soft atmospheric music
[Nas] The New York criminal underworld
is full of household names...
real and fictional.
[phone vibrates]
And in Queens, few names ring
like Gerald "Prince" Miller and Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff
of the Supreme Team.
[automated voice] This call is from an inmate
at a federal prison.
This call is being recorded and is subject to monitoring.
-[phone beeps] -You may begin speaking now.
[Prince] You know, I think back sometimes, right?
And I start to reminisce over how it all started.
[train rumbling]
Growing up, our family was a tight-knit family.
My uncle, he was a little older than me.
I gravitated towards him.
That's who I would hang out with.
We was close.
[automated voice] Hang up to decline the call,
-or to accept, dial five now. -[phone beeps]
[Supreme] Prince-- we was raised like brothers,
and we did everything together.
We played sports together. We fought together.
I mean, our priorities back then was business
and getting money, power, success,
like, the American Dream.
From then on, it was just Supreme Team.
[Eric] The Supreme Team is part of the urban legends
and the myths that we grew up understanding.
[Bill] They lived by a code.
I mean, they had a strong bond.
[Eddie] It was always about the money.
There's no doubt about it.
And if you were the new jack on the block
and you were gonna bump these guys,
the Supreme Team would bump you,
and that would be the end of it.
[person] You have athletes, you have rappers,
drug dealers-- everybody is together.
[LL Cool J] So, when you see these guys
ride by in their cars with the girls with the furs on,
it really is seductive.
They were like neighborhood superheroes.
[Prince] I've been in jail for 32 years.
When you in this situation, you reflect,
and you look back on your life.
First thing you do is you find out
what made you become criminal-minded.
[siren wailing]
[glass shatters]
somber music
dramatic music
-[door closes] -[LL Cool J] Running around,
looking like goddamn Anchorman or some shit.
-What up? -[laughter]
My guy.
[LL Cool J] You know what I mean? Shit crazy.
Yo, I can't believe I'm talking to you,
interviewing you like this.
Like, this is crazy to me.
Just want to fan out for five seconds.
-No, it's all love, man. -[Nas laughs]
It's all love, bro, for real.
[Nas] Street guys and rap dudes,
they from the same stuff.
How influential was the Supreme Team out in Queens?
-Oh, I can give you that. -[Nas] Yeah.
[LL Cool J] I used to ride my bicycle from Northside
all the way over to Southside
and just be over there looking--
you know, just checking out what they was doing.
Going through Bricktown, going all over there,
just seeing what was happening.
They were the biggest.
[LL Cool J] They were the biggest and the brightest.
Me, because I was always ambitious,
I gravitated to those kinds of characters.
Can someone bring me the computer?
I got something to show my man L,
around the time when you were maybe 17 or 18.
Cue up the videotape.
[tape rewinding]
Ain't loud enough
for this money-making motherfucking crew, now.
Y'all got to get loud for these motherfuckers here.
Look at these boys!
God damn! Y'all got to get loud.
[Nas] We saw you in the club here at a Supreme Team party.
-[LL Cool J] Word? -[Nas] Yeah, at Warner's.
You probably haven't seen this since you been--
You probably never saw this before, bro.
-Yeah. -[Nas] Check this out.
[LL Cool J] Holy shit. Where did y'all get that?
[person speaking indistinctly]
Damn, B.
[laughs] That's fucking hilarious.
What's so crazy about that is that I remember
going to some of them parties,
but I couldn't remember which party it was.
-So was that that party? -[Nas] Prince's birthday.
[person] Once again, send out a "happy birthday"
going out to Prince.
A thoroughbred, huh?
[LL Cool J] And I-I was there.
-[Nas] Yes. -[LL Cool J] I knew it!
Yo, damn, B.
That's crazy 'cause I thought I went to that party,
and I kept saying, "I remember going to that party."
And I also remember not being able
to get near that stage at that time,
'cause it was bossed up, like, real heavy.
So I was, like, in the crowd
just kind of playing my position.
[person] We're gonna make this a birthday party
that Prince won't never forget.
[LL Cool J] They're like the godfathers of Queens,
like, that most people don't talk about or know about.
I didn't know Prince, but what I did know of Prince
is don't play with him, you know?
Homey washes up with two guns.
Okay?
He ain't even getting in the shower.
He washing up with two guns on the sink, B.
Like, this was the word that came back to us.
I want to make a special dedication
to my man, my brother...
[LL Cool J] Preme was always cool with me,
and he always gave me love.
It was nice to be part of the family.
You know? [laughs]
He was different from the rest of them.
Oh, no, he was definitely different,
because what people have to understand
about street life is that you have a lot of hustlers,
but then you have some gangsters,
and a lot of people don't know the difference.
When you meet certain people, they got the look.
You know what it is.
When you say "what's up?" to them
and they take, like, 30 seconds
before they say "hello" back and they're like--
-You know what I mean? -[laughter]
You know what it is.
-You know that look. -Yeah.
We know what it is, so...
-Wolf. -Wolf.
But these are choices, right?
You have some dudes who try to--
just want to make a little money and get out,
and then you have some dudes that go all the way in.
tense music
[Nas] I've been telling this story
since I first started rapping...
on "Memory Lane"--
"Some fiends scream about Supreme Team,
a Jamaica Queens thing."
Some fiends scream about Supreme Team
A Jamaica Queens thing
Uptown was Alpo, son, heard he was kingpin, yo
But something stood out to me about the guys in Queens.
