Thursday, March 26, 2009

Combat Jack Throwback: Tupac Shakur Stayed Having The BEST Weed!























All good things come to an end and the kids go back to school next week. Being that I'm headed outta town,
as promised, here's a throwback of my world famous, award winning blog series recapturing my Top 5 gulliest moments I experienced first hand in the music industry, shit you won't hear about anywhere else on the whole effin planet but here!

PREVIOUSLY: #5, #4, #3, #2

Courtesy of Byron Crawford

#1. The Time I Smoked A Blunt With Tupac ([||] and sorta)

Back in the early 1990's, I was working with some more gully Mount Vernon niggas. One'a my former clients, Kenny Smoove landed a label deal with Atlantic Records because of his hit production on the group "Intro". He discovered and broke the group "Changing Faces" with their smash hit single "Stroke You Up" produced by and featuring R. Kelly (no Michael Jackson pederast). Shit was looking extra good for Kenny. His next project was a rap group called “Ground Zero” who were supposed to be like the East Coast version of NWA. Don’t worry if you don’t recall hearing about them though, they were dropped from the label like about a week after this story took place, but I'm telling you, these negroes were really crazy, like, not right in the head.

They were all cousins (I think maybe inbred) and when they weren’t rhyming or writing “hot shit”, they'd get all smoked out and drunk and start fighting each other for real. Bare fists and knuckles real. Dudes were so crazy even, and if I'm lying, I'm dying, that there was this one incident when, in the midst of a drunken spell, they started fighting amongst each other in middle of the street, said fight eventually escalating into a "friendly" game of gun play where one of ‘em shot another one either in the arm or the leg. Real shits and giggles these guys. Believe me when I say these cats were effin idjits!!! Good dudes though, just not too mentally balanced. Anyways, they had a “road manager” who went by the name of “Easy Lee.” Easy was one of those pretty boy [||] type of dudes with a million dollar smile who was in all actuality, real grimy, so much so that that you wouldn’t wanna trust him near your cash, your girl, your moms, your kids, your video games, your gear, you flat out couldn’t trust this fucker. I wonder why he didn’t just call himself Greezy Lee.

Anyways, Ground Zero stayed producing joints in the studio with Kenny, shit started gelling, sounding mad proper and eventually they ended up getting a gig to perform way out in this ghetto ass club in Queens, New York. It was a promotional date and they were one of many acts opening up for the legendary, late, great Tupac Shakur. This was around the time that ‘Pac was starting to establish his name on the fact that he just made his acting debut in the film “Juice”. I'm thinking "Above The Rim' also. So on the night of the scheduled performance, Me, "Greezy", Kenny, Ground Zero, and a few other cats drove out to the club. When we got there, the place was packed with a line going around the entire block. To make matters worse, this was like the coldest night I ever experienced in my life!!! I'm talking a few years before this global warming thing, where it was seriously 2 degrees with a wind chill factor of like negative 25! Some real BRICK shit. Outside, there were hundreds of chicks waiting to get in, hoping, praying to catch a glimpse of Tupac. I gotta give it to them 'cause they was out there dressed in the skimpiest of halter-tops and opened toed shoes. I didn’t get it because I was wearing like three pairs of socks and a pair of 40 Below Timberland boots and being that it was so cold, my toes felt like they were being sliced and diced with razor blades.

To make shit even more horrific, the bouncers at the door didn’t give a rat’s ass who the eff me, Kenny Smoove or Ground Zero were and most definitely were not letting us in. After waiting for like an hour, Tupac shows up with his crew (including the future G.O.A.T., Biggie Smalls, who at the time was content playing his position as one of ‘Pac’s weed carriers). To this day, I’ll never figure out how, but Greezy Lee somehow managed to slip into Tupac’s entourage and disappeared inside the club alongside them. Five minutes go by, I know for sure that my feet are frostbitten and that I'll probably have to have one of ‘em surgically removed thus becoming gimped up, Ground Zero start getting antsy, cussing at each other, shoving and looking like they’re about to start fighting, shooting in the crowd and at each other when Greezy pops out the club with out his million dollar smile and a bouncer, points in our direction and tells dude to let the us in. Me, Kenny and Ground Zero gets escorted in and right as we're about to pass security, this other bouncer let's everybody else in and cuts the flow by sticking his meaty ass hand in my chest, thus blocking my entry. Freezing, stuck and knowing that I just blew my last shot at getting into the ghetto ass club with the name I forgot, I sadly watch the posse enter, doors closing behind them.

