Welcome in. It's so good to have you here for
today's custom -tailored deep dive. Yeah, glad
you could join us. Because we've got a story
for you today that, honestly, it feels like it
was ripped straight out of some surrealist movie
script. Completely. But it is entirely unbelievably
real. Just consider this contrast for a second.
How does a child actor, someone who is literally
casting a sunny smile on television alongside
Big Bird, grow up to face a life sentence in
a maximum security prison? Right. It's a massive
jump. Exactly. And how does that same person
survive being shot seven times in a single incident,
lose his mobility, and then eventually pivot
to become an Eisner -nominated comic book writer?
It is a mind -bending trajectory. Today we are
exploring the Wikipedia article on Percy Carey.
If you, you know, follow underground hip -hop,
you know him globally as the absolute legend,
M .F. Grimm. The Grim Reaper himself. Yep. And
our mission today is to uncover the unbelievable
resilience, the tragedy, and... And that relentless
creative drive of a man who literally turned
his scars into art. He really used reinvention
as a survival tactic. Okay, let's unpack this.
Because we have to start at the very beginning
to even begin to understand how someone navigates
all these different lives. Yeah, to really understand
the foundation of Percy Carey, you have to picture
the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1970s.
Right. This is the environment that shaped his
early years. He was born in 1970. And his introduction
to the entertainment world is just, it's one
of those lightning in a bottle moments that defies
logic. It totally does. It wasn't through some
aggressive stage movement or a massive citywide
casting call. The connection actually came through
his neighbor. And his neighbor happened to be
Morgan Freeman. Which is wild. It sets the tone
for the bizarre serendipity of his whole life.
Seriously. Morgan Freeman actually helped arrange
for young Percy to get cast as a child actor
on Sesame Street. This started when he was just
five years old, and he stayed on the show until
he was about nine, making his first appearance
in season seven. We are talking about the golden
era of educational television here, right in
the heart of a very gritty 1970s New York City.
There's this one specific anecdote from the source
material that just perfectly captures the innocence
of this era in his life. When Cary was around
seven, he had a dream about losing his tooth.
Pretty normal kid thing. Right. Most kids tell
an adult, the adult smiles and everyone moves
on. But young Percy Carey told Jim Henson about
this dream. The creator of the Muppets. Yes.
And Henson actually turned that dream into a
real episode. There is an actual episode of Sesame
Street where Percy Carey and Big Bird spend the
day walking around the street trying to find
his lost tooth. Wow. It's this incredibly pure,
crystallized moment on television. What's fascinating
here is the stark pivot that happens just a few
years later. This is where we see the first major
character shift. We go from this wholesome televised
innocence, you know, walking hand in hand with
Big Bird, to a much harsher reality as he enters
his teenage years. Yeah, the contrast is jarring.
It really is. He attended Park West High School
in Hell's Kitchen, and his time there ended abruptly
and violently. He was expelled after beating
up a high school dean. And the reported reason
for the altercation was that the dean allegedly
owed him drug money. It's a staggering escalation.
You go from Sesame Street to being expelled for
assaulting a school official over narcotics.
But right in the middle of this dark turn, there's
another vital picket happening. He's finding
hip hop. He decides at the age of 14 that he
wants to be an emcee. And interestingly, his
mother doesn't push back against this. She actually
supports his dream. She bought him his first
turntables and a microphone. And he didn't just
casually pursue this in his bedroom either. He
dove headfirst into the culture. In the early
90s, he even moved to California for a bit, formed
a DJ and rapper group called the Grabtagaz, which,
just as a note, is a separate entity from the
more famous horrorcore Grabtagaz. There was distinction
to make. Yeah, and he worked with the legendary
Rock Raida as his DJ. His raw talent was just
undeniable on the circuit. By 1993, he was making
serious waves as a battle rapper. He placed third
at the World Supremacy Battle that year. Which
was huge. Huge. To put his industry momentum
into perspective for you, he was performing at
major events like the Jack the Rapper Convention
in Atlanta on Execution Night. Oh man, Jack the
Rapper. Yeah, for those who might not know, in
the early 90s, the Jack the Rapper Convention
was the absolute epicenter of the hip -hop industry.
