Latest / DISGRACELAND / The RZA: (Wu-Tang Clan Chapter 1): Kung Fu in Times Square, Weed on Wall Street, and Attempted Murder in Ohio

Transcript

The RZA: (Wu-Tang Clan Chapter 1): Kung Fu in Times Square, Weed on Wall Street, and Attempted Murder in Ohio · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
0:21
Speaker 1: the Wu Tang Clans the Riza are insane. At the
0:25
Speaker 1: age of nine, he was hanging around junkies and dealers,
0:28
Speaker 1: perverts and sex workers in Times Square, and by his
0:33
Speaker 1: teens he was selling diamondbags of weed to day traders
0:36
Speaker 1: on Wall Street. His first shot at a music career.
0:40
Speaker 1: It backfired, plunged him back into a cycle of poverty
0:43
Speaker 1: and violence that he was so desperately trying to escape.
0:47
Speaker 1: He sold harder drugs in Ohio, where he was involved
0:50
Speaker 1: in a Christmas Eve shooting that landed him in a
0:53
Speaker 1: fight for his life. And this all happened before The
0:57
Speaker 1: Riza made great music, some of the most definitive hip
1:01
Speaker 1: hop music of all time as mastermind of the groundbreaking
1:05
Speaker 1: Wu Tang Clan. Unlike that music I played for you
1:09
Speaker 1: at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
1:12
Speaker 1: That was a preset loop for my melotron called Jackie's
1:16
Speaker 1: Beach Party MK. One. I played you that clip because
1:22
Speaker 1: I can't afford the rights to Black or White by
1:24
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. And why would I play you that specific
1:28
Speaker 1: slice of chemon cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
1:33
Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on December twenty fourth,
1:36
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, and that was the day that the
1:40
Speaker 1: Rizza was arrested and charged with attempted murder. On this
1:44
Speaker 1: episode Dimebags Party, hard drugs, a Christmas Eve shooting, an
1:50
Speaker 1: attempted murder, and Wu Tang clans the Rizza. I'm Jake
1:55
Speaker 1: Brennan and this is disgrace. Slamm. The glue Sniffer stood there, drooling.
2:31
Speaker 1: His speech was slurred, eyes half closed. It's a pathetic bastard.
2:37
Speaker 1: Harmless though, but he was important, important to nine year
2:41
Speaker 1: old Bobby Diggs, the boy the world would later know
2:46
Speaker 1: as the Rizza, and the Young Rizza aka Young Bobby
2:50
Speaker 1: here was equally important to the glue Sniffer. The glue
2:54
Speaker 1: Sniffer was older, so he could buy Bobby a ticket
2:57
Speaker 1: for the R rated movie that Bobby wanted to see,
3:00
Speaker 1: and to reciprocate. In addition to the dollar fifty it
3:04
Speaker 1: costs for a ticket, Bobby handed over an extra buck
3:07
Speaker 1: to fund the glue Sniffer's junkie lifestyle. It was a
3:11
Speaker 1: win win, but still two fifty two dollars and fifty
3:15
Speaker 1: cents didn't come easy. You ask your mom a stupid
3:18
Speaker 1: question like hey ma, you got twenty five cents, and
3:21
Speaker 1: you get the same answer every time. Well, I don't
3:23
Speaker 1: even have good sense. So it was a big deal
3:26
Speaker 1: for a nine year old to put a couple of
3:28
Speaker 1: bucks in the hands of a junkie and Times Square
3:30
Speaker 1: and trust that he'd returned with a movie ticket. Bobby
3:33
Speaker 1: hustled to raise that kind of toe, delivering papers and
3:36
Speaker 1: shoveling snow. He was relieved to see the glue sniffers
3:39
Speaker 1: stumble back and hand over the ticket, and then the
3:42
Speaker 1: pathetic bastard hobbled off to get what he wanted heroin,
3:46
Speaker 1: which here in Times Square and nineteen seventy eight was
3:50
Speaker 1: easy to find. In nineteen seventy eight, New York City's
3:55
Speaker 1: Times Square had what you wanted, especially if what you
3:58
Speaker 1: wanted was filthy and depraved peep shows, live nude girls,
4:03
Speaker 1: porn movies twenty four to seven. And it was more
4:05
Speaker 1: than just perverts. It was also junkies, like I said,
4:08
Speaker 1: nodding off in dope, dust and coke, all just a
4:11
Speaker 1: handshake away. It was stick up men, their pistols pressed
4:14
Speaker 1: it to your waist, Give me everything he got, young
4:16
Speaker 1: blood and the sex workers. They got all your money too,
4:19
Speaker 1: they just took it with honey instead of piss. But
4:23
Speaker 1: Bobby Diggs didn't want any of that. He didn't want
4:26
Speaker 1: to get off, and he didn't want to get high,
4:29
Speaker 1: at least not for now. Fuck triple X. He wanted
4:32
Speaker 1: a triple feature of Kung fu movies. As soon as
4:36
Speaker 1: Bobby stepped off West forty second Street took a seat
4:38
Speaker 1: inside the Deuce, one of Times Square's grimy movie theaters,
4:42
Speaker 1: he was transported. The projector came to life, and the
4:46
Speaker 1: title cards hit the big screen. The Fury of the
4:49
Speaker 1: drag Master of the Flying Five, Death kind of Shaw
4:53
Speaker 1: VERSUSO Tang personally Gordon Bleu, the Brother's Law, the choreographed flights,
4:58
Speaker 1: the costumes, their dialogue, and the cover the Sabarai. The
5:03
Speaker 1: films were fantastical, mythical. Even the all day experience took
5:08
Speaker 1: Bobby to another world, in another universe, so far away
5:11
Speaker 1: that for a couple of hours he could forget about
5:14
Speaker 1: the outside world. Like the projects. In Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood, Bobby,
5:20
Speaker 1: his mother, and his siblings crammed into a small apartment,
5:24
Speaker 1: four brothers sharing two twin beds in the same clothes. Yo,
5:28
Speaker 1: do you wear those pants yesterday? And they better not
5:30
Speaker 1: to smell like in nuts because I'm wearing them today.
