Voo
Ntymydat
Voo,Ryno,Chalie
Ryno
Dollar,Tony,Big Mike
Ryno,Nichole,Chalie Boy
Rochelle,Bavu,Ryno,Chalie
Rapid Ric
Chalie
My Boy Matt Sonzala
The Greatest Musician Alive D-Madness
Friday, November 18, 2005
SOME PHOTO'S FROM DEVIN THA DUDE SHOW
Devin stops by the bar before heading to the stage
Voo
Ntymydat
Voo,Ryno,Chalie
Ryno
Dollar,Tony,Big Mike
Ryno,Nichole,Chalie Boy
Rochelle,Bavu,Ryno,Chalie
Rapid Ric
Chalie
My Boy Matt Sonzala
The Greatest Musician Alive D-Madness
Voo
Ntymydat
Voo,Ryno,Chalie
Ryno
Dollar,Tony,Big Mike
Ryno,Nichole,Chalie Boy
Rochelle,Bavu,Ryno,Chalie
Rapid Ric
Chalie
My Boy Matt Sonzala
The Greatest Musician Alive D-Madness
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
GET YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR DEVIN THA DUDE LIVE AT ANTONE'S
Don't be the only one not there!!!
Thursday Nov. 17th "Nobody Leavin" Video Premiere
ANTONE'S 5th & Lavaca Austin, TX
9 p.m. - 2 a.m.
DEVIN THA DUDE
BAVU BLAKES
D-MADNESS
CHALIE BOY
BIG MIKE
DJ DOMO
DJ RAPID RIC
Tickets available now atwww.gettix.net and Pinky's Wireless stores and Waterloo Records on 6th/Lamar
Thursday Nov. 17th "Nobody Leavin" Video Premiere
ANTONE'S 5th & Lavaca Austin, TX
9 p.m. - 2 a.m.
DEVIN THA DUDE
BAVU BLAKES
D-MADNESS
CHALIE BOY
BIG MIKE
DJ DOMO
DJ RAPID RIC
Tickets available now at
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN!!!! D-MADNESS AND ANDRAE VAN BUREN LIVE AT THE WHISKY BAR
D-Madness and Andrae Van Buren live at the Whisky Bar tomorrow night! If you have never seen this duo play live then this should be your night to come out. Their music will blow you away. D-Madness is doing things that no one should be able to do. Have you ever seen anyone play guitar, drums and the keyboard AT THE SAME TIME?? What makes D so amazing is that he plays all those instruments at the same time even though he is BLIND!!!! Trust me, you gotta see him.
Show starts at 9pm and it's free to get in, so that means more money in your pocket for drinks!!!
Bring your date and stay late!
WHISKY BAR AUSTIN
303 w. 5th Street
(512) 481-8599D-Madness and Andrae Van Buren live at the Whisy Bar tomorrow night! If you have never seen this duo play live then this should be your night to come out. Their music will blow you away. D-Madness is doing things that no one should be able to do. Have you ever seen anyone play guitar, drums and the keyboard AT THE SAME TIME?? Another amazing part about D is that he is BLIND!!!! Trust me, you gotta see him.
Show starts at 9pm and it's free to get in, so that means more money in your pocket for drinks!!!
Bring your date and stay late!
WHISKY BAR AUSTIN
303 w. 5th Street
(512) 481-8599
Monday, November 14, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
TONY AYALA JR
I always have found the Tony Ayala story very compelling. Here is an article I found a few years back. It doesn't have anything to do with rap, but it is good none the less.
Fighting back
From prison to the ring, Ayala resurrects career
Click here for more on this story
Posted: Monday August 23, 1999 07:42 PM
The 36-year-old Tony Ayala Jr. was released from New Jersey's Bayside State Prison in April. CNN/SI
By Nick Charles, CNN/SI
SAN ANTONIO -- Tony Ayala Jr. chalks up mile after mile during early morning workouts. In this particular case, he makes his way into a local stadium and up a row of steps.
Once a prodigious young knockout artist, Ayala is now a 36-year-old man attempting a boxing comeback. That comeback begins Friday night when Ayala (22-0, 19 KOs), gets in the ring against 21-year-old Manuel Esparza (19-4-1, 5 KOs) in a 10-round middleweight bout before a hometown San Antonio crowd of less than 10,000 and a pay-per-view television audience.
As he heads toward a new future in the ring, he is struggling to leave his violent, criminal past behind.
"I did 16 years in prison for a horrible crime that I committed that I was guilty of," Ayala said.
16 years ago, Ayala was a 20-year-old junior middleweight who hit like a hurricane, blasting away every one of the 22 opponents he faced. The consensus was, he was unstoppable.
But underneath the gleam there was gloom. Ayayla says he was a basket case. Insecure and terrified of failure.
"What I remember is one long daze," he says. "I was always abusing heroin and alcohol and all sorts of drugs. And I really can't with a clear mind tell you what it was like."
Much of Ayala's past though is documented on a rap sheet.
In 1978, at age 15, he viciously assaulted a woman in the bathroom of this San Antonio movie theater He was given 10 years probation after his victim agreed to a reported $40,000 civil settlement.
Ayala fights daily to break out of the shadows of his past.
Then in August of 1982 when he was 19 and still on probation in Texas, Ayala was found drunk in a stranger's home carrying the identification of the woman who lived there. Ayala avoided prosecution when his handlers got him into a rehab program for substance abuse. But Ayala continued to get high.
Then he put a gun in his mouth.
"I had just bought a house," Ayala recalls. "I was alone, I was drunk, my wife and I had separated and I just wanted out of this miserable life," he said explaining why he wanted to end his life.
Although Ayala and his wife Lisa reunited, he continued to unravel.
On New Year's night 1983, he slipped out of their home in a New Jersey complex and broke into an apartment downstairs. Wielding a knife, Ayala threatened to kill the two women living there. He then bound and blindfolded one of them, raped and sodomized her and left her tied to her bed. Police arrested Ayala outside the apartment that cold winter night, shoeless, shirtless, and alone.
Ayala makes no excuses for his actions.
"I did what I did and it was a horrible crime. And I paid a price for it."
Convicted of aggravated sexual assault and other charges, Ayala began serving a 35-year sentence in 1983 and that is where he says his story nearly ended.
"I was really at the end of my rope. I couldn't visualize doing 15 years in that situation. And I called my dad and I basically asked him if it would be OK for me to take my own life."
The answer Tony Ayala, Sr.'s gave was not the one his son expected to hear.
Time with a prison psychologist shed light on Ayala's deep-seeded rage.
"I told him, 'If you do that, I want you to understand that I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm not gong to sit here because, if you feel guilty for what happened, maybe perhaps I'm guilty too. Maybe I was not the best parent around. Maybe I had something to do with this. So if you took that route, I would take it myself.'"
"That was something I couldn't accept," Ayala, Jr. said. "I couldn't accept. To me I was left with no choice but to deal with my demons and deal with what I had become. So that's what I did."
