This idea that no one will tell the police anything, it’s not really practical and it’s not really the way things happen
Nelson George is a critic’s critic. If you’re an 80s baby, you probably can’t recall his literary feats that redefined the way urban music books are done: The Michael Jackson Story, Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound, and The Death of Rhythm & Blues.
But today, George’s name is wrapped around the credits for TV shows, and films. The 51-year-old writer, producer, and filmmaker, is currently executive producing BET’s addictive American Gangster series which tells the story of drug dealers and killers— from Frank Lucas to Larry Hoover— who are as known for masterminding criminal enterprises as they are for being the bedrock of hip hop folklore.
George called into VIBE.com to discuss the successful series (the second season is being released on DVD today), the “stop snitching” code and other upcoming projects.
How did you get involved with American Gangster? When I first heard you were involved with the project it wasn’t too surprising, [but] it was interesting.
When [Reginald] Hudlin joined BET, we talked about different things I might be able to work on, we kicked it back and forth and talked a lot about how to use black crime the way that really good Hollywood films use Italian crime. That is, how do you use stories of these criminals to tell a larger story of black society in the black world? And, so the idea of American Gangster came about from those conversations. People are excited by stories of how people become criminals, and also how people build empires, which a lot of these guys have done. The other part is what role does larger American society play in the role of molding these men, so far, in terms of their criminal activity? How much does capitalism and how much does racism play a role in the creation of these criminals? Thirdly, these cities. One of the best things about this show is being able to go in and do a profile of Felix Mitchell and really look at Oakland. To go to Philadelphia and look at the Black Mafia. Do the D.C. Sniper story and also do a racial image story, look at D.C. Look at how almost all of these stories deal with the conditions in these black communities in various times.
Was that the original plan, to look at the overall cultural context of it? Or did you guys go in saying…
That’s the only reason we did the show, to do the larger…to make it work.
As oppose to a character profile of who that person is?
If you do the character profile, it’s not the same show because you can’t really do any of these guys without doing their cities, because the particulars of each city effect who they are. I mean, particularly the history of Baltimore and its black community have so much to do with Melvin Williams, and particular strips where a black business was and where clubs were. Melvin Williams was such a product of Baltimore, as he says very explicitly in his piece. The particulars of the geography of Oakland played a huge role in Felix Mitchell’s career. I mean, that’s pretty much---you can look at the two Chicago shows…Jeff Fort and Larry Hoover. They’re both from Chicago and they’re both actually parallel stories. They were happening largely at the same time during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. And yet, they are completely different worlds because Chicago is such a vast city that these guys can exist with pretty complex criminal enterprises and not actually get too much in each other’s way.
When you guys were forming the show, was it hard to avoid romanticizing the criminals in a certain kind of way?
I mean, all you can do is tell what they did and the romance is gone. When you look at the Philly Black Mafia and the violence that was done under their name, when you look at the way crack and angel dust affected Washington D.C., when you look at the kind of pain that happened in Queens behind Kenneth McGriff, there’s no romance in that because you’re talking about people getting killed and people getting destroyed. Those who didn’t die of violence, or crack-related violence, you know, often had their lives destroyed by the drug itself. Their communities were held captive. I grew up and lived in Brooklyn all during the crack era and I saw areas that were working class areas and saw how they were affected by the crack trade, and once you get into the particulars of what they did, the romance is over.
What about hip hop though, Nelson, because in general it’s a lot of artists who reference gangsters; a lot of artists grew up hearing about these different gangsters. How do you feel about the influence that some of the people, who have been on American Gangster, have on hip hop culture?
The thing that’s funny about it is that most of the people who are referencing these guys—I mean, there’s always stuff about “don’t snitch,” there’s always… the truth is, there’s always guys who have snitched on somebody. And that’s just the truth. That kind of romanticizing of these guys as an immovable, you know, “don’t cooperate” guy, it’s a joke, it’s not true. Hip hop takes what’s out there, and certainly these gangster stories--Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas, Tookie Williams—these are people who are really well known in their areas. Felix Mitchell in Oakland and Rayful Edmond in D.C. are huge figures in their communities. They’ve become folk legends and folk heroes. I just think that any popular form of storytelling takes from what’s out there, the same way that Hollywood does it. In a strange way, hip hop is like Law and Order: something’s happening, you jump on it, and you’ve got to get some type of romanticized story. What I’m hoping is that American Gangster actually doesn’t do that.
The whole stop snitching thing—where do you stand on that?
If someone mugs someone or kills someone or did something really bad to someone, it seems ridiculous to not let the authorities know and try to let that person go to jail. So, there’s not much discussion there for me. Crime is crime, and if you’re in a criminal life and you’re feeling like you need to be loyal to someone, fine—I guess—but it’s not really the way it works. Over and over again we look at these American Gangster stories and almost every one of these criminals, from Rayful Edmond to Felix—I mean so many of these guys had to tell on someone. I mean, I always think Nicky Barnes is a great example. At the end of the day people make decisions based on whether or not they’re going to survive. And that’s how they do things. And ultimately, this idea that no one will tell the police anything, it’s not really practical and it’s not really the way things happen. People can wear the t-shirts all they want to. But at the end of the day, if someone’s going to go to jail for 20 years over a principle which is not really that…I mean the truth is, if you look at the Mafia, these guys talk all the time. And you talk about romanticized, that’s the most romantic thing out there.
Did any of the criminals that you’ve profiled on the show touch you on a personal level?
What pulled at my heart were their families. What pulled at my heart are the sons of these guys who never got a chance to know their fathers. The wives who had to stand up for them and then had to take care of these kids by themselves. That’s what was painful. All these shows and the emotional stuff are almost never from the criminal, or the guys convicted, even if they have remorse. It’s the people around them who were so affected by their lives, [like] Larry Hoover’s wife, who was a big part of Larry Hoover’s show. It’s not the guy himself, because he’s made decisions that simply affected his entire family.
What do you have going on right now? You’ve been in the game forever.
I have this book out that I edited called The James Brown Reader, which is a book I did with my friend Alan Leeds. We collected over 50 years of articles about James Brown, from the earliest thing we could find in 1959 all the way up to just when he died. Through his rise to articles in the black press, all the way to the ‘60s when he was discovered by white media and white audiences, through his height in the ‘70s through his crack fall off, and finally through his redemption when he was back onstage touring and virtually died on stage. He was still on tour when he got sick. So that book is out now, it’s been out for a month and a half; it came out on his birthday. I’m very proud of it, it’s the first mini-significant book to be written about this man who has had such a huge impact on black culture.
Any thoughts on black music right now? The industry is changing so much, with downloading and everything, style is going through a metamorphosis. Your thoughts?
I hear lots of great music, I hear lots of great artists, I just don’t hear lots of it on the radio. I just came back from London, there are great soul artists over there, there’s great funk bands throughout Europe. I heard a singer over there named Baby Charles, she’s a 28-year-old black woman who sounds like Lynn Collins. There’s lots of great music out there and it’s happening all over the country. I think the nature of how we consume music is changing. There’s always going to be pop stars that make pop music, I see a lot of great music related to soul culture out there, and I’m really happy about that. That’s what I really listen to these days. A lot of independent artists. I’m aware of what’s on the radio but it’s not what I find myself listening to.
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August 13, 2008 at 9:18 pm