5:32
Speaker 1: And outside on the streets, you had a plan three
5:35
Speaker 1: steps ahead. Brownsville was the kind of place where dudes
5:38
Speaker 1: jumped you just for standing in the wrong spot, and
5:41
Speaker 1: if you were caught with some change in your pockets
5:43
Speaker 1: or nice kicks on your feet, kissed that shit could buy.
5:47
Speaker 1: When Bobby's mom fell behind on rent and they were evicted,
5:50
Speaker 1: that was actually a blessing in disguise, because that's how
5:54
Speaker 1: Bobby's family ended up in Staten Island. Staten Island was
5:59
Speaker 1: different from Brooklyn, less hostile turf to navigate. Bobby's odd
6:03
Speaker 1: jobs brought in some cash enough to ditch school each
6:06
Speaker 1: week and go to Times Square and watch a new
6:08
Speaker 1: Kung Fu movie. In a four years span alone, Bobby
6:11
Speaker 1: must have seen two hundred of them. He also bought
6:14
Speaker 1: a pair of Technics turntables and then a microphone and
6:17
Speaker 1: a cheap drum machine. Hip hop was the pulse of
6:21
Speaker 1: New York at the time, at least it was to
6:23
Speaker 1: Bobby and his cousins Russell and Gary. Didn't matter if
6:27
Speaker 1: hip hop began in the South Bronx. Now it permeated
6:30
Speaker 1: every borrow, from block parties on the street to Mister
6:33
Speaker 1: Magic's Rap Attack radio show on the air, Grandmaster Flash
6:37
Speaker 1: and the Furious five Busy b Dougie Fresh Cool mo
6:40
Speaker 1: d e pm D. Bobby, along with Russell and Gary,
6:43
Speaker 1: formed their own rap trio as teenagers all in together
6:47
Speaker 1: Now they called themselves when they dreamed of hitting the
6:50
Speaker 1: big time and leaving life in the projects in the dust.
6:53
Speaker 1: But there was no money in dreams. The money was
6:56
Speaker 1: in reality. The reality was the streets. The streets had
7:01
Speaker 1: a lure because the streets had dollars, more dollars than
7:05
Speaker 1: you could make pushing a fucking shovel up a driveway
7:08
Speaker 1: in the snow. And once he made a little bit
7:10
Speaker 1: of that money and saw what it got you, he
7:13
Speaker 1: only wanted more. From where he sat in Zakody Park,
7:18
Speaker 1: he could see the yuppie coming and that uptight ass
7:22
Speaker 1: clenched power Walk product in his hair and pleats in
7:25
Speaker 1: his pants. The New York Times Stock Exchange didn't break
7:29
Speaker 1: for lunch, but around noon on weekdays, floor traders spilled
7:33
Speaker 1: out onto the street. They needed fresh air, and they
7:37
Speaker 1: needed a break from shouting at the big board, and
7:39
Speaker 1: they needed something to chill him the fuck out weed.
7:44
Speaker 1: Bobby had what they were looking for. They didn't care
7:46
Speaker 1: that he was a teenager. For Bobby, it was easy
7:49
Speaker 1: money and it sure beat getting up at the ass
7:51
Speaker 1: crack of dawn to deliver papers. And the yuppi slipped
7:54
Speaker 1: you a bill, and you handed him the dimebag bill,
7:57
Speaker 1: dinbag bill, dinbag bill. Dineback, and Bobby did it so
8:02
Speaker 1: many times that it became rope. But he got a
8:05
Speaker 1: little too comfortable. Unlike the game of chess unfolding on
8:08
Speaker 1: the table in front of him in the park, Bobby
8:11
Speaker 1: didn't plan three steps ahead. Blue lights, sirens, NYPD swarm
8:15
Speaker 1: in the park with guns drawn, cold steel snapped tight
8:18
Speaker 1: around Bobby's wrists, arrested, thrown in a holding cell for
8:23
Speaker 1: selling weed, but fortunately let go after a day or two. Unfortunately, however,
8:29
Speaker 1: the whole incident wound up on Bobby's permanent record. But
8:32
Speaker 1: Bobby was busy thinking of other records, hip hop records.