Ayala's breakthrough came just a few weeks later when he met Dr. Brian Raditz, a New Jersey state prison psychologist, who had been a fan of the young boxer. In sessions with Dr. Raditz, Ayala uncovered the roots of his criminal rage.
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Have a question, comment or story idea for Nick Charles, Jim Huber, Sonja Steptoe or the Page One producers? Send a message to our Page One mailbag and check back often to see if your question is selected.
"Obviously I had some serious issues," Ayala said. "Some serious problems that I never dealt with. And it stemmed from some expriences I dealt with when I was very young."
Ayala is asked to be specific.
"I was sexually abused as a kid," he says.
In Dr. Raditz's mind, that single admission seemed to jump-start Ayala on the road to recovery.
"Once he was able to get it out, it was like a sponge after that," Raditz said. "You couldn't give him enough information. And just constantly more questions. More questions trying to understand himself, his behaviors and the types of hurts that he went through and how to fix them and how to address it."
While Ayala won't reveal who sexually abused him, he learned to heal himself while he remained behind bars. Finally this past April, he was released from New Jersey's Bayside State Prison. With his wife at his side, after 16 years of hard time, Tony Ayala was a free man.
Wife Lisa says prison life has left its mark on her husband.
This photo of Ayala was taken after he was arrested for raping and sodomizing a neighbor.
"Do I think he will ever do something like he did? Never," she answers. "He will never, ever go back to prison again. This was a very, very hard lesson for him. And he'll never go back to prison. So that's not something I need to worry about."
Ayala says the crime and the time is something he will never forget.
"I live with the regret of what I did," he said. "That got me 16 years in prison. The regrets I live with at this stage of life. The regrets that I will take with me to my grave are that I hurt some innocent people."
"His psychic demons confronted, his crime acknowledged, Ayala is now back where it all began. A free man who has returned to this same San Antonio gym where he learned to box. He asks no forgiveness in the ring, just a chance to discover what 16 years of rusting away behind bars has left him with physically.
"There were some unanswered questions," he says adding, "the 'what ifs' haunt me. And I've got to ride this pony out. I've just got to ride it out. I've got to know where I was. I've got to know who I was. I've got to know where I stand."
Ayala won't be alone. His prison therapist Dr. Raditz is now managing his ring career and his father, who trained him before prison, is back in his corner.
"I've been clean and sober now for 16 going on 17 years," Ayala said. "I'm living my life very little different now than when I was in prison other than the obvious that I'm free to do whatever I want. Right now my change happened in my heart. It happened in my soul."
Tony Ayala Jr. has spent nearly half his life behind bars. Now as he attempts to claim the fame and fortune he threw away, the ongoing challenge will be to confine his violence to the boxing ring.
Fighting back
From prison to the ring, Ayala resurrects career
Click here for more on this story
Posted: Monday August 23, 1999 07:42 PM
The 36-year-old Tony Ayala Jr. was released from New Jersey's Bayside State Prison in April. CNN/SI
By Nick Charles, CNN/SI
SAN ANTONIO -- Tony Ayala Jr. chalks up mile after mile during early morning workouts. In this particular case, he makes his way into a local stadium and up a row of steps.
Once a prodigious young knockout artist, Ayala is now a 36-year-old man attempting a boxing comeback. That comeback begins Friday night when Ayala (22-0, 19 KOs), gets in the ring against 21-year-old Manuel Esparza (19-4-1, 5 KOs) in a 10-round middleweight bout before a hometown San Antonio crowd of less than 10,000 and a pay-per-view television audience.
As he heads toward a new future in the ring, he is struggling to leave his violent, criminal past behind.
"I did 16 years in prison for a horrible crime that I committed that I was guilty of," Ayala said.
16 years ago, Ayala was a 20-year-old junior middleweight who hit like a hurricane, blasting away every one of the 22 opponents he faced. The consensus was, he was unstoppable.
But underneath the gleam there was gloom. Ayayla says he was a basket case. Insecure and terrified of failure.
"What I remember is one long daze," he says. "I was always abusing heroin and alcohol and all sorts of drugs. And I really can't with a clear mind tell you what it was like."
Much of Ayala's past though is documented on a rap sheet.
In 1978, at age 15, he viciously assaulted a woman in the bathroom of this San Antonio movie theater He was given 10 years probation after his victim agreed to a reported $40,000 civil settlement.
Ayala fights daily to break out of the shadows of his past.
Then in August of 1982 when he was 19 and still on probation in Texas, Ayala was found drunk in a stranger's home carrying the identification of the woman who lived there. Ayala avoided prosecution when his handlers got him into a rehab program for substance abuse. But Ayala continued to get high.
Then he put a gun in his mouth.
"I had just bought a house," Ayala recalls. "I was alone, I was drunk, my wife and I had separated and I just wanted out of this miserable life," he said explaining why he wanted to end his life.
Although Ayala and his wife Lisa reunited, he continued to unravel.
On New Year's night 1983, he slipped out of their home in a New Jersey complex and broke into an apartment downstairs. Wielding a knife, Ayala threatened to kill the two women living there. He then bound and blindfolded one of them, raped and sodomized her and left her tied to her bed. Police arrested Ayala outside the apartment that cold winter night, shoeless, shirtless, and alone.
Ayala makes no excuses for his actions.
"I did what I did and it was a horrible crime. And I paid a price for it."
Convicted of aggravated sexual assault and other charges, Ayala began serving a 35-year sentence in 1983 and that is where he says his story nearly ended.
"I was really at the end of my rope. I couldn't visualize doing 15 years in that situation. And I called my dad and I basically asked him if it would be OK for me to take my own life."
The answer Tony Ayala, Sr.'s gave was not the one his son expected to hear.
Time with a prison psychologist shed light on Ayala's deep-seeded rage.
"I told him, 'If you do that, I want you to understand that I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm not gong to sit here because, if you feel guilty for what happened, maybe perhaps I'm guilty too. Maybe I was not the best parent around. Maybe I had something to do with this. So if you took that route, I would take it myself.'"
"That was something I couldn't accept," Ayala, Jr. said. "I couldn't accept. To me I was left with no choice but to deal with my demons and deal with what I had become. So that's what I did."
Ayala's breakthrough came just a few weeks later when he met Dr. Brian Raditz, a New Jersey state prison psychologist, who had been a fan of the young boxer. In sessions with Dr. Raditz, Ayala uncovered the roots of his criminal rage.
Page One Mailbag
Have a question, comment or story idea for Nick Charles, Jim Huber, Sonja Steptoe or the Page One producers? Send a message to our Page One mailbag and check back often to see if your question is selected.
"Obviously I had some serious issues," Ayala said. "Some serious problems that I never dealt with. And it stemmed from some expriences I dealt with when I was very young."
Ayala is asked to be specific.
"I was sexually abused as a kid," he says.
In Dr. Raditz's mind, that single admission seemed to jump-start Ayala on the road to recovery.