[Prince] Make sure I ain't leaving nobody out here.
Other than Supreme, you had myself,
then Green Eyed Born, you had Black Just,
you had Baby Wise, you had Bimmy,
and Shannon, C-Just,
you had Tucker, Teddy-- it's a whole bunch.
I was trying to name most of the lieutenants.
This story is about people who were juggernauts.
These guys were bigger than life.
How could we not see what was going on
in Jamaica, Queens?
Comin' outta Queensbridge
I'm from Queensbridge.
Queensbridge is near the city, right across the water.
You can look at Manhattan from the park in Queensbridge.
You're looking at it right there.
So Jamaica, Queens, is way deep inside Queens.
You know, when Jamaica came into my consciousness,
it had that ring like the Jamaica island.
Jamaica? Really?
Like, you know, "What is this place?" You know?
How dope is it that there's a place called Jamaica
in New York and there's Black people there?
[phone vibrates]
[automated voice] You have a prepaid call.
You will not be charged for this call.
-This call is from... -[Prince] Prince.
[automated voice] This call is being recorded
and is subject to monitoring.
[Prince] I love New York, and I love Queens,
and my family was just across the street
from Baisley Projects.
So I lived over more towards the 40 Project area.
But Baisley was on the other side.
[Supreme] I was raised in a private residence
with a lawn, gate, a dog.
Compared to people that grew up around me,
I had a perfect childhood.
[I. Daneek] I'm councilmember I. Daneek Miller.
I represent the 27th council district
here in Jamaica, Queens, New York.
jazz music
I'm very proud of Jamaica's rich cultural history.
First and foremost, it is the largest enclave
of African American homeownership in the nation.
And that's unique in a city
where 75% of the city are renters,
to have homeowners and homeowners of color.
[Eric] Queens was like The Jeffersons for Black folks.
You know... We're moving on up
Hardworking-class people,
teachers, civil servants
just purchasing their own home
trying to, like, experience this modified version
of the American Dream.
[Andrew] In the earliest days, Queens had a reputation
as being the recreation borough.
People would come from Manhattan across the river
and recreate and picnic and relax,
get away from the city.
The people who migrated here--
coming from the South, coming from Harlem,
were also some of the businesspeople
and some of the civic-minded people
were about, "what can we do
to make this community better for future generations?"
[Nas] When I was a kid,
there was a lot of thriving Black-owned businesses.
In Jamaica,
a Black construction company built the city.
[Mark] My name is Mark Griffin,
president of M.E. Griffin Contracting Inc.
[truck beeping]
jazz music
[Roy] In the '60s, in the early '70s,
there were no other Black contractors there,
none whatsoever.
It was a struggle all along,
but L.B. had persistence to pursue them.
[Mark] Pretty much, downtown Jamaica is--they built it.
Archer Avenue retaining wall.
Part of the J train down below.
We were just the excavators on these sites.
-[Roy] Yes. -Right.
[Roy] And as you know, any building,
what's the important thing?
-The foundation. -Foundation.
Beginning.
[Toni] Growing up in Queens,
everyone's connected based on family,
and that's how I got to meet Gerald Miller.
[Prince] Toni and I were each other's first love.
She captured my heart in every sense of the word.
You know, we were the exact same age,
and she was very, very intelligent.
And it look me a long time to win her over,
but it was well worth the wait.
Absolutely, he was my first kiss.
[laughs]
I was so embarrassed.
Like, "I don't know how to kiss anyone."
[laughs] But he was.
[Prince] Toni was an excellent cook, man.
That's one thing about me, man.
I love homemade food and cooking.
I just wanted to say that.
That was important to me,
and I really love and respected that.
[Toni] I gave him specific times
so I know, like, in between, you know, my job.
So he'll call and say, "Okay, I'm gonna call at this time
the next day or tomorrow."
So three o'clock.
It is three o'clock on the dot.
Whoo. [laughs]
[ringtone plays]
Hello?
[Prince] Hey. ¿Cómo está, mamacita?
Hey. ¿Cómo estás?
When we were young, there was no Supreme Team.
Those were the boys that was part of my family.
It just makes everything that happened to them
very complicated.
It's like, "How can that be?
That's not the person that I live with.
That's not the person that I grew up with.
That's not the person that was in my household."
You know? What happened?
melancholy jazz music
[Prince] When I was growing up, I was just a regular child
living his life and not thinking
about the worries of the world.
But the year 1973
was one that would change the rest of my life.
upbeat funk music
[Nas] 1973 was a big year.
[Dick Clark] It is now 1973.
[Richard Nixon] We, today, have concluded an agreement
to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam.
[Nas] The Twin Towers,
the tallest buildings in the world,
were getting built.
It was the last time
the Knicks took home the championship.
[announcer] And the New York Knicks
have won the NBA championship in 1973.
[Nas] My first love, hip-hop, some say, was born that year.
It seemed like nothing could go wrong.
[train squealing]
[distant train horn blows, siren wailing]
Do you remember Clifford Glover?
Very well. Very well.
Clifford Glover was a ten-year-old child.
somber music
It was on New York Boulevard.
It's now called Guy R. Brewer Boulevard.
And they were running.
Officer Shea shot Clifford Glover
in the back.
[reporter] In this lot in Jamaica, Queens,
was young Clifford Glover
wielding a black gun in his hand
when police officer Thomas Shea shot him to death?