8:37
Speaker 1: With his turntables and some borrowed gear, namely a four
8:40
Speaker 1: track recorder and a roll in nine h nine drum machine,
8:43
Speaker 1: Bobby assembled a makeshift studio in his apartment, and next
8:46
Speaker 1: to kung fu, making music was Bobby's obsession. He was
8:51
Speaker 1: also thinking about surviving and providing. In nineteen eighty eight,
8:55
Speaker 1: when Bobby was nineteen, his mother left New York for
8:58
Speaker 1: Ohio with most of his siblings, leaving Bobby behind to
9:01
Speaker 1: take care of his little brother in the family apartment.
9:04
Speaker 1: Bobby's dimebag hustle wasn't always enough, so they stole food
9:08
Speaker 1: from convenience stores. They got bye on ramen, and we
9:12
Speaker 1: there had to be a better way. Maybe it wasn't
9:14
Speaker 1: a question of dreams versus reality. Maybe it was as
9:18
Speaker 1: simple ast changing your reality, willing something new into existence,
9:23
Speaker 1: like the feeling Bobby gut when he stepped inside the
9:26
Speaker 1: deuce and was transported to another place entirely. Maybe he
9:30
Speaker 1: could do that with music. He started by creating a
9:34
Speaker 1: new persona for his musical pursuits, called himself Prince Rakim.
9:39
Speaker 1: The guys he was making music with followed suit. His
9:42
Speaker 1: Staten Island friend Dennis Cole became Ghostface Killer, named after
9:46
Speaker 1: a character in one of Bobby's beloved Kung Fu movies.
9:49
Speaker 1: Kung Fu also inspired the name of one of Bobby's
9:52
Speaker 1: cousins Russell Jones, who now went by Old Dirty Bastard.
9:56
Speaker 1: But it was Bobby's other cousin, Gary Grise, a formidable
10:00
Speaker 1: threat on the mic who called himself the Genius and
10:04
Speaker 1: who would later become the Jizza, who got Bobby thinking
10:07
Speaker 1: about something else. Numbers, not the number of dimebags he
10:12
Speaker 1: sold that week, and not the number of dollars he
10:15
Speaker 1: owed and rent. Supreme numbers as in supreme mathematics. A
10:21
Speaker 1: principle of the five Percent Nation aka the Nation of
10:26
Speaker 1: Gods and Earths, an offshoot of Islam that empowered and
10:30
Speaker 1: inspired hip hop culture in the nineteen eighties. The five
10:34
Speaker 1: Percent Nation believes that black people are the original people
10:38
Speaker 1: on planet Earth, black men being gods and black women
10:43
Speaker 1: being queens. They also believe that only ten percent of
10:47
Speaker 1: the people in the world know this, but that they
10:49
Speaker 1: deliberately withhold that knowledge from eighty five percent of the
10:52
Speaker 1: world in order to wield dominance the remaining five percent.
10:57
Speaker 1: The five percent Nation are the ones you know the
11:00
Speaker 1: whole truth and are determined to spread the word to
11:03
Speaker 1: everyone else. Gary was a five percenter. Gary was one
11:07
Speaker 1: of the smartest dudes Bobby knew, so Bobby became a
11:10
Speaker 1: five percenter too, and a believer in supreme mathematics. The
11:15
Speaker 1: numbers helped you understand how humanity in the universe are connected.
11:20
Speaker 1: Each number had meaning. For example, the first number, the
11:25
Speaker 1: number one, is knowledge. You get to look, listen, assess
11:30
Speaker 1: the situation. And this was not new to Bobby. He'd
11:33
Speaker 1: been doing the knowledge, as they said, for years, all
11:36
Speaker 1: the way back to his Brownsville days when he had
11:38
Speaker 1: to calculate every step he took. He also recognized that
11:42
Speaker 1: sometimes he didn't do the knowledge, like in Ziccote Park
11:45
Speaker 1: when the cops came down on his weed hustle. And
11:48
Speaker 1: what did Bobby Diggs know now? That he wanted not
11:51
Speaker 1: only to survive, but to thrive, to get above the
11:55
Speaker 1: bullshit going down on the streets, to make hip hop
11:58
Speaker 1: music not just a dream but a reality. Bobby believed
12:02
Speaker 1: in himself, and if he believed in himself and believed
12:05
Speaker 1: in the power of the five percent nation, he was
12:08
Speaker 1: confident that he could realize his goals. He just wasn't
12:12
Speaker 1: sure if the streets would actually let him go. Nineteen
12:36
Speaker 1: ninety one was a landmark year for hip hop. A
12:39
Speaker 1: tribe called Quest released The Low End theory, Public Enemy
12:43
Speaker 1: Drop Apocalypse ninety one, The Enemy Strikes Black, and Dela
12:47
Speaker 1: Soul beat the sophomore slump with their brilliant Dela Souls Dead.
