VIDEO: NY Gangs Street Family.mov

REWRITTEN: 2026-05-12 21:39:34

SCRIPT 594 OF 686

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Yo, Fab let loose his first project, Ghetto Fabulous, on that day nobody's ever gonna forget, September 11th, 2001. By that point son was already making noise heavy in the mixtape world and DVD scene, building up mad street credibility. This drop wasn't just him stepping into the rap arena officially, it was also putting his whole squad on, the Street Family. Right off the rip, Fab showed he was elite with the pen game, going bar for bar with the heavyweights in the industry. Spots like DJ Clue's mixtapes and Smack DVDs became his proving grounds where he displayed his lyrical ability and threw up for Street Family. The crew was made up of his blood Paul Cain and a tight knit circle of day ones, rolling out as a collective of starving young lions ready to conquer the whole game. But that's New York for you, where spitting rhymes and street business intersect, it wasn't long before the gutter side of things started surfacing. Go for it, let me see you hit that, tear the face off the sun. While Fab kept his public persona squeaky clean, behind closed doors Street Family's operations started drawing attention for shit that had nothing to do with music. Consumer investigator Jim Strickland spoke this story and now he's first with tape of the crime gym. The video from the hotel's own security system shows two men getting away with the car, the victim now complains they're going to get away with the crime. This was this was my dream car. Beeves left there at Bargastgo's car crashed and trashed. His attorney just got the video showing what happened on that the bellman gave the keys to the wrong person. The mistake that White Hot Rod is Bargastgo's Lamborghini at quarter till five a.m. on January 31st, sources confirmed somewhere in this entourage is the rapper, Fabolous, as they leave the intercontinental. Outside two of the entourage, neither is the rapper, get the keys to the Lamborghini from the bellman. They climb in as if they own the car. The men soon drive off with the rest of the group following in the minivan. I would wonder how many crimes go at least unpunished when there's a surveillance video that shows what happened. We've obtained an email from a police detective who confirms the performer knows the suspects, but that DA Paul Howard would not sign off on a subpoena to the grand jury to force Fabolous to name names. The detective says there are no other leads. The Lambo is at a dead end. Are these guys going to get away with it? If I had to guess, I would say yes. How does it make you feel to say that? It makes me feel like Eric's not going to get justice. Bargastgo is suing the hotel. I did nothing wrong and to be forced into this situation where I have to pay an attorney now to protect my interest is just, it just seems wrong. While Howard issued a statement just before newstime putting the responsibility for this on the cops, Howard tells me police had promised immunity in exchange for help finding the car. He says, quote, I believe the integrity of the promise was more important than pursuing suspects. No response from the hotel's lawyer or for the publicist for Fabolous. In some grimy news article dated June 9th, 1998 titled, rap star Foxy Brown saved after failed robbery, the Daily News broke down another crazy story about a high profile home invasion that went down in Brooklyn. This time around it was Foxy Brown, her moms and two other people who got targeted in a wild push-in robbery attempt at their Prospect Heights brownstone. The incident popped off around 11 in the morning the day prior. The two intruders muscled their way into the spot but jetted out with nothing after Foxy Brown's mother Judith Marchand, she was 49 then, slipped out and dialed 911 from a neighbor's crib. At the time, police commissioner Howard Safer said the case hadn't been connected to the June 30 shooting of Wu-Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard who caught one in a robbery attempt at a Bedford Stuyvesant apartment. According to Detective George Nagy, the robbers rolled in acting like they were dropping off a package. Once inside one of them whipped out a burner and forced Judith into the first floor bathroom. Meanwhile Foxy Brown, only 19, her brother Gavin 20, and their homegirl Chattara Jenkins 19 were knocked out asleep. The intruders didn't touch nobody, but the shock of them being there was a cold reminder of the street element they couldn't shake, especially in BK's treacherous hoods. The boys in blue rushed to the scene thinking it was a full blown hostage situation. They ran up in the crib only to find no trace of the robbers, but grabbed Foxy Brown, her brother and their friend dragging them outside in handcuffs like they were the perpetrators. A 16-year-old neighbor named Justin Thomas told