The police search never turned up such a weapon.
[Prince] I had mostly fond memories
of the early years of my life, right?
Most of the time it was filled
with, like, laughter and excitement.
So I was very innocent to the world,
what was going on in the world.
But when the Clifford Glover killing happened,
it brought consciousness to me.
[Eric] We view life through our set of prisms.
And if you looked at the police department
during that time, early '70s,
it was a predominantly white department.
Many of them came from communities
where there was no diversity.
And so now imagine that mindset
now coming into what they considered the jungle
and policing good, middle-class people.
It just was the wrong mixture.
[Toni] That was probably the breaking point.
As strong as he is, that really--
and still today-- like, that's very disheartening
when you feel like you lost someone
over something that's just that violent
at that young age.
It's wear and tear, and you don't forget that.
[Prince] He lived about-- just a few blocks from me.
I didn't know him as a friend.
I'm not one to sit here and say that I did.
It's the fact that somebody could be walking to a job--
a job to help their stepfather on the weekend,
and he's killed.
And then to make matters worse,
a trial happens, and he's found not guilty
by a predominantly white jury.
In one instance, I woke up to the reality
that my color could be a detriment to my life.
For me at that time,
it took my innocence away.
I was on the Little League baseball team
in 40 Projects at the time,
playing a white team when the verdict came down...
dramatic music
...when all of a sudden,
I saw a crowd of about 100 Black residents
of 40 Projects coming with pipes.
They picked up our bats,
and they started attacking the white ballplayers
from Nassau County.
I mean, you could hear the sound
of the bats hitting their skulls,
and it was just unbelievable.
We were in total shock of what happened.
It happened so quickly.
[Prince] All hell broke loose in South Jamaica.
You know what I'm saying?
South Jamaica went up in flames.
You know what I'm saying?
South Jamaica, Queens, went up in flames.
What happened to this kid?
Why is all this injustice happening in South Jamaica?
Why can't we get work?
That was it. They couldn't take no more.
-What'd Lou say to you? -Just block up the streets.
That's what we did.
[truck beeping]
There was no commerce going back and forth
to Jamaica Avenue anymore.
We stopped the city of South Jamaica still.
But it became a major uproar in the neighborhood.
Mm.
-It woke people up. -That's right.
Local gangs, especially the Seven Crowns.
dramatic music
[Mr. Black] My name is Michael Mitchell.
On the streets, they call me Mr. Black.
[Prince] But Black was ahead of the Crowns.
I know when I was growing up,
the Seven Crowns stood out more to me than any others.
[Eric] There used to be this number seven
with a crown on top of it,
and it was just extremely impressive.
And just being just associated with the Seven Crowns
just gave me a sense of ownership and belonging.
[Mr. Black] The police kept trying to downplay stuff,
like, you know,
it happened, and he could've had this.
They found the gun, and it was a mistake.
It wasn't no damn mistake.
We knew what they was capable of,
and the main thing's that they keep getting away with it.
It's justifiable homicide.
And so, you know, we marched on the precinct...
trying to strike back and let them know
that enough is enough and we just not gonna sit down
and let y'all just keep doing that.
[Prince] I was ten years old when that situation happened.
That shit stuck with me.
It may not have stuck with everybody,
but it stuck with some of us that was young
in South Jamaica at that time.
Sometimes we believe the--
when that bullet hits the body of a person,
that it stops its trajectory.
And, no, the emotional pathway of that bullet
continues to just dig through us.
And the mere fact that Prince mentioned that--
I think about it all the time--
it shows how it just defined how we looked at policing
and what policing meant.
[Prince] It was that moment that I started realizing,
"Damn, we second-class citizens."
And that became my Black Power moment for real.
Some people would, like, become activists from it.
It changed me in a different way.
-[person] Shake his hand. -[both] Peace.
[Nas] The world has a way of stripping Black men
of their innocence.
But at the same time, our community was teaching us
to think for ourselves as gods.
We, the Five Percenter here, we represent ourself as God.
through our true knowledge as God.
All wise people...
[Supreme] Well, when we was younger,
we were never gang related.
We were never gang oriented.
But we had became Five Percenters
when we were young.
The Five Percent Nation, Nation of Gods and Earths.
[C Allah] Our focus was, go to school,
get your education,
because that education is the key to the lot
to enlighten yourself
and to progress to get better in life.
And that was actually one of the main teachings
of the Five Percenters.
[Supreme] C Allah is the last remaining brother
that brought the Five Percent to--
we call it desert, which is Queens.
With the knowledge of each man upon this Planet Earth
that he is God, and the original Black man is God.
[Understanding] For you to say that you're a god,
your mind and your vision becomes, like, tenfold,
and you start trying to find other things
to get you out of the poverty
that said that you were just a slave
when you came to this country,
and you have no other knowledge
about any of your history.
That concept enlightened young kids like me
to know about themselves,
find out about your history,
and in the process of doing that,
you're taking people with you
because you're enlightening them, too.
[Supreme] The dude who taught me about the Five Percenters--
and gave me knowledge itself-- his name was Supreme.
So I was given his name.
Whatever name you're given,
you got to try to live up to it.
soft ambient music
[Green Eyed Born] You know, we come from the same neigh--
went to the same schools and everything.
Shared the same friends, shared the same people.
Man, so, you know, we became a part
of that awareness movement,
which is the Nation of Five Percent.
