Latest / DISGRACELAND / GZA (Wu-Tang Chapter 10): Quantum Physics, Cop Killers, and a Stock-Trading Scumbag

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GZA (Wu-Tang Chapter 10): Quantum Physics, Cop Killers, and a Stock-Trading Scumbag · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the Wu Tang Clans the Jizza are insane. He may
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: be the only rapper who lectures about quantum physics at
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Ivy League institutions, including Harvard and MIT. That honor stems
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: from his acknowledged role as the genius the so called
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: voltron head of hip hop's most notorious group. A group
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that was targeted by the most hated man in America
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: after that same man bought their one of a kind
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: album at auction for two million dollars. A group that
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: nearly crumbled under the weight of resentment, acrimony in lawsuittes.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: A group who's passed continued to come back to haunt them,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: particularly when Staten Island's undisputed drug Kingpins went on trial
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: after a nearly twenty year reign of fear and violence.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: A group that made great music, music made even greater
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and more profound by the presence of the Jizza. Unlike
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that clip I played for you at the top of
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the show that wasn't great music, that was a preset
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: loop for my melotron called life Moves Pretty Fast MK one.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I played you that clip because I can't afford the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: rights to Hello by Adele And why would I play
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you that specific slice of from the Other Side Cheese?
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: song in America on December seventeenth, twenty fifteen, And that
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was the day that the Federal Bureau of Investigation made
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: an early morning rest in New York City after a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: prolonged investigation and arrest that sent a shock through the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang world. On this episode Quantum Physics Ivy League
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: institutions the most hated man in America from the Other
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Side Cheese and Wu Tang clans the Chisha. I'm Jake Brennan,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and this is Disgraceland. Few people living in New York
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: City in the nineteen seventies were as uniquely prepared for
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the dawn of rap music as Gary Grice, the boy
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the world would later know as the Jizza. But Young
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Jizza aka the Genius aka Young Gary Here didn't know
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: that he was uniquely prepared for anything. All he knew
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: were rhymes, the nursery rhymes and his mother goose book
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that he memorized as a kid. The rhymes on records
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: by the spoken word group The Last poets. He listened
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to those over and over, repeating every verse, every inflection,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: every cadence. He mashed both worlds together in his head,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: poems for kids and poems for adults, two halves of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: one brain. On one side, Humpty Dumpty, all broken up,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: but no one to put him back together again. On
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the other side, Jesus Christ himself standing on the corner
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of Lennox in one hundred and twenty fifth, trying to
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: catch the first cab out of Harlem. You know when
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the revolution comes. When the revolution did come, when Curtis
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Blow dropped the brakes in nineteen eighty and Grandmaster Flash
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and the Furious Five hit the arm Beach Yard in
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two with the message Gary now a teenager.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: His head flowing with verses by local mcs like Spoony
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: g and Ati Chiva, understood better than most what he
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: was hearing. Hip hop made sense. It was a language
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: he was already speaking, the style he was already living.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: The hip hop ciphers that broke out on street corners
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and block parties were all about inclusion. The ciphers were circles,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and circles were made to be unbroken. They brought people together,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: people who had no other options, no voice. Like the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: punks across the pond in England, they had no future.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Until now hip hop made something out of nothing. Hip
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Hop triumphed over adversity. It brought meaning to the absurdity
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of life and thus brought life to burnt out and
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: deteriorating buildings in the South Bronx projects where Gary here
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: spent the summers with his father. The South Bronx was
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: ground zero for hip hop. DJs rolled up, plugged their
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: huge speakers into a random lighthole on the street, hijacked
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: electricity and started spinning, and next a dude just jumped
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: on the mic, and then another dude challenged the first dude.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: It was all about standing your ground, proving your worst,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: mastering your flow. Gary took that flow with him to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: his mom's place, first on Staten Island and later in Brooklyn.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: On paper, Staten Island was just another burrow, but it
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: was not the Bronx, and this being the late seventies
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and early eighties, news traveled as slow as the Staten
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Island ferry. So Gary's cousin Bobby Diggs aka the Rizza,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: got hipped to the Floe before the rest of Staten Island,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: only because Gary brought it to him. Hip hop blew
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Bobby's mind between the Kung Fu movies and now rap music.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Bobby didn't sleep much who needed sleep? Along with their
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: third cousin, Russell Jones aka a Son Unique aka old
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Dirty Bastard, the cousins just wanted to walk the streets
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: at all hours and look for a cipher, a circle
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: of other MC's dropping freestyles off the top of their domes.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Ciphers or where you learned cipher's or where you picked
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: a fight, not physically, but with your words, with your rhymes,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: with your flow. Gary learned quick soon he was like
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the lone wolf and showgun assassin, only if the lone
