Ra Diggs & Uncle Murda: Putting the Lotion on the Rap Game
How a brain-damaged rapper outted a high-ranking Bloods gang member as a cross-dressing fruit.
“You don’t know what pain is!”
- Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb
As I imagine many a historian has encountered when studying other cultures, there’s a lot of dumb shit rappers have done that never got nearly the attention it deserved in its time, and is at the risk of being left out of the pages of rap history. Granted, I’m making the bold assumption that rap history will actually be written down at some point. If some of the completely blank pages in Kanye West’s book Thank You and You’re Welcome are any indication, the amount of illiteracy in hip-hop is staggering.
Case in point: Uncle Murda. For the uninitiated, Uncle Murda supposedly got a bullet lodged in his head in 2008 while sitting in a parked car in East New York (a.k.a. the part of Brooklyn where White people don’t live). He didn’t die, the bullet is just still in there, and instead of seeing a doctor he chose to self-medicate with malt liquor and menthols.
Murda is also the mastermind behind the 2013 rap song “Wu Wuu Wuuu.” Listening to the song, I’m led to believe that the two events are related, in that it may have taken nearly 5 years for the bullet to burrow its way deep inside the language center of Uncle Murda’s brain. I’ve reproduced the song’s hook here for posterity’s sake, so that even if a nuclear war destroys the planet, some future civilization can take solace in the unacceptable bullshit rappers were churning out circa 2013:
“Sheesh wu wuu wuuu wuuu
Come through like wu wuu wuuu wuuu
I get money like wu wuu wuuu wuuu
My bitch body is wu wuu wuuu wuuu
Sheeshe wu wuu wuuu wuuu”
More recently, Uncle Murda opened his mouth on June 18, 2014 to testify at the trial of fellow rapper Ra Diggs. Aside from being guilty of being Black, Diggs was on trial for three counts of murder and racketeering. Hip-hop fan that I am, I initially had no idea who the fuck Ra Diggs was, but apparently he’s a YouTube rapper who appeared on some tracks with Uncle Murda and Waka Flocka Flame, so I don’t feel as bad for not knowing.
What actually mattered to me was that prosecutors tried to use Diggs’ own rap lyrics as evidence against him in the trial. Apparently the courts don’t care much about witnesses’ rap lyrics, because the judge could’ve taken one look at the lyrics of “Wu Wuu Wuuu” and realized you can’t put a brain-damaged rapper on the witness stand in a murder trial, in all good conscience.
Regardless, I figured there was a dangerous legal precedent to be set, because rappers say all types of stupid shit in their lyrics. What’s the government supposed to do, prosecute every rapper who ever rapped about illegal things? I’m pretty sure that all things equal, Jay-Z is too pretty to last very long in the pokey, but he once shared an apartment with an alleged cornball male model / football player, and Lil Wayne has proven himself comfortable with kissing another on the mouth at least one time that I know of, so maybe they’d be doing some rappers who’re still on the down-low a favor.
At any rate, I did a little “research” on the Ra Diggs case. The New York Daily News reported that he’s a member of the Bloods, implying that he’s an actual bona-fide member of the gang, compared to some other supposed Bloods in the rap game, who shall be named. If the conspiracy theories are to be believed (they are), Suge Knight is another Blood who also managed to commit triple murder on Biggie, Tupac, and Eazy-E.
Though to Suge’s credit, it’s hard to figure out which team he really plays for (pause), even after searching the Internets for a good 5 minutes. Again, “research”.
The main difference in gangstaness between Bloods like Ra Diggs and Suge Knight lies in the fact that Suge suffers from a crippling (no pun intended) condition where you can smell the bitch on him from a mile away, according to the Wikipedia. In August 2005, Kanye West hosted a pre-VMA Awards party, after what was likely a long day of staring blankly at his computer, struggling to spell his own name correctly on his book cover. Suge was in attendance and, as is wont to happen whenever Suge Knight is in the same room as another rapper, there was a shooting. Suge took a bullet to the leg and was also robbed of his $150,000 diamond earring, as possible penance for murdering 3 legends of rap nearly a decade earlier. Karma’s a bitch, albeit a slow one.
When filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Suge had the audacity to sue Kanye for “mental and physical pain caused by the shooting,” rather than self-medicate with malt liquor and menthols. However, Suge also sued Kanye for the cost of the earrings he lost. Of all people, Suge must’ve been well aware that Kanye doesn’t have that kinda scratch, what with the way record labels like Suge’s often piss on an artist’s head and tell them it’s raining. Moreover, Kanye’s illiterate ass wasn’t gonna be cashing royalty checks off his fifty-some-odd page collection of blank pages anytime soon.
Also, I can understand suing for medical costs and whatnot, but Suge was awfully hung up on getting those earrings back, more so than an ostensibly heterosexual Black man typically ever should be, for fear of being labeled a fudge.
Thus, comparing Suge Knight’s errant behavior to Ra Diggs’ is where one might start to think that Diggs is, in fact, a bona-fide Blood gangsta. For instance, they had to beef up security with U.S. Marshalls around the Brooklyn Federal Court because there had been “multiple attempts to intimidate government witnesses” during his trial. All members of the jury had to be kept completely anonymous, and not even the judge knew who the jurors were. The prison also had to put Diggs in the hole, because he might’ve been the source of all the “continuing threats to witnesses.” Damn.