"Once he was able to get it out, it was like a sponge after that," Raditz said. "You couldn't give him enough information. And just constantly more questions. More questions trying to understand himself, his behaviors and the types of hurts that he went through and how to fix them and how to address it."
While Ayala won't reveal who sexually abused him, he learned to heal himself while he remained behind bars. Finally this past April, he was released from New Jersey's Bayside State Prison. With his wife at his side, after 16 years of hard time, Tony Ayala was a free man.
Wife Lisa says prison life has left its mark on her husband.
This photo of Ayala was taken after he was arrested for raping and sodomizing a neighbor.
"Do I think he will ever do something like he did? Never," she answers. "He will never, ever go back to prison again. This was a very, very hard lesson for him. And he'll never go back to prison. So that's not something I need to worry about."
Ayala says the crime and the time is something he will never forget.
"I live with the regret of what I did," he said. "That got me 16 years in prison. The regrets I live with at this stage of life. The regrets that I will take with me to my grave are that I hurt some innocent people."
"His psychic demons confronted, his crime acknowledged, Ayala is now back where it all began. A free man who has returned to this same San Antonio gym where he learned to box. He asks no forgiveness in the ring, just a chance to discover what 16 years of rusting away behind bars has left him with physically.
"There were some unanswered questions," he says adding, "the 'what ifs' haunt me. And I've got to ride this pony out. I've just got to ride it out. I've got to know where I was. I've got to know who I was. I've got to know where I stand."
Ayala won't be alone. His prison therapist Dr. Raditz is now managing his ring career and his father, who trained him before prison, is back in his corner.
"I've been clean and sober now for 16 going on 17 years," Ayala said. "I'm living my life very little different now than when I was in prison other than the obvious that I'm free to do whatever I want. Right now my change happened in my heart. It happened in my soul."
Tony Ayala Jr. has spent nearly half his life behind bars. Now as he attempts to claim the fame and fortune he threw away, the ongoing challenge will be to confine his violence to the boxing ring.
PART # 3 THE RISE AND FALL OF SOUTH PARK MEXICAN
This is the last part of this SPM article. This is a very sad tale of a rapper who I really enjoyed listening to. His image will never be the same. This story kind of reminds me of Tony Ayala Jr The boxer from San Antonio. He had a lot going for him and made some horrible decisions and was locked up for a longtime. Enjoy.
Coy's daughter Carley had invited the daughter of her parents' friends over to spend the night. The two girls and another young playmate had accompanied their mothers and other family members on a shopping trip and a seafood meal that Saturday afternoon, and neither Carley nor the soon-to-be victim, age 9, wanted the fun to end. Carley begged her friend's mother to let the girl spend the night. After some misgivings, she gave in. The mother testified that she had thought that Coy would spend the night out partying somewhere, as he did most nights. Her old friend Gina Acosta would look after the kids.
But Coy was there that night, jamming hard in his home studio. The girl testified that they could hear the music through the floors as they played upstairs. Soon, the music stopped. The girls were in Coy's marital bed channel-surfing when Coy, clad in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, joined them. He picked up the remote and dialed up Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They all lay in the dark taking in the gore, the girl later testified, when suddenly she felt Coy's hand caressing her.
Though alarmed, the girl said nothing. Both girls disliked the movie, so soon they switched activities. Coy took control again. At his insistence, the girls were soon cutting a rug to Destiny's Child Survivor. The party came to a halt around 11 p.m. when the third girl's mother came and picked up her daughter. Gina Acosta put Carley and her friend to bed. The two girls changed into nightclothes, popped a Scooby Doo movie into Carley's bedroom VCR and turned in. Carley was asleep almost immediately.
Her friend--who has documented minor sleep disorders--was not. As she watched various make-believe monsters get unmasked on video, a real one appeared in the doorway. He walked over to the bed, and reached over his sleeping daughter to her friend. She lay still, pretending to be asleep, hoping he would go away. He did not. There was no intercourse, but Coy's offense was worse than mere digital contact. It was all over in five minutes. Coy left the room. The girl lay in bed, and eventually picked herself up and took herself to the bathroom.
She wanted Gina Acosta to take her home then and there. A bleary Acosta told her she was tired; Carlos would do it. The terrified girl got in the car with him for the quick trip home. On that short drive, Coy told the girl not to tell anybody about what had happened. If she kept quiet, he said, he would give her money. Hell, he was soon going to open a dance studio, and hadn't he just told her how well she could dance? He was gonna make her a star.
That was the horrific tale the young girl told a packed courtroom. (Coincidentally, the court was full of field-tripping juniors from a Houston Catholic high school then reeling from a predatory priest scandal.) Her word was all the state had in this case---there was no physical evidence gathered from Coy's house or visible marks on the girls body.
Coy Denied it all. He said that it was nothing more than the actions of a woman scorned, acting through her daughter to exact revenge. He claimed he had seduced and dumped the girl's mother years ago, while the father (his close friend) was in prison. He had led the girl's mother to believe that he was going to take her and her daughter out of poverty, only to cruelly dismiss her later.
Former full-time (now part-time) Dope House publicist "Don Juan" Corzo says that this was well-known years before the arrest. "She was expecting him to go with him," he said in an August 2002 interview. "They had grown up together in the 'hood. Carlos grew up to be this big star--he grew out of getting drunk and selling drugs and stuff and straightened out when he started to be a rapper. At some point she expected Carlos to leave Gina and go and live with her and her daughter."
But such was not to be, according to Corzo and the Coy camp. "Carlos used to tell me that he would insult her. He would say, 'You know what, you're just a slut. I'm just sleeping around with you. You're nothing. I love my wife and my kids. I'm just having a good time and that's it."
The mother waited until the Odom case came to light to spring her trap. With the cooperation of the Harris County District Attorney's office, a clinical child psychologist and the Houston Police Department, she coached her daughter to tell the horrific tale. Later, Harris County law enforcement enticed the other girls to come forward, because they feared Coy's clout among his people and couldn't stand to see a brown man succeed on such defiant terms as the gangsta rapper had. That's Coy's story anyway, and he's still sticking to it. "This system is trying to stop this movement," he wrote in an open letter to his fans from the Harris County Jail in July. "But their efforts will crumble. They teamed up with a family I have known for almost 20 years. A family I thought were my friends. Together they tried to destroy a man's dream to help his people, but they only showed they fear they have of us."
On the stand, the mother dismissed the claim out of hand, and no hard evidence came to light supporting Coy's claims. Coy's defense attorney---Chip Lewis---tried a more artful tack. He gently picked at the young girl's testimony, made much of her documented sleep issues, introduced no little doubt that the girl might have been asleep and dreaming the whole awful experience. He even introduced four horror films the girl's parents had rented and had the jury spend a day watching them. After a day's deliberation, the jury sided with the girl.
They prosecution had been eagerly anticipating the punishment phase of the trial. They picked over Coy's interviews and lyrics for the standard gangstar rapper posturing, and portrayed Coy ass the callous, misogynist, cop-hating, drug dealing, violent thug all gangsta rappers pretend to be and some actually are.