the post at the time that Foxy was heated, crying hysterically and rattled. She looked like she couldn't process what was going down. Foxy would later ride with detectives to the 77th precinct station house to give her statement while flipping through mug shots. Though no suspects were ever nabbed, word on the street was already circulating that this could've been the work of Street Family. It was information that there were guys going around in his group, particularly the group, that were going out there robbing other rappers. Their investigations with the robberies, robberies, Foxy Brown, home evasion, and it was also already another robbery with Busta Rock. So they used all of the week and they were probably following us around and stuff like that. I had a great buzzer and we got some hip-hop cops, you were saying. That was not a whole lot of talks. For the number of two reasons they had all along. What was the position of the weapon? No, the truth is for the early guys, it was in the car room. There were people that were in your crib at one point. You know, I don't know what type of relationship you might have with these guys, but that they were doing robberies on the other rappers. Have you ever heard of it? I don't know if it was. We had information that some of his guys that traveled with him were doing robberies of other rappers and they were taking chains and then gold and things like that and they were going to a jeweler and they were getting a jeweler to knock down the jeweler and the jeweler's resellant. There's a prominent hand jeweler that's been fencing stolen jewelry. What do you know about that? I've never heard anything like that. When they took to jewelry to a guy, when they get where he was in jewelry, he was involved in a murder in another state. And he was a prominent person so that became a really big problem because now you have always different units that want to get involved in some investigations that became like a problem. The FBI had to go to a lot more paperwork. Those long things that hadn't begun and eventually it just got pushed to the side. I just think it's guilty and for sure, you know what I'm saying? It's saying you're guilty before and then you got a clue that you're innocent. The charges being considered against tributes at that time and investigation time stole to what? These are the things that a lot of people don't know what stolen. One of, if not the main reason why Fab and his crew earned that grimy reputation was an incident that resulted in the tragic death of one of their own, 25-year-old Chamele McKinley. Chamele was the brother of Deuce ambassador and Roc-A-Fella affiliate Darrell Mr. Ruggs McKinley, who was a well known player in Atlanta's nightlife circuit. It all jumped off on November 23rd, 2007, outside the popular Duvet Nightclub in Manhattan. Chamele got caught up in a violent altercation that was reportedly ignited by an attempted robbery. According to the Daily News, McKinley tried to yank a $10,000 chain from another clubgoer who just so happened to be a rapper himself, Anthony Taylor, a fellow Brooklyn native. That attempted theft sparked a brutal confrontation and Taylor ended up shanking McKinley in the chest and back, leaving him fatally wounded. Taylor would bounce from the scene but was later locked up in Atlanta several weeks later and hit with McKinley's murder charge. By the time Fab opened his eyes the next morning, his face and the story were splashed across every New York newspaper. This incident cemented the perception of Street Family as a violent crew, turning Fab and his squad into primary targets of that shadowy police unit known as the Hip Hop Cops.

The Chamele McKinley murder marked a turning point, one from which Street Family could never fully recover in the eyes of the law and the public. What had begun as a tight-knit collective of hungry artists looking to make their mark on the game had spiraled into something darker, something the streets couldn't ignore and the feds wouldn't let slide. The robberies, the home invasions, the chains snatched off unsuspecting victims—these weren't just street tales anymore. They were federal cases, NYPD investigations, and FBI paperwork stacking up higher than the towers in Lower Manhattan. The legacy of Street Family is one of unfulfilled potential tainted by the gravitational pull of the streets, a cautionary tale of how fast ambition can turn to infamy when money, respect, and violence become intertwined. Fab went on to have a successful rap career despite it all, but the crew that rode with him in those early days would never shake the ghetto they came from. Street Family remains a symbol of New York's roughest era—when the line between hustler and rapper blurred beyond recognition, when mixtape fame could land you in federal court, and when the only thing separating a platinum record deal from a body bag was luck and timing.