in the morning.

00:40:29Word.

00:40:30Most cats that were in the gang banging world, or drug dealing, never talked about the stuff that we did.

00:40:37But here the rappers were, and they were being the voice for that particular group of people.

00:40:43We make our records based on stuff that's happening where we live, you know.

00:40:49And people out there that don't like it, f*** them.

00:40:59NWA probably had a bigger impact than anybody when it came to the gangster rap music and the West Coast

00:41:05lifestyle.

00:41:05Because they were talking about f*** the police, they were talking about the boys in the hood that were slangin'

00:41:11dope.

00:41:24NWA's unfiltered stories of crack gangs and street violence unleash a firestorm of controversy.

00:41:31The media labels it gangster rap, but it sells millions of records.

00:41:36They were like the Harlem Globetrotters.

00:41:39We wanted to do everything that they were doing because they represented what cool was.

00:41:45Obviously, you guys must know a little bit of something of what you're talking about.

00:41:49What is your background?

00:41:51Killings, robbery, everything.

00:41:53The whole nine yards, dope dealing, everything.

00:41:56Everything you hear on our records is true.

00:41:59We knew Eazy-E was a drug dealer.

00:42:02The word on the street is that it's drug money that finances Eazy-E's new label, Ruthless Records.

00:42:08The crack game was money, and the natural transformation was buying a record label.

00:42:14Crack basically funded hip-hop.

00:42:17We all have the same story.

00:42:20The success of our raw tales from the hood sends a message to all the young hustlers out there.

00:42:26This is a way to tell your story and get paid in the process.

00:42:32Gangsta rap will blow up nationwide just as the spread of crack, gangs, and guns brings down the full weight

00:42:39of the new drug war.

00:42:52See this cute little vial here?

00:42:54It's crack, rock, cocaine, the most addictive form.

00:42:58You think it's the glamour drug of the 80s?

00:43:00Well, that's the point of this fronted little reminder.

00:43:02It can kill you.

00:43:04In the next few months, the motion picture industry and theater owners will be bringing you a series of messages

00:43:11like the one you just saw.

00:43:13I don't think anybody will miss the point.

00:43:15In 1987, the president and Nancy Reagan enlist Hollywood in their war on drugs.

00:43:21These little vials of chemical garbage have a nasty habit of killing people.

00:43:26Crack can kill you.

00:43:28Dead.

00:43:28Every time you do it, every single time, you risk ending up on a slab in the morgue.

00:43:33You're laying your life on the line for a ten-minute hide.

00:43:39If anyone offers you some, tell them where to shove it.

00:43:46Look, everybody wants to be cool.

00:43:50But doing it with crack isn't just wrong.

00:43:53It could be dead wrong.

00:43:59But the kids of the crack generation are hardly going to listen to Clint or Pee Wee.

00:44:05I was making so much money, that was the only vision in my mind was the money.

00:44:09My clothes was looking nice, I had a car.

00:44:14When you come from nothing, and you have the opportunity to turn nothing into something, you want to make it

00:44:19the best run that you can make it.

00:44:21When you're selling drugs, you start to feel invincible.

00:44:24You know, I started to feel that I was the guy who created to sell cocaine, and that I was

00:44:28the greatest cocaine seller ever.

00:44:30And that was my job.

00:44:35Business is booming, and Freeway Rick is at the top of his game, helping to spread crack across the country.

00:44:41A year and a half ago, the DEA was finding crack in only seven cities.

00:44:46Now, crack is showing up in more than 40 cities.

00:44:49Well, people would come from other cities to get it.

00:44:51You know, they would come out to visit their families, and they would see what was going on.

00:44:54They would be like, wow, can we get this in our town?

00:44:57It was kind of like exporting a business almost, or exporting a product.

00:45:04When I first started as public enemy and toured the country, you start seeing other cities like Dallas, St. Louis.

00:45:1388, it was like New York in 85.

00:45:16Get out! Get out! Get out!

00:45:18Police raiding another crack house in Des Moines.

00:45:21Des Moines, Iowa, the epitome of middle America.

00:45:26I've lived here for about 40, 50 years. Never thought it would come to that.

00:45:30City by city, this white tornado was swirling on, just wiping out black America.

00:45:36We said we have to do something to make this seem very unattractive to a young audience.

00:45:43Here it is! Bam! And you say, goddamn, this is a dope jam.

00:45:48But let's define the term called dope, and you're thinking me funky now.

00:45:52Public enemies in your face track night of the living base heads becomes an anti-crack epic.

00:45:58Black comatose walking around. Please don't confuse this with the sound. I'm talking about space!