If you were on that stage, you were deemed the
future of the culture. Absolutely. We're talking
about sharing the spotlight with heavyweights
like Lady of Rage, Tupac, and Ty Dog Pound. He's
releasing 12 -inch singles like So Whatcha Wanna
Go? and collaborating with absolute legends of
the era, people like Cool G Rap, Curious, and
a group called KMD. He is building this massive,
undeniable momentum. He has a full album's worth
of material recorded for his debut. He's basically
on the precipice of mainstream success. He is
right there. And then we hit 1994. I think it's
important to prepare you, the listener, for the
sheer brutality of this chapter. In 1994, Percy
Carey was the victim of an attempted murder.
He was shot seven times by rival drug dealers.
And what makes that even more harrowing is that
the source notes he had already survived being
shot three times in a previous attempt on his
life back in 1986. Just think about the gravity
of that. Ten bullets in total, and he's only
in his early 20s. The physical devastation from
that 1994 attack is difficult to fully comprehend.
The medical fallout was absolute. He was left
comatose. He was deafened. He was blinded. And
he was paralyzed from the waist down. It's horrific.
And the tragedy extended far beyond his own physical
trauma. In that same attack... His half -brother
and manager, Jansen Smalls, was killed. Oh, man.
It's a total catastrophic collapse of his world.
And when you look at it from an industry perspective,
the music business is notoriously cold and unforgiving.
Very true. When doctors predicted that Grimm
would be paralyzed for the rest of his life and
that his senses would remain permanently dulled,
the industry math changed. Every single record
label that had been courting him for his debut
album immediately severed ties. Just dropped
him. Completely. He was viewed as a liability.
All that material he had recorded on his rise
up. Much of it was stolen or lost while he was
in that coma simply because nobody expected him
to wake up. It is the ultimate rock bottom. Trapped
in a coma, grieving the loss of a brother you
can't even attend a funeral for, your career
erased, and the people who wanted to profit off
your talent completely vanished. Yeah. But the
story refuses to end there. Grimm miraculously
recovers his full vision. He gets his hearing
back. His speech ability returns completely.
He does remain in a wheelchair, permanently paralyzed
from the waist down. But his mind and his voice
emerge entirely intact. Which, medically speaking,
defies the odds doctors have placed on him. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Because Grimm
doesn't just focus on his own quiet survival.
he pivots from being a solo performer to literally
lifting up others in the hip -hop community right
he takes all that surviving spirit and channels
it into becoming an architect behind the scenes
he steps into the role of an executive producer
and this leads us to one of the most important
foundational relationships in underground hip
-hop history You're referring to his bond with
MF Doom. This is a crucial piece of the puzzle
for the entire genre. Yes. They had been friends
since the early 90s, initially bonding over their
mutual love of hip -hop and comic books. Grimm
even featured on a 1993 KMD track called What
a Niggy No Remix, using the alias The Grimm Reaper.
I love that track. But the bond forged in the
aftermath of their respective tragedies is what
permanently altered music history. Doom, who
was known as Zevlovex at the time, had just suffered
his own catastrophic loss. His brother, DJ Subrock,
was killed in a car accident. Whatever in the
same time. Exactly. Grimm had just lost his brother,
Jansen, and his own mobility. So you have these
two incredibly talented artists, both completely
shattered by grief, both abandoned by the mainstream
music machinery, and they essentially barricade
themselves against the world and look out for
each other. We end up living together. Yeah.
When Doom is finally ready to reemerge from his
grief and create his iconic debut album, Operation,
Doomsday, the person facilitating that resurrection
is MF Grimm. It's amazing. Grim acts as the executive
producer. He fends the project. He supplies the
vintage samples that Doom flips into these iconic
beats. They record the entire thing right there
in Grim's basement. Right in the basement. Grim
even financed the release of KMD's shelved second
album, Black Bastards, ensuring his friend's
legacy wasn't buried by label politics. It's
a profound act of artistic brotherhood. Grim
is building an infrastructure from scratch. He
founded his own label. day -by -day entertainment
in the late 1990s, he put together this massive
Godzilla -inspired MC collective called the Monster
Island Czars, which Doom was an integral part
of. In 2000, they even released a collaborative
EP together on Brick Records, simply titled the
MF EP, splitting the record's material. They
were creating their own cinematic universe out
of a basement. But this is where the harsh reality
of the American healthcare system and street
life collide in a brutal Catch -22. We want you
to really imagine the immense pressure Grimm
faced here. He's funding these legendary culture
-shifting hip -hop projects. But he is doing
it while facing staggering, insurmountable medical
bills from his extended hospitalization and ongoing
care. It doesn't just pay for itself. Exactly.
