Dos Noun: The Rise of Bloods & Crips in Pittsburgh (Part 3)

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]A lot of times what would happen is like some kid would be like, "Oh yeah, you guys are wannabes. You're wiggers, whatever. I'mma come crush you and then we would pull up with like 30 kids from the hood and they'd be like, "You're crushing who?"

[00:00:14]>> So earlier you said that a whole riot broke out where it was 50 on 50, right?

[00:00:20]So can you help describe >> Well, I mean that was that was my high school at the That was my high school at the time though, bro. Like Homewood was still [ __ ] East Hills was still blood, Hazelwood was still [ __ ] Lurmer and Wilkinsburg were still Bloods. Like those tensions were very real. And you see that reflected in even, you know, like the Taylor gang because you look at them like I mean they're all cryp those are my a lot of them are boys like Lonnie whatever they're all very crypt coded like if you if you really like analyze the music and like see like how they move and you know like like you know how they're the rappers they're around and stuff like that like that was very real in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was one of the first cities in this part of the country. I mean, we got it probably right around when Little Rock did. Like, by the time Banging and Little Rock came out, they were banging in Pittsburgh, you know, like like like there's archival footage of Crips and Bloods in our city in the late 80s, early 90s. That was a very real situation. And while you didn't have to directly experience it if you lived in Squirrel Hill, if you went to public high school like I did, then you were going to see it constantly. And if you were friends with those kids, then you were going to have to walk those lines as well. You have to be very conscious about where you were going, what neighborhood, who you're with, whatever.

[00:01:38]Now it seems like a joke. I mean, I think probably to a lot of people back then it certainly was not. I mean, this is the '9s. The murder rates were through the [ __ ] roof. There are no cameras. There's no DNA. There's no cell trackers. None of that [ __ ] People would get kids would get killed all the time. Like you would leave for on Friday, come back on Monday, they'd be like, "Yeah, three kids got three dudes in the class got got got shot." And then the things that would happen in the neighborhood would get litigated in school.

[00:02:10]Like it would bleed back through.

[00:02:12]Someone would get shot out there, then there would be, you know, it wouldn't be a shooting in school, but it would be like a 50 on 50 brawl, you know, like a I mean, I've seen him in prison, you know what I like a a straight like you know like like gang pod brawl in the school. Tables getting flipped, teachers getting crushed, dudes getting thrown off staircases, whatever.

[00:02:34]And that was all the time.

[00:02:37]>> Did you ever join a gang early on?

[00:02:41]>> No. No, I never joined a gang. I You know, again, like there's limits, man.

[00:02:46]You know what I mean? like like I like I I'm from Squirrel Hill, you know what I mean? Now I said I always proudly repped my neighborhood which even led to conflict because there's a neighborhood right next to ours called Greenfield that actually had like a white street gang that went to my school. Like think of them as like the South guys, like souy Irish guys from like Boston >> and they wore like green like Fighting Irish [ __ ] Green Bay Packer stuff, green bandanas. They were kind of like a street gang, but they were also kind of racist. Like racist wiggers basically, but they were tough. Like it was it was a tough, scrappy neighborhood. It was not a rich neighborhood. And it bordered Squirrel Hill. So you already know they mortally [ __ ] hated us. So we would have to fight them all the time. Again, very like 1950s like Westside Story like at the basketball court [ __ ] you know what I mean? Like it was this stuff happened, you know, like it was uh it was the '9s, man. Like violence and strife and acrimony were a fact of life back then. It wasn't something that had to be manufactured for social media clout. It was something that just happened organically all the [ __ ] time.

[00:03:58]>> But you knew when you went to another >> I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[00:04:04]You knew when you went to another neighborhood, you didn't have to be in a gang. When you knew when you went to another neighborhood that if you didn't have an alliance with that neighborhood, even sliding through there, that it could be on at any point in time. That that's just the the way of it. I always used to say like every summer night felt like the [ __ ] warriors trying to make it back to Coney Island. like for us cuz we were like the eight dudes from Squirrel Hill who were like on that type of time going to different neighborhoods to go get high, go meet girls, like whatever. And then we're having to like dogle it across the city using like a mixture of like public transit, hoofing it, sympathetic rides, whatever. And then like alternatively fighting, running, running, fighting, fighting, running until we finally made it back to Squirrel Hill at like 5 in the morning.

[00:04:58]That was every summer night.

[00:05:01]>> But there was a lot of racial tension at that time too, right? Between blacks and whites.

[00:05:06]>> Yes, absolutely. And that was another reason why I think that a lot of the other white neighborhoods didn't like us because, you know, like we were we were with black people. Like I mean, we hung out with black kids. Like they slept over at our houses. We went to their neighborhoods and kicked it with them.