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: wolf wasn't alone but instead had a wolf pack. And
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: this wasn't the peaceful Eto period in Japan. This was
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: New York in the nineteen eighties. Muggers, murderers, thieves, and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: dope fiends were behind every corner. Fear City was not
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: for the faint of heart. You had to be sharp
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and your words, your delivery, your confidence that had to
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: be wustaf some cheap gins your shit. The rush you
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: got when you brought fire to the cipher. When you
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: were funky, cool, confident, like butter or better yet like mercury,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: both liquid and metal at the same time. That rush
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: was incredible. Nothing felt better. Gary loved that feeling, so
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: he did it more. He battled, he learned, he got better,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and soon he was coming in for the kill. A
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: choice verse was like a broad sword to the chest
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: in a couplet. Here a rhyme. There, knees buckled and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: blood ran red. He was ruthless. He sliced necks, He
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: cut heads, and the heads rolled. But as the decade
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: rolled on and rap music gained commercial traction, the genre
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: was increasingly vilified by those who didn't understand it the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: way Gary did. Tipper Gore, a Democrat senator's wife from Tennessee,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: led the charge of the Parents Music Resource Center. We
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: have the PMRC to thank for those parental advisory stickers,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: as well as the erroneous claim that rap simply glorified
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: violence and degraded women. In nineteen eighty eight, Paulus Queen's
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: his own run DMC held a press conference to blast
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the media and come to rap's defense after a fan
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: died at a hip hop show at the Nassau Coliseum.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Writing about that show, The New York Times described rap
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: music as quote a rhymed chant to an electronically produced beat, unquote,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and reported that the violence at this particular show was
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and I also quote the latest in a wave that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: seems to follow rap performances almost as closely as its
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: fans decked out in gold chains. That wasn't what hip
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: hop was about at all. Not to Gary. It was
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: hip hop was lyrical. It came from the streets, sure,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: but it also came from the heart, from the depths
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of your imagination. It was poetry and mathematics, Mother Goose
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and Last Poets. It didn't have to be about your life.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It could be about anything. It was multidimensional, cosmic. Rap
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: was dust and stars, and in Gary's hands, rap was
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: straight up genius. But genius isn't recognized by everyone. Mediocrity
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: is much easier to spot, and thus mediocrity dominates the conversation.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: It turns out mediocrity.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Wants to rule the world.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Martin Chakrelly had something that no one else had. Wu
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Tang Clan's seventh studio album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolan,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: was one of a kind. A singular copy had been made,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: just literally one copy, two compact discs housed at a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: silver jewel encrusted box with a wax Wu Tang seal
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and liner notes bound in leather. There was quite literally
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: nothing else in the world like it. It wasn't just music,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: it was art. It was twenty sixty, the year prior
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Chaqurelle put up two million dollars at auction to own
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the world's rarest album. He paid more money for Once
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: upon a Time in Shadowland than anyone had paid for
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: an album in history. Two million dollars. That's nuts. It's
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: fucking crazy for char though it was a drop in
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the bucket, he had that kind of money, or at
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: least he made it look like he had that kind
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: of money. His parents worked hard for their money, immigrants
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: who came to Brooklyn and found work pushing brooms. Definition
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of working class not entirely unlike the guys in Wu Tang,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and also not unlike a lot of the guys in
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang. Chakrelli dropped out of high school to hustle,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: But he didn't hustle dice games like method man, and
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: he didn't hustle crack like you got Rayquon and Deck,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Chakrelly had a different hustle the stock market. Incredibly, he
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: was buying shares of a little company called Amazon at
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: just fifteen years old. He interned for Wall Street hedge funds.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Before he was twenty one. He grew tall by short
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: selling biotech stocks. He played huge risks and used the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: art of bullshit to cover his ass when those wrists
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: didn't pay off. His pharmaceutical company infamously bought the rights
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to market draprim, a drug used by AIDS patients. Chakerelle
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: immediately raised the cost from twelve dollars and fifty cents
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to seven hundred and fifty dollars and that's over five
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: percent per pill. The Daily Beasts labeled Schakrelly the most
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: hated man in America. And it wasn't just as wealth
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: for his greed, or as bullshit, or the fact that
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: he made a life saving drug next to him possible
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: for sick people to afford. It was his smirk, the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: shit eating granny flashed every time he was on the news,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: sent a very clear message. He may be despised, and
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: he may be a scam artist, but one thing could
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: not be denied. He was untouchable. Every time he smirked.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: He confirmed this very entitled and very smug and very
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: safe up in his white collar tower. What's my name is?