So to pay those bills to keep the label afloat
and the music going, Grimm turned back to the
underground economy he knew from his teenage
years. He returned to drug dealing. And that
lifestyle inevitably catches up with you. His
organization was taken down by law enforcement.
He found himself facing severe narcotics conspiracy
charges. In the year 2000, Percy Carey was sentenced
to life in prison. Life. Yeah, he was prosecuted
under the Rockefeller drug laws. Now, to understand
the weight of that, you have to know that the
Rockefeller laws were notoriously draconian.
Very much so. They established strict mandatory
minimums, which meant judges were often stripped
of their discretion. If you were caught up in
a conspiracy, regardless of the nuanced context
of your life, you were facing mandatory, severe
time, in his case, a life sentence. A life sentence.
It's hard to even process the psychological weight
of being told you will die in a cage. Unimaginable.
But the way Grimm responds to this impending
doom is a masterclass in creative urgency. He's
out on bail before his prison sentence officially
begins. He knows the clock is ticking down to
his incarceration. And what does he do? He records.
He records his entire debut solo album, The Downfall
of Iblis, a ghetto opera, in a single 24 -hour
period. One day. That's all the freedom he had
left. That's insane. He pulls in production help
from Doom and Count Bastille, finishes laying
down the vocals, and then he reports to prison.
If we connect this to the bigger picture... It
highlights a man who absolutely refused to let
the physical confines of a maximum security prison
or a wheelchair dictate his creative output.
Right. Because the story doesn't stall when the
cell door locks. While he is serving this life
sentence, he creates a second album. It's called
Digital Tears. Email from Purgatory. And he releases
it under one of his Monsta Island Czars aliases,
Superstar Jet Jaguar. And the logistics of this
are what make it truly legendary. Oh yeah, he
didn't just write lyrics in a notebook and wait
for visiting hours. He actually created the drum
beats while locked up. Using a portable drum
machine that he somehow successfully hid from
the prison guards for the entire duration of
making the album. It's wild. The source material
doesn't even fully explain the sheer logistical
miracle of how you keep a piece of electronic
music gear hidden during daily cell shakedowns
for months on end. It really doesn't. It adds
this massive layer of mythos to the record. You're
in a highly surveyed, hostile environment, sitting
in a wheelchair, secretly tapping out complex
beat patterns on a smuggled device, writing an
album called Email from Purgatory. It is an unparalleled
level of dedication. Fortunately, the legal landscape
shifted. Yes. The Rockefeller laws faced massive
public and political pushback for their severity.
His sentence was eventually reduced. And in 2003,
M .F. Grimm was released from prison. Which brings
up a wildly poetic detail. He was released in
2003. Meaning that he heard his own debut album,
The Downfall of Iblis, for the very first time
only after he became a free man. Wow. Yeah, he
recorded it in that frantic 24 -hour blur back
in 2000, went to prison, the album got released
on his independent day -by -day entertainment
label while he was inside, and he couldn't even
listen to the final mixed product until he wheeled
out of those prison gates three years later.
Once he was free, his output became practically
superhuman. He and Doom collaborated again in
2004 for an album called Special Urges and Spices
Volume 1, where Grimm freestyled over Doom's
instrumental beats. Right. He released a compilation
of his older pre -Prison material called Scars
and Memories in 2005. But the project he drops
in 2006 fundamentally altered the scale of independent
hip -hop releases. The triple album, American
Hunger. It is hard to overstate the magnitude
and the sheer risk of this release. It was the
first 60 -track triple CD album in hip -hop history.
60 tracks. He conceptually divided it into three
meals, breakfast, lunch, and the last supper.