00:46:03You see everybody out all night looking for this little $10 substance to keep their zombie life going.

00:46:10Nothing can save your space!

00:46:11And it's like night of the living day.

00:46:13Shame on the brother when he dealing. The safe block where my 98 be wheeling.

00:46:17And everybody know another kilo. From a corner for my brother keep another below.

00:46:22And stop illin' and killin', stop drillin', yo black, yo.

00:46:26We have the audacity to try to tell people that crack is whack.

00:46:30Cause this didn't come from us.

00:46:31KRS-1, Kumo-D, Ice-T.

00:46:34It was a consensus. Crack is terrible, you know?

00:46:38And we all gonna go after it like that's the enemy.

00:46:43In New York, a group of concerned residents takes to the streets, armed with cans of paint.

00:46:49The target? Suspected crack houses.

00:46:51Cause we're going to tell everybody, when they see the red on the doorpost, that they're selling murder to our

00:46:59babies inside.

00:46:59There's no doubt that black America is suffering from crack and crying out for help.

00:47:05We've got to wage an all out aggressive war against narcotics, there's no question about that.

00:47:10During the presidential campaign in 1988, the media coverage of the rising violence of the crack trade is heating up

00:47:17again.

00:47:18George Bush assumes office with what he sees as a clear mandate for a new national crackdown.

00:47:27This is the first time since taking the oath of office that I felt an issue was so important, so

00:47:33threatening, that it warranted talking directly with you, the American people.

00:47:37Our most serious problem today is cocaine, and in particular crack.

00:47:45This, this is crack cocaine, seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the

00:47:54street from the White House.

00:47:56I listened to that and it sounded suspicious to me. This doesn't sound right.

00:48:02In a park just across the street from the White House.

00:48:05Crack isn't being sold across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park.

00:48:09And I followed up. I pressed and I had some people in the DEA and eventually I hit gold.

00:48:16They told me the whole thing was a setup.

00:48:18I eventually wrote the story and it caused a huge fuss.

00:48:22The White House acknowledged today that a dramatic moment in President Bush's speech declaring war on drugs resulted from a

00:48:29setup.

00:48:30President Bush's speech writers came up with the idea of using a prop.

00:48:35So they just write that into the speech.

00:48:39They had one problem. They had to find a bag of crack.

00:48:42As the Washington Post reported today, to make the buy in Lafayette Park, drug agents had to lure the seller

00:48:48there.

00:48:50The kid set up by the DEA to provide Bush's bag of crack is an 18 year old high school

00:48:56student from across town named Keith Jackson.

00:48:59They say, can you meet us in Lafayette Park? And Keith Jackson goes, where's Lafayette Park?

00:49:05And the DEA tells him, well, it's across the street from the White House.

00:49:08And Keith Jackson replies, where the f*** is the White House?

00:49:14It came to symbolize how the threat of drugs in general and crack in particular was being portrayed in almost

00:49:25a near hysterical fashion.

00:49:26Oh my God, it's all around us. It's everywhere.

00:49:30It was clearly something that the country was concerned about, but it was being inflated for political purposes.

00:49:38The president calls for a massive increase in prison space and law enforcement.

00:49:44This way, this way, this way.

00:49:46In 17 cities across the country, police are declaring war on crack.

00:49:53It's called Operation Crackdown.

00:49:55200 police officers spreading out all over Broward County, confiscating as much crack as they can find.

00:50:05TV crews first start going on crack raids in the summer of 1986, but now it's a nightly occurrence.

00:50:14The war on crack is so dramatic that Fox turns it into a primetime hit when it puts cops on

00:50:21the air in 1989.

00:50:23Police! F***! Get down!

00:50:29Cracking.

00:50:30We find a bottle of cocaine base rocks and you're going to tell me you don't know nothing about this.

00:50:35The crack raids in this pilot episode form the template that makes cops the first successful reality TV show in

00:50:42the history of commercial television.

00:50:46In this atmosphere, the crack kingpins are being taken down.

00:50:50And one of the first of all is Freeway Rick, targeted by the special Freeway Ricky Ross Task Force in

00:50:58the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

00:50:59Me and two of my guys come from playing basketball.

00:51:03We saw these cars pull up behind us with no lights on.

00:51:05So the first thing my guy did was grab his pistol and he's ready to start shooting at them.

00:51:10Because they thought it was somebody trying to jack us.

00:51:12When we found it was the cops, I took off, ran, got away.

00:51:16But they planted drugs in the car and say that I dropped the drugs.

00:51:19Plus, you know, if a cop goes to court and say that he pulled you over and you had dope

00:51:23in your pocket, then you're in trouble.

00:51:24It's gonna be hard to beat that case.

