Raw Returns

Raw contends he has always told kids to stay away from drugs. "I could've easily took all my dope money and bought a mansion on Star Island or driven a fancy car, but I didn't. All my money I put into hip-hop and to educating the shorties that there's a way out. When the cops came and took me, I was chilling in a modest single-family home. I was never proud of the shit that I did, but, man, someone was gonna do it."

On September 6, 1997, the Miami Herald ran a story about Hoodstock with the headline "Something Positive in the 'Hood." The next week, Raw was in a jail cell.

In a small apartment in Hialeah Gardens, Omar Islam sets up his mom's VCR. As he closes the blinds, he says, "Excuse the quality. It's been dubbed a lot."

Amid scratches and poor sound, a coiffed WSVN-TV (Channel 7) newscaster booms, "A popular DJ who served as a role model for kids in Wynwood was arrested today...."

The camera pans across 26 cuffed felons lined up in front of the Miami Police Station. Most are in boxers from the early-morning raid. Some cover their faces.

Then Raw, looking rather stoic and wearing no shirt, enters the lobby. Flash bulbs click.

"Why'd you do it?" asks a reporter.

"I guess it was just to bring something positive to the area of Wynwood," he says, his voice cracking.

"How so? How'd you bring something positive to the neighborhood?"

"I brought Hoodstock for world peace that gathered more than 10,000 heads — they come from all over the world.... My neighborhood has a lot of negativity and ..."

"What about the drugs? You were bringing drugs as well," she interrupts.

"Yes, I was bringing drugs in, but...."

Raw, Price, and Kurage were arrested September 16, 1997, after a yearlong investigation that included wiretaps, surveillance, and informants. The three were caught up in an operation DEA agents called "Wind-Jammer." The early-morning raid swept through Raw's North Miami home, where police found 16 kilograms of cocaine, 523 marijuana plants, $35,000 in cash, eight handguns, and two assault-style rifles.

Although many of the others arrested that day had closer ties to Colombian drug cartels, everyone's attention focused on one person. Newspaper headlines the following days read like a movie: "Idolized Inner City DJ Accused of Drug, Thug Life," "The Rise and Fall of a Legend in the Hood," "Good Guy Gone Bad or Great Pretender," and "Happening in the Hood Dashes Dade's Hip Hop Dreams."

Raw was initially charged with cocaine trafficking, conspiring to traffic cocaine, and selling the drug in a school zone. Undercover agents said they had purchased approximately 254 grams on three occasions at Raw's house on 115th Street, just a few blocks from Lakeview Elementary School.

He was held on $700,000 bond.

Over the next two years, Raw gave a series of depositions that led to multiple charges. He says he confessed everything because he knew the other 25 arrested would blame him. Raw hired private defense attorney Thomas Payne (who declined to comment for this story); he later settled for a public defender because he was low on cash and "didn't trust that guy [Payne]."

Finally, on September 9, 1999, he pleaded guilty before Judge Mark King Leban to racketeering and cocaine trafficking. The charges for selling coke in a school zone were dropped.

Kurage and Price both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to three years in state prison. Raw got 10 years. "I guess I felt relieved," he says about his sentencing. "I knew I had to go to jail to set an example to the kids that crime does not pay."

Price has his own idea about why Raw confessed. "He did it for me and Kurage so we would get a lesser sentence and so we wouldn't have to rat him out. He took the fall."

Raw's first four years were the most difficult. "When I went to prison, I was an illiterate — I could barely read and write. So I had to start with the basics, got my GED, and during my sentence, I took part in HIV prevention training and got seven certifications from the Florida Department of Health. I even created an HIV program for the Florida Department of Corrections."

Indeed records show Raw was an exemplary inmate. He received several awards for good behavior. With the help of a few guards, who wrote letters of recommendation, he was sent to a lesser-security correctional facility.