[Understanding] Me, Preme, and Green Eyed Born,
the three of us had green eyes, you know?
We always called each other the triplets,
because-- I don't know what it was--
but the woman was just loving green eyes, right?
[person] Pretty niggas, man.
All them niggas from Baisley was pretty, man.
Pretty niggas, man.
You know what I'm saying? [laughs]
You know, can't no female ever say no.
Like, you know what it is.
[man] You know what I'm saying, man?
You put a gold chain and all that around him,
he, like--that's it.
Then there's nothing to talk about.
-That's it. -[person] Yeah.
[person 2] Dangerous.
[person] Solid and dangerous, man.
[Nas] What was the climate in New York early '70s?
[LL Cool J] Oh, I can give you that.
The climate in New York, it was...
dangerous.
jazz music
[person] There's no law here. There's no rules.
Nothing is normal here.
[person 2] My God, the hopelessness of it all
really grabs you.
Gave him the keys to the city
- Called him the lovin' man -[siren wailing]
His conversation is pretty
[LL Cool J] It was "Mary Jane" by Rick James.
It was Michael Jackson, like, is in the zeitgeist.
He's, like, a big part of our lives.
It was pin joints. It was Thai stick.
It was a crazy time.
Says folks should love one another
[LL Cool J] Back then, it was an honor
to be able to do that, you know?
To be able to walk around with your jewelry on
actually meant something.
He's a lovin' man
[LL Cool J] Yo, it's crazy-- like, back then,
it was like, if you had a $300, $400 pair of Gazelles
-and a sheepskin... -Oh, boy,
...and you was able to walk around with that
and really, like, move around like that,
it said a lot about you.
Ooh, lovin' man
[Nas] The lessons of the Five-Percent Nation
had weight and power.
But the draw of the streets brought a different weight,
and money.
[Prince] I didn't see a lot of opportunities back then.
Even though my parents would instill in us
that we could be anything and do anything we want to do,
I got caught up in a different mindset
because of what affected me more.
One of the things people ask me to define myself
and a lot of the people that came from where I came from,
we are very good people that did bad things.
somber music
Our mentors in a lot of cases were street people.
They're the ones that came to our events.
They're the ones that spoke to us.
A lot of the people who were doing well in our community,
they didn't deal with us-- they'd walk by us.
They didn't want to be attached to us,
and the definitely didn't want to invest a lot of time in us.
But the street people did, and that's why,
slowly but surely,
those are the people that we gravitated to.
[Bing] There was a few guys to look up to
when I was growing up.
They were just smooth cats.
You know, they had a persona about them
that just rubbed off, like, you know what I mean?
Always dressed nice, nice cars, and stuff like that.
When we was young, we would just look up to 'em
like that's what you want to be.
[LL Cool J] When you walking around in the hood
and you're a little kid, you feel powerless.
You feel invisible.
So hustlers, you know, were always important to me,
because at the end of the day,
they were the only people I saw that had any money
and any success.
Now, you know, people in the outside world
would judge--would say, "That's not really success,"
but when you're from where we're from,
it is success.
Bottom line is this, man-- it's a sad state of affairs,
but sometimes it was the only game
that it felt was there to play.
[Sterling] My name is Sterling Johnson.
I am a United States District Court judge.
I had always wanted to be a white-collar lawyer,
showing the documents and doing this,
but it wasn't to be.
My destiny was always drugs and violence.
Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas,
you name it, I did it.
[reporter] Johnson has been told by the FBI
that he's been marked for death
by the powerful Medellín drug cartel from Colombia.
I don't take threats lightly, but it's not gonna stop me
from doing what I've been doing all these years.
Just keep on doing it.
America has always been a drug-oriented nation.
You look at the TV, see how many drugs come on.
Just check it out.
[person] Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids
because they're perceived as too strong.
And New York has always been the epicenter.
One of every 40 residents in New York City
is a heroin addict.
[reporter] One block away from the hospital,
we saw this man
showing apparently typical signs of being on heroin.
[Sterling] Heroin was the big thing
back in the '60s and the '70s.
And...
I was there.
The FBI today announced the arrest of 15 members
of an alleged heroin ring.
The suspects are believed to be members
of organized crime families.
[reporter] Prosecutors say that as the arrest went down,
suspect Oreste Abbamonte
threatened one of the undercover agents.
"You are a dead man," he reportedly said.
Drugs was always in the mix in America.
The realness is the country was built on moonshine
and it became dope.
[reporter] The National Citizens Crime Commission
meeting in New York today viewed police videotapes
of heroin pushers peddling their wares
one block from Wall Street.
[C Allah] The chaos was here.
Always has been, always will be.
It just changed its appearance.
[David] My name is David Cohen,
and I have my own criminal defense practice
here in Queens.
I like the independence.
I like the fact that I'm fighting the government.
You're a gunfighter. You're a gunslinger.
And you're the only thing that stands between them
and being put in a cage and going to jail.
[interviewer] The unproven allegation here
is that Fat Cat Nichols, is this drug king--
I don't understand who that is.
If you're referring to Lorenzo Nichols...
I represented a gentleman by the name of Lorenzo Nichols.
His street name was "Fat Cat."
He got involved in the drug business
and became successful in that business.
[Prince] My uncle--
he was working for an old-time drug dealer at the time.
Fat Cat also works for the same person,
so that's how they got to know each other--
Fat Cat and Preme.