12:51
Speaker 1: It was also the year then NWA became the first
12:54
Speaker 1: rap group to hit the number one spot with an
12:56
Speaker 1: album on the Billboard two hundred who. One month after
12:59
Speaker 1: Enda made history in July nineteen ninety one, Bobby Diggs
13:04
Speaker 1: or should I say Prince Rakim released his debut single
13:07
Speaker 1: on Tommy Boy Records, the same label that Dla Soul
13:11
Speaker 1: was signed to. But that single, Ooh I Love You RAKKINI,
13:15
Speaker 1: a clunky boast of sexual conquests over a Stax record sample,
13:20
Speaker 1: had little in common with Dela. In fact, it had
13:23
Speaker 1: more in common with some of ninety one's other major
13:26
Speaker 1: hip hop stars, such as Tone Loak and MC Hammer,
13:29
Speaker 1: who the hip hop had saw as wrap pop hybrids
13:32
Speaker 1: that lacked authenticity. That was the problem with Ooh I
13:36
Speaker 1: Love You Rakim. It wasn't authentic. It was the product
13:40
Speaker 1: of years of hard work on Bobby's part, a dedication
13:43
Speaker 1: to his craft as a beat maker, a songwriter, and
13:45
Speaker 1: an MC. His ability to network and connect with the
13:48
Speaker 1: right people in the right place at the right time,
13:51
Speaker 1: and his hustle, a hustle that he had learned on
13:53
Speaker 1: the streets and was now applying to the music industry.
13:57
Speaker 1: But the hustle failed, and it wasn't entirely Bobby's fault.
14:01
Speaker 1: Tommy Boy Records passed on the songs that reflected Bobby's
14:04
Speaker 1: gritty reality and instead went for the novelty track. They
14:07
Speaker 1: put him in a top hat in tails in the
14:09
Speaker 1: music video, and they tried to make Bobby something he wasn't,
14:13
Speaker 1: and the whole thing bombed. The single, the video in
14:17
Speaker 1: Bobby's buddy music career. Now Bobby was right back where
14:22
Speaker 1: we started. No record deal, no prospects in the music industry,
14:26
Speaker 1: no prospects period, and he needed money bad. So Bobby
14:31
Speaker 1: had no choice but to go back to the only
14:33
Speaker 1: other thing he knew, hustling drugs on the streets. But
14:37
Speaker 1: the streets had changed. A group of ruthless drug dealers
14:41
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn had set up shop in Staten Island's Park Hill,
14:44
Speaker 1: and they weren't selling dimebags of weed. They were moving
14:47
Speaker 1: a shit ton of crack cocaine, which was currently plaguing
14:51
Speaker 1: the projects of New York City and beyond Not only
14:54
Speaker 1: was this group of dealers the biggest game in town,
14:57
Speaker 1: they were also the toughest. The body count that piled
15:01
Speaker 1: up in park Hill, which locals were now calling kill
15:04
Speaker 1: a Hill, made that clear. Bobby wasn't an idiot and
15:09
Speaker 1: there was no way he could compete, which gave him
15:11
Speaker 1: an idea. If he left New York he went to Steubenville, Ohio,
15:15
Speaker 1: where his mom and other siblings lived. He could be
15:18
Speaker 1: a big fish in a little pond, run circles around
15:21
Speaker 1: those Midwest jokers and make a killing, even if it
15:24
Speaker 1: meant selling a drug that killed his own people. Crack
15:28
Speaker 1: destroyed lives of ripped families apart. Bobby knew what he
15:31
Speaker 1: was getting into, but he also felt that given the circumstances,
15:35
Speaker 1: he had no choice. A few months later, in the
15:39
Speaker 1: fall of ninety one, Bobby bought a one way train
15:41
Speaker 1: ticket to Ohio. He boarded the train with a briefcase.
15:45
Speaker 1: Inside the briefcase where his five percent Nation lessons book
15:49
Speaker 1: a gold chain he could hawk for quick dough product
15:52
Speaker 1: to sell in a twenty five caliber pistol. Ohio came
15:57
Speaker 1: as advertised, Bobby sold drugs. Bobby made money, and Bobby
16:01
Speaker 1: tried not to think about the moral ramifications of his actions.
16:04
Speaker 1: Company helped his cousin Russell Jones aka Old Dirty Bastard,
16:08
Speaker 1: and his Staten Island buddy Dennis Cole's aka Ghost Face
16:11
Speaker 1: Killer joined him in the hustle and on the trip.
16:15
Speaker 1: But in Ohio they're all seen as outsiders, and they
16:18
Speaker 1: attracted the anger resentment of local dealers who felt like
16:21
Speaker 1: their turf was being invaded. And it seemed like every
16:24
Speaker 1: time they made a chunk of cash, something bad happened.
16:28
Speaker 1: Dirty got pinched, ghosts got shot. It was, as Bobby
16:32
Speaker 1: later said, a cycle of non success and the math
16:36
Speaker 1: just wasn't adding up. Bobby was thinking about this as
16:41
Speaker 1: he sat behind the wheel of his sister's car in
16:43
Speaker 1: a traffic light in Stupenville. He was also thinking of, oh,
16:47
Speaker 1: what she told him when he left that evening, You
16:49
Speaker 1: better not fuck my car up. It was Christmas Eve
16:53
Speaker 1: and it was late, and he waited for the light
16:55
Speaker 1: to turn green. He was driving two girls home, just friends.