Against Lewis' advice, Coy took the stand himself, and at first, a kinder, gentler rapper emerged. That was under direct examination. Under cross-examination, the image crumbled. Coy was an arrogant braggart. By his own admissions, he was a crack dealer who sold only the purest dope. He claimed to have single-handedly ended the gang problem in Houston---all those who credited the mayor and the Houston Police department were tooting on the wrong horn.
The punishment phase also featured a parade of girls who testified that Coy had sex with them in cheap motels or at Dope House. One, a 14-year-old, testified that Coy had sex with her in a motel while he watched a Cinemax soft-core porn movie. Coy---who admitted to sharing a motel room with her alone but denied that any sex occurred--was out of jail on bond awaiting trial on the molestation charges at the time.
Corzo says that he and Sylvia Coy had warned Coy against putting himself in such situations after the first charges came. Carlos paid them no mind. After all, he was always about "keeping it on the real." "me and Sylvia used to tell him, 'Hey, while this is going on, you need to be a saint," Corzo says. "You need to be a role-model father and husband. You need to be perfect." He would always say, I'm not gonna change my life 'cause that would be a lie.'
"I thought that was kinda stupid," Corzo added. "Cause look what happened, those minors came forward."
Coy's appetites would not be curbed. "He was still bringing those girls around Dope House and I could see that they were young---15,16. You could see they had that young look," Corzo says. "I used to say, 'If he's gonna mess around, if he's not gonna be the perfect husband, he at least needs to mess with girls who are 21 and up.' His response was 'I don't have to change my life because that would be a lie.' And I would be like, 'Okaaaay."
According to Corzo, Coy also erred badly in selecting a lawyer. Instead of seeking specific sex crime expertise, Coy chose to go for overall prestige. "They were referred to people who specialized in sex charges, but from what I hear from the people at the label, Carlos wanted to go with the most expensive guy," Corzo says. "They referred him to this guy who was gonna charge him about $50,000. He's an expert who has represented teachers who had been hit with sexual charges, and this guy had a good reputation. But they didn't want to go for him because he wasn't the most expensive."
Corzo believes that Coy is guilty only of having sex with the pubescent girls, but not his youngest victim. "To this day I feel pretty certain that what he was convicted for is not true," he says. "If he was convicted for sleeping with 15-year-olds, I would have said 'Hey, you deserve it, because you have.' And every rock and rap star has done that."
Corzo also thinks that more prepubescent victims would surely have come forward by now. He does allow for the possibility that Coy may have been extremely messed up on beer and weed that night. "I don't deny that hasn't crossed my mind in a very, very minimal way," he says. Maybe he was just really drunk and high, and she just..." Corzo's voice trails off. "It's very, very minimal," he says finally.
Corzo's former full-time gig was maybe one of the most thankless in the history of entertainment. Seldom has any star been accused of a crime as heinous as Coy's, and Corzo says that even under better circumstances that the artist was no ideal employer. Nevertheless, he is standing by him. "Something I haven't told a whole lot of people is this: The whole time I've known Carlos, since about '98, I've always felt that he has been sort of arrogant. While I worked at the label, several people have commented on that fact that he was arrogant or had a big head, while other people said he was humble or a down-to-earth guy. He's a different sort of down-to-earth guy. If he detected you to be not from the 'hood, he would be arrogant and rude. I perceived that attitude from him early on, and so we never really hit if off.
"People wonder why I defend him if he was such a jerk with me. I say that has nothing to do with it. It has to do with justice. A lot of people think I defend him because we were friends or because I worked with him. I never really liked the guy personally. He was arrogant. I just feel that he didn't do it."
So what now for Coy's empire? Most observers are predicting a dark future for Dope House Records. Carlos' brother Arthur Jr. and sister Sylvia are still trying to helm the label through the storm, through without their No. 1 artist most are predicting rough waters.
Californian Baby Beesh, the label's No. 2 act, is said to be gone after his third album for the label. Beesh is said to be unhappy with the treatment he has received from the Coy family, especially the preference shown recently for his labelmate Juan Gotti. "He's always felt that they've never given him the attention or the promotion that he deserves," Corzo says. "He says it's because he's from California, that he's not from the 'hood with Carlos."
Beesh is also said to feel slighted by the rest of Dope House because he is only half-Mexican. "His dad is American. His mom is Hispanic," Corzo says. "He's always had that little clash with some of the people at the label because he's not from the 'hood, because he's not 100% Mexican. He's told me all about it. He saw the promotion they gave to Juan Gotti on the website when they both had new albums out. Gotti got a helluva lot of promotion---he was all over the radio, they took him on tours, the tours were all over the website, they promoted him really, really hard.
"With Beesh, they put out his album and they promoted him, but not as much. Not even half as much. Even though Beesh had his songs on the radio here and in California, and Gotti's never done that , they still promoted Juan Gotti harder and stronger because he's a full-fledged Texican."
Former Southwest Wholesale project manager Greg Ellis says Beesh has already all but bolted from Dope House's stable. The same day his Dope House release On Tha Cool racked in Texas, the rapper also dropped Velvetism on the 40 Ounce label in California. "I don't see how they can make it without [Beesh]," Ellis says. "Guys like [Dope House rappers] Grimm and Juan Gotti have a lot of talent, but they can't see enough for them to go on."
Recent Soundscan numbers bear him out. The two albums that Dope House was hoping would be it's salvation----Gotti's No Sett Trippin' and On Tha Cool---together sold less than 7,000 albums by mid-August.
Coy's freestyle Reveille Park, released on Cinco de Mayo 2002, sold 17,000 copies, though only 3,600 of those were moved in his native Houston. By contrast, 21,000 copies of his last Universal project Time Is Money were sold in Houston, along with 12,000 copies of Never Change, which was released soon after his arrest.
"The won't see any of the money from Time is Money," say Ellis. Universal is still recouping their $500,000 advance. Ellis attributes Coy's eroding popularity in his hometown to the fact that Houstonians know the most about the case. As word gets around to the far-flung outposts of Coy's fan base like Wichita and Albuquerque about the exact nature of his crimes, Ellis thinks that sales will dwindle there too.
As sales for Dope House decline, their expense mount. Coy's legal bills are immense, and continue to grow. Until his August move from the Harris County jail to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice jail, Coy had also racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills from Harris County jail, as he attempted to run the label via speakerphone, "Carlos' Angels" styles, if you will. "Every time I was over there after the trial he was on the phone the whole time," says Houston hip-hop journalist Matt Sonzala. "That shit get pretty expensive."
TDCJ rules allow inmates in good standing only one monitored, five-minute phone call every 90 days, so now that option is gone. He's going to have to run his empire on paper now, and through instructions to the maximum of 10 people on his visitor's list.