00:51:27Freeway arrives at the L.A. County jail and finds out he's not alone.

00:51:32Quite a few of the guys from the street was there and they started telling me that they were looking

00:51:36at life sentences and stuff.

00:51:37I mean, I was scared.

00:51:39But the real war would be conducted against those low level drug dealers slinging crack on the streets.

00:51:46And these kids are getting sentenced at a rate that's a hundred times higher than those sentenced for cocaine powder.

00:51:52Let's build the prisons. This is where these people belong when they violate the law.

00:51:57These guys deserve nothing less than do it. Hard, long time.

00:52:01Step back from the wall. One step. Do it now.

00:52:04The president wanted to crack down, so they cracked down on everybody.

00:52:08Five years for you right off the bat.

00:52:11A lot of my friends went that way.

00:52:14From this moment on, there would be more people questioning the effectiveness of the war on drugs.

00:52:19There's one cop said to me, look, the minute the drugs are on the street, the war's over.

00:52:23You know, there is no war on drugs. It's like sweeping leaves on a windy day.

00:52:27One of those caught up in the web is Snoop Dogg when he's busted by an undercover cop for dealing

00:52:31rocks at his usual spot on 61st Street in Long Beach.

00:52:35I didn't feel like I was doing nothing wrong. I wasn't shooting nobody. I wasn't raping nobody. I wasn't, you

00:52:42know, robbing nobody. I was giving somebody, you know, a service for what they were paying me for.

00:52:50Snoop is now part of a national trend of mass incarceration that'll see one in three young black males in

00:52:57America caught up in the criminal justice system.

00:53:00Wu-Tang was actually the product of that culture. Unfortunately, I hate to say that, but it's true because you

00:53:05read the track record, you see seven out of nine are felons.

00:53:09That is from drugs or guns. The young black men who are the primary creators of hip hop are the

00:53:18most incarcerated group in the history of the world.

00:53:22As they turn to hip hop, the hustlers of the crack generation will document all of these experiences in rhyme

00:53:29and in doing so change the course of popular music and culture.

00:53:38By 1990, with violence and stiff prison sentences taking hold, the drug game starts to seem like a very tough

00:53:45way to make a dollar.

00:53:47Young kids grow up and that's all they know. Didn't teach him in school, now he's slangin' dope. Only thing

00:53:52he knows is how to survive, but will he kill another brother before he dies in the ghetto?

00:53:57It was looking bad. People started getting a lot of time in jail for drug involvement. A lot, a lot,

00:54:03a lot, a lot of funerals.

00:54:04A lot of friends turned enemies and just one crack house would be so valuable. A war would start over

00:54:11that one spot, you know?

00:54:17Crack had no rules, no regulations and it was every man for himself and whoever had the most built up

00:54:24strongest team and he brought his homies in and they clicked up and that's what it was.

00:54:29With money, drama gonna come. So you got the stick up guys, you got the crooks, thieves, you know, crooked

00:54:37cops. It becomes scary. You start seeing the dollar sign in people's eyes.

00:54:42New York kingpin AZ Faison falls to the coldest blow. Always say, the day your brother wakes up and plans

00:54:49to do you dirty, there's no defense against that. For AZ it means getting robbed at gunpoint by a dude

00:54:56from his own crew.

00:54:57I just watched him walk up to me and put the steel on my forehead and I watched him pull

00:55:03the trigger.

00:55:06I didn't feel it. I just heard the gunshot and it seemed like my spirit left the body.

00:55:11And I went into this bright light. Basically, I got shot like nine times that day.

00:55:18Next thing you know, I woke up in the hospital.

00:55:21AZ begins a recovery that's nothing short of a miracle.

00:55:25Bloodbath in the Bronx, they call it.

00:55:29At some point, every street hustler must elevate his game to something legit.

00:55:34If not, prison to death is guaranteed.

00:55:37In the streets, the game is so crazy that you get shot.

00:55:41Oh, you the man. That's the state of mind. But hip hop had a voice.

00:55:45I said, you know what? I'm going to start rapping. And that's when I created the group Mob Style.

00:55:51I got something to say. Shoot the homeboys from around the way.

00:55:56Our style of rap was talking about our style of living. I'm telling you, give it up. It ain't no

00:56:02use.

00:56:03Bloodbath in 87. I knew I was dead. I felt myself going to heaven. But I learned from my mistakes.

00:56:09That's how my dog dog opened up the gates.

00:56:12Mob style never breaks out of the underground.

00:56:15But AZ is not the only gangster to see hip hop as a legit hustle.

00:56:20Be Real also has hopes of getting into the rap game with his homeboys Sin Dog and DJ Muggs.