[Shannon] Fat Cat was drug kingpin
from South Jamaica, Queens,
and he was a part of, what, the Seven Crowns
back in--when there was a gang called Seven Crowns
back in the late '70s, early '80s.
Then he turned to the drug trade.
And he was big-time.
[Mr. Black] Fat Cat--he was a Crown.
Fat was-- when Cat joined the Crowns,
I think he was 13 or 14.
I knew his whole family, you know,
'cause my father and his mother
was in the same poker circle.
And he used to live right around the corner.
And, you know, he was part of my inner circle.
In the beginning, there was no drugs in the beginning.
While I was doing my time for the Feds,
that's when they crossed over into the heroin.
[siren wailing]
soft dramatic music
[reporter] The Feds seem to think
they've got most of Fat Cat's people,
and things will change.
That'll never happen, 'cause you got too many people
out here nowadays.
[DJ Casino] A lot of people think
that the neighborhood was always wild.
No, it wasn't always wild.
The beginning of the drug infestation
started on South Road and 150th Street--
Sutphin Boulevard. It's a little corner there.
And anybody who did anything did it from there.
[Nas] You know, I would go to different parts of Jamaica
and see the most dangerous blocks I ever saw in my life.
One was South Road.
tense music
South Road was this block
that looked like a bunch of storefronts maybe
or factories or whatever,
but it was just people.
Now, I don't know what business we had
going on over there.
I think we went over there to a weed spot
when the other weed spot was closed or something.
You just drive down, it's just a row of people
doing their own separate things.
It looked like a block the cops didn't want to stop on.
It was hard, you know what I mean?
Very live, very live.
[Supreme] I mean, me and Prince,
we went down to-- we call it the block.
That's where everything started, on 150th Street.
And when I saw it, it was fascinating.
It was like-- I never saw nothing like that.
It was like an open-air drug market.
It was so much shit going on. It was like a movie for me.
And I was hooked ever since.
[Understanding] The beginning of the '80s
was very interesting.
You can look at poor communities
and see what kind of drug
was in that community at the time.
In the '80s, it was coming out of the '70s
and the disco era when cocaine was the choice of drugs.
See, power is giving people what they want.
[Joy] I think about Miami Vice, like, in the '80s, right?
Like, they kind of made cocaine dealing sexy.
Cocaine kind of, like, skates through, you know,
like it's not the worst thing in the world.
It's kind of the sexy drug you can deal,
'cause rich white people use it, you know,
and they're using it in their clubs
and they're hanging out at the, you know,
at the Four Seasons, you know, doing it.
[Sterling] And then people found out later on,
put a little bicarbonate of soda, water,
heat it up...
you got crack.
In the alphabet of illegal drugs,
few have become so popular, so potent,
so addictive so fast
as what's known on the street as crack.
[reporter] Crack, the cocaine derivative,
continues to be sold in record amounts.
New York City's been called the crack capital.
Well, I'll tell you, the folks along 107th street in Manhattan
didn't have to wait until tonight to see Miami Vice.
All they had to do is look out their windows last night.
Right underneath them, there was a very big crack raid.
[reporter] Some officials say crack is spreading now
from the slums to suburbia.
[Understanding] By the middle '80s, '84, '85,
you started seeing crack cocaine
come to South Jamaica.
[Mark] Imagine you're in Baisley or the 40s,
and this is your life.
And all of a sudden,
you can get a little bit of euphoria for five bucks.
Sounds like a pretty good deal.
[Suzette] You heard the buzz about,
"Oh, it's this new drug,"
and then you just saw, like, everybody.
Drug addicts here, there.
We go to the grocery store, you'll see it.
You take your kid to school, you'll see it.
It was so close to home.
[interviewer] Can you buy crack up here?
Yes, it's definitely out here, you know?
That's where the majority of the money is.
You get rich off of it.
Heroin used to be the money. Now it's crack.
[Prince] If you grew up in that environment,
it's like the fishnet theory.
We may not get all of you, but we gonna get one of you.
I had two brothers and a sister,
and none of them are criminals,
know what I'm saying?
But I got caught. I got snared in the net.
dramatic music
[Gary] There was a lot going on, and we were young,
but we lived like men.
We were doing adult things.
We were around adults,
'cause that's where it starts for a lot of us.
We start off going to the store,
and then you grow.
Your errands change. You become more mature.
Next thing you know, you're delivering packages.
This is the way it goes.
And then once they get to know you, they trust you.
And that's how it builds.
And then you start to work your way up the hierarchy
and before you know it, next thing you know,
you're running your own little operation.
[Bing] Around '81, '82, when I first met Supreme
on 150th Street in South Jamaica.
[Supreme] See, Bing was actually
the first person that was down with me
with the Supreme Team.
When the Supreme Team really just took off,
it was when I started hustling over on his side of town.
[Bing] I had a few jobs, you know understand?
But it wasn't making ends meet, because, like,
my dad left when I was growing up,
and I got, like, a brother and three sisters.
It was five of us.
It was some of that that drew me to the streets also,
to try to help to provide
for my mom and my sisters and brothers.
[Shannon] And I was-- you know, I was a good kid
till about high school.
Then, you know, I started seeing the drug life.
I was enthused by it, so I started
just hanging around...Supreme.
You know, I looked up to him.
[Nathan] He's a people's person,
but intellectually-wise, he was very charismatic.
A long time ago, years ago, he had this big vision
about being an entrepreneur.