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Smirk seemed to say, fuck you, that's my name. It
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: was the same smirk he was flashing now. In a
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: video posted onlineanked by three men wearing masks over their faces,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Chakerelle gave the patent an insufferable smirk as he addressed
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: one particular member of the hip hop group who's one
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: of a kind album I just purchased. Dennis, I'm going
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: to call you by your government name. You're not a
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: ghost face killer.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: You're an old man that's lost his relevance and you're
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: trying to reclaim a spotlight from my spotlight. And that's
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: not okay. Most people don't even try to beef with me,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: you know why, because nobody's that dumb, and for whatever reason,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: you think that's okay to beef with me, that's.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: A big mistake.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Chakrelle, of course, was addressing ghost face Killer aka Dennis Coles,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: who called Schakerelli a shithead when TMZ asked him to
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: comment on the buyer wu Tan's unprecedented work of art.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Ghost wasn't wrong. He told his truth, but hearing that
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: truth pushed Chakrelle over the edge. His verbal missive online
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: turned downright threatening. I'm going to erase you from the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: record books of rap I butter your bread. You understand
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: me without me knew nothing. Stop acting, stop pretending, stop lying,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: be real, and don't ever fucking mention my name again,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: or there will be more of a price to pay
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: than just this video. Chakerelle's threats may have phased a
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: weaker person, but not ghost Face. In fact, Ghosts could
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: not wait to respond to that fake ass supervillain's video,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and my god, man did he respond. Google Ghosts is
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: eleven minute video in which he destroys the farmer brow
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: with humor and heart, in the help of his sister
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and his mother. But I digress. It's reasonable, however, to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: think that Ghosts and the rest of Wu Tang were
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: aware of, and perhaps concerned with, the unspoken threat in play.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: You could laugh all you wanted at s Chakerelli's weak
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: thug act, but you could not deny this, that a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: man could be so entitled, so untouchable, so above the law,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: that he could take whatever he wanted. Didn't matter if
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Ghost could out disson or the Jia could out Genius.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: This guy had money, influence, and power, just like the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: PMRC back in the day. Today it was a silver
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: jewel encrusted box, and tomorrow it could beat everything else.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: We're We're, We're.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Jiz was pissed. He knew he was getting fucked and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: they were all getting fucked. Kid Capri, Granddaddy, IU Cool,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: g rap Master Ace each given a twenty five dollars
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: per DM on this ten city promotional tour, while the sponsor,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: their record label, Cold Chilling, was pulling down sixty thousand
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: dollars a night. Sixty grand, Now that was cold. It
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was also a wake up call the labels, the music
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: industry at large. They didn't care about you. They only
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: cared about how you could make money for them, and
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: also they cared about keeping as much of that money
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: from you as possible. Jizza, just twenty four years old,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: wide eyed, optimistic, hungary, was about to be taught a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: major lesson in how the world really worked. Cold Chillin
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the label was not going to change Jisus's life. He
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: was going to have to find another way nineteen ninety one,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: one year before the Dawn of Wu Tang, Jizza was
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: still going by his original stage name, The Genius. His
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Cold Chill In Records solo debut Words from the Genius
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: was barely making it dent. To be completely honest, it tanked.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Very few people heard it. Lost out there somewhere between
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the Tone loaks and the NWA's and the public enemies.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Jizz gave it his all. He poured his heart and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: sold to every line on every track Cold Chillin poured
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: it all down the drain in Jesus eyes. They didn't
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: give him a chance, they didn't give his promotional budge
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: enough zeros, and now they're offering him this mere pennies
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: on the dollar while they raked in the big bucks.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Jizza may have been young, but he knew a screwjob when.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: He saw one.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Not that life as an undervalued Cold Chillin artist was unique,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: far from it. Like Hunter S. Thompson once said, the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: entertainment world is a quote long plastic hallway where thieves
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and pimps run free and good men die like dogs
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: for no good reason.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He was actually talking about the television industry, but it
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: tracks for the music visz too. These recording deals were
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: almost always made by young artists desperate to change their reality,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and desperation will make you do just about anything, And
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: in the case of guys like Jizza and his brothers
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: in Wu Tang, a record deal meant they were doing
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the impossible. They were making something of their lives. A
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: record deal meant you could stop running, stop dealing, stop
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: living hand in mouth. Thus it was easy to sign
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: on the dotted line, but even easier to feel like