Keep in mind, this is 2006. This is the pre -streaming
era. Pressing and distributing a physical three
-CD indie album without the backing of a major
label requires massive financial investment and
logistical maneuvering. But this album also marked
a very painful shift in his personal life. It
signaled the public souring of his relationship
with MF Doom. The brotherhood they had built
in that basement during their lowest moments
fractured. On American Hunger, there was a track
called The Book of Daniel. It's a scathing diss
track aimed directly at Doom. Yeah, it's rough.
Ouch. So what does this all mean? You've been
a child star on network television, a street
-level kingpin, a survivor of 10 gunshots, a
battle rapper, a prisoner facing life, and an
executive producer who helped shape the underground
sound. That's a full life already. Where do you
possibly go from there? You execute the most
unique pivot of your career. You literally translate
your life story into a comic book, right? In
2007, DC Comics, specifically under their prestigious
Vertigo imprint, which is known for massive titles
like Sandman and Preacher released Sentences,
The Life of M .F. Grimm. It's a graphic novel
autobiography brilliantly illustrated by Ronald
Wimberly. And we have to emphasize that this
wasn't just a rapper doing a vanity project.
It was critically acclaimed at the absolute highest
levels of the comic book industry. Exactly. Writing
under his real name, Percy Carey, he was nominated
for two Eisner Awards in 2008, one for best reality
-based work and another for best lettering. For
context, the Eisner Awards are essentially the
Academy Awards of the comic book world. That's
huge. He also won two Glyph Awards for Best Cover
and Story of the Year. He took all of that trauma,
the street life, the prison time, and the music
industry betrayals and synthesized it into an
entirely different visual and literary medium.
And he just kept innovating conceptually. As
we move into the 2010s and 2020s, he drops these
incredibly dense cinematic hip hop projects.
Yeah. He did a trilogy with underground producer
Grazar Monumental called Good Morning Vietnam,
which explored the Vietnam War concept and later
introduced heroin as a theme. He released a concept
album called The Hunt for the Gingerbread Man
and then followed it up over a decade later in
2021 with a sequel, Get the Dough, complete with
animated music videos. It's brilliant. He even
put out a 13 -page comic book to accompany his
2010 album You Only Live Twice, the audiographic
novel. He essentially transitioned from a traditional
MC into an architect of these vast multimedia
universes. He refused to be confined to just...
Dropping 16 bars on a beat. It is a wild, wild
ride. Just to summarize what we've walked through
today for you, you have Percy Carey starting
as Big Bird's friend on the sunny streets of
1970s television. He grows into a battle -tested
MC and a street -level hustler. Yeah. He gets
violently gunned down, survives 10 bullets, loses
his brother, and ends up permanently in a wheelchair.
He rebuilds himself as an executive producer
who essentially midwives the solo career of MF
Doom. He gets hit with a life sentence under
the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. sneaks a
drum machine into a maximum security prison,
gets out, independently releases a historic 60
track album, and then completely reinvents himself
as an Eisner nominated comic book author. It
is the ultimate testament to the power of human
resilience. This raises an important question,
one I think is worth leaving you, our listener,
to ponder today. Absolutely. Throughout this
deep dive, we've touched on this recurring theme
of reinvention, specifically through the sheer
number of aliases he used. The source lists so
many distinct identities. Build and destroy,
given to him as a teen by King's son. Yeah. The
Grim Reaper. GM Grim. And of course, the monster
island czars aliases like Superstar Jet Jaguar.
Consider for a moment how in the face of profound
paralyzing real world trauma, adopting these
alter egos isn't just an artistic gimmick or
a clever marketing tool. Definitely not. Building
these cinematic Godzilla inspired universes might
actually be the ultimate psychological survival
tool. It allows an artist to step entirely outside
of a broken physical body to transcend the limits
of a maximum security prison cell or a wheelchair
and become an invincible, immortal character
in their own story. That is such a powerful thought
to leave on. Thank you so much for joining us
on this deep dive today. We hope this look into
the many lives of M .F. Grimm has sparked something
in you. Keep exploring, keep questioning the
narratives around you, and most importantly,
stay curious. We'll see you next time.