“I Been Sellin Crack Since Like the 5th Grade”
Bobby Shmurda - Hot *****
If you aint know,
Bobby Shmurda
basically started the Brooklyn drill sound
and brought a whole new wave to New York.
But part of what made his bars so cold,
was the fact that he was really in the streets before blowin up.
In the song Hot *****, he drops the bar
“I Been Sellin Crack Since Like the 5th Grade”
It was one of the hottest lines in the whole song and inspired a lot of memes.
And Bobby claims, it was all facts.
In an interview with the Village Voice back in 2014,
Bobby said
“I was chilling with older kids.
In school, I was always bad.
I was either in the suspension room or with the deans and them
and they was talking to me all day.
I was one of those kids.
When I leave school,
I was hanging with the older dudes.
I was hardheaded.
A lot of people tried to tell me to stay out of it, but I wanted to do it myself.
It was fun money.
Like, I could go buy $100 of weed,
shoes,
without asking anybody.”
He also said in other interviews
that he had a lot of bros who was like four, five years older than him.
And he was always around them,
so when they jumped off the porch around 14 or 15,
he was right there with them at just 10 years old.
One of his brothers,
Javese Pollard
also got caught up in the indictment
that would get him locked up for 7 years.
So,
it pretty much runs in the family.
But Bobby kept it solid,
did his time,
and now he’s a free man.
But he aint the only rapper who hit the streets before highschool.
This next rapper got sent to juvy in 7th grade
after bringing a gun to school.
“7th Grade
I got Caught with a Pistol,
sent me to Pantherville”
- 21 Savage & Metro Boomin
– No Heart
21 Savage gotta be one of the most respected rappers today.
Aside from being a genuine street dude who really lives what he raps,
he’s also done a lot for his hood.
But 21 aint always been so positive.
Comin up in the streets of Atlanta,
he was a menace from day one and aint take **** from no one
– even in middle school.
On the song "No Heart"
from his first mixtape Savage Mode with Metro Boomin,
he raps
“7th grade
I got Caught with a Pistol,
sent me to Pantherville”.
21 says he really got expelled in 7th grade for bringing a gun to school.
So,
he got sent to the Dekalb Regional Youth Development Center,
aka Pantherville.
In an interview with Hip Hops Revival,
he explained that a kid in school was trying to bully him,
so he came back with a pistol,
a deuce five to be exact.
The kid ended up snitching on 21,
and not only was he kicked out of that school,
he also got banned from every other school in the county.
So they brought him straight to Pantherville.
They called his mama up
and asked if she would come pick him up
and she said no,
cuz she wanted to teach him a lesson.
So He stayed in Pathersville for like a month,
then returned to regular school.
But He later got kicked out again
and just ended up dropping out for good in 9th grade.
But look,
you know 21 aint the only one who was in the streets as a youngin.
This next artist
rapped about how he and another rapper hit licks together before they got famous.
“Remember days me and X Hittin Licks”
– Ski Mask the Slump God
- Faucet Failure
Ski Mask the Slump God
was one of the biggest artists to blow up from Florida
in the late 2010s.
He and his boy XXXTentacion
was leading the wave and putting Florida on the map.
But before they blew up,
he and X ran around the streets together and broke into houses to get money.
Ski and X met in juvie back in 2014.
X was facing a robbery charge,
and also a gun charge
and Ski was just in there for some weed.
They both had a history of robbing houses.
So after they met,
they started hitting licks together.
X was already making music at that point, but Ski wasn’t.
X encouraged him to freestyle
and this is when they first started to collab.
So when they got out,
they ran the streets together,
building a music career while hittin licks
and doing whatever they had to do to make some studio money.
Around that time,
they formed the group Members Only
and collabed with other artists from Florida.
They would drop Members Only Volumes 1, 2, and 3
and start blowin up on SoundCloud.
X then dropped the track "Look at Me!" in 2016
which slowly started goin viral the following year
and the rest is history.
But that whole movement all started when X and Ski first met in juvie
and planned they next big lick.
"He got done like kebab,
it went through his chest
and come out his back"
- No Hook
Feat. Active Gxng,
Suspect (Active Gxng),
AbzSav,
Workrate,
Broadday (Active Gxng)
SIXTY (NGang) 156,
also known as Ngang
are a UK drill gang from Northolt, an area in West London.
Popular rappers who are members
include NitoNB and Mad Max.
They cool with gangs like 12 Anti
and 12 World in Shepard’s Bush
and they beef with gangs like 1011 and Rayners Lane.
Active Gang is another gang from the Agar Grove Estate
in the Northwest Borough of London.
They mostly a Somali gang
and they cool with gangs like FSG and NRB
and they beef with Queen’s Crescent,
Cumbo, and Peckwater.
They main rappers include Suspect,
Broadday,
2smokkey aka Rocky,
and T.Scam.
In this bar,
Suspect raps about the murder of a dude from Camden named Alex Smith
– aka Culprit.
Culprit was an active member of the 51st gang alliance,
which has members from Cumbo,
Peckwater
and Queen’s Cresent.
They main opps are Active Gang and other sets they allied with.
On August 12th, 2019,
Culprit got stabbed to death by a rival gang at just 16 years old.
A group of like six dudes from Active Gang was out hunting for opps
when they saw Culprit and a bunch of dudes he was with.
They hopped out of they cars,
chased him down,
and stabbed him multiple times.
He damn near died instantly.
When police arrived,
they say he got stabbed at least two times.
But the one that killed him, went through his chest
and all the way out the other side of his back.
CCTV footage
led police right to the killers.
A dude named Arif Biomy was arrested for the killing
and got life in prison.
Biomy got stabbed by members of 51st
back in 2017 and prosecutors say
Culprit’s murder was payback.