17:00
Speaker 1: Them was Ghost Girl, at least that's what Bobby thought.
17:03
Speaker 1: Then another car pulled up alongside them, four guys inside,
17:07
Speaker 1: all looking at Bobby and the girls, but one of
17:10
Speaker 1: the dudes was bugging out, his eyes wide with rage,
17:13
Speaker 1: and Bobby knew that look. It was a look that said, yo, man,
17:18
Speaker 1: you got my girl in your car. And the dude
17:20
Speaker 1: was outside, now out of his car, and he stormed
17:23
Speaker 1: toward Bobby, and he put his foot into the door
17:25
Speaker 1: of Bobby's sister's car. And the dude wanted to know
17:27
Speaker 1: what the fuck his girl was doing in a car
17:29
Speaker 1: with some other dude from New York, so he kicked
17:32
Speaker 1: the car again, and Bobby panicked, not just because he
17:35
Speaker 1: promised his sister he wouldn't fuck her car up, but
17:37
Speaker 1: because he was outnumbered. He put his hand to his belt,
17:40
Speaker 1: felt his pistol. He wasn't going to use it, not
17:43
Speaker 1: unless he absolutely had to. He just wanted to make
17:46
Speaker 1: sure it was still there. The dude banged in the
17:49
Speaker 1: car window and the girls freaked out, and one of
17:52
Speaker 1: them screamed, they've got guns. Just go go, just go,
17:55
Speaker 1: just go right now. Bobby didn't check to see if
17:58
Speaker 1: the light had changed. He took foot off the brake
18:00
Speaker 1: pedal and slammed it down on the gas. His adrenaline
18:04
Speaker 1: searched and the engine roared, The wheels squealed, and Christmas
18:07
Speaker 1: lights strung up on houses outside flew by like melting day,
18:10
Speaker 1: low crayons, and Bobby looked into the rear view, no
18:13
Speaker 1: one behind them, But he couldn't be too careful. He
18:16
Speaker 1: didn't spend years learning how shit worked on the streets
18:19
Speaker 1: in New York to come all the way out to
18:20
Speaker 1: fucking Ohio and drop his guard like some herb He
18:24
Speaker 1: drove around, he parked, killed the lights, he turned them
18:28
Speaker 1: back on, and drove around some more, and he told
18:30
Speaker 1: the girls to chill the fuck out, and finally, hours
18:33
Speaker 1: later he drove them home. The street was a dead end,
18:38
Speaker 1: and the neighborhood was quiet Christmas Eve kind of quiet,
18:42
Speaker 1: children nestled all snug in their beds, visions of sugar
18:45
Speaker 1: plums and all that shit. And Bobby watched the girl
18:49
Speaker 1: walk up to her front door and get safely inside,
18:51
Speaker 1: and he was about to pull away when suddenly a
18:54
Speaker 1: pair of headlights came on across the street. An engine rebveed, fuck,
19:00
Speaker 1: those dudes were waiting here all along, and the other
19:02
Speaker 1: car sped towards Bobby's shots rang out, and Bobby hit
19:05
Speaker 1: the gas and peeled away, but it was a dead end.
19:08
Speaker 1: More shots, and Bobby turned the wheel and tried to
19:10
Speaker 1: maneuver his way out. His sister's car crashed up onto
19:13
Speaker 1: the sidewalk and the other car closed in, and Bobby
19:16
Speaker 1: reached for his twenty five pure instinct, pointed the pistol
19:19
Speaker 1: through the open window and fired. He racked the slide,
19:23
Speaker 1: aimed one more time, and again pulled the trigger. The
19:25
Speaker 1: gunshots woke up the neighborhood. Lights flew on, faces pressed
19:29
Speaker 1: against windows, Sirens wailed in the near distance. It was
19:32
Speaker 1: to Cody Park all over again. But this time it
19:35
Speaker 1: wasn't yuppies and dimebags of weed. This time it was
19:39
Speaker 1: one guy shot in the thigh, another guy grazed by
19:41
Speaker 1: a bullet, and Bobby Digs from Staten Island, sitting in
19:44
Speaker 1: a Jefferson County jail cell, awaiting trial for attempted murder.
19:54
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this. We're we're where At first,
20:02
Speaker 1: it wasn't attempted murder. At first, Bobby was offered a
20:05
Speaker 1: plea deal for his role in the shooting, which left
20:09
Speaker 1: one person shot in the thigh. After all, he'd acted
20:12
Speaker 1: in self defense and there were four of them and
20:15
Speaker 1: only one of him. Sixty days he could do that time.
20:19
Speaker 1: But once the prosecution discovered that Bobby was not a
20:22
Speaker 1: local guy, but from New York City, that plea was
20:25
Speaker 1: no longer on the table in the eyes of the
20:28
Speaker 1: Ohio authorities. Bobby Digs and the guys he hung around with,
20:32
Speaker 1: guys like old Dirty Bastard and Ghosts face kill him.