00:56:26We all hung out together and went through our life experiences together.

00:56:31When I went and got involved with the gangs and selling drugs, you know, the other guys were constantly trying

00:56:38to, you know, pull me back in to do music and do something positive.

00:56:42For Be Real, what starts out as just another night slinging crack turns into a defining moment in his life.

00:56:51One night, one of my friend's mothers came and bought a piece and we had the grass high up where

00:56:57we were serving out of because if any cops came, we would just throw the crack in the grass and

00:57:03it would take forever for them to find it.

00:57:06And this one lady came, bought her crack and she dropped her crack in the grass and we could hear

00:57:11her outside of our window crying the whole night.

00:57:14And I'm like, what the are you doing? I dropped my crack in the grass.

00:57:19She didn't want to leave. I ain't going nowhere.

00:57:22My OG homie that was in control of the spot, he came out with a shotgun and was like, you

00:57:27better get your ass out of here right now or I'll blast you.

00:57:33And she looked up dead in his eye with that barrel pointed right in her face.

00:57:37I'll die for my crack right now. So if you're going to shoot me, shoot me, but I'm going to

00:57:41stay here looking for it till I find it.

00:57:46Right then and there that changed my whole perspective on it.

00:57:49You know, I said, OK, I'm going to stop serving the crack.

00:57:54I didn't have the heart for it because I thought, what if that was my mom?

00:58:02By 1991, B-Reel's crew Cypress Hill has enough traction in the music business that he can leave the drug

00:58:09game behind for good.

00:58:18Everything that we were going through previously to making music had a big effect on us.

00:58:23It was always like trying to create awareness. This is the life that we were fortunate enough to get out

00:58:28of.

00:58:39Crack stayed big for as long as it had to. You know what I'm saying? If it wasn't for the

00:58:42rap game, I truly believe that crack will still be the dominant right now.

00:58:50For Snoop, serving time in jail for crack is his turning point.

00:58:54Being incarcerated, I really got to focus on where I wanted to take my rap into.

00:58:59I was just able to get off in the jailhouse because it was so many homies in there rapping and

00:59:04it was so much competition and to be able to rise in a situation where it's all wolves and gorillas.

00:59:11You know what I'm saying? Then the wolves and the gorillas bow down and tell you, man, you the one.

00:59:15You need to get out and get a deal. That gives you a real sense of, I need to do

00:59:20this.

00:59:23When Snoop is released from county jail, he hooks up with Dr. Dre, now CEO of a new label, Death

00:59:30Row.

00:59:32When he gets a chance to cut his first song for the soundtrack of the 1992 movie Deep Cover, Snoop

00:59:42turns to his own crack bus for inspiration.

00:59:456.05 was the time on the clock when me and my homie bailed in the parking lot. The same

00:59:50looked strange and it felt like a setup.

00:59:52Let not be, cause if it is, they gettin' bitter.

00:59:55I made it about me getting caught selling drugs to an undercover officer. That's how I caught my dope case,

01:00:01but I put a little fiction on it.

01:00:03And I put it together with me and Dre as some drug dealers that ended up getting set up.

01:00:08Guess what they told me? We give you 20 G's if you snitch on your homie.

01:00:12They wanted me to tell on Dre.

01:00:19But instead of me telling on Dre, me and Dre turned on him and killed the police officer.

01:00:30Deep Cover is a record about killing a cop. I had one too, called Cop Killer.

01:00:35We were all angry about what was going down with the police.

01:00:39Put your hands on your hands. Step to the wall. Step to the wall. Get down on your knees when

01:00:42you get to the wall.

01:00:43You got the police really working to get us. Crash units, gang units, just f***ing with us for nothing.

01:00:51I used to watch him in LA. You'd always be riding down the street and you'd see some guys on

01:00:54their knees with their hands like this.

01:00:57Go for the pat down, check the car and you can go.

01:01:01Crack brought that on.

01:01:02The fact is, if the streets seem out of control, so are the police.

01:01:06By the time the Rodney King beating is captured on a video camera, this kind of thing has become a

01:01:12normal occurrence.

01:01:14We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty of the crime of assault.

01:01:18Timothy E. Wynn, not guilty of the crime.

01:01:22And them being found innocent. And y'all gonna walk out smiling?

01:01:27You know, you gotta look at all that anger and that frustration. That's years of frustration.

01:01:33And that's what ignites the riot when those cops are declared not guilty.

01:01:44After cops make a number of arrests at the corner of Florence and Normandy, an amateur video shot at the

01:01:50scene captures the mounting tension exploding into violence when the police retreat.