Another man named Yusuf
got sentenced to 34 months
for helping Biomy after the fact
when he burned two of the cars used in the attack
to get rid of the evidence.
Police are still lookin for 4 other suspects involved in the murder,
but so far
they aint made no other arrests.
But UK rappers
aint the only ones out here doin drills.
This next artist
rapped about how he got shot,
but then was right back to the streets.
Sheff G – Flows
featuring Sleepy Hollow
“I got shot, I ain’t *****,
I just manned up”
Sheff G and Sleepy Hollow
are two Brooklyn drill rappers from the 83 Gangsta crips or M8V3N Gang.
Comin up on the wild streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn,
Sheff and Sleepy had to learn how to adapt to they environment.
In an interview with Hip Hop DX,
Sheff said that he and Sleepy actually met
when he and his crew tried to jump him
but decided not to after Sleepy stood his ground.
Sheff said
“It was like 50 of us,
and he’s by himself
walking around the block,
and we start screaming at him.
He dead ass stopped and turned around.
So, I was like, ‘Yo, wait.
I like him.
I think this kid on some different ****”
After that, they started seeing each other around the hood and they got tight.
But growing up,
Sleepy was always in and out of trouble.
He first got locked up on a weed charge
and spent about three weeks in juvie.
After that,
he started getting deeper into the streets
and started hanging with Sheff G and other 83s.
But what do you know,
This later lead to Sleepy Hollow getting shot.
In February 2017
hanging out around East 55th St. near Lenox Road in East Flatbush.
A Honda Accord slid past
and started letting off shots,
hittin Sleepy in the leg.
Rohan Levy, a 15 year old who was chilling with Sleepy,
ended up getting shot in the head and died.
Police later arrested 17-year-old Zidon Clarke for the murder.
Authorities said that they believed Clarke was a rival gang member
tryna get Sleepy but hit Rohan by mistake.
Sleepy Hollow made a full recovery
and was back on the streets in no time.
Then Sheff G dropped his hit track "No Suburban" just a few months later
and they would both continue to go viral.
Now This next rapper,
who unexpectedly killed himself earlier this year,
talked about losing his brother to the streets and his uncle to prison.
Lil Loaded
– 6locc 6a6y
“My brother in the ground,
***** skeleton and bones
and my uncle doin life,
he ain’t never comin home"
Lil Loaded was a rapper from Dallas, Texas,
who took his own life in May 2021.
He first blew up with the track 6locc 6a6y, which went viral back in 2019.
On the song,
Lil Loaded talks about some struggles he went through before blowing up.
In an interview with Genius,
Lil Loaded broke the lyrics down.
He explained how his uncle, Big Mike,
which is his pops brother, is serving life in prison.
He said where he grew up,
he saw a lot of people go to prison.
It made him realize,
people gotta do what they gotta do in the streets,
but that lifestyle comes with consequences.
In an interview with DJ Vlad,
he opened up about his older brother getting killed when he was just 15.
He said his brother was a big role model for him growing up,
and the one who actually got him into the streets.
He aint speak on how he died,
but he did say that after it happened was when he really started turnin up.
His brother was 8 years older than him and was the man of the house.
So after he got killed,
Loaded took up that responsibility and helped out his moms and other siblings.
Plus,
he really wanted revenge for his brother’s murder.
But after gettin shot at a few times,
he quickly learned
that he had to move smarter.
He ended up dropping his first track 6locc 6a6y in 2019,
which really went viral
all cuz of a Polish YouTuber, Tommy Craze,
who reviewed music videos with 0 views.
So it seemed like Lil Loaded's life was bout to change for the better.
But sadly, the money and fame
couldn't solve ALL his problems
and in May 2021
the rapper ended his own life by shooting himself in the head.
And it’s crazy man
cuz before this happened,
he accidentally shot and killed his best friend
and was actually supposed to be going to court for it a few days later.
RIP Lil Loaded.
Now this next rapper
threw shots at his enemy, who went viral,
for getting slapped by a rival gang member back in 2012.
"He got slapped and went viral,
why ya'll believe the dude?"
- Coach da Ghost and Envy Caine
Woo K Pt 2. Coach Da Ghost and Envy Caine
are two GD rappers from Brooklyn, who rep the Choos.
The Choos are known for the deadly gang war with the Woos,
another Brooklyn gang with both Blood and Crip sets.
Coach Da Ghost
is one of the most well-known Choo rappers, along with 22gz.
In this bar he's taking shots at Pop Smoke,
RIP,
who was the most famous rapper in Brooklyn at the time.
This song came out when Pop was still alive
and was first blowing up with his track "Welcome to the Party".
In this bar,
Coach is downplayin Pop’s street cred,
by bringing up an embarrassing moment the rapper had before blowing up.
In 2012,
a video went viral on World Star
showing a then-unknown Pop Smoke
getting slapped by another dude on the block and then just walking away.
I guess the other dudes was Bloods
and they was pressing him bout his ties to the Crips.
They tell him to throw up his set,
and he does
but then the dudes start clowning him.
And this leads to Pop
gettin smacked in the face by two of the dudes before just walking away.
Now, He was pretty young and by far outnumbered.
But either way it was embarrassing for him,
especially since it went viral.
And When Pop started blowing up as a rapper,
fans put two and two together
and realized he was the kid from the video getting slapped.
But ay
Pop eventually got his get back at a convenience store years later
when he ran up on one of the dudes who slapped him.
The guy
clearly ain’t have that same energy
now that he was the one who was outnumbered,
so Pop got his revenge.
But that ain’t ever stop his enemies
from using it to diss him
at least when he was still alive.
Rest In Peace to Pop Smoke.