[00:05:23]Like we didn't have those. We weren't yinszers. Like cuz Squirrel Hill dudes like we're not white workingass Pittsburgh dudes. We're upper middle class Jews who live in the city. We're upper class Jews. So like we're not going to discriminate on basis of color.

[00:05:38]That's just wasn't wasn't how we were raised. It just wasn't the type of time we were on. We're more cosmopolitan than that. And that also bought us a lot of hate >> because oh not only do you want to be black, you're hanging out with blacks.

[00:05:50]Duh. But of course you already know the Darn's neighbors. They're not using those words.

[00:05:54]>> You know what I mean? So it's like so we we had d we had double duty like we had to deal with it over there and then we had to deal with it with like the other white kids who were jealous andor suspicious of how we were moving because of that fact.

[00:06:11]Now, there were also advantages, too, because like a lot of times what would happen is like some kid would be like, "Oh, yeah, you guys are wannabes. You're wiggers, whatever. I'mma come crush you." And then we would pull up with like 30 kids from the hood. And they'd be like, "You're crushing who?"

[00:06:28]>> So, yeah, you weren't really focused on school during that time. You were doing lots of drugs, ditching school.

[00:06:33]>> No, not at all. Not at all. Not I I never went I I I had a truency case by the time I was a sophomore. I think I had 90 absences in one class. Like I was never in.

[00:06:42]>> Holy [ __ ] >> Cuz again, there was no computerized system. You could capture the letters before they came home. You could leave the phone off the hook. They had truency police. They literally had a Pittsburgh.

[00:06:51]It was called the GP, the green police.

[00:06:53]They had a green logo on their car. But if you didn't get directly caught by GP, I mean there was just like back then again because before the surveillance state or whatever, there were just like thousands of truent kids just moving across the city every day going to the pizza shops, the arcades, the [ __ ] head shops, music stores, clothing stores, trying to get weed, trying to get other drugs, house parties in the middle of the ditching parties in the middle of the day at different people's houses. Like that was a whole culture.

[00:07:27]Like nobody was going We were outside, man.

[00:07:31]We're going to school. And And we had it and we had it even better. We had it even better cuz in Squirrel Hill, people are monumentally rich, like multi-millionaires, even in the '9s. So a lot of people's parents, they're going to Europe for like three months at a time and literally being like to their kid like, "All right, here's the credit card. Like [ __ ] spend for yourself, >> right?" So, like we would just we would be kicking it in mansions. Like I'm talking like literally like giving each other shotguns through suits of armor.

[00:07:58]And I'm not exagger being hyperbolic. I remember Tim putting on a suit of armor and having a Zulu spear and like we're smoking weed in in this girl's enormous mansion. You me in the middle of the day. Dude, I remember like kicking it by the pool and like whacking golf balls like off the pool like down the hill into other people's yards.

[00:08:20]We were just because those types of opportunities were open. You just do whatever the [ __ ] you It was the It was the best life. You just do whatever the [ __ ] you wanted to do. So, it was a great basis for becoming like a largecale organized criminal cuz like where were you going to go from there?

[00:08:36]>> You want to rein it in or you want to do this forever?

[00:08:41]>> You guys formed deadly scribes from that pretty much though, right?

[00:08:45]>> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

[00:08:47]>> That was awesome. You guys were the first backpacking group in the city pretty much.

[00:08:53]>> No, there were other ones before us cuz Strict Flow kind of was like that too.

[00:08:57]Uh RXC, um Rook and Bishop. There were other people that >> energy though.

[00:09:03]>> No, no, no. We I I guess so. We were we were like we were the first ones though that were like we are lyrically lyrical underground. Like we looked like the dudes from like the cartoon characters from the lyricist lounge insert. Like definitely like we and we were so earnest about it.

[00:09:16]>> You know what I mean? with the full echo camo suits and like spray cans tucked in our backpacks. Like we were very very Yes. No, we were like the backpackist backpacky backpackers of all [ __ ] time. And all of our songs were about that too.

[00:09:33]All our songs we're the most miracle MC's ever and going to restore the culture. So I can only understand why like an older dude would just be like ah these guys. But we could rap. I mean those we had two things in our advantage. We could rap. We could battle. And we did great live shows. We did. We had very good We practiced a lot together all day long. Whether we're when we weren't going to school, just walking down the street and organized too. Like in Mike's room with like shitty plug-in mics. We would run through our sets like to everything from the hand movements to like the way to hold the mic. Like we were really like trying to soak up game and be good.

[00:10:11]You know, back then no videos, no YouTube, no nothing. Your live show was going to be what sold you.