Meanwhile, Coy is writing his memoirs, to be called Hustle Town. (He had envisioned a biopic by the same name, but the film project never came to fruition.) Corzo is worried that adult versions of the high school gangs who caused Coy so much grief back in his South Park days will again seek to victimize him. "I'm concerned about him being in [the penitentiary]. Since he was from the 'hood and was involved with drugs and crime in his younger years, I'm thinking those who are involved with Latin Kings or Texas Syndicate in there are gonna try to intimidate him into being part of these organizations. They may say if he doesn't accept their protection then he's gonna get hurt."
As is well know, inmates known to have victimized children rank somewhere around snitches in the prison hierarchy. A child molester has almost no chance in the general population, so Coy will most likely be held apart like Huey Meaux, another famed Houston music go-getter (who's release, incidentally, is imminent). Coy will be in administrative segregation, TDCJ's name for protective custody, in his cell for 23 hours a day. Barring a successful appeal, that is Coy's new reality. Regarding appeals, Harris County Assistant D.A. Denise Onckon says, "We tried a clean case. I don't recall any issues that should be sticking points on appeal...I think the rulings of the court were fair and erred on the side of caution in admitting evidence."
Corzo still believes in his former employer, with a vehemence that will shock many. "Many times when I go out I get in arguments with people who tell me that Carlos is a child molester and this is what I tell them," he says. "I say I would trust Carlos to baby-sit my 5-year-old daughter, but not my 15 year-old daughter."
Well that's it. I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did. Now after reading this whole article what conclusion have you made? I want to know what he supposedly did with that 9-year-old girl. The article really doesn't specify what happened. Remember this was written back in 2002 so if you have any updated information on this case or know any inside information please share it with us. Thank you for visiting my blog. I'll keep it as up to date as possible for you guys.
Peace, Tony-C
Coy's daughter Carley had invited the daughter of her parents' friends over to spend the night. The two girls and another young playmate had accompanied their mothers and other family members on a shopping trip and a seafood meal that Saturday afternoon, and neither Carley nor the soon-to-be victim, age 9, wanted the fun to end. Carley begged her friend's mother to let the girl spend the night. After some misgivings, she gave in. The mother testified that she had thought that Coy would spend the night out partying somewhere, as he did most nights. Her old friend Gina Acosta would look after the kids.
But Coy was there that night, jamming hard in his home studio. The girl testified that they could hear the music through the floors as they played upstairs. Soon, the music stopped. The girls were in Coy's marital bed channel-surfing when Coy, clad in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, joined them. He picked up the remote and dialed up Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They all lay in the dark taking in the gore, the girl later testified, when suddenly she felt Coy's hand caressing her.
Though alarmed, the girl said nothing. Both girls disliked the movie, so soon they switched activities. Coy took control again. At his insistence, the girls were soon cutting a rug to Destiny's Child Survivor. The party came to a halt around 11 p.m. when the third girl's mother came and picked up her daughter. Gina Acosta put Carley and her friend to bed. The two girls changed into nightclothes, popped a Scooby Doo movie into Carley's bedroom VCR and turned in. Carley was asleep almost immediately.
Her friend--who has documented minor sleep disorders--was not. As she watched various make-believe monsters get unmasked on video, a real one appeared in the doorway. He walked over to the bed, and reached over his sleeping daughter to her friend. She lay still, pretending to be asleep, hoping he would go away. He did not. There was no intercourse, but Coy's offense was worse than mere digital contact. It was all over in five minutes. Coy left the room. The girl lay in bed, and eventually picked herself up and took herself to the bathroom.
She wanted Gina Acosta to take her home then and there. A bleary Acosta told her she was tired; Carlos would do it. The terrified girl got in the car with him for the quick trip home. On that short drive, Coy told the girl not to tell anybody about what had happened. If she kept quiet, he said, he would give her money. Hell, he was soon going to open a dance studio, and hadn't he just told her how well she could dance? He was gonna make her a star.
That was the horrific tale the young girl told a packed courtroom. (Coincidentally, the court was full of field-tripping juniors from a Houston Catholic high school then reeling from a predatory priest scandal.) Her word was all the state had in this case---there was no physical evidence gathered from Coy's house or visible marks on the girls body.
Coy Denied it all. He said that it was nothing more than the actions of a woman scorned, acting through her daughter to exact revenge. He claimed he had seduced and dumped the girl's mother years ago, while the father (his close friend) was in prison. He had led the girl's mother to believe that he was going to take her and her daughter out of poverty, only to cruelly dismiss her later.
Former full-time (now part-time) Dope House publicist "Don Juan" Corzo says that this was well-known years before the arrest. "She was expecting him to go with him," he said in an August 2002 interview. "They had grown up together in the 'hood. Carlos grew up to be this big star--he grew out of getting drunk and selling drugs and stuff and straightened out when he started to be a rapper. At some point she expected Carlos to leave Gina and go and live with her and her daughter."
But such was not to be, according to Corzo and the Coy camp. "Carlos used to tell me that he would insult her. He would say, 'You know what, you're just a slut. I'm just sleeping around with you. You're nothing. I love my wife and my kids. I'm just having a good time and that's it."
The mother waited until the Odom case came to light to spring her trap. With the cooperation of the Harris County District Attorney's office, a clinical child psychologist and the Houston Police Department, she coached her daughter to tell the horrific tale. Later, Harris County law enforcement enticed the other girls to come forward, because they feared Coy's clout among his people and couldn't stand to see a brown man succeed on such defiant terms as the gangsta rapper had. That's Coy's story anyway, and he's still sticking to it. "This system is trying to stop this movement," he wrote in an open letter to his fans from the Harris County Jail in July. "But their efforts will crumble. They teamed up with a family I have known for almost 20 years. A family I thought were my friends. Together they tried to destroy a man's dream to help his people, but they only showed they fear they have of us."
On the stand, the mother dismissed the claim out of hand, and no hard evidence came to light supporting Coy's claims. Coy's defense attorney---Chip Lewis---tried a more artful tack. He gently picked at the young girl's testimony, made much of her documented sleep issues, introduced no little doubt that the girl might have been asleep and dreaming the whole awful experience. He even introduced four horror films the girl's parents had rented and had the jury spend a day watching them. After a day's deliberation, the jury sided with the girl.
They prosecution had been eagerly anticipating the punishment phase of the trial. They picked over Coy's interviews and lyrics for the standard gangstar rapper posturing, and portrayed Coy ass the callous, misogynist, cop-hating, drug dealing, violent thug all gangsta rappers pretend to be and some actually are.
Against Lewis' advice, Coy took the stand himself, and at first, a kinder, gentler rapper emerged. That was under direct examination. Under cross-examination, the image crumbled. Coy was an arrogant braggart. By his own admissions, he was a crack dealer who sold only the purest dope. He claimed to have single-handedly ended the gang problem in Houston---all those who credited the mayor and the Houston Police department were tooting on the wrong horn.
The punishment phase also featured a parade of girls who testified that Coy had sex with them in cheap motels or at Dope House. One, a 14-year-old, testified that Coy had sex with her in a motel while he watched a Cinemax soft-core porn movie. Coy---who admitted to sharing a motel room with her alone but denied that any sex occurred--was out of jail on bond awaiting trial on the molestation charges at the time.
