Featured Story, Street Legends

Supreme Team Redux

shakim1The Southside of Jamaican Queens- a legendary neighborhood in the great metropolis of New York. If it’s going down in the Big Apple, you know they’re doing it with the style, swag and the utmost of their ability. That is just how they carry it in the town. Dudes in the city are doing it first class, all the way and everyday.

Every time I do a book or an article I always get some stuff I wish I had included in the manuscript and for whatever reason, it didn’t make it. Time constraints or I didn’t hook up with the person soon enough, you know how it goes. Gorilla Convict Publications just put out my Supreme Team book- The Supreme Team: The Birth of Crack and Hip-hop, Prince’s Reign of Terror and the Supreme/50 Cent Beef Exposed, and I got some stuff that should’ve made the book, but didn’t.

The book is blowing up in the streets and the prisons, but what I’d like to do here is give some more vital stuff I got from my people for the book, but the only thing was I got it too late. So I am going to share it with you here on my blog, we’ll call it the Supreme Team Redux. And this is some vital stuff if you are a fan of the team.

In the New York State prison system back in the day, the Five Percenters were a force to be reckoned with. They ran the phones, b-ball courts and held the tiers down. Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff and a lot of Supreme Team members were originally Five Percenters. They went back to the 705 with that. One God describes what it was like when Preme first went upstate in the mid-80s on his state charge.

“Preme was big on the East Coast and up north in the penal system just like the Five Percenters, who once upon a time ruled the 70s and 80s until the crack era messed shit up. But hip-hop and dudes like Preme kept the teachings alive.”

The same God, who was born and raised in Queens and was in and out of the prison system in the 80s and 90s breaks it down more for us on his memories of the team.

“I’m from Queens and bumped into Supreme Team members on the streets and on Rikers Island in the late 80s. Black Just (RIP), Green Eyed Born, Jeff Dog, Courtney, Shorty Bleak, Bimmy. I’m speaking on Preme’s crew, not Prince’s. I know Black Just. I remember when Preme came home in 1993, not 1995 like all the magazines say. It was about 1993. Me, Duss, Takim

(RIP) and DD pulled up to Popeye’s on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard in South Jamaica and came across the street to the barbershop/hair salon to greet and parlay with Preme. Unbeknownst to anybody, the 113th Precinct had organized crime down the block watching the shop and they saw bulges sticking out of our garments. We was kicking the Willie bo-bo with Preme and I left to get a bottle of brew at the next hood bodega. I peeped the undercover car and backtracked and told niggas that the po-po was outside and hurried up to the cars at Popeye’s. Organized crime made their move and surrounded us. We stashed everything in hidden compartments. They dragged us out of the cars and had us laying on the concrete for an hour as they tore the car up. We all had armored gear on so they felt like something was in the car. Preme came outside and told them to leave us alone, that we just came in for a haircut. They finally let us go. Shit was crazy. We were dirty with crazy hardware, real war shit. I said I’m never stopping to holler at Preme and this was way before he met Irv Gotti and them. I don’t know if he was in halfway house or whatever, but son was on the streets ending of 93.”

Supreme was just that high profile, even coming out of prison. He had the feds posted up in his backyard waiting on him to do something, so they could bust him again. He was as he has said, “the usual suspect.” The feds had a definite hard on for Preme and in their eyes he was public enemy number one. The god continued his stories with amazing insight, insight from one that was truly there in the flesh.

“Irv Gotti ran with us before he got with Preme. We called him DJ Irv. We would be around Lance and Pretty Tony also. Back in the day they were Preme’s, Fat Cat’s and Wall Corley’s plug. When they did that American Gangster segment on Preme, Ykim and Lance did the talking on that.”

The God speaks on Supreme Team enforcer, Harry “Big C” Hunt (RIP) also, who was killed at USP Beaumont, known in the system by prisoners and guards alike as “Bloody Beaumont” for the violence perpetrated there. Big C met his demise in the early 2000s, the God enlightens us to the circumstances.

“Believe it or not Harry Hunt, Big C (RIP) that was my dude. We were in Cali together. We were the only two dudes from Queens. Son was a loose cannon and I was the only one who could talk and control him. Niggas did him dirty and dropped notes on him and got him locked up. I tried to get him back out. They shipped him to Beaumont where Prince was and you know the rest. When son got murked I was unavailable, in the hole at USP Lee. The SIS came to see me and told me that me coming back out was impossible because they were aware of me and Big C’s correspondence. New York cats were dropping notes that I may retaliate. It was a Brooklyn-Queens thing going on. I wrote and called Big C’s sister a few times. I got a photo we took in Lompoc blew up and sent to her. A lot of heads was aggie at Prince, but it wasn’t his fault. Big C was grimy and he was the fear factor that Prince moved and progressed off of. Dudes was leery of Big C. Son was very comical and fun to hang with despite the negative slander. Big C was real peoples.”

From the penitentiary straight to Gorilla Convict. You know how we do.

Order the new book today- The Supreme Team– available in print and eBook versions from gorillaconvict.com

5 Comments

  • Tiffany says:

    Hello, I know the son of Big C I told him I came across this article and I wanted to see if he can meet with the person who spoke about his father.

  • Damon Williams says:

    Big C was my main man before he joined the Supreme Team and it was whole family very good people we had a lot of good times together,I miss him terribly RIP My brother

  • Damon Williams says:

    I meant to say I knew his whole family very nice people, Big C wasn’t just my friend it was like my brother

  • Ann says:

    To all those think Harry Hunt AKA Big C was a nice guy–get over it. Back in the summer of 1985 he raped my sister in Baisley Park Houses where our Family resided at the time. My sister has never recovered from the rape Harry Hunt did to her. Years later as we attended a rape survivors therapy group to our horror, we ascertained THREE women attendees all had the same rapist–HARRY HUNT. He was not a nice guy. He had two hangouts; He would stand on the corner of Guy Brewer Blvd (GBB) and 116th Avenue or his other hangout spot was the NYCHA parking lot near Foch Blvd and 164 Street. Harry Hunt walked up and down GBB like HIS name was on that street. He was often seen with no shirt on or wearing the so called wife beater tee shirt trying to impress area women and young teenage boys; the women he sought to sleep with and the guys he hope to lure into the widening crack cocaine market that was then ravishing Southeast Queens. We will never know how many lives HE destroyed via sex or cocaine. Harry Hunt’s death was the answer to my prayers.

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