ALL STAR 2011 - Ozone Magazine

side. I always had homies that were Crips, butin Compton I never had Crip homies. That’swhere the action is, that’s where my neighborhood.I’m not finna drive from Comptonto L.A. just to beef with another Crip. So Inever had action with them niggas. Plus, Igot more sense and I’m over that.Te Money: Me and Dolla and Akon were doinga reality TV show that was going to consist ofa Blood, a Crip, and a Mexican. It was calledThe Gang too. This was before I involvedmyself in the rap group. So I actually went todifferent hoods to find talent, which is whereI met Chino. I went to the neighborhoodand held auditions at this school. Like 20Southsiders came, that’s the Mexicans. 30 or40 Bloods came, 30 or 40 Crips came – at differenttimes. (laughs) Out of all the Mexicans,there were a lot of them that could rap, butChino just stood out. I actually had pickedanother Blood [for the group] but he backedout, so I went around asking people who wasthe hottest Blood in the streets. They pointedme towards Lefty.Chino: I had like seven homies that told me,“There’s an audition, we got talent, so let’sput it to use. Let’s go check it out, we don’thave anything to lose.” I was blessed enoughto make it to this point.So the message of the group is that Bloods,Crips, Blacks, Mexicans, everybody shouldcome together?Te Money: We can’t speak for everybodyelse, but we’re trying to show people thatit can be done. L.A. has a lot of influence onother places – St. Louis, Little Rock, Arkansas,Minnesota – there are niggas gangbangin’in other hoods that ain’t never been to L.A.People think it’s just Crips and Bloods andMexicans, but there are 275 different Cripgangs. There’s a lot of Crip-on-Crip beef also.If people from other states come here andsee that we can get along, maybe they canget along too.How would you respond to critics sayingthat by creating a rap group out of this,you’re glorifying the gang lifestyle?Te Money: We’re not glorifying it, and we’renot doing anything negative. The policeare a gang; they beat the shit outta RodneyKing. [The police] do good things and badthings. You’ve got gang members that dogood things and gang members that do badthings. There’s a thing out here [in L.A.] thatOZONE MAG // 67