20:35
Speaker 1: It could be part of a larger operation, maybe an
20:38
Speaker 1: operation that was spreading its wings far beyond its New
20:41
Speaker 1: York base, bringing guns and drugs into their communities. And
20:46
Speaker 1: who knew how deep it all went. And that was
20:49
Speaker 1: the thinking on behalf of the prosecution. It was attempted murder,
20:53
Speaker 1: which meant eight years behind bars. They wanted to bury
20:58
Speaker 1: Bobby Diggs, just like the those four guys wanted to
21:01
Speaker 1: bury him under the cover of darkness on Christmas Eve.
21:04
Speaker 1: But Bobby wasn't going down that easy. Even though he
21:07
Speaker 1: was struggling. He struggled with knowing he was disappointing his mother.
21:11
Speaker 1: He struggled with the fact that his own sister had
21:13
Speaker 1: to put up her life savings ten grand to cover
21:16
Speaker 1: his bail, and he struggled when he learned that his
21:19
Speaker 1: girlfriend was pregnant with his child. That struggling was all
21:23
Speaker 1: he knew, and the prosecution, the judge. They hadn't seen
21:27
Speaker 1: the things he'd seen, experienced what he'd experienced, and they'd
21:31
Speaker 1: never pay off a glueseniffer just to see a fucking movie.
21:35
Speaker 1: And they weren't smarter than him either. They couldn't do
21:37
Speaker 1: the math like he could. So when Bobby took the
21:40
Speaker 1: stand to testify, he thought of the ten supreme numbers
21:44
Speaker 1: and how they could help him. One knowledge, What did
21:49
Speaker 1: he know? He knew how he was seen by the cops,
21:53
Speaker 1: the prosecuting attorney, and the judge as a threat, as
21:56
Speaker 1: a menace to society. Two Wisdom. Once you've got knowledge,
22:01
Speaker 1: act upon what you know. He told the jury that
22:04
Speaker 1: he was not the person they all said he was.
22:07
Speaker 1: He wasn't a bad person. He was a young man
22:09
Speaker 1: who made some bad decisions. Three Understanding. After you act
22:14
Speaker 1: upon what you know, you've got to truly understand it. Yes,
22:19
Speaker 1: he understood what got him in this situation in the
22:21
Speaker 1: first place, which meant he could also understand how not
22:24
Speaker 1: to get into the situation again. Four. Culture the way
22:28
Speaker 1: of life. After you know something and act upon it
22:31
Speaker 1: and understand it, only then can you live it. This
22:34
Speaker 1: culture of drugs and guns may have been the culture
22:36
Speaker 1: he came from, but it wasn't his culture. This was
22:40
Speaker 1: not his way of life. Five power aka truth. He
22:45
Speaker 1: told the jury had hurt him, to know that he
22:47
Speaker 1: had hurt another human being. That was the truth, and
22:50
Speaker 1: truth is power. Six Equality. You must be equal in
22:55
Speaker 1: all aspects of one's true self. Seven God, perfection, g
23:01
Speaker 1: the seventh letter of the alphabet. Seven colors in the rainbow.
23:05
Speaker 1: Seven notes on the musical scale. Eight build to elevate
23:09
Speaker 1: the foundation of knowledge. In order to build positivity, you
23:12
Speaker 1: must eliminate all negativity. His past was negative, his future
23:17
Speaker 1: was positive. Nine Born to be, to exist, you're born
23:22
Speaker 1: first in the womb. You're born a second time mentally
23:25
Speaker 1: through the understanding of supreme mathematics. The day he testified
23:30
Speaker 1: was April twenty third. Take the two in the three
23:33
Speaker 1: from twenty third add them to four for April the
23:36
Speaker 1: fourth month. That's two plus three plus four, which equals nine.
23:41
Speaker 1: The ninth number is born Today. He was a new
23:45
Speaker 1: person ten, which is actually zero because you are the
23:49
Speaker 1: one standing on the left side of a zero, and
23:52
Speaker 1: that zero is a circle. A cipher. Bobby knew about ciphers.
23:56
Speaker 1: Groups of mcs standing in a circle freestyling and working together.
24:00
Speaker 1: He knew that there was strength in the cipher, the bond,
24:03
Speaker 1: the completion of all three hundred and sixty degrees, one
24:06
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees of knowledge, one hundred and twenty
24:09
Speaker 1: degrees of wisdom, and one hundred and twenty degrees of
24:11
Speaker 1: understanding to complete the circle from knowledge to understanding and
24:15
Speaker 1: back again. Bobby concluded his testimony and returned to his
24:22
Speaker 1: seat at the defense table. The jury stood up and
24:25
Speaker 1: exited the courtroom, and two hours later the jury returned
24:29
Speaker 1: and Bobby stood up to hear the verdict read. The
24:31
Speaker 1: foreman spoke on the charge of attempted murder. We the
24:35
Speaker 1: jury find the defendant, Robert Diggs, not guilty. Bobby felt
24:41
Speaker 1: a weight lift from his shoulders. He turned to face
24:44
Speaker 1: his mother. She had a sober look on her face. Boy,
24:47
Speaker 1: she said, this is your second chance. Don't mess it
24:51
Speaker 1: up and don't look back. Bobby did the knowledge. He
24:55
Speaker 1: quit smoking, quit drinking, quit dealing dope. He fused the
24:59
Speaker 1: lessons of the Street with the lessons of the five
25:01
Speaker 1: for centners. He memorized the one hundred and twenty questions
25:04
Speaker 1: and answers that unlocked the keys to life. Who is
25:07
Speaker 1: the original man? The original man is the Asiatic black Man,
25:10
Speaker 1: the Maker, the Owner, the cream of the planet Earth,
25:13
Speaker 1: the father of civilization, the god of the universe. And
25:16
Speaker 1: who is he? Bobby Diggs? He was a new person
25:20
Speaker 1: He was as the teachings of the Five for Centers
25:22
Speaker 1: taught him, born anew, but not as Prince Rakim. Rakim
25:27
Speaker 1: was the past. Rakim was negative. Bobby had to work
25:30
Speaker 1: on that positive build his new persona would have purpose
25:34
Speaker 1: and intention, and it would be simple, just three letters.