Corzo says that he and Sylvia Coy had warned Coy against putting himself in such situations after the first charges came. Carlos paid them no mind. After all, he was always about "keeping it on the real." "me and Sylvia used to tell him, 'Hey, while this is going on, you need to be a saint," Corzo says. "You need to be a role-model father and husband. You need to be perfect." He would always say, I'm not gonna change my life 'cause that would be a lie.'
"I thought that was kinda stupid," Corzo added. "Cause look what happened, those minors came forward."
Coy's appetites would not be curbed. "He was still bringing those girls around Dope House and I could see that they were young---15,16. You could see they had that young look," Corzo says. "I used to say, 'If he's gonna mess around, if he's not gonna be the perfect husband, he at least needs to mess with girls who are 21 and up.' His response was 'I don't have to change my life because that would be a lie.' And I would be like, 'Okaaaay."
According to Corzo, Coy also erred badly in selecting a lawyer. Instead of seeking specific sex crime expertise, Coy chose to go for overall prestige. "They were referred to people who specialized in sex charges, but from what I hear from the people at the label, Carlos wanted to go with the most expensive guy," Corzo says. "They referred him to this guy who was gonna charge him about $50,000. He's an expert who has represented teachers who had been hit with sexual charges, and this guy had a good reputation. But they didn't want to go for him because he wasn't the most expensive."
Corzo believes that Coy is guilty only of having sex with the pubescent girls, but not his youngest victim. "To this day I feel pretty certain that what he was convicted for is not true," he says. "If he was convicted for sleeping with 15-year-olds, I would have said 'Hey, you deserve it, because you have.' And every rock and rap star has done that."
Corzo also thinks that more prepubescent victims would surely have come forward by now. He does allow for the possibility that Coy may have been extremely messed up on beer and weed that night. "I don't deny that hasn't crossed my mind in a very, very minimal way," he says. Maybe he was just really drunk and high, and she just..." Corzo's voice trails off. "It's very, very minimal," he says finally.
Corzo's former full-time gig was maybe one of the most thankless in the history of entertainment. Seldom has any star been accused of a crime as heinous as Coy's, and Corzo says that even under better circumstances that the artist was no ideal employer. Nevertheless, he is standing by him. "Something I haven't told a whole lot of people is this: The whole time I've known Carlos, since about '98, I've always felt that he has been sort of arrogant. While I worked at the label, several people have commented on that fact that he was arrogant or had a big head, while other people said he was humble or a down-to-earth guy. He's a different sort of down-to-earth guy. If he detected you to be not from the 'hood, he would be arrogant and rude. I perceived that attitude from him early on, and so we never really hit if off.
"People wonder why I defend him if he was such a jerk with me. I say that has nothing to do with it. It has to do with justice. A lot of people think I defend him because we were friends or because I worked with him. I never really liked the guy personally. He was arrogant. I just feel that he didn't do it."
So what now for Coy's empire? Most observers are predicting a dark future for Dope House Records. Carlos' brother Arthur Jr. and sister Sylvia are still trying to helm the label through the storm, through without their No. 1 artist most are predicting rough waters.
Californian Baby Beesh, the label's No. 2 act, is said to be gone after his third album for the label. Beesh is said to be unhappy with the treatment he has received from the Coy family, especially the preference shown recently for his labelmate Juan Gotti. "He's always felt that they've never given him the attention or the promotion that he deserves," Corzo says. "He says it's because he's from California, that he's not from the 'hood with Carlos."
Beesh is also said to feel slighted by the rest of Dope House because he is only half-Mexican. "His dad is American. His mom is Hispanic," Corzo says. "He's always had that little clash with some of the people at the label because he's not from the 'hood, because he's not 100% Mexican. He's told me all about it. He saw the promotion they gave to Juan Gotti on the website when they both had new albums out. Gotti got a helluva lot of promotion---he was all over the radio, they took him on tours, the tours were all over the website, they promoted him really, really hard.
"With Beesh, they put out his album and they promoted him, but not as much. Not even half as much. Even though Beesh had his songs on the radio here and in California, and Gotti's never done that , they still promoted Juan Gotti harder and stronger because he's a full-fledged Texican."
Former Southwest Wholesale project manager Greg Ellis says Beesh has already all but bolted from Dope House's stable. The same day his Dope House release On Tha Cool racked in Texas, the rapper also dropped Velvetism on the 40 Ounce label in California. "I don't see how they can make it without [Beesh]," Ellis says. "Guys like [Dope House rappers] Grimm and Juan Gotti have a lot of talent, but they can't see enough for them to go on."
Recent Soundscan numbers bear him out. The two albums that Dope House was hoping would be it's salvation----Gotti's No Sett Trippin' and On Tha Cool---together sold less than 7,000 albums by mid-August.
Coy's freestyle Reveille Park, released on Cinco de Mayo 2002, sold 17,000 copies, though only 3,600 of those were moved in his native Houston. By contrast, 21,000 copies of his last Universal project Time Is Money were sold in Houston, along with 12,000 copies of Never Change, which was released soon after his arrest.
"The won't see any of the money from Time is Money," say Ellis. Universal is still recouping their $500,000 advance. Ellis attributes Coy's eroding popularity in his hometown to the fact that Houstonians know the most about the case. As word gets around to the far-flung outposts of Coy's fan base like Wichita and Albuquerque about the exact nature of his crimes, Ellis thinks that sales will dwindle there too.
As sales for Dope House decline, their expense mount. Coy's legal bills are immense, and continue to grow. Until his August move from the Harris County jail to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice jail, Coy had also racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills from Harris County jail, as he attempted to run the label via speakerphone, "Carlos' Angels" styles, if you will. "Every time I was over there after the trial he was on the phone the whole time," says Houston hip-hop journalist Matt Sonzala. "That shit get pretty expensive."
TDCJ rules allow inmates in good standing only one monitored, five-minute phone call every 90 days, so now that option is gone. He's going to have to run his empire on paper now, and through instructions to the maximum of 10 people on his visitor's list.
Meanwhile, Coy is writing his memoirs, to be called Hustle Town. (He had envisioned a biopic by the same name, but the film project never came to fruition.) Corzo is worried that adult versions of the high school gangs who caused Coy so much grief back in his South Park days will again seek to victimize him. "I'm concerned about him being in [the penitentiary]. Since he was from the 'hood and was involved with drugs and crime in his younger years, I'm thinking those who are involved with Latin Kings or Texas Syndicate in there are gonna try to intimidate him into being part of these organizations. They may say if he doesn't accept their protection then he's gonna get hurt."
As is well know, inmates known to have victimized children rank somewhere around snitches in the prison hierarchy. A child molester has almost no chance in the general population, so Coy will most likely be held apart like Huey Meaux, another famed Houston music go-getter (who's release, incidentally, is imminent). Coy will be in administrative segregation, TDCJ's name for protective custody, in his cell for 23 hours a day. Barring a successful appeal, that is Coy's new reality. Regarding appeals, Harris County Assistant D.A. Denise Onckon says, "We tried a clean case. I don't recall any issues that should be sticking points on appeal...I think the rulings of the court were fair and erred on the side of caution in admitting evidence."