01:02:13It wasn't directly because of crack, but crack was in the shadows.

01:02:20You get this cauldron, these violent shootings and these deaths, and come into these neighborhoods with these armored police cars

01:02:29with battering rams, and you mix it up, and you're gonna get an L.A. riot.

01:02:36The riot quickly turns into an orgy of looting.

01:02:40We was watching on TV when they first jumped off. There's all kind of riots and looting going on in

01:02:45L.A.

01:02:46That's all we needed to see. We went straight to where it was happening at.

01:02:49And every time I was going in these little stores to steal something, I was seeing all kind of people

01:02:55that was my friends.

01:02:56I haven't seen my hair dressed in one of the stores. It was crazy as hell.

01:03:03The six-day uprising causes the deaths of 53 people and a billion dollars of damage.

01:03:10We're burning down our community, yeah.

01:03:13But we're gonna broadcast this around the world. This is our cry for help.

01:03:17As sick, and as dysfunctional, and as twisted as it may be.

01:03:23I bet y'all are paying attention now.

01:03:26They say the only way to fix a lack of hope is to create opportunity.

01:03:31And for the crack generation, hip-hop may represent the best way out they're ever gonna get.

01:03:42Hi, mister. How do you make your money?

01:03:47Hustle up. Word, I pull the trigger long.

01:03:50Quit my tea spray to every brother's gone.

01:03:52Got my blocks, sewn on my dope spots.

01:03:54Last thing I sweat, so suck a punk cop.

01:03:56I've always liked to be on the cutting edge.

01:03:59But I never dreamed that in 1991, I'd star in the first major Hollywood movie about the crack trade.

01:04:07At times like these, people wanna get high.

01:04:09Real high and real fast.

01:04:11And this is gonna do it.

01:04:14And make us rich.

01:04:22It was a moment in time.

01:04:24You know, it was this epoch all in one movie of what crack was all about.

01:04:31That movie was really like, you really wanna make it?

01:04:34You gotta go for it like that.

01:04:37Dudes do have that mentality.

01:04:39New Jack City is an attempt to bottle all of that hip-hop energy around crack cocaine and a larger

01:04:50-than-life drug lord like Nino Brown.

01:04:53New Jack City was, was the ****.

01:04:57It was hard.

01:04:58Nino Brown was one of the most loved superheroes in the hood of all time.

01:05:02New Jack City is the first in a new wave of street movies.

01:05:05Like Boys in the Hood and Menace to Society.

01:05:10Is that dog in there?

01:05:12I want that dog out of my house.

01:05:13That's my father.

01:05:14What are we gonna do?

01:05:16Don't even trip.

01:05:17I'm gonna have a listen.

01:05:19By the time West Coast gangster rap peaks in 1993, with Snoop Dogg's first solo album, Doggy Style, the music

01:05:27is the movie.

01:05:31The album brings Snoop the kind of instant fame that allows him to close the door on a life where

01:05:37there was no future.

01:05:41I've been gunned down with an AK-47 and didn't get hit.

01:05:45I've been right next to people who got knocked off.

01:05:48And I really don't want to be selling drugs, shooting, getting shot at for the rest of my life.

01:05:55I'd rather tell stories about how I used to be.

01:05:59That head I just dropped, cause you know it don't stop.

01:06:02Mr. 187 on the undercover cop.

01:06:04Tick tock, not by the block, just some nuts and a cop.

01:06:07Rob you for your ends, then I kill you blood clots.

01:06:10Snoop Doggy Dogg.

01:06:11His album Doggy Style was the hottest selling album in the country this week, beating out everyone from Pearl Jam

01:06:17to Sinatra.

01:06:18Doggy Style turns an ex-crack dealer into the biggest star in hip-hop.

01:06:23Debut album for me, like, never done before, top of the charts.

01:06:27And it's my first year as a solo artist, now I'm in the big leagues now, you know what I'm

01:06:30saying? I'm out there by myself.

01:06:32Snoop ushers in a new era, as kids who hustle crack in the 80s turn their backs on the drug

01:06:38game.

01:06:38On Staten Island, RZA, Raekwon, and seven other ex-hustlers formed the Wu-Tang Clan.

01:06:45Every day we would want to talk about either trying to make some money or make a tape to sit

01:06:51in the neighborhood and get some fame.

01:07:05We came with the right music and we all became successful and blew up.

01:07:11I thought I went the wrong route, so I got with a sick type click and went all out.

01:07:16I left the crack business quick, personally, you know what I mean? I couldn't just do it, you know what

01:07:22I mean? Hip-hop was my salvation.

01:07:31We came together as a crew, we brought Striff together, and our Striff helped us escape.

