bulletwounds The Last Mr. Bigg a.k.a. Diamond Eye (Mobile, AL) Where would people know you from? My biggest single was “Trial Time” - true story. I thought I was on my way back to jail again, so I had to hurry up and put out some music. Why were you in jail? I did four years in Alabama for second degree assault and robbery. That’s what made me realize that this is not something I wanna do for the rest of my life. People in there had kids and wives, but they were still coming back and forth to prison - getting out and coming right back in two weeks. I knew I couldn’t do that. When did you get out of prison? They released me in February 1998, on Valentine’s Day. A few months later, in August, an informant working for the Feds came to my house to buy a CD. He was wearing a wire. When he left, he told the cops that I had a large quantity of cocaine and a bunch of money laying around the house. They got a warrant and came back to the house and never found anything. They were trying to set me up. They put a charge on me for that. While I was waiting to go to trial, that’s when I recorded “Trial Time.” The song took off fast, and I was still going back and forth to court. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was still learning; I didn’t know the music game. I was just trying to get my point across – how easy it is for somebody to snitch, to make up something. I had four lawyers, and I beat the case. Now that we’ve got a little background on you, tell us how you got shot. A lot of people heard that you had died. Well, that situation happened at a time when I was making a lot of moves; good moves. A guy asked me to listen to his CD. I sat in his car with him and we rode around listening to his music. I felt like I’d made a good decision by giving him a shot, because he seemed to be an alright fella. I didn’t know what he had going on other than his music, because I didn’t know him like that. We rode around and I took him to the club with me to try to get his music played. We just hung out that night. When we left the club, we went by his mom’s house. He said he had to meet some guy that stayed down the street from him. I ended up getting shot twice in the face just because I was there. When everything first happened, I thought it was a set up. But when I came out of the coma, I still had all my jewelry and my money and my mink coat. If it wasn’t a robbery attempt, what was it? He was shooting at the guy I was with. The guy ran up and shot him in the face first, and as he ran towards the house, he shot him in the back. As soon as I heard the shots go off, I called my house. As the shooter ran around the car chasing the guy towards the house, the driver side door was open and he saw me in there slumped over talking on the cell phone. He got in the car behind me and closed the door. I threw my hands up, trying to speak to him, and that’s when he shot me. He stuck the gun to the center of my head and shot once. The second shot hit my left ear. Do you know who shot you? I knew who he was after I got out of the hospital and talked to the driver. If he’d died, I never would’ve known what happened. It was revenge; it was some beef those two had got into earlier, before I had met the guy. I was really in the wrong place at the wrong time. How did you survive two shots to the head? God. Nobody but God. I lost my right eye. The shot that came through the back of my head to the front blew my eye out. What went through your mind when the shot went off? My kids. The first shot popped my eardrum. I’ve been shot like six other times, but it had never came to the point where it could be fatal. When he popped the first two shots, the first thing I did was grab the phone and call my family, to tell my girl to take care of my kids cause I wasn’t gonna make it. She didn’t answer the phone, so I was saying all this on the answering machine. I’ve got it all recorded for my next CD. Did you lose consciousness when you got shot? No. I know it sounds crazy now, but I remember telling the ambulance 52
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driver, “Please let me take my coat off.” They were cutting off my mink coat. I was like, “Please don’t cut it.” They were saying, “We’ve got to cut it,” and slipping it over my face. That’s the last thing I remember. How long were you in the hospital? I was in the hospital for eleven days. I was in a coma for a week. When I got out of the coma, I didn’t know seven days had gone by. During the first couple days, word had got out that I was dead or wasn’t gonna make it. They said I’d be a vegetable; my personality would be all fucked up and I wouldn’t remember anything. The doctor said I got shot in the part of the brain that controls your personality and memory. The first two days, they thought I was gonna die. On the third day, they told my mom, “He’s gonna live, but we have to take his right eye or it’ll destroy the other eye.” It was hard for my momma to make that decision. She’s got a glass eye too so it just destroyed her. But everything connecting to my eye was destroyed, so she had no choice. Has your personality changed since the incident? Yeah, a lot. That’s the mental part I have to deal with by myself. You’re going to put the voicemail recording from that night on your album? Is the shooting going to be the main theme of the album? Yeah, I’m gonna put the recording on there, and maybe one or two songs. I’m not going to make a whole album talking about being shot. I did one song strictly about that to let people know that I was in the wrong place in the wrong time. I wasn’t involved in nothing fucked up. I been got away from that lifestyle. The rumor was that I was involved in a drug deal gone bad, and that’s not true. The purpose of doing that song wasn’t to make money or get a deal or get people to feel sorry for me for being shot. I don’t get down like that. I just had to let my kids know that daddy was not still involved in the same ol’ bullshit that he used to be involved in ten or fifteen years ago. I don’t have to use the fact that I got shot, because I’ve got talent and good music. Do you have a release date? Not yet, but I just finished my mixtape Diamond Eye. It’ll be in the streets in a minute. I’ve also got three songs on Three 6 Mafia’s new album, and I’m in the next video for “Poppin’ My Collar.” Why do you think you survived? What’s your purpose in life? It wasn’t my time. God still had something for me to do. He knew I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everything happens for a reason, so I’m blessed to be alive. I’ve been waiting a long time for the world to really see who I am. A lot of people have heard about me, but I’m a big mystery. They never really got a chance to hear me on a major level. After all that, I’m starting all the way from scratch, indie. Anything else you’d like to say? The Last Mr. Bigg is not dead. Once again, I am not dead. I am alive. Be on the lookout for my new album coming soon on PCP Records. - Words and photo by Julia Beverly