Coolio DA’ Unda’DogG: Coolio Da’Unda’Dogg can describe the 80s crack epidemic in Vallejo from first-hand experience. He partially fueled it. He can tell you how drugs spread through The Crest like a modern day plague, and how even his mother fell victim to drug addiction. Not one to glorify crime or violence, Coolio was once a misguided youngster who learned life’s lessons the hard way. Graduating from drugs to armed bank robbery, Coolio was an instrumental element in the Romper Room capers of the early 90s and eventually spent five years in prison. Like J-Diggs, Coolio depicts a lifestyle of lavish living, an endless craving for cash, and a music career that often took a backseat to his criminal activities – until he had no other choice but to change. Why did you decide it was important to tell your story to the public? At first, we were all skeptical because some of those people were still going through cases. But we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t gonna harm us. My cousin is an officer and I asked him, “Is this stuff incriminating?” He said, “Naw, you can talk about anything you’ve been convicted for or charged with.” Plus, we wanted to [clarify] that Mac Dre wasn’t involved in robbing banks. The authorities painted Mac Dre as a gang leader. He expressed his thoughts in his music, but since you knew him firsthand, what was going through his head regarding the false accusations? Once Dre got wind of it he was like, “Man, y’all serious? Y’all not robbin’ banks?” At first he didn’t believe it. Other people started imitating [our] style of robberies. It wasn’t always us. We used tape on the shoes, tape on the weapons, tape on our wrists. We didn’t have ski-masks, we cut beanies and stretched ‘em out long so you couldn’t see our faces. They wouldn’t even know what color we were. I showed a couple [other] people our style and they started robbing everything, from hotels to pizza parlors to nail salons. Now you’ve got these imitation robberies blamed on us. When Dre made the song “Punk Police” it brought more attention on him. But he wasn’t involved in the actual robberies. None of the money was ever used to fund his career. Kari was Mac Dre’s executive producer, so no bank [robbery] money was used for Mac Dre’s music. What was going through your head the first time you robbed a bank? The first time I robbed a bank I didn’t go in; I was the driver. One of my friends got in my car with a wad of brand new money and said he robbed a bank and wanted to hit another one. We picked up another friend and went to the bank. I’m in the car waiting and I hear these sirens coming. I’m automatically thinking we’re caught, but they made it to the car with the money. I saw the police coming towards me and ducked down. I headed towards the freeway. I was nervous as hell but once we made it back to his house, we counted the money and it was like $17,000. 68 // OZONE MAG
When did you get up the nerve to go into the bank yourself? A few weeks later. It was probably the biggest adrenaline rush I ever had. I felt comfortable knowing we could get away with it. I was more nervous the first time [as a driver] than I was actually going into the bank. I went in and grabbed all the money out the drawer. My friend was pretty much just barking all the orders so I didn’t have to say much. We got the money and ran out. That time we had about $47,000. Where did the money from the robberies end up? Did you ball out or end up having to turn it over to the authorities? For my 18th birthday I bought two cars on the same day. We were buyin’ jewelry, clothes, just havin’ fun. I was also running my company. I’ve had my business license since I was 18. Some of my friends’ money was going into cars and getting [sound systems] and rims for their cars. But none of the money ever went to Dre’s career. They tried to say that we were funding our music, that we were in debt, that we had drug habits, but none of that was true. We were just youngstas havin’ fun. Does the money overshadow the guilt of robbing people or the idea of getting caught? Yeah. Once you make it home and count the money, you don’t think about the people ‘cause you haven’t physically hurt anyone. You don’t think about getting caught if you already got away. The only time I felt remorse over the people in the bank was when I got arrested. I started reading that some of the people were traumatized. I told my homeboy, “I wish I could apologize to these people.” I reflected back on it and was like, wow, I really scared the life outta people, pointing a gun in somebody’s face. How did you get caught and how much time did you serve? I got took down on July 14th, 1992. We robbed a bank in Richmond and they was pretty much already on us. When we come out of the bank, we get in the car and duck down. My friend is drivin’ and he’s like, “Man, the police are behind us in an