Corzo still believes in his former employer, with a vehemence that will shock many. "Many times when I go out I get in arguments with people who tell me that Carlos is a child molester and this is what I tell them," he says. "I say I would trust Carlos to baby-sit my 5-year-old daughter, but not my 15 year-old daughter."
Well that's it. I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did. Now after reading this whole article what conclusion have you made? I want to know what he supposedly did with that 9-year-old girl. The article really doesn't specify what happened. Remember this was written back in 2002 so if you have any updated information on this case or know any inside information please share it with us. Thank you for visiting my blog. I'll keep it as up to date as possible for you guys.
Peace, Tony-C
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
PART # 2 THE RISE AND FALL OF SOUTH PARK MEXICAN
Second part of I don't know how many parts, but just keep checking in. I may be done by thursday.
STORY BY JOHN NOVA LOANS
Armed with a GED, Coy attempted to further his education at San Jacinto Junior College. He spent most of his only college semester playing golf, skipped all his classes and flunked out.
Next, he worked with his brother Arthur in a chemical plant. That fizzled as well. Coy's last straight job was much better-suited to his talents, if not his desire for wealth and fame. He sold perfume door-to-door and in mall parking lots. Coy discovered a gift for gab. He could cold call with the best of them. Still, he soon gave in to frustration. His bosses in this racket were getting rich while they doled out peanuts to their best salesman.
Earnings were better in the crack game, which was Coy's next addition to a not-too-impressive resume. Exactly how long Coy was a crack dealer is debatable. His sister said it was three months, Coy said on the stand it was less than a year. Others estimate it was longer.
Coy insists he was as much prey as predator in the crack world. He testified that he had been on the ground on the wrong end of a gun numerous times, eyes closed, waiting for an oblivion that never came. For whatever reason, the gangsters who marked him for death never pulled the trigger. Coy later attributed it to a sign---surely he was destined for great things.
But first, things go worse. Thieves stole a consignment of crack he was fronted, and Coy was left with a debt he had to pay either by coming up with the silver or taking in some lead. To cover the debt, Coy sold all the flashy cars and bling he had bought with his crack proceeds. He was back at square one, no better off than he had been when he was peddling knock-off perfume. To hear him tell it, his conscience was also gnawing at him. "I was tired of selling crack to your homeboy's mom," he told a Houston Press reporter years later.
Coy spent about a month hunkered down. His mother owned a trailer park, so Coy was loaned a mobile home in which to plot his next move. He subsisted on cold pork and beans and small loans from his brother. He didn't want a real job--he says he was too proud to work for the white man for peanuts. He wanted greatness, and he wanted it now.
But what was he great at? Not much. What he was best at was selling crack. He saw no alternative, he said. He was going back to the dope game. As he was dialing up a crack wholesaler, he abruptly lost his will. The phone slipped from his fingers. He fell to his knees and begged Jesus for a sign.
Jesus delivered. According to Coy's dramatic story, he picked up the remote and zapped on the TV. The first thing he saw were three huge letters. R-A-P. Hip-Hop was to be his destiny. Years later at his trail, prosecutor Andrews asked him about his life in the dope game. Coy boasted that it was much like the music career that followed. He was always known as the man with the "best uncut dope."
"What do you mean by 'uncut'," the prosecutor asked.
"I've never believed in adding any harmful additives," he said, his trademark swagger then still intact. The jurors were not impressed and the media sniggered later in the halls.
That was always one of the things that his fans loved about him. He "kept it on the real," as they put it, and did so with wit and humor. But these kind words were to come later. Coy's road to hip-hip glory was long and hard.
The first detour along this road, he said from the stand, was an ill-fated foray into Christian rap. After losing a live rap battle to a rookie rapper who didn't know half as much about the ghetto as he did, Coy swore off Christen rap for good. He started rapping about his life as a crack dealer and soon made a cassette he named Hillwood in honor of the South Park 'hood where he plied his trade.
Coy was a natural-born hustler, and he loved to sell himself. He sold Hillwood by the backpack-full to anyone and everyone who came in his orbit. When he wore his own 'hood out, he would load up another backpack-full and hop on a bus and ride it to the end of the line and do the same there. His brother eventually helped him by loaning him a car, and then Coy took his debut tape and his marketing genius to Dallas, San Antonio, Abilene and Corpus Christi. He was everywhere----at low-rider shows, swap meets, flea markets, or just hanging out in front of liquor stores. He wouldn't let demographics get in the way of a sale---little abuelitas got the pitch as readily as his contemporaries. If he couldn't afford a booth at a flea market, he would hang out in the men's room and peddle his tapes there.
Veteran Houston-scenester Dennis Marshman is no rap fan. The owner/operator of the Boat Yard's two incarnations is a rocker and honky-tonker to the bone, but even Marshman appreciated Coy's genius. "Musicians my son's age are always bitching about why they aren't stars," he said. "They blame radio, the media, whatever. I always tell them, 'Look at South Park Mexican. If you want to make it, that's what you gotta do.'"
Coy's persistence paid off. By 1997, he had Southwest Wholesale distributing his stuff for him. But he had slipped up early. About the time he was beating the streets with his backpack full of Hillwood dubes, he met Jill Odom. Odom fell head-over-heals for the aspiring rapper and ghetto legend. She later testified that Coy was her first lover, and that the two of them never discussed birth control. She wound up pregnant and gave birth to a son that the basketball-mad couple named Jordan Dominique, though Coy didn't give the boy his last name.
There was another complication factor: Carlos was 23 at the time and Odom was 13. He later testified that he had thought she was much older, although he admitted that he often picked her up and dropped her off at her Pasadena middle school. He was "always big on education," he testified. He hadn't known it was a junior high, he said, since her school was in Pasadena. He didn't know all the names of the schools there. According to Coy, when he met her she looked like a "party type" and she was known to have a weakness for wine coolers.
He informally acknowledged his son and sent Odom a few checks every now and then. He even offered to marry Odom, though the girl's parents quickly put the kibosh on the plan. Six years later Harris County constables served Coy with papers in July 2000 to formalize paternity and arrange for consistent child support. It seemed like an isolated incident a long time ago, and the local media ignored the matter. By then, Coy had two other children with girlfriend Gina Acosta: son Carlos jr., and daughter Carley.
That year on the Houston scene---Destiny's Child aside--Coy was the biggest thing going. He swept the first of two straight Houston Press Music Awards. He scooped a half-million dollar advance from Universal and released two new albums--Time is Money and The Purity Album. He garnered favorable write-ups from Texas Monthly and Newsweek, both of which heralded him as not just a rapper, but also as a de facto civil rights leader, a voice of the voiceless.
"A lot of Mexican-American kids have low self-esteem," he told Newsweek's Lorraine Ali. "I let them know that they can do more than just work like an animal for peanuts."
