Man, what's the world coming to when even the southside drug dealers are pickin' Hillary over Smooth Barack? Dang! Noted southside Gangsterologist Lady E. hipped ol Ty to yet another tight Mark Jacobson New York Times Magazine article called the 'Lords of Dopetown', which features a very entertaining interview with both Frank Lucas (American Gangster) and his dope selling, Harlem rival, Nicky Barnes (Mr. Untouchable). That's Nick on the left and Frank on the right in the glossy. Both homeys are far cries from the brothers who portrayed them (Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Denzel respectively) in the recently released film 'American Gangster'. Not to be outdone, Nick is featured in his own documentary, Mr. Untouchable, which actually 'opened' a week before American Gangster (October 26th). Who knew? More on that and the interview after the jump...
First, big props to Mark Jacobson (his site includes a cool Charlie Rose interview with Mark, Frank, Richie Roberts and Nicholas Pileggi) for not only penning two tight articles on these characters - his original story, 'The Return of Superfly', was the basis for the movie - but for getting Nicky and Frank together in the same room to talk about their 'glory days'. Some interesting facts from the article aside from their thoughts on Hillary vs. Barack, Rudi Giuliani was the NYC DA while they were up to their shenanigans, Nicky was bold enough to appear on the cover of The New Yorker Magazine under the title 'Mr. Untouchable', Nicky is into the hip-hop culture that reveres he and Frank, Frank has no love for hip-hop but interestingly both men give much love to Sean 'Diddy' Combs pops, Melvin Combs...what's that about!?
I knew when I saw Cuba's portrayal of Nicky that his story was just as interesting as Frank's. Too bad, 'Mr. Untouchable' was a documentary or Cuba could have jumped on that as well. As it is, I hear that, after reading my post on his poor career choices of late (excluding American Gangster, of course), he finally seems to have things turned around. I also see that Forest Whitaker likes the Nicky Barnes story so much that he's executive producing a new Showtime series also called 'Mr Untouchable'.
Man, how'd two low a$$, old school dope dealers get so big? That's pretty sad actually, but my understanding is that both have repented somewhat, but still it seems to ol Ty that there's a long list of folks who should be getting (and are more deserving of) this level of attention - Dr. Ben Carson, Dr. Mae Jemison, - you know, regular folk. I guess it's like Prince said, it's a (sad) sign of the times...Peace@Least,
Tyrone
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