25:38
Speaker 1: First was R in the divine alphabet. R stands for
25:42
Speaker 1: rule or ruler, and to rule is to control righteously.
25:47
Speaker 1: Z is the last letter in the divine alphabet, representing
25:50
Speaker 1: the final step of consciousness and standing for zig zag zig,
25:55
Speaker 1: which represents the three sixty trip from knowledge to wisdom
25:58
Speaker 1: to understanding and back again zig zag zig. And A,
26:03
Speaker 1: of course is Allah, the supreme being original man. R
26:08
Speaker 1: z a ruler, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, Allah the Rizza. The
26:16
Speaker 1: Riza then envisioned a cipher, a cipher that actually worked,
26:20
Speaker 1: unlike the cipher of poverty and violence. He'd been trapped
26:22
Speaker 1: in the cycle of non success. The only way out
26:26
Speaker 1: was to make a new cipher, a new circle, a
26:29
Speaker 1: circle of power. The strongest, most powerful circle was a
26:33
Speaker 1: group effort. And this ship was bigger than you. You
26:35
Speaker 1: needed a group of guys who had your back, and
26:37
Speaker 1: you had theirs. And let's call it a clan. That
26:40
Speaker 1: wasn't just knowledge, that was wisdom and understanding. A whole
26:44
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty degree trip zig zag zig. The
27:10
Speaker 1: New York Field Office was busy for a Friday morning.
27:14
Speaker 1: The coffee machine hummed non stop, phones were ringing off
27:18
Speaker 1: the hook, and the agent sat at his desk and
27:21
Speaker 1: took a sip of coffee. It was lukewarm. Weak. In
27:26
Speaker 1: all honesty, the coffee sucked. The agent hoped that it
27:30
Speaker 1: would make up for a lack of taste with an
27:32
Speaker 1: abundance of caffeine to get him through the stack of paperwork.
27:35
Speaker 1: Sitting on his desk, he picked up the first memo
27:38
Speaker 1: on the stack, Federal Bureau of Investigation, written in all
27:42
Speaker 1: caps at the top, fought so bold the coffee should
27:45
Speaker 1: take notes. The date below the heading was August fourth,
27:49
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, and the memo was just a few
27:52
Speaker 1: days old. The agent began to read two New York
27:57
Speaker 1: from New York case number two eight one f dash
28:02
Speaker 1: N y dash n E W title Wu Tang Clan.
28:08
Speaker 1: The agent paused Wu Tang Clan, the hip hop group.
28:13
Speaker 1: He was a little surprised to see their name, but
28:15
Speaker 1: not shocked. The FBI had a heart on historically for
28:19
Speaker 1: musicians in the counterculture Bureau agents before his time monitored
28:23
Speaker 1: Hendrix and The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, and this
28:26
Speaker 1: probably wasn't any different. Rap music, in particular, was a
28:30
Speaker 1: hair across the ass of many a white collar prude.
28:33
Speaker 1: He continued to read synopsis request to open a new
28:37
Speaker 1: case on above captioned matter details. Information was received by
28:42
Speaker 1: the New York Police Department about criminal activity being conducted
28:45
Speaker 1: by members of the Wu Tang Clan organization on Staten Island.
28:48
Speaker 1: The detectives have documented in their case files that the
28:51
Speaker 1: Wu Tang Clan or WTC, is heavily involved in the
28:55
Speaker 1: sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjackings, and
28:59
Speaker 1: other types of violent crimes. Information developed by the detectives
29:03
Speaker 1: determined that the WTC has purchased numerous guns from the Steubenville,
29:07
Speaker 1: Ohio area. At least one of these guns has been
29:10
Speaker 1: identified as the murder weapon in the killing of A.
29:12
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson aka Pooh on Staten Island on twelve thirty
29:17
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Johnson was an associate of the WTC who
29:21
Speaker 1: had a falling out with the group, and is believed
29:23
Speaker 1: that his murder was ordered by someone within the WTC.