But 2000 was also the year his fame crested. He never broke through to the California Hispanic market like Universal hoped. After releasing Never Change in November 2001, Coy's affiliation with the major was over.
From a public relations standpoint, Universal could only have wished the deal terminated a couple of months sooner. Over a long Labor Day weekend, two months prior to the release of Never Change, Coy committed an outrage that, barring a miracle of appellate lawyering, will keep him in prison until 2022.
Keep tuning in for the conclusion of this riveting story.
STORY BY JOHN NOVA LOANS
Armed with a GED, Coy attempted to further his education at San Jacinto Junior College. He spent most of his only college semester playing golf, skipped all his classes and flunked out.
Next, he worked with his brother Arthur in a chemical plant. That fizzled as well. Coy's last straight job was much better-suited to his talents, if not his desire for wealth and fame. He sold perfume door-to-door and in mall parking lots. Coy discovered a gift for gab. He could cold call with the best of them. Still, he soon gave in to frustration. His bosses in this racket were getting rich while they doled out peanuts to their best salesman.
Earnings were better in the crack game, which was Coy's next addition to a not-too-impressive resume. Exactly how long Coy was a crack dealer is debatable. His sister said it was three months, Coy said on the stand it was less than a year. Others estimate it was longer.
Coy insists he was as much prey as predator in the crack world. He testified that he had been on the ground on the wrong end of a gun numerous times, eyes closed, waiting for an oblivion that never came. For whatever reason, the gangsters who marked him for death never pulled the trigger. Coy later attributed it to a sign---surely he was destined for great things.
But first, things go worse. Thieves stole a consignment of crack he was fronted, and Coy was left with a debt he had to pay either by coming up with the silver or taking in some lead. To cover the debt, Coy sold all the flashy cars and bling he had bought with his crack proceeds. He was back at square one, no better off than he had been when he was peddling knock-off perfume. To hear him tell it, his conscience was also gnawing at him. "I was tired of selling crack to your homeboy's mom," he told a Houston Press reporter years later.
Coy spent about a month hunkered down. His mother owned a trailer park, so Coy was loaned a mobile home in which to plot his next move. He subsisted on cold pork and beans and small loans from his brother. He didn't want a real job--he says he was too proud to work for the white man for peanuts. He wanted greatness, and he wanted it now.
But what was he great at? Not much. What he was best at was selling crack. He saw no alternative, he said. He was going back to the dope game. As he was dialing up a crack wholesaler, he abruptly lost his will. The phone slipped from his fingers. He fell to his knees and begged Jesus for a sign.
Jesus delivered. According to Coy's dramatic story, he picked up the remote and zapped on the TV. The first thing he saw were three huge letters. R-A-P. Hip-Hop was to be his destiny. Years later at his trail, prosecutor Andrews asked him about his life in the dope game. Coy boasted that it was much like the music career that followed. He was always known as the man with the "best uncut dope."
"What do you mean by 'uncut'," the prosecutor asked.
"I've never believed in adding any harmful additives," he said, his trademark swagger then still intact. The jurors were not impressed and the media sniggered later in the halls.
That was always one of the things that his fans loved about him. He "kept it on the real," as they put it, and did so with wit and humor. But these kind words were to come later. Coy's road to hip-hip glory was long and hard.
The first detour along this road, he said from the stand, was an ill-fated foray into Christian rap. After losing a live rap battle to a rookie rapper who didn't know half as much about the ghetto as he did, Coy swore off Christen rap for good. He started rapping about his life as a crack dealer and soon made a cassette he named Hillwood in honor of the South Park 'hood where he plied his trade.
Coy was a natural-born hustler, and he loved to sell himself. He sold Hillwood by the backpack-full to anyone and everyone who came in his orbit. When he wore his own 'hood out, he would load up another backpack-full and hop on a bus and ride it to the end of the line and do the same there. His brother eventually helped him by loaning him a car, and then Coy took his debut tape and his marketing genius to Dallas, San Antonio, Abilene and Corpus Christi. He was everywhere----at low-rider shows, swap meets, flea markets, or just hanging out in front of liquor stores. He wouldn't let demographics get in the way of a sale---little abuelitas got the pitch as readily as his contemporaries. If he couldn't afford a booth at a flea market, he would hang out in the men's room and peddle his tapes there.
Veteran Houston-scenester Dennis Marshman is no rap fan. The owner/operator of the Boat Yard's two incarnations is a rocker and honky-tonker to the bone, but even Marshman appreciated Coy's genius. "Musicians my son's age are always bitching about why they aren't stars," he said. "They blame radio, the media, whatever. I always tell them, 'Look at South Park Mexican. If you want to make it, that's what you gotta do.'"
Coy's persistence paid off. By 1997, he had Southwest Wholesale distributing his stuff for him. But he had slipped up early. About the time he was beating the streets with his backpack full of Hillwood dubes, he met Jill Odom. Odom fell head-over-heals for the aspiring rapper and ghetto legend. She later testified that Coy was her first lover, and that the two of them never discussed birth control. She wound up pregnant and gave birth to a son that the basketball-mad couple named Jordan Dominique, though Coy didn't give the boy his last name.
There was another complication factor: Carlos was 23 at the time and Odom was 13. He later testified that he had thought she was much older, although he admitted that he often picked her up and dropped her off at her Pasadena middle school. He was "always big on education," he testified. He hadn't known it was a junior high, he said, since her school was in Pasadena. He didn't know all the names of the schools there. According to Coy, when he met her she looked like a "party type" and she was known to have a weakness for wine coolers.
He informally acknowledged his son and sent Odom a few checks every now and then. He even offered to marry Odom, though the girl's parents quickly put the kibosh on the plan. Six years later Harris County constables served Coy with papers in July 2000 to formalize paternity and arrange for consistent child support. It seemed like an isolated incident a long time ago, and the local media ignored the matter. By then, Coy had two other children with girlfriend Gina Acosta: son Carlos jr., and daughter Carley.
That year on the Houston scene---Destiny's Child aside--Coy was the biggest thing going. He swept the first of two straight Houston Press Music Awards. He scooped a half-million dollar advance from Universal and released two new albums--Time is Money and The Purity Album. He garnered favorable write-ups from Texas Monthly and Newsweek, both of which heralded him as not just a rapper, but also as a de facto civil rights leader, a voice of the voiceless.
"A lot of Mexican-American kids have low self-esteem," he told Newsweek's Lorraine Ali. "I let them know that they can do more than just work like an animal for peanuts."
But 2000 was also the year his fame crested. He never broke through to the California Hispanic market like Universal hoped. After releasing Never Change in November 2001, Coy's affiliation with the major was over.
From a public relations standpoint, Universal could only have wished the deal terminated a couple of months sooner. Over a long Labor Day weekend, two months prior to the release of Never Change, Coy committed an outrage that, barring a miracle of appellate lawyering, will keep him in prison until 2022.
Keep tuning in for the conclusion of this riveting story.
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