So here I am, stuck out in the frozen tundra, toes all blue, with about 500 ghetto ass, open toed shoe wearing half dressed 2pac crazy bitches, with no ride home and no opportunity to see my group perform. Fortunately, I had the keys to the group’s vehicle, so I hop in the whip, turn on the heat and wait for like 2-3 hours for the crew to get back. Around four in the a.m., Greezy, his smile, Kenny and Ground Zero wake me up from out of my slumber by knocking on the window and we all head back to Mount Vernon. They inform me that although the bouncer allowed the group into the club, the promoter took one look at them and said there was no way in hell he’d allow those crazy niggas to get up on stage and perform. They did decide to remain inside (and at my expense) in order to watch Tupac (and Biggie's) performance. That evening was a wrap.

Anyways, we drive back to Mount Vernon, get to Kenny’s crib when Greezy proudly announces that while he was “backstage” (how the fuck did he manage to get backstage?), he started “going for his” by grabbing all types of shit - others people’s belongings and stuff - until he came upon this real plush looking black leather Pelle Pelle jacket with an image of a black stallion embroidered on the back. Realizing he “just had to have it,” Greezy slipped it on under his coat while Tupac and crew were performing and then casually blended back into the audience. So dude takes out the jacket and I’m like “Yo man, that’s really fucked up, I don’t get down like that!!! ….. Um, what’s in the pockets?” Greezy then goes all up in the pockets and produces a wallet containing none other than Tupac Shakur’s driver’s license! That's when we all recognize the jacket because ‘Pac had done a lot of promotional shit for “Juice” rocking the same jacket. We all remain silent, not believing that Greezy just jacked “Bishop” when from the other pocket, he pulls out the largest, ripest, pungent most beautifullest pillow sack of Chronic weed I had ever seen in my life. We were all in awe because in New York and around that time, most of us still wasn't privy to Chronic other than what Snoop, Dre and Nate Dogg over on the West Coast were rapping and sanging about.

As we lounged back and smoked the Chronic, Greezy and his smile was like our hero for a coupla hours, and I, for the life of me, couldn’t get out of my mind the image of ‘Pac’s tiny ass [||] being ushered out of the club, wrapped all up in blankets and sheets, just in order to keep warm, with no coat on and no weed to smoke, middle finger pointed high in the sky for the niggas that ganked him, his wallet, his drivers license and his smoke. I don’t know what Greezy ended up doing with the jacket, and ‘Pac’s license, I just don’t fuck with cats like that anymore. I think I remember something about how he made mad money selling off the rest of that bomb ass weed though. I just hope that this incident wasn't the camel's straw that eventually triggered that crazy ass nigga Tupac to go off the deep end, resulting in him hating B.I.G., Puffy and just about anything else East Coast related. On the real though, good looking out for that solid ‘Pac, Thug Life and all that my nigga! R.I.P. You mos def kept some of the best weed I ever had in my life!



15 comments:

  1. I can't call it my dude. But I'm sayin'.

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  2. That Dame Dash drop was good enough to make it a top 6 gulliest moments/stories. The fact thats its a first hand account makes you the nas of bloggers.

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  3. @CJ : I bet zone for zone, Cali weed was as pricey as gold in NYC at that time.

    Great story and would you go out and say Pac had the best supply of any entertainer you've come in contact with?

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  4. I think you done started something here, CJ. You might need to do a couple drops that are strictly weed-related.

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  5. Haha great story.

    You could write a book from all these...

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  6. That there's one of the greatest stories ever told.

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  7. ....why dont u write a book?...foreal do it

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  8. Wow! Great story!

    I'll buy that book too lol.

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  9. (I think maybe inbred)

    That was the funniest shit I've read in 2009.

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  10. That was one hell of a story, Being that Im from LA and Pac is my G.O.A.T. I found it very entertaining.

    I bet you if the internet was poppin back then we would have found that jacket on E-bay

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  11. That's a good story. That club was either the Q Club or Club Azmaru .

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  12. If it's the same Ground Zero, I have a copy of their EP, which all the tracks are just direct lifts from P-Funk All Stars-Urban Dance Floor Guerillas(Hydraulic Funk in UK).

    I don't think they even cleared it and yet had a sticker on the cover saying that it featured Bootsy Collins.

    It was alrite, but nothing next level and got it more for the P connection than anything.

    Great story, but I bet there's folks that as of today even, will be seeking retiribution, if the G.Z. set is still about.

    Great blog!

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  13. Great joint man... If you've released your book already consider another sale brother coming your way... Peace

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  14. great read.big stuff.
    like heavster.

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