29:26
Speaker 1: This murder case remains unsolved at this point. Seven years earlier,
29:33
Speaker 1: when Bobby Diggs was born anew as the Rizza. When
29:35
Speaker 1: he made his triumphant return to Staten Island, having just
29:38
Speaker 1: dodged eight years in the pen, he thought he put Steubenville,
29:42
Speaker 1: Ohio long behind him. He was wrong. The shooting put
29:46
Speaker 1: him on the radar, not just in the Midwest, but
29:49
Speaker 1: in New York. Lawyers talked, and so did cops. Detectives
29:54
Speaker 1: never shut up. They like to connect the dots and
29:56
Speaker 1: tie one thing to another. Call up a guy they
29:59
Speaker 1: knew in the next day over and see if the
30:01
Speaker 1: extra piece of one puzzle fit into the missing piece
30:03
Speaker 1: of another, see if their hunch was true. And it
30:06
Speaker 1: was true, the Rizzo was planning something big, real big, actually,
30:11
Speaker 1: but not a drug deal in crime syndicate. It was
30:14
Speaker 1: a hip hop group, the kind that no one had
30:16
Speaker 1: ever seen before, a group so big they weren't just
30:19
Speaker 1: a group, They were a clam. The Wu Tang Clan
30:23
Speaker 1: a collection of MC's from Staten Island in Brooklyn, guys
30:27
Speaker 1: who were all stuck in their own cycles of non success,
30:30
Speaker 1: Guys who needed to bond together to make something greater
30:32
Speaker 1: than any one of them. Friends and cousins like ghost
30:35
Speaker 1: Face Killer an Old Dirty Bastard, and Gary Grice aka
30:39
Speaker 1: The Genius aka the Jizza, Corey Woods aka Raikon the Chef,
30:43
Speaker 1: and Jason Hunter otherwise known as Inspected Deck You God,
30:48
Speaker 1: method Man, Master Killa. Some of these dudes already had
30:51
Speaker 1: their alter egos from the streets. Others got their names
30:54
Speaker 1: from Rizza's favorite kung fu movies. The name Wu Tang
30:58
Speaker 1: came from those movies too. The Wu Tang sword style
31:01
Speaker 1: had fucked with. Dudes in the rhymes of the Wu
31:03
Speaker 1: Tang Clan were unfuckiable. Their tongues were their swords, and
31:07
Speaker 1: they honed their swordsmanship not in Staten Island, but in
31:11
Speaker 1: Sha Lin. More of a state of mind than a
31:14
Speaker 1: physical realm, the Wu Tang Clan built a new world
31:17
Speaker 1: into which they could escape from the world they knew,
31:21
Speaker 1: just like the Riza used to escape into the Deuce
31:23
Speaker 1: movie theater back in the day. But make no mistake,
31:27
Speaker 1: this was an escape, not a fantasy. Riza made them
31:32
Speaker 1: all promise, give me a few years of your life
31:34
Speaker 1: that will not only be successful, will be famous, will
31:37
Speaker 1: be so rich that we'll never have to go back
31:39
Speaker 1: to selling drugs in the streets or stealing food from
31:41
Speaker 1: the neighborhood market. We'll take the hustle to Jin. The
31:45
Speaker 1: rest of the clan put their faith in their leader,
31:47
Speaker 1: and the Riza delivered. Wu Tang Clan became a worldwide phenomenon.
31:52
Speaker 1: But at the New York office of the FBI seven
31:55
Speaker 1: years later in nineteen ninety nine, the origin story of
31:59
Speaker 1: the Wu Tang clan and didn't look like an innocent
32:01
Speaker 1: meeting of musical minds. And never mind the group's platinum
32:04
Speaker 1: first album or their four times multi platinum second album.
32:08
Speaker 1: The Feds knew a front when they saw one. The
32:11
Speaker 1: bureau memo that the agent with the Shitty coffee was
32:13
Speaker 1: reading classified Wu Tang as two to eight one F,
32:17
Speaker 1: which is FBI speak for a major criminal organization. Wu
32:22
Speaker 1: Tang was a clan all right, from the FBI's vantage point,
32:26
Speaker 1: a clan of organized crime. The agent took one last
32:30
Speaker 1: sit while he read the final paragraph on the page.
32:33
Speaker 1: The detectives are seeking the assistance of the FBI in
32:36
Speaker 1: the US Attorney's Office to further their case, along as
32:39
Speaker 1: to package the numerous crimes committed by the WTC organization
32:43
Speaker 1: in the form of federal charges in rico prosecution. The
32:47
Speaker 1: agent picked up the receiver of his desk phone and paused,
32:50
Speaker 1: we go prosecution. This wasn't run of the mill bureau paranoia,
32:55
Speaker 1: and there was plenty of juice for the squeeze here
32:58
Speaker 1: and if what he was reading was this was just
33:02
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. The agent punched in a
33:05
Speaker 1: number and the line rang. A voice answered, and the
33:09
Speaker 1: agent spoke it was his opinion that the Bureau should
33:13
Speaker 1: approve the NYPD's request and begins surveillance of the Wu
33:17
Speaker 1: Tang clan immediately. I'm Jake Brennan in this episode of
33:23
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is to be continued. Disgraceland was created by Yours
33:41
Speaker 1: Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits
33:45
Speaker 1: for this episode can be found on the show notes
33:47
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33:50
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