To wit, it seemed Ra Diggs might actually have been on some drug kingpin, Hannibal Lecter, I’ll-eat-your-face-if-you-convict-me shit, which is definitely gangsta. Kanye once said in an interview that wearing socks with sandals is gangsta, but had Diggs maintained his gangsta persona, he might’ve been well on the way to being mentioned in the same breath, because Lord knows Kanye can’t write it.
Well, it turns out that Ra Diggs is really more like rap’s version of Buffalo Bill. BET’s coverage of the trial (yes, they had coverage) notes that one of Diggs’ henchmen, Saquan Wallace, testified that on more than one occasion Diggs had cross-dressed as a woman complete with wig, lipstick, and makeup to run up on drug dealers who were disrespecting him. Diggs had also asked Wallace to cross-dress while putting a shoe – or stiletto, I guess? – on another drug dealer.
For me, this was the smoking gun. The threats against witnesses, murdering drug dealers who talked too much: Diggs and the Bloods were trying their damnedest to make sure that no one would out him, a high-ranking Bloods member, as a cross-dressing cornball brother, bringing the entire Bloods organization to its knees (pause).
Think about it. The Bloods had already dealt with Suge Knight painting the whole gang with six shades of bitchness because of his love for women’s jewelry, and now a few guys at the Gowanus Housing Projects were running their mouths about Diggs being a cross-dresser. It wasn’t as if they were just starting rumors, either – it was actually true. But in gangs and especially in hip-hop, you can’t let people on the skreets air out your dirty laundry; you have to murder them. That’s Public Relations 101.
Seriously – Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, had Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels as his biggest fan. Bernays probably killed more unemployed Jews than rappers have, but Lyor Cohen is still alive as of this writing, so there’s still a big opportunity for rappers to move their public relations careers forward and get on Bernays’ level. Just saying.
Enter good ol’ brain-damaged Uncle Murda, to put the final nail in Ra Diggs’ coffin. In response to several witnesses who said that Diggs traveled around the projects with armed henchmen, Murda testified, and I quote:
“Fair to say we all might have male groupies that hang around.”
Ew.
Uncle Murda also testified that Ra Diggs’ entire persona of being a rich rapper / drug kingpin was a front, stating that Diggs had to borrow his “girlfriend’s” (air quotes) car all the time, hold his recording sessions at the ass-crack of dawn to get discounted rates at studios, and spend $5,000 he didn’t have every night on bottle services at the club. All of this in the name of “maintaining appearances.” I kinda doubt Diggs’ girlfriend even exists, because why wouldn’t she be called as a witness to how piss poor he is? And with the testimony of Saquan Wallace and Uncle Murda, it’s clear to me what appearance he was actually trying to maintain: that of a heterosexual male rapper.
What’s tragic is that Uncle Murda’s testimony is the truth: he and Ra Diggs actively worked on maintaining appearances. Months before testifying at the trial, Murda starred in a commercial for PawnRite, a pawnshop chain with 5 Brooklyn locations. In it, he’s in the studio with his homeboys and in order to afford studio time, Murda suggests that they all pawn their jewelry, automobiles, and bikes (what kind of rapper rides a bike?) at the local PawnRite. He also can’t say a single word in the commercial without waving his hands around, so the bullet in his brain may be affecting his motor skills at this point. It must’ve been entertaining to watch him talk in court, at least.
And can you guess what song Murda was recording at the beginning of the commercial? None other than “Wu Wuu Wuuu.”
So not only does documentary footage exist of Uncle Murda’s worsening brain damage, but the PawnRite commercial proves Murda and Diggs were liable to make quick money-grabs to maintain appearances, covering for a shadowy lifestyle of cross-dressing and bufu-ing male groupies.
Unfortunately for Ra Diggs, Murda’s brain damage caused him to be incredibly dumb and go and spill everything in federal court anyway, which means all three of Diggs’ murders were for nought. Now Diggs is looking at a lifetime prison sentence after having his cross-dressing laundry aired out in federal court, and I’m sure the Bloods in prison won’t be too happy about it. But least they’ll have a new opportunity to “beat a body,” to use Diggs’ own lyrics against him (I’m running out of pauses to use at this point.)
If only Diggs’ lawyers had introduced Uncle Murda’s lyrics from “Wu Wuu Wuuu” as evidence to discredit the witness, then all this dumb shit might’ve been avoided. Instead, I’ve dedicated upwards of 2,000 words to the time when Uncle Murda tried to run a smokescreen on Ra Diggs’ male groupies and cross-dressing lifestyle, but ended up exposing him and Bloods as a big gang of fruits, just so it wouldn’t be lost among the annals of rap history. If I’m lucky, I’ll get mentioned in a footnote.
Rob Stiles is the editor of HoobityBlah.com, a site dedicated to rambling commentary on hip-hop music, politics, and the plethora of amazing videos on the Internets.
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