01:07:36Cash rules everything around me, Cream get the money, dollar dollar bill, y'all.

01:07:41We was like, y'all, life is about to change, I'm legit now.

01:07:46In 1993, the group's first hit single, Cream, puts the hustler mentality on wax, setting a blueprint for hardcore hip

01:07:54-hop of the decade.

01:08:09What happens now is that a number of ex-crack dealers break through to become dominant figures in hip-hop.

01:08:16In Do or Die Bed-Stuy, there's Christopher Wallace, who goes by the name of Biggie Smalls.

01:08:25Damn, why'd they want to stick me for my paper?

01:08:28Biggie, it was the same individual as us.

01:08:31This album, Ready to Die, you know it was another tale from that side of the world.

01:08:36And in the Marcy projects of Brooklyn, Sean Carter becomes Jay-Z.

01:08:41One drama clip, me and my conglomerate, shall remain anonymous, caught up in the finest clip.

01:08:47Live out my dreams until my heart gets fouled and brought me crazy, you know exactly what this is about.

01:08:52I just started doing interviews this year.

01:08:54I was still selling drugs.

01:08:57Practically every rapper who's come along from the early 90s going forward either is rapping about crack cocaine or has

01:09:06to make some reference to the crack trade because it's so pervasive in terms of their lives and the lives

01:09:12of the culture.

01:09:13This is the era where the Hustlers story sells millions of albums and connects to a global audience, elevating hip

01:09:20-hop to new levels of creativity and influence.

01:09:24Clocker fashion trends like Timberland boots and baggy jeans go mainstream, and a former gangster hits the runway at a

01:09:31Tommy Hilfiger fashion show.

01:09:33I wound up becoming cool with Tommy's brother Andy, and he knew that we was talking about these clothes.

01:09:39Andy was like, yo Ray, I want you to come through and do the run walk, can you do it?

01:09:44I'm like, what? You want me to be a model?

01:09:50The 90s is when the Hustler goes corporate.

01:09:53Rappers start their own fashion lines and blow up in business.

01:09:59What you want, a shirt to be on the beach with?

01:10:01You know what I mean?

01:10:03Just play it. Play it right here. Just blow it in the wind.

01:10:07Yo, yo, you're my fisherman. Give me my Gilligan.

01:10:10Come on, man. Everybody got these in your hood. You probably the only cat without them.

01:10:14That's our uniform. Anytime I see people with my stuff on, I got mad love for them.

01:10:18I know they feel exactly where I'm going, man.

01:10:23Ironically, just as the crack generation is taking over hip-hop, the crack epidemic itself is tailing off.

01:10:30By the early 1990s, and certainly by 1992, crack had kind of run its course.

01:10:35What had happened was the crack epidemic had kind of burned itself out.

01:10:39Not because law enforcement had been successful, but because people saw the crack heads and the crack hoes and stuff

01:10:47on the street.

01:10:47And a new generation said, wait a second.

01:10:50You look at a person that uses crack and they're like, ugh, disgusting.

01:10:53The statement, crack is whack, is still living.

01:10:56The expression that was intended as an anti-drug message was popularized on the wall of this Harlem playground by

01:11:02a New York artist back in 1986.

01:11:04Now, seven years later, there's evidence it just might be catching on.

01:11:11As the crack epidemic winds down, its legacy is inescapable.

01:11:16Many will never see the outside of a prison cell.

01:11:20But even for the few to get out of the game, it isn't easy to move on.

01:11:24The streets are right there, and they are unkind, unfriendly, unforgiving.

01:11:29So if you're filthy stacked up, better watch it back and duck, cause these fiends, they got it cracked up.

01:11:36Now we living the dream, but yet we still going through that same struggle.

01:11:39Why? Because people are still dying.

01:11:41You watch the video, Cream, and you see the kid on the bus, Two Cent.

01:11:45No, Two Cent is dead now.

01:11:47We only see him in that video.

01:11:54Our life is continually haunted by that era of crack and violence.

01:11:59It's real.

01:12:05I went to the river.

01:12:09The living testimony of the crack generation can be found in the stories of those who survive.

01:12:14Like the members of the Gospel Choir of ARC, the oldest rehab in Harlem.

01:12:20This little light is mine, yes, and I'm gonna let it shine.

01:12:25These ex-crack addicts have risen from the ashes to reclaim their lives and inspire others.

01:12:32I went back to school. I got my associate's degree.

01:12:35Then I went and I got my bachelor's degree.

01:12:36Then I went and I got my master's degree.

01:12:38I did all of that through the grace of God.

01:12:41The choir was something that, you know, I can identify with because in the same token I was being healed,

01:12:47I was giving a message to people out there just like myself that you can change your life.

