SHMURDA LIFE — PART ONE…THE START OF THE BROOKLYN DRILL MOVEMENT

Bobby Shmurda was born Ack­quille Jean Pol­lard in Miami, Flor­ida, on August 4, 1994, the same year Biggie’s debut album Ready To Die climbed to No. 15 on the Bill­board 200 chart.

By all accounts Pol­lard (from here on referred to as “Shmurda”) should have spent his form­at­ive years in the sun­shine state.  But fate had oth­er plans.  Gervase John­son, Shmurda’s fath­er, was sen­tenced to life in pris­on for attemp­ted murder in Miami-Dade county.  Not long after Johnson’s sen­ten­cing, Leslie Pol­lard, Shmurda’s moth­er, moved him and his older broth­er, Javese, north to the toughest bor­ough in New York: Brooklyn.

Shmurda was barely two months old when he arrived in the bor­ough that brought us Fabol­ous and Jay‑Z.  The year the Pol­lards moved to New York, the city’s  crime rate improved slightly when com­pared to a dec­ade earli­er.  Crime was fall­ing across the city, for sure, just not as fast as it rose.  In Flat­bush where the Pol­lards would even­tu­ally settle, ser­i­ous crimes like murder were on the rise.

Around 10 years old Shmurda was intro­duced to Flatbush’s crack trade by his broth­er, Javese.  Shmurda’s intro­duc­tion to drug deal­ing came from a need to fol­low his big broth­er every­where.  If Javese went to shoot hoops at Pro­spect Park, Shmurda was on the side­lines beg­ging to dribble the rock.  If Javese was look­ing for a spot to lay out on Brighton Beach, Shmurda was right behind him, drag­ging the cool­er across the sand.  So when Javerse star­ted selling crack, it made per­fect sense for a young Shmurda to do the same.

It was 2004 when Shmurda sold his first vial of crack to a Brook­lyn fiend.  It was also the year rap­pers from the Mid­w­est and (to a great­er extent) the South began mak­ing their mark on the Hip Hop scene.  A year ago East Coast MCs like Lil’ Kim and 50 Cent dom­in­ated the Hip Hop and R&B charts.  Now the likes of Lil’ Wayne and Kanye West were the ones dominating.

South­ern rap’s influ­ence and pop­ular­ity would only increase over the next dec­ade.  As artists like Out­Kast and Jeezy ran rough­shod over the air­waves, Shmurda was run­ning the streets of Flat­bush with a crew that called them­selves GS9.

GS9 stands for “G Stone Crips.”  In a dec­ade, Brook­lyn Dis­trict Attor­ney Ken­neth P. Thompson would indict Shmurda and sev­er­al mem­bers of GS9 on 69 counts ran­ging from Con­spir­acy to Murder.  Six months before the indict­ment, Com­plex would ask Shmurda what it was like grow­ing up in Flat­bush.  The rap­per would respond, “[You] gotta be hard.  If you ain’t hard you ain’t gonna stand.”  That’s exactly what GS9 was com­posed of: A mot­ley crew of young males of Carib­bean des­cent hardened by the streets of Brook­lyn.  Based in East Flat­bush, the GS9 gang claims sev­er­al dozen mem­bers.  The more well-known mem­bers include Chad “Rowdy Rebel” Mar­shall, Rashid “Rasha” Deris­sant, Santino “Cueno” Bod­er­ick, Alex “A‑Rod” Cran­don, and Shmurda’s best friend, Tyr­ief “Shyste” Gary.

The activ­it­ies Shmurda and GS9 were involved in from 2004 to 2014 need not be men­tion in detail.  All that needs to be under­stood is this: GS9 did whatever it took to sur­vive the streets of Brook­lyn.  If a rival invaded GS9 turf, the gang was quick to defend it.  If money had to be made, GS9 made it by any means.  Some­where between defend­ing turf and mak­ing money, Shmurda spent a little over a year in juven­ile deten­tion for a gun charge.  The charges were dropped even­tu­ally, and Shmurda soon found him­self back on the streets.

Then, as anoth­er hot sum­mer came to a close, tragedy struck.

On Septem­ber 5, 2011, Shmurda’s best friend was shot while attend­ing a Labor Day cookout in East Flat­bush.  Shyste was shot in the chest.  Three oth­er men were hit too.  All four gun­shot vic­tims were rushed to Kings County Hos­pit­al.  Shyste was the only one who didn’t sur­vive.  He was 18 just sev­en months when he died.  News reports claimed mem­bers from a rival gang called BMW (“Brooklyn’s Most Wanted) were behind Shyste’s murder.  The N.Y.P.D.‘s gang unit would later claim sev­er­al shootouts between GS9 and BMW occurred in the years fol­low­ing Shyste’s death.  Like an old ghost these incid­ents would come back to haunt the GS9 crew.

While the beef between Shmurda’s crew and BMW cooked in Flat­bush, a heated debate was tak­ing place with­in New York’s rap cul­ture.  The debate was about cer­tain East Coast Rap­pers, and wheth­er or not they should cease imit­at­ing the sound of South­ern rap, which dom­in­ated the air­waves at the time.  Tru Life, a rap­per from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, argued both on and off wax that New York MCs should quit imit­at­ing their South­ern coun­ter­parts.  Far as Tru Life was con­cerned imit­a­tion wasn’t flat­tery, it was a vam­pire suck­ing the life out of East Coast rap.  The MCs that dis­agreed with Tru Life thought, in prin­ciple, that a rapper’s sound should not be con­fined to the region in which they reside.

This debate would con­tin­ue for years.  As it raged on,  Shmurda and GS — at this point vir­tu­al unknowns to the lar­ger New York rap scene — were exper­i­ment­ing with rap, cook­ing up a sound of their own.  Their exper­i­ment would give birth to a new genre of rap called Brook­lyn Drill.

In simple terms, Brook­lyn drill com­bines ele­ments of trap and Chica­go drill music with the sig­na­ture sound of New York-Style rap.  Today, Brook­lyn drill has reached Hip Hop fans across the globe thanks to artists like Sheff G and the late Pop Smoke.  But five years before Pop Smoke would per­form “Wel­come To The Party” and “Dior” at London’s Isling­ton Assembly Hall, Shmurda would release a track that many believe ignited what we now call the Brook­lyn drill movement.

That track was “Hot N—a.”

Stay tuned to Iamhiphopmagazine.com for “Shmurda Life — Part Two.”