Thug Life: The True Story of Hip-Hop and Organized Crime

From the penitentiary to the streets, it's on and popping. Thug life is more than spitting rhymes or hustling on the corner.

Thugs live and die on the streets or end up in the "belly of the beast." Rappers name-drop guns by model number and call out drug dealers by name. Gangsta rap is crack-era nostalgia taken to the extreme. It's a world where rappers emulate their favorite hood stars in videos, celebrate their names in verse, and make ghetto heroes out of gangsters. But what happens when hip-hop and organized crime collide?

From the blocks in Queens where Supreme and Murder Inc. held court to the neighborhoods of Los Angeles where Harry-O and Death Row made their names to Rap-A-Lot Records and J Prince in Houston, whenever rap moguls rose the street legends weren't far behind. From Bad Boy Records and Anthony "Wolf" Jones in New York to Gucci Mane and the Black Mafia Family in Atlanta to Too Short and Daryl Reed in the Bay Area, thug life wasn't glamorous. The shit on the street was real. In the game there was a common struggle to get out of the gutter. Cats were trying to get their piece of the American Dream by any means necessary. Drug game equals rap game equals hip-hop hustler.

In Thug Life, Seth Ferranti takes you on a journey to a world where gangsterism mixes with hip-hop, a journey of pimps, stick-up kids, numbers men, drug dealers, thugs, players, gangstas, hustlers, and of course the rappers who live dual lives in entertainment and crime. The common denominator? Money, power, and respect.