01:12:56I like the choir because it gave me a peace of mind.

01:12:59I know who I am today. I'm clean. I can survive. I can live with myself.

01:13:11But these are the lucky ones.

01:13:15This thing called crack became a destroyer of communities.

01:13:22You can sit around a room of kids and say, how many of y'all actually got raised by your

01:13:28parents?

01:13:29And they all gonna sit there and go, not me. My daddy went to jail. My daddy got murdered. My

01:13:33mother was on crack.

01:13:40It got a member of my family.

01:13:48Family member, my sister, you know, my close, you know.

01:13:51You know, I saw what it did to her, you know what I mean?

01:13:55And it was sad. And I hated that time, you know, because it just took so many people down.

01:14:04Many people in the African-American community thought that perhaps something akin to genocide was taking place.

01:14:11If you talk to certain people, they're gonna tell you that the government was the very people putting the crack

01:14:17out on the street.

01:14:20In 1996, journalist Gary Webb comes out with the Dark Alliance.

01:14:25His newspaper series claiming that the CIA helped distribute the cocaine that was used to make crack in Los Angeles.

01:14:32And that the profits were used to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.

01:14:36So here they are talking about fighting a war on drugs, but yet they're the ones that are putting the

01:14:42drugs in circulation.

01:14:42At the center of this controversy is Freeway Rick Ross, who received his cocaine from one of these Nicaraguan connections.

01:14:51When Gary printed his story, it just started a whirlwind.

01:14:55On November 16th, CIA Director John Deutsch holds a public meeting in a Watts High School to respond to these

01:15:02charges.

01:15:04We have no evidence of a conspiracy by the CIA to engage in encouraging drug traffickers in Nicaragua or elsewhere

01:15:12in Latin America.

01:15:13Many will never be satisfied by these denials.

01:15:17I will tell you, Director Deutsch, as a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective, that the agency has dealt drugs

01:15:22throughout this country for a long time.

01:15:29The CIA connection to crack is still being debated today.

01:15:34But what's indisputable is that the crack legislation of 1986 has left us with the largest prison population in the

01:15:43world.

01:15:44And that it's disproportionately black.

01:15:46A lot of the Congress persons who were responsible for this hundred to one disparity between crack and powder have

01:15:56come to regret that.

01:15:57They've seen the devastating consequences on families, on communities, and especially on African Americans.

01:16:03And they said that we were wrong.

01:16:06In the last 25 years, we realized that it was too much of a disparity.

01:16:09And that's one of the reasons why I led the fight to try and change it.

01:16:12It takes decades of effort and the election of Barack Obama to reform the law and bring the sentencing disparity

01:16:19down from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.

01:16:23So yesterday, we took an important step forward when Congress passed a fair sentencing bill that I look forward to

01:16:30signing into law.

01:16:31A bipartisan bill to help right a long standing wrong by narrowing sentencing disparities between those convicted of crack cocaine

01:16:39and powder cocaine.

01:16:40It's the right thing to do.

01:16:45As for the lasting impact of crack on hip-hop, 25 years later, it's everywhere.

01:16:53Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.

01:16:55You hear the echo.

01:16:56Man, I've seen the best go.

01:16:58You can see how that metal.

01:16:59I'm a hustler, hustler.

01:17:01A push is push up.

01:17:03You a bust a customer.

01:17:04I get to some cook up.

01:17:06It began to affect what a rapper would talk about.

01:17:09Then it began to affect what an audience expected.

01:17:12It began affecting what the videos would be like.

01:17:23I think rappers at some point, with the bling bling era coming in, with Puffy and Bad Boy and Cash

01:17:31Money and all these artists coming about.

01:17:35What they brought visually was something that they were imitating.

01:17:42The art was imitating the gangsta's life.

01:17:44The image of the crack hustler becomes so mythic that dudes start putting on the persona like a dookie chain.

01:17:51Who you suckers think you're trippin' with?

01:17:54Yes, I'm the boss.

01:17:56Say I'm 45, white on white.

01:17:58That's Rick Ross.

01:17:59Everybody hustle different, man.

01:18:01My homies, we did it cause we had to.

01:18:03I like your import export.

01:18:04I'm in the distribution.

01:18:06I know Pablo.

01:18:08Pablo.

01:18:09Noriega.

01:18:10The real Noriega.

01:18:11He owe me a hundred favors.

01:18:13Rick Ross stole my name and my identity.

01:18:18I'm the number one hustler in the streets, Rick Ross.

01:18:22One day I was sitting in my cell and some guys ran over to me with a XXL.