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a when he realized he'd been played. The thing is
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: getting played wasn't something that was exclusive to an artist's
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: formative years. Cold Chilling wouldn't be the only time Chizza
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: was going to do the math and scratch his head. Hey,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Dirty Baby, I got your money was a line that
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: the Riza likely never uttered, but Old Dirty Bastard's nineteen
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: ninety nine hit single was allegedly written about Riza and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: how he initially balked at letting odb out of his
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang contract. As we covered in an earlier episode,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that sentiment was echoed by many in the group who
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: said they didn't have an easy time parting ways with
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang productions. Additionally, You God claimed in his autobiography
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: that Rizza's deep knowledge of the music industry put the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: rest of the group at a distinct disadvantage. From what
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I can tell, he got rich, you got rope, but
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I still don't know what I'm doing. This confusion and
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: resentment never went away. It bubbled up time and again,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: and most notably around the creation of Once Upon a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Time in Shaolin, the one of a kind album sold
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: to Farmer Brough Martin Chakrelli in twenty fifteen, an album
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: which You Got called quote some sucker shit, pure and simple.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Ray Kuan agreed in his own book, Ray called what
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: went down during the making of that album as quote
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: some of the dirtiest shit.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: I've ever heard of.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Once Upon a Time in Shaolinn was conceived by Silver Rings,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a Dutch Moroccan rapper and producer, originally discovered by ODB
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: and Method Man and signed to Wu Tang Records by Rizza.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: The concept of a single copy of a single album
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: sold to a single buyer was, of course the end
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: result of the increasingly worthless nature of all recorded music,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: most of which has now given away for next to nothing.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But Silver Rings's idea was not exactly a new one.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: It harkens back to the golden age of classical music,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: when music was not just art but work. In work
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: was time and time was money. Back when composers like Bach, Beethoven,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and Mozart to name a few, were put on retainer,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: were hired outright by wealthy patrons or royalty to make
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: their music according to the market, and they were fairly compensated.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: But there was only one Mozart, not a clan of Mozarts.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: And that's where the problem was. Once upon a time
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: in Shaolan starts the problem of fair compensation. Depending on
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: which member of Wu Tang you ask, they were either
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: compensated very little or not at all for this album,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And they were compensated very little or not at all
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: for random verses they laid down here and there, verses
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: they weren't even aware were being used for a new
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang record, a record that was produced in secret,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a record that sold for two million dollars, And where
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: was that money going? They wanted to know. At every step,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang were kept in the dark. Even when the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: album went out for auc most of the guys in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the group had never heard it. Wu Tang weren't the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: only ones complaining. The artists who created the intricate Silver
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Box said he never got paid either. Hey, silver Rings, baby,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: you got my money, And the question was asked in vain.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Silver Rings wasn't answering. He wasn't in Shaoland anymore. So
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the disgruntled artist went after whoever he could track down.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: He sued some of the guys in Wu Tang, who,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: as it turns out, were busy suing Wu Tang Productions
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: after the biggest sale in the history of recorded music.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang Clan was splintering. The lawsuits, the acrimony, the resentment.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: It was the perfect moment for a guy like Martin
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Chakrelly to weasel his way in and take advantage of
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the crumbling foundation. But Shakrelle wasn't the only one Wu
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Tang had to worry about, because just as the group
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: was attempting to sort out what would become of their future,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: their past was working overtime trying to catch up to them.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Renell Wilson shot the first detective in the back of
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the head at point blank range. He didn't know the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: cop had two sons waiting for him at home, not
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: that it would have mattered. The other detective, sitting inside
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the unmarked police car, begged for his life while the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: first one let out on his seat. He had three kids,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: for Christ's sake, and he told Wilson he'd give him
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: whatever he wanted. He wouldn't say shit about any of this.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Just don't kill him, not here, not now. Wilson wasn't listening.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: All his life, he'd known chaos and hardship. He saw
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: plenty of foster homes and psycho valves.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: But no happy endings.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Ever, the only thing that mattered in life was getting
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: what you wanted by any means necessary and right now,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Wilson wanted two things. First, the twelve hundred dollars that
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the undercover detectives were carrying for this botched buy and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: bust operation. Then second, no witnesses. He pointed his pistol
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: at the whimpering detective and pulled the trigger. Then he
