When Miami rapper Young Scrilla was shot in Overtown while making a music video a couple of weeks ago, details trickled out like a weekend baller trying to make it rain with Wingstop coupons.
Now, in a Crossfade exclusive, Dave and LT of TruStory Entertainment -- the bosses who threw last year's Rick Ross show at King of Diamonds and who run all things Scrilla -- are giving their first interview about the shooting, and it was a lot wilder than anyone thought.
"The only thing Scrilla is a victim of," Dave tells us, "is his own success."
There's also the matter of the drive-by shooting that sent Scrilla, LT, and a TruStory associate to the hospital with multiple bullet wounds.
See also:
-Young Scrilla of Tru Story Ent Shot in Overtown AK-47 Driveby
-Rick Ross, Big-Booty Strippers, and 3,000 Ballers at King of Diamonds (NSFW)
-TruStory, Ex-Cocaine Jackboys, Talk Doin' Business With Rick Ross & King of Diamonds
Watch for Dave and LT in this video for "Bugatti" by Ace Hood ft. Rick Ross & Future
A darkly colored car pulled up alongside the BMW in which the TruStory crew were idling, about to leave for the next filming location. The group was listening to a recently recorded Scrilla track, "Murda," when, "Boom, we get hit," Dave says. "I think that's what you might call serendipity."
"This is like a replay of 2002, when I got it in the same way," LT explains, referring to an incident in North Miami that left him with a bullet that is still in his neck. Dude's so hard that he's actually part-man, part-bullet. When he sneezes, it's like Yosemite Sam shooting up the place (cover your mouth, LT). "Last time, it was with a Glock .40, this time with an AK-47."
"There were 15 to 20 shots," LT continues. "I got hit by the third shot. I felt it in my back. Because I've been shot before, I knew not to panic, so I waited for the shots to finish, and in the dead silence, I see that Scrilla's been shot."
Knowing that the shooter was probably going to come around to finish them off, LT pulled Scrilla and his cousin out of the car. Scrilla, according to LT, "had his kneecap blown almost clear off" and couldn't stand. LT, who would later learn that he had a punctured lung and three broken ribs, pulled Scrilla out of the street as the car came back around. Scrilla was safe, but it was only "some spin-type shit" that kept LT from getting any of the four more shots fired and having his "head nearly rolled over by the car" on its final pass.
"The way they got Martin Luther King, they're trying to get us," Dave says. "Who knows who it was, but Scrilla didn't have nothing to do with it. He's an innocent casualty of war. Someone doesn't want us to make it."
"The more you panic, the more you bleed out," LT advises Crossfade readers. On the way to the hospital, he took off his shirt and applied pressure to the wound in his back. "No one knew I'd been shot until the other two were good and the doctors saw me holding my bloody shirt."
The third victim of Scrilla's success remains in the hospital with a shattered pelvis, according to LT.
But aren't the TruStory guys worried that whoever was in that car might try to finish what he started?
"I don't give a fuck about that," Dave says. "We're still going to get there. A lot of rappers talk about their 'street life,' but this is the real street. This is every day for us."
"We're going to keep persevering and be resilient," LT agrees. "That motherfucker still has to deal with TruStory because we're still alive. And now Scrilla is going to make even more hits because he's got even more stories to tell."
Some of those stories will be heard on TruStory's upcoming mixtape, I'm a TruStory, and the former road manager of Scrilla collaborator Future is going to help take the TruStory guys worldwide. "We've got a lot of industry friends who have been checking in, and that's just one of them. More than ever, people want to work with us," Dave says.
Touring is going to have to wait. LT tells us that right now Scrilla can't perform and can't even bend his leg. He estimates it will be 60 to 90 days before Scrilla is back on his feet, but he's already recorded a new track about the incident.
LT emphasizes that their focus is on the music, not on revenge. That, Dave tells us, would have been part of their old life. Now they see music and success as not only a way out of the lifestyle that put Dave and LT in prison for much of their early years but as a way to help the community that saw several other shootings over the same 48-hour period during which Scrilla was hit.
"These streets are the battlefield now, but they don't have to be," Dave says.
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