He always talking about business.
That's the vision that I followed.
That's the vision that I see in him.
That's the vision I wanted to be a part of.
[Supreme] My father was my hero,
but I never wanted to have a job
where I had to live paycheck to paycheck.
I had bigger dreams.
[Prince] Preme is a businessman
more than anything else.
He looked at the drug game as a business.
[Supreme] The streets for me was always just a process,
a stepping point.
I always trying to find a way out.
Godfather.
[Shannon] And he always wanted
to have us watch The Godfather.
The Godfather was about tradition and everything.
Don't rat.
Always be a man.
Honor your name, your work.
Being loyal.
[gunshot]
dramatic music
[Prince] We felt Scarface was cool,
but Preme and myself,
we were more Godfather disciples.
You know, it illustrated moving with purpose,
along with rules that you could live by
in those times.
[Shannon] Definitely played a part
in how the crews was structured.
Preme was the boss.
Like, Prince would be the underboss.
And then lieutenants
and then, you know, under lieutenants,
they were, you know, the workers.
So it definitely was structured like the Mob.
Anyone who tells you that organized crime in New York
wasn't romanticized is completely full of shit.
You know, everything from Murder, Incorporated
to Scarface.
All of a sudden, you know, The Godfather
becomes something different than what it was intended.
It becomes almost an instructional manual,
something that you can aspire to.
[Supreme] All the things with me were basically organic.
Like, nobody ever plans these things.
It's just, like, I came up with an idea.
I started hustling.
I put guys that I grew up with down with me,
and then we started blowing up.
[Shannon] I wouldn't tell people who I was.
They would find out who I was, and they would come to me--
"Oh, I didn't know you were Shannon
from the Supreme Team."
There was a few people that wanted my autograph.
I'm not someone you need to idolize, you know?
I think the Supreme Team started around '83, '84.
That's when it really got real.
You know, the name came about.
notes chime Hit it.
World's Famous Supreme Team's "Hey DJ" playing
We'd like to dedicate this record to all the DJs...
[DJ Casino] You know what made the name
"Supreme Team" famous?
There was a record that came out,
and it used to say The World's Famous Supreme Team show.
And all the ladies sing along, huh?
[Nathan] Hey, DJ, play that song
Keep you dancing all night
The World Famous Supreme Team show.
Keep me dancing all night
Hey, DJ, just play that song...
[Supreme] A friend of mine said it one time,
and it just stuck.
And then always it was just the Supreme Team.
[Joy] What was the ethic of the 1980s?
Dynasty, Dallas,
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Like, what was being fed to young people at that time?
Get cars, get money, get rich.
This country in the '80s was 100% focused on wealth
and on ostentatious wealth.
So you can't tell young people both those two things
and then be shocked when they do what you said.
[Shannon] I started selling weed at first.
And then I started moving up
to a little bit of coke and everything.
I was working right under Preme,
and I was selling at least...
ten to 15 keys a week.
Nickle bags of crack. That's it.
So we were making a lot of money at that time.
Hey, DJ...
[music muffles]
[Nas] I started to hear about Preme and the Supreme Team
through kids--
kids that had family in Jamaica.
"Supreme Team" made it already something
that you wanted to know more about,
that you could be a part of a army.
It was something about it, you know?
I was all ears for that.
Just dudes getting a lot of money,
you know, coming from where we come from
at that time, you know, that stood out crazy.
[Robert] McGriff had a different idea
as to how to approach what he wanted to do.
So he decided
to create a fiefdom within Queens
called the Baisley Houses.
And there, he basically controlled that whole complex
and all the drugs that were distributed in the area.
And he organizationally set up a team,
the Supreme Team, to do that.
[Supreme] Robert Simels-- he took my first federal case
back in 1987 and my last federal case.
They were scared of him.
Later on, one of his clients had set him up with a wire,
and he ended up doing 14 years.
[Robert] I walk through Baisley with McGriff,
and it was a world that was foreign to me.
If you look at the poverty that you would see,
they wanted to rise above that,
and this was their opportunity.
somber music
Where you at right now,
it was guarded like a fortress.
You couldn't get in here unless you had permission.
At one point in time,
these buildings were so secured...
You see these back doors?
Couldn't get in 'em.
Roofs was kind of covered in a certain kind of way.
And we was hiding.
It was the way it was structured.
It looked small, though.
Little dusty building with a dirty sign on it.
but when you come in there,
machine in that bitch.
You know, a Fortune fucking 500 company was running.
He climbed the corporate ladder
in a street sense in his own way.
[Shannon] Yes, it was a company.
And it wasn't guys that you, you know,
you just snatch up off the street or whatever.
It was guys that was coming straight from school
and working.
Preme and Prince had the...
gift of gab, I guess you could say,
to even pull the smartest guys in.
[Tuff] I was a young-un,
so I'd run to the store, get waters and juices
and, you know, potato chips, whatever.
Give me a $100 bill, I keep the change all the time.
But right here, when this here came about,
this when life was already real.
[Corey] My name is Corey Pegues.
I'm from Queens, and I grew up in a family of six--
five sisters and myself.
And at about the age of 13,
I gravitated to the streets, started selling drugs,
and eventually started working
for one of the most notorious conglomerates in the country,
the Supreme Team.
Yeah.
tense music
I was a street peddler.