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: dumped the two lifeless bodies in the middle of a
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Staten Island street and drove off into the night with
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the cash. NYPD arrested Wilson two days later. They found
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: some remedial rap lyrics he scribbled on a piece of
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: paper bragging about being a cop killer two times over
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: hip hot and death. Not so strange bedfellows two constants
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: in the shithole of a city, So went to thinking
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: by members of law enforcement. Anyway, Rana Wilson didn't give
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a damn with the copstole. He had no regrets and
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: no remorse, And the prosecution told the jury that only
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a man with no remorse didn't take the stand, So
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the jury sentenced Wilson to die. This was in two
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: thousand and seven. Three years later, Wilson's sentence was overturned
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: by a federal appellate panel, and the prosecution had violated
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Wilson's right not to testify when they told the jury
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: that stuff about remorse and testifying didn't matter if that
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: sentiment was ultimately true or not. The law was the law.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Back in park Hill, Staten Island, where the law was
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: anyone's guests, Wilson's temporary reversal of fortune was caused for celebration.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Wilson's fellow sympathizers in the Bloods partied in a parking lot,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: including Anthony and Harvey Christian aka the Christian Brothers aka
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the Undisputed Kingpins of the park hilled drug trade for
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: close to two decades. Now, I should say that the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Christian brothers allegedly celebrated a cop killer's stay of execution,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: as this detail was provided in the sworn testimony of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: one of their former associates, who in twenty fourteen turned
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: snitch for the Feds. When the Christian brothers were arrested
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and put on trial, Anthony and Harvey Christian were accused
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: of running a feared in violent enterprise, charged with racketeering,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: firearms possession, multiple counts of drug trafficking, and murder conspiracies,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: including in the case of Anthony Christian, the murder of
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: a man named Jerome Boo Boo Estrella. Now, if the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: name Jerome Estrella sounds familiar to you its ship, you
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: may remember him from our previous episode of Disgraceland about
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Masta Kila. Estrella was the Blood's member murdered in nineteen
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: ninety nine, a murder that at the time the FEDS
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: were trying to pin on Wu Tang clan, reason being
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: that Estrella had supposedly robbed the Rizz's little brother, and
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: according to testimony from former gang members turned snitches, the
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: murder was payback alleged to have been ordered by Wu Tang.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Of course, the FBI's designation of Wu Tang Clan as
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: a major crime organization was old news. Their five year
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: investigation was closed shut had been for a decade. Their file,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: which made connections between the hip hop group and numerous murders,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: not to mention the never ending transgressions of old Dirty
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Bastard was stashed deep in the bowels of a government building.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Case closed, but nothing is ever truly closed. The past
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: is never truly dead. It's only a matter of time
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: before it wakes up again. Sometimes though, it wakes up
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in Steubenville, at other times on Staten Island. Once it
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: woke up at the House of Blues in Los Angeles
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: when a cryp tried to put a piece and met
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: the man's hand. After the notorious Big was gunned down,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and now in a high profile case involving two of
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: New York City's most dangerous drug kingpins, it woke up again.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Anthony Christian's lawyer heard about the FBI's file on Wu
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Tang Clan. He demanded to see it. What if the
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: bureau's cold case had hot legs? But what of all
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: that existing due diligence could actually clear Anthony Christian's knee.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: What I'm trying to ascertain, the lawyer said, is the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: FBI's stated belief in an official file that Wu Tang
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: ordered this homicide. He wasn't suggesting that Wu Tank committed
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: a crime. The FBI had gone ahead and done that already. Thursday,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: December seventeenth, twenty fifteen, six am, New York City was
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: still shrouded in darkness when the knock came at the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: apartment door, and then another. Finally, the door opened. Federal
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: agents wearing neatly pressed suits with guns at their hips
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and badges around their necks, flooded inside. The man inside
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the apartment was barely awake, or maybe he'd never gone
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: to sleep the night before. It was hard to tell
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: what the ones who lived outside the law for so long.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: The lead agent told the man to put his hands
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: behind his back, and the man did as he was told,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and the agent got out his handcuffs. He locked him
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: tight around the man's wrists and began to read Hi
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: miss rites. And the agent led the man to the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: front door of the apartment building and out into the
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: tree lined streets of Murray Hill. The Sun was struggling
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: to come up with a crowd of reporters struggled to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: get a quote. The man wasn't talking. His gray hoodie
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: was pulled over his head. He didn't say a word.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: He just let the Feds walk them the word on
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: marked carr idled on the side of the street, and
