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Written by Dan England
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Thursday, 31 January 2008 |
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Mr. Capone-E was in a cell, a little older, a little tired, a little scared from a few stabbings, and he wondered what he was going to do with his life.
He was a feared gang member in southern Los Angeles County, and that’s the image he liked to portray in prison, a hard place. But while he was talking about gang banging on the outside, on the inside, he knew he wanted to do something else with his life. He knew how far too many gang members ended up. They either gave in to the whispers in their ears and eventually killed someone and wound up in prison for life, or they were on the other end of those whispers and wound up dead.
He had a dream, like everyone does, and he always enjoyed rapping. The thing was, others seemed to enjoy hearing him rap, too. So when he got out of prison in 1998, he decided that was his last time behind bars. So, he started to work on some tracks. It was hard work, much tougher than the freestyling he did with his friends. His friends, gang members he still calls his homeys, traded lowrider bikes and stereo equipment, whatever they had in their garages, for studio time and beats from a L.A. producer.
His first track appeared on a compilation album, and he was walking down the street one day in his neighborhood when some girls drove by blasting his song. He was stunned. He released his first album in 2000, and it did well enough to get him more gigs and more albums.
Even today, he’s still an underground rapper, but he’s made a name for himself, and he’s no longer gang-banging, he said in a phone interview.
And that’s why he’s still confused at why Greeley Mayor Ed Clark and Weld District Attorney Ken Buck put so much pressure to get his show pulled from the Island Grove Events Center, a show originally scheduled for Feb. 9. He believes he’s an example of a gang member who pulled himself out of the chaos and did something positive. He’s a Chicano who found a niche and talks about having pride in a community that’s faced hard times in the past.
“I understood in a way where they’re coming from,” Capone-E said. “They’re trying to do something positive for their town. But there’s no way in hell I’m telling people to be a gangster.”
When hip-hop and rap hit it big — and it’s still a huge seller, especially among young Latinos — gang members started to look at ways to leave the life, he said.
“I now see ex-gangsters trying to start a clothing line or a magazine or a car businesses or they’re into graphics,” he said. “Ten years ago, when I got my start, there was none of that. They looked at people like me and said, ‘Damn, you’re doing that, I’m going to do this.’
“I think if someone was going to spend their money to see me, in their heart, they want to get out of a bad situation. There’s hope. I’m that hope. I show them there’s another way.”
Of course, Clark and Buck point to lyrics from his 2001 album, “Last Man Standing,” including the title track, which advocates killing police officers, talks about living the gang life and is filled with obscenities. They said those messages, what they say glorifies gangs, is the opposite of what they’re trying to do for Greeley, which is make it an unfriendly place for gangs after some serious problems in the last few years.
Mr. Capone-E laughed off concerns about security at his shows. He’s never seen a gang fight at the more than 150 performances he’s put on in the last two years.
“I mean, every show has little knuckleheads everywhere,” he said. “But it’s always been love with every show I’ve done. And even the knuckleheads don’t want to start trouble because they respect me and what I’ve been through.”
Dismissing hard questions about his lyrics and image is tougher, however, and he acknowledges that. But his music has toned down, he said. Most of his tracks these days are clean and about love or getting with a girl.
But he still talks about the street life, he said, and as an answer to that, he points to his background growing up in the harder parts of Los Angeles County. Trouble was a way of life, and he had to join a gang because bad things happened to those who didn’t. It’s not a life a mayor or district attorney can relate to, but some of his fans can, he said. When he was stabbed, for instance, it didn’t horrify him. That’s just how it was. His friends had to talk him into going to the hospital after he was bleeding for hours from one wound.
“I thought that’s all the world had to offer,” he said. “When you were really into that lifestyle, that’s all you see, and that’s all you know.”
He can’t just ignore his past (and that image sells, after all), and so he will always write about that life. But even when he’s writing about that life, he believes the messages are positive ones. When he shows pictures of himself holding a gun, as he does on his MySpace page, that’s to show power and to show, as he put it, that he’s still connected to the streets, that he hasn’t forgotten them or that life.
“You see guys in those Army commercials with guns all the time,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we are trying to shoot someone. It means we’re trying to move up to the top.”
Other songs ultimately talk about survival in a hard world. Even the song that Clark and Buck picked on, “Last Man Standing,” is about making it and being the last one to survive, Capone-E said, that he will keep going and striving, whatever it takes. In the interview, he also said he didn’t advocate killing police officers but that in his world, cops weren’t always his friends, even when he wasn’t getting into trouble.
He has, like other rappers, experienced what he said was police officers abusing their power. On the streets where he grew up, it was a constant struggle for power between gang members and law enforcement, making interactions an oftentimes uneasy proposition.
“But I’m not gang-banging anymore,” he said. “As a gangster, I’m not supposed to like any other city, and I want to unify everyone. I want everyone at my shows.”
Mr. Capone-E considers his lyrics about Surenos, a known gang with several branches, including some in Greeley, to be more about showing where he’s from.
“It’s almost like a race,” he said. “It’s about growing up in an environment. They’re all under one umbrella. It means you’re from Southern California.”
Mr. Capone-E has performed in Colorado many times, and he hopes to perform in northern Colorado soon, although there’s still no word from the promoter if he’s found a new place to host a concert. In the meantime, Capone-E knows this is part of his hard work
“At first I thought this was fun and games, but when it came down to it, I really had to think about it,” he said. “It was hard. I was impatient. But I knew I had to have patience.
“If I didn’t have rap, I don’t know where I’d be. Maybe I’d be back in prison.”
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