01:18:27And he was in the XXL and he was talking about how he got the name.

01:18:31I was like, what?

01:18:32So I got on the phone and I started to find out who he was.

01:18:36He's been living the fraud.

01:18:38He's never sold drugs.

01:18:39He was a correctional officer.

01:18:42He's not me.

01:18:43He's not Rick Ross.

01:18:45They wouldn't give me a job to be a correctional officer.

01:18:48I guarantee you.

01:18:58These rappers today, they don't really understand what they're doing by sending that energy out to the people.

01:19:07In his autobiography Game Over, which becomes the movie Paid in Full, AZ Faison urges kids to stay away from

01:19:16drug dealing.

01:19:17The drug game is a dying world.

01:19:19It's like everybody's just a race to be the boss in the land of the lost and it's over.

01:19:23It's like you're dying to sit in an electric chair.

01:19:26Freeway Rick Ross ends up serving close to 17 years in prison and is now out and trying to begin

01:19:33a new life.

01:19:35For the crack hustlers who get into hip hop, what they learn in the crack game helps them get ahead

01:19:40in the rap game.

01:19:41They took the same entrepreneurial steps that we was using in the drug business and they applied it to the

01:19:49music business.

01:19:50Look at the Wu-Tang deal and they say, well, Rizzo made an ingenious deal.

01:19:54He made one deal with a major corporation that gave him the power to put the group out, but then

01:19:59he kept the individual rights to go and make individual deals.

01:20:03That's just like somebody who would have a one crack spot in Brooklyn, but then they would go get a

01:20:07spot in Staten Island, get a spot in Queens.

01:20:10And you collaborate and make a lot of money.

01:20:12We think of like drug dealers.

01:20:14Most of us who started our rap businesses, it was modeled behind the crack trade.

01:20:19I literally pictured my cassettes as kilos of cocaine.

01:20:24I was thinking like a drug dealer.

01:20:26Their role models ultimately were not just a street dealer.

01:20:29They wanted to be the CEO.

01:20:31It's a classic story of American reinvention that takes these kids from the hard streets of the ghetto to the

01:20:38pinnacle of success.

01:20:40And no one embodies it more than Jay-Z.

01:20:43A brother who was considered in one generation to be a criminal or an outcast.

01:20:48It's now a celebrity.

01:20:50That's the power of American culture.

01:20:54Americans love the reformed gangster.

01:20:57Speech.

01:20:58First of all, I want to thank my connect.

01:21:00The most important person with all due respect.

01:21:03Thanks to the duffel bag.

01:21:04The brown paper bag.

01:21:06The Nike shoe box for holding all this cash.

01:21:08Okay.

01:21:09Boys in blue who put green before the badge.

01:21:11The first push of whoever made the stash.

01:21:13The rock boys in the building tonight.

01:21:16When I think about Jay-Z, here's a kid who in the early 90s was literally on the corner selling

01:21:22drugs.

01:21:24You flash forward to 2009.

01:21:28He has better seats at the inauguration than Jesse Jackson.

01:21:32Rock boys in the building tonight.

01:21:34Oh, what a feeling I'm feeling like.

01:21:36You don't even gotta bring your paper out.

01:21:39We the dope boys in the air.

01:21:40Drinks is on the house.

01:21:42In a way, the journey of this crack generation goes full circle back to the myths of Scarface.

01:21:47Like Tony Montana, these hustlers came from nothing and reached for the only way out they saw.

01:21:54The world, Chico.

01:21:55When everything in it.

01:21:57You remember that?

01:21:58Only in this American hip-hop version, Tony survives the game, goes legit, and transforms into something else entirely.

01:22:12Now we escape that life.

01:22:14I appreciate it every day, man.

01:22:17Look at the things that we're doing positive with our lives now.

01:22:20Look at me for an example.

01:22:22I have a football league that I started in Southern California.

01:22:25And in my football league, there are so many different parents that sold drugs, gang bang, that used to shoot

01:22:30at each other.

01:22:31Now, they're all on one page to see their kids do something positive in a football league.

01:22:37I want people to be inspired to try something different, not to keep dying in those ghettos, going through the

01:22:43same thing, filling up those jail cells for those cops.

01:22:46If you spend time in a neighborhood slanging dope or gang banging and you lost two or three of your

01:22:52best friends, now you're doing music.

01:22:56You're trying to serve as the example of, hey, there's an alternative.

01:22:59This was our alternative.

01:23:02Along the way, they create some of the most powerful music and culture of the age.

01:23:09Who could have ever imagined that so much would come from crack?

01:23:13This demon drug that looked like broken pieces of hard rock candy.

Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation TV Movie 2011 1h 24m

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