Then I had somebody that was like a lieutenant,
and then that lieutenant--
-It was a flow chart. -[elevator bell dings]
You can't do anything without,
you know, the okay from the top.
If it didn't come from the top, you couldn't do it.
Like, these kids today just be like, "Make the block hot."
You can't make the block hot.
It's like, "Listen, no fighting.
None of that stuff over here."
They had everything mapped out.
They didn't do anything on an ad hoc basis.
Everything was thought out.
It was very sophisticated.
Walkie-talkies, a security van
with a security crew on the ready
to do whatever.
You know, it's crazy.
We even had a Supreme Team uniform--
I don't know if y'all know about that,
if somebody told you-- you know, with sweatsuits,
with Le Tigre shorts on top,
and, like, "Preme Team" in a circle right here.
I actually brought a picture of that with me.
New Jack City was loosely based off the Supreme Team,
and I'm here to attest.
I can remember definitely being in an apartment,
and it was maybe about five or six women,
like in that New Jack City
where they in there naked bagging up.
Definitely seen that.
[Shannon] I guess you could say
I would cook up maybe five keys at one time.
And once it gets cooked up,
I would take it to the girls to bag up.
Once everything's bagged up,
it would get to the lieutenants.
Once the lieutenants get it,
they'll distribute it to their workers.
And the workers would, you know, sell it from there.
[Corey] We worked six days a week.
I worked a shift. We had three shifts.
But the funniest thing is, we got paid on Fridays.
So I, like, really had a job with the Supremes.
That's what, like, the Jay-Zs, the Premes and all this--
these guys was, like, running, like, million-dollar companies
in the streets,
and they could run like American Express.
It's crazy what these criminal minds can do.
When people start to analyze that street entrepreneurship,
don't analyze it from your intellectual
born-on-third-base mindset.
Those cats were not even born in the ballpark.
[chuckles] You know?
And they say, "You know what?
"I'm not going to be a CEO in a Fortune 500 company
because I don't have the academic skills."
But the street,
your degree comes from having the heart.
And that's what you saw.
You saw street-corner CEOs
popping up all over our city.
[reporter] For thousands of middle-class Black families,
the neighborhoods of Southeastern Queens
were once thought of as the American Dream.
But something has gone wrong.
The nightmare is crack--
a cheap, highly addictive form of cocaine.
[Prince] It was getting kind of wild shit, you know,
and I remember I went to my window one time
and seen somebody get stabbed, you know what I'm saying?
Killed right there on the boulevard.
[Bill] Things started to get real violent in New York.
The city was, you know, just--
it was all--it was hell.
As a person who carried a weapon,
I was nervous at times walking around the streets
of New York at night, you know?
You know you had to watch your back.
[reporter] You are looking at a victim of murder--
one of almost 1,800 murder victims
in the city this year alone.
[Mark] You have a world
that's made it easier
for everyone to be his or her worst self.
So, if you're inclined to be a junkie,
all of a sudden, you got a five-dollar high.
And if you're inclined to be a gangster,
if you had a gun and your balls,
you were in business.
So everything breaks down.
The smartest, the bravest, and, in this case,
the most ruthless tend to survive.
[LL Cool J] If Einstein grew up in the projects,
he would've been selling drugs.
If Donald Trump grew up in Baisley Houses,
then he'd have been selling drugs.
[Corey] The chaos was already orchestrated.
They just joined the club.
[Milton] We were a village
until we were separated through drug use, drug sales,
and just life-changing experiences.
This is the main entryway.
This is the lobby
of, you know, my family's funeral home,
of Paul Lane Funeral Home,
and this is typically where the guest'll come in
and their first stop.
I used to kind of keep a running total
of the number of services
that we have in our database, in our file from 1954,
but it's definitely been thousands.
melancholy music
This is the place where a mother
had to say goodbye to her daughter
that she was forced to kill in self-defense
because she was addicted to crack.
How do you wrap your head around that?
That's almost like a kind of...
[sniffles] ...shared trauma...
'cause even though the individuals
in this neighborhood didn't...
directly experience it,
just the fact that it happened here
to somebody that we know...
...it's like destruction from within.
[Mark] The engine
that transformed the city was crack.
If you were, like, up on Mars
and you wanted to come up with a nefarious scheme
to make life in New York City even more fucking miserable,
you would've invented crack.
It changed the culture of New York.
It changed the calculus of criminality.
It changed the way kids thought about themselves.
And as horrible as it was,
it democratized crime.
You didn't have to, you know, be Italian.
You didn't have to be made.
You didn't have to wait for anyone--
some old man to open up the books.
All the rules of previous criminal cultures
in New York...
were done.
[distant siren wailing]
[Nas] You know, at one end,
it's tearing the community apart.
On the other end, there's not enough opportunity,
not enough jobs, you know.
These are guys who were at the ripe age
for the things that flooded the city.
So who knows?
If I was their age, I could've been--
you know what I'm saying?-- like, on their level.
These people were at the right place
at the right time for the perfect storm.
[distant siren wailing]
[Prince] You need good cops in the community.
Not racist cops, you know what I'm saying?
Not bad cops,
but you need good cops in the community.
You know, families, mothers, fathers,
young adults, teenagers, and children,
they depend on cops to protect them
from the common criminal, man--it's just common sense.
If we didn't have cops,
it would be like the Wild, Wild West.
[Eddie] I was a New York City housing cop from 1982
to 1995.
It was a calling, and you just put everything into it.