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: then he quietly ducked inside. After a prolonged investigation, after
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: years of surveillance and CEOs and dead end leads of
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: knowing in their guts that they were right, the FBI
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: finally had vindication. They made an arrest, and they had
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: their guy. But this was not a of Wu Tang
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: being led away by the FBI. The man in cuffs
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't ghost Face Killer, nor was it the Rizza or
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the Jizza. It was Martin Chakrelli. Chakrelle's purp walk was
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: broadcast on every major network. It was headline news. The
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: FEDS had an avalanche of evidence against him as one
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: agent put In. Chakerelle was being charged with the securities
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: fraud trifecta, lies, deceit, and gree Martin Chacrelli's sudden fall
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: from a smug untouchable to a disgraced con man was
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: satisfying to watch for most not least of all Wu
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Tang clan. He defrauded investors and stole millions, and now
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: everything was being taken away from him, including the two
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: million dollar album, which was sitting in a temperature controlled
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: room at the Department of Justice. Wu Tang meanwhile, were
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: cleared of any wrongdoing in the eyes of the federal government.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Drug kingpin Anthony Christian and his life lawyer tried for
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: a year to get the FBI's Wu Tang case reopened,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: but were unsuccessful. The Christian brothers were eventually found guilty
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: on all charges. Harvey Christian received a fifty year sentence,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: while Anthony, who was also found guilty of the murder
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: of Jerome Boo Boo Estrella, got life. Martin Chakrelli got
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: seven years for fraud. Ghost Face Killer the method Man,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: got a photo with James Comy, former FBI director, backstage
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: at a taping of The Late Show with Stephen Copert.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Ghost posted it on his Instagram. The US government eventually
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: resold Once upon a Time in Shao Lynn. In order
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to satisfy the balance of Martin Chakerelly's debt, it was
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: purchased by a group of NFT collectors called Pleaser Dow
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: And don't ask me to properly pronounce that or to
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: explain decentralized organizations or non fungible tokens. I'm not going
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: to do it, but I am going to tell you
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that they paid twice which Chakrelli paid for it per
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the terms of the original sale. Public release of the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: album is forbidden until the year twenty one three. And
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Jizza aka the Genius aka the man Rizza once called
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the head of Wu Tang's Vultron Assembly, was standing at
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the podium in a lecture hall at Miit. At first
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: it felt funny to be there, like he was a
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: man out of place, like maybe he should stay in
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: his lane, but this was his lane, thought, imagination, expression.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: No matter if it was in the classroom or on
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the street corner, all of it was cosmic. Everything was
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: connected by dust and stars. Boards themselves were electrically charged,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and electrical charges made up subatomic particles something like that.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: He was still learning since he was a little kid.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: He never stopped learning. But now, in addition to battling
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: rappers and a cipher back in the neighborhood, he was
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: training thoughts with marine vieiologists, an astrophysicists, and just think him.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Gary Grice, a kid from the South Bronx, from Brooklyn,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: from Staten Island, a kid obsessed with hip hop, that
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: musical form once derided by the public and misrepresented by
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the media. He was here now as an ambassador of
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: that music, in that culture, at the forefront of higher education,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: waxing existential to college students about quantum physics, about time
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: and space, but mostly about rap music. How he been
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: there for the Big Bang back in the seventies, and
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: now how he was here for four decades later, still
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: watching the so called globalization of hip hop take over
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the entire world, from New York all the way to Japan, Europe,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Africa and everywhere in between. Just like hip hop, Jessica
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: not and would not stop. From Mit, he went to NYU,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and then from NYU to Harvard, and from Harvard to Oxford.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: He didn't want to rule the world, and there were
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: enough mediocre people already trying to do that. The Martin
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Chacreles and the Fbis and the Christian Brothers. He was
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: just trying to understand it. How so many were content
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to wallow in mediocrity, but yet had so much promise
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: for genius. How the years were long and the challenges
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: were deep, and there was tragedy and there was triumph,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and there were moments that burned bright. And there were
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: times when, as Jesuit explained about the current status of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Wu Tang, that match burns out. But there was always
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: light somewhere. The cipher was never completely broken, nothing was
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: ever truly over. After all, the universe was expanding. I'm
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
• 34:24
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• 34:27
  Speaker 1: a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com
• 34:31
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• 34:35
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• 34:39
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• 34:48
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• 34:51
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• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Rock and ROLLA He's a bad, bad man.