This is an article I posted way back on October 2005. I found it very interesting and I wanted to share it with the rest of the world. To this very day people from all over the world post comments about it. Well here it is again. Enjoy and leave your thoughts. Tony-C aka Heater 8/23/06
PART 1 OF 3
CAROLS COY WAS A SELF-MADE SUCCESS STORY, A HOUSTON KID WHO WALKED AWAY FROM PETTY DRUG DEALING TO BUILD A THRIVING RAP EMPIRE AND BECOME A ROLE MODEL TO THOUSANDS. THEN HE WAS CONVICTED OF AN UNSPEAKABLE CRIME THAT MAY KEEP HIM IN JAIL FOR A VERY LONG TIME. BY JOHN NOVA LOANS
South Park Mexican never did all that well with the critics, especially those from beyond Texas. The New York press said His 2000 Major-Label Debut "TIME IS MONEY" (UNIVERSAL) was "Bad, Cheap Rap" That sounded like it "Came from a Casio Tone Bank," While ALLMUSIC.COM dismissed it as "[not] worthy of National Attention." Fans on the national scene were not quite so blase, though their compliments were often firmly backhanded. "I think I have a new favorite wack MC," wrote a Usenet poster shortly after SPM'S first video began airing on MTV. "His style is nuts. It's like how a 4 year old would rhyme if he sold drugs and fucked hoes....He is the worst MC I've ever heard but that's what makes him dope."
Not that the haters brought him down. In five years, the rapper (who was born Carlos Coy) went from peddling homemade cassettes out of his backpack at swap meets, car shows and ice houses to running his own successful indie rap label, complete with a distribution deal with Universal. Between 1997 and 2001, he averaged sales of more than 100,000 units a year. About a dozen rappers were in his stable, and about as many more people (including his parents and siblings) were employed at his Dopes House label in Houston.
Certain classes of the people he came to think of as "his"---RAZA---loved him as they have loved few others since Selena. While the parents of his fans may tune in to Tejano or regional Mexican sounds, their children wanted something grittier, something street, something "on the real," and Coy gave it to them. No Texan rapper of Mexican heritage had ever done what he had done--deliver up gangsta-rap--La Raza- style with such flair and wit.
By 1999, Coy no longer saw himself as a mere rapper, but something like a Chuck D of La Raza. If hip-hop is the CNN of black America, Coy wanted to be the Telemundo of brown America. He boasted to one sold-out concert hall, "Before I'm done, MTV's gonna stand for Mexican television!"
But one bunch of critics had the power to bring him down, and that was the 12 jurors who heard a month of often graphic testimony in Judge Mark Kent Ellis' courtroom. It wasn't Coy's music they were trashing. It was his behavior, which included molesting his daughter's overnight guest, fathering a child with a 13-year-old 10 years ago when he was 23 and having sex with six other underage girls.
Their verdict: 45 years and a $10,000 fine. With TV cameras allowed in the courtroom for the first time, Judge Ellis read a speechless Coy his "review." "In my 17 years on this bench I have seen a lot of sex offenders, and there is one thing they all have in common. They are all liars, and you are no exception. You've lied to this court. You've lied to your family. You've lied to your fans with your so called positive raps when your own life wasn't right.
"The fact is, there is only one victim in this case and it is a 9 year-old girl," Ellis thundered on. "Now that is reality, and you need to deal with it. Time for you to face the music. "Bailiffs, take him away."
So ended the wild ride of a young, Houston-born man who gave voice to a huge and growing segment of the Texas population, a barrio Horatio Alger who was intent on becoming something more than just another gangsta rapper with a few hit records.
Coy's story began on the Southeast side of Houston, a working-class area by Hobby Airport. When Carlos was 3, his ex-Marine father Arthur walked out on the Family, though father and son have since entered into an uneasy reconciliation. After his parents' divorce, Coy's sister was left to raise him. According to Sylvia Coy, who describes herself as Carlos's "mother-sister," their mother was to proud to go on welfare. "We lost all of our cars-my mom went and bought an old car. Basically she always worked to save the house, and I took care of Carlos."
Sylivia paints Carlos as something of a wild child. He excelled at sports, and later, break-dancing. At the trial, he told the court that he once envisioned a career as a professional break-dancer. "When breaking went out of style, I was left with out a job," he chuckled.
In junior high, he says he showed a remarkable talent on the violin, though he never picked one up in his later musical career. In one year, he became first chair in his class. "I passed up every-body," he boasted in court. "Chinese kids and everything."
Coy's life changed dramatically when his family moved from predominantly Hispanic Southeast Houston neighborhood to African-American South Park. At Woodson Middle School, where he was a classmate of BRAD JORDAN (aka Scarface), Coy was the only Hispanic. He filed away the Barry Manilow and Charlie Daniels records of his youth and replaced them with RUN-DMC and MARVIN GAYE.
At about the same time, he started smoking marijuana and drinking beer. Trouble followed. Gang members beat him up for not joining with them. Other guys beat him up, he says, for stealing their girls. He was thrown out of Houston's Milby High School, when, as a 17 year old freshman, he slugged a female classmate. He tried to continue his education at an alternative school, but eventually threw in the towel. Coy explained his rationale to the Houston Press' Craig Lindsey in 1999. "One more year in high school," he said, "and I would have went to jail for fucking all those little young bitches."
In the punishment phase of his trail three years later, those boastful words would come back to haunt him. Prosecutor Lisa Andrews opened her cross-examination by reading them to the court. A juror actually gasped aloud. Coy was asked to explain himself. "Uhhhh, I may have said that," was all Coy could say in his defense.
More to come...............................
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