I mean, more than once I showed up on my day off in uniform
and I was told, "You got to go home.
You're not supposed to be working today."
And it just-- it's like a compulsion.
You got to be there every day.
[Supreme] I think I heard of that name.
Yeah, I did, I do remember
a housing cop by that name, sure do.
[Eddie] I would make an arrest every day I worked.
I had an average of 100 arrests a year there
in uniform.
We really did some damage on that.
It was a fantastic time.
dramatic music
One time, the mailman came in,
and I just happened to be coming down the staircase.
And he had-- In these apartment buildings,
you use a big key,
and this whole thing comes down,
and the mailboxes are open.
You can see in every mailbox.
I saw immediately five to seven mailboxes
loaded with drugs.
And I tried to move on it.
The mailman quickly put it up, locked it,
and says, "You're not gonna get me killed."
It was like a chess game.
It was a lot of fun, but it was a chess game.
Back then, the drug dealers was making,
in some cases, more money than a lot of rappers.
Definitely more than me.
I mean, at that time,
you know, these guys were making,
you know, $80,000, $100,000, $200,000 a week.
Tax-free.
Tax-free, and it's in the late '80s, B.
I mean, that's-- I don't even know how you--
what them numbers are right now, but that's--
you know, it was looking real lovely out there.
The Supreme Team probably had more money
than Russell Simmons back then.
There's no question about it. And more juice and more pull.
upbeat funk music
[Shannon] We was making money--
you know, good money back then.
[Bing] All day, thousands and thousands
and thousands and thousands of dollars.
A successful corner or block,
anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 a day.
[Mook] I said, "Yeah,
these are bad dudes right here."
When I said he had everything,
I mean everything.
Five Benzes, two BMWs,
a crib in Long Island,
all the girls, all the money.
All you do is wake up and just live.
I just don't want to stop
Never too much, never too much
[Corey] They were, like, the real first street celebrities,
not like these rappers.
Like, they were the street celebrities.
[Bing] We used to go to all different, like, clubs,
to, like, the Disco Fever in the Bronx,
the Rake in Jersey.
And we used to go to different boroughs.
There'd be a lot of us go in and just have fun.
[Shannon] He had the infamous parties at The Encore
and stuff like that.
The parties was crazy, off the hook.
Anybody and everybody who was anybody was at the parties.
He had the best parties I can remember.
I just don't want to stop
[Prince] I had a party, and Run-DMC was there.
Melle Mel was there.
You had the Fat Boys, Whodini, Kurtis Blow.
Russell Simmons was there. Lyor Cohen showed up.
You know, and that was before
some of them were actually huge.
It was just beautiful, man.
The environment was love. It was a beautiful thing.
They would be having parties, and I'd be there.
They might give me a bottle of warm champagne, you know.
But, yo, I was just so happy to be in the spot.
And when you 15, 16, that's what success looks like.
You don't know any better.
[Corey] When we were selling drugs,
rappers wanted to be drug dealers.
If not wanting to be drug dealers,
they wanted that drug-dealing money.
We were like idols to them.
[Bing] It's just something about a hustler's swag.
They was looking at us like we was bigger than rappers.
Like, they them boys, but we them gods.
[Corey] Rappers prior to Run-DMC--
you got Furious Five and Melle Mel--
they wearing shiny suits--
silk suits, tight pants.
Preme and them, they really dressed hip-hop.
Jay changed the whole look with Run-DMC.
It was like, "Yo, we got to dress like this."
It changed the game.
dramatic music
[Joy] Queens was giving birth
to this whole, like, genre of music.
And I think it was some of the same young people.
Some people were going one direction
and deciding what they were gonna do
with the money that they had,
and their entrepreneurial spirit
was to become hip-hop artists,
and some people were going in the drug game,
but I think they were all happening at the same time.
[Prince] We was actually hip-hop for real,
know what I'm saying?
We was living that life but not rapping that life.
And they turned the life we was living into a story, man.
Crack--we made a whole lot of money off of it,
and that is a fact.
[crowd cheering]
[Mark] If you can put an organizational chart
of the Supreme Team in the newspaper,
yo, you're gonna be a target.
Someone's gonna come and try to take you down.
When did Nicky Barnes become a target?
When the Times Magazine wrote about him.
So there's a certain critical mass
of fame, success,
and, above all, publicity as a gangster
that you do not want.
And the Supreme Team
obviously crossed that line.
[distant siren wailing]
[Shannon] When it first started,
it was 15 to 20 guys started it.
But then I'd say around '84,
got bigger.
And later on, like, around '85,
that's when the crew got anywhere from 75 to 100 guys.
tense music
[Sterling] I remember he said,
"What's the worst block in Queens
for drugs, selling drugs?"
The worst block was on my block.
They were on the corner selling drugs on my block.
You know?
And, naturally, I make a couple telephone calls,
and he got caught.
[Bing] We was just hanging out in one of our places,
and they were just talking--
the normal routine stuff we normally do.
And then all of a sudden... [knocking on door]
What the fuck?
I know we're doing
Keni Burke's "Risin' to the Top" playing
Everything that we want to
Meanwhile, are we losing?
Because we can't let go
Let's start thinking what we're doing
[person] This is how it goes!
[speaking indistinctly]
Don't let nothing change your mind
[person speaking indistinctly]
Let's start heading homeward bound
Get off the ground
Stop losing, yeah, losing
Keep risin' to the top
Give it all you got