unmarked car!” We were like, “Just keep going.” All we heard was sirens and we were like, “Go! Don’t stop!” So we [drove] high speed through Richmond for maybe 15 minutes and then we crashed. Two of my friends got away but got caught later. Me and the driver got caught up on a chain-link fence and couldn’t move. That was the day I got took down and I did five years. When you were in prison, were you thinking about ways to change your life? The whole time I was like, I’ma get out and do my music the right way. I got my high school diploma, went to college for a year and studied law. I was getting books sent in about the music industry. I was already working on Cavvy R. Records off and on, but I wasn’t that successful. Before I got arrested I had released a cassette. I pressed up 2,000 copies of it and when I came home all those units were sold out. I had a check waiting for me. Did the publicity from the Romper Room capers fuel your record sales? When me and Dre got out, we started working on The Rompalation, and to this day that album has sold over 100,000 copies. We sold 10,000 copies in the first week. You’re from Watts and you moved to The Crest in Vallejo as a kid. Why did you relocate? I grew up in Watts and started getting involved with the Greg Street Crips. My mother had just married a guy from Vallejo, so they decided it would be best to relocate to the Bay Area. I was 15 years old at the
time. A lot of my friends were gettin’ killed, going to jail for murder, and joining gangs. My mother was like, “You’re next.” [Moving from L.A. to Vallejo] was like going out of the fire back into the frying pan. It wasn’t as hot. It wasn’t gangs in the Bay Area, and in Vallejo the murder rate was almost none. [My mother] figured the most I could get into was a fight. At what point did you establish yourselves as the Romper Room Crew? About 6 months after I moved to Vallejo. I used to sell drugs on Mark Street with my cousin. A guy named EB, the oldest in the bunch, stayed on Leonard Street. We used to hang out at his house. It’d be me, him, his brother, and Dre was just coming around then too. He wasn’t Mac Dre back then, just Dre. They told me he rapped and he came to my house and I was showin’ him some of my mixtapes we used to do off Whodini instrumentals. Dre was like, “Aw, you tight.” How did the crack epidemic affect Vallejo? When I first moved to Vallejo, it was actually only a handful of people who was sellin’ drugs. I was one of the youngest that was doin’ it. I helped some of the youngsters get in the game. I saw it progress in The Crest area in ’88 and ‘89 from one street to the next. By the end of ’89, the crack epidemic was huge in The Crest. You could buy drugs on every street. Everybody was makin’ thousands of dollars a day. What were the negative effects? My mother was on crack, and I saw some of my good friends’ mothers and fathers on crack. Our whole community was affected by crack, but like you said earlier, money overshadows the consequences. I never personally served drugs to my mother. But I actually saw people sell drugs to their own mother and father; brothers and sisters. And their excuse was, “Well, they’re gonna get it from somebody so I might as well make the money.” Was your mother able to overcome addiction? Yeah, it took her a few years. My mother left immediately after she came to Vallejo. It was like she dumped me off and left with my brothers and sisters. They all went back to the projects in Watts. I was really taking care of myself. At 16 I was buying my own clothes, my own cars. What do you have going on currently? I just released two projects: The Rompalation 2008 and The Bay Boys Compilation. My Romper Room Gangster album is out as well. I have the “American Gangster” single on iTunes. I had that song in 2007, so when they contacted us to do the show I was like, “Aw, that’s right on time.” I’ve got 30 other titles in stores and on iTunes. For the American Gangster movie we’re gonna talk to the rest of our homeboys that still doing time. I’ve got my movie coming out this summer called The Unknown Legend. It’s my life story, growing up in L.A., from gangbangin’, Crips and Bloods, coming to the Bay and hooking up with drug dealers and kingpins, and staying clean for 12 years after getting out of the pen, to running my company. What do you want people to learn from this? My quote is, “A gangster doesn’t glorify violence. Violence glorifies a gangster.” So just maintain and be yourself. Don’t try to be like this person or that person, just do what’s right for you. Don’t look at me and say, “Well he was violent and he robbed banks and bounced back,” because you might not bounce back. You might get shot in one of those robberies, the same with selling drugs. I got lucky. Learn from lessons and make the right choices. It’s up to you what you learn from experiences in your life. //