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This Is Who I Am
It’s been a hard knock life for this forgotten Ruff Ryder. Still Drag-On has overcome more drama than Mary J. could stand and has returned to see if a platinum plaque is in his future. DMX’s little man has big plans.
XXL, June 2003
As Drag-On sits forward his chair in Negril, an up market Jamaican restaurant in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, he is drawing furtive glances and whispers from the other patrons. They stare curiously, not because they bought his first album, The Opposite of H20, or recognize him as the co-star of the Jet Li/DMX action thriller Cradle 2 The Grave. Rather, they’re probably wondering why he’s devouring a 12-inch Subway meatball sandwich without a hint of self consciousness.
Eventually, the server makes his way over. “You’re not actually, uh, actually supposed to be eating that in here,” he says.
“That’s OK,” the diminutive rapper assures him, popping the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth and taking one last satisfying sip of soda from his paper Subway cup. “I’m done.”
In the early 1960s, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy established a “charm school” for his artists. To the larger, White world, Gordy presented acts like Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Little Stevie Wonder and The Supremes scrubbed clean of the turmoil that gripped inner-city Black America. Today, that idea seems quaint. The blueprint for the modern rap star—typified by Drag-On’s mentor DMX—is someone does what he wants when he wants, holds his tongue for no one and rings up numerous run-ins with the law. Faith is practiced, always one-on-one, never with a minister playing intermediary. Justice, lawsuits be damned, is also meted out one-on-one. The violence inherent to this lifestyle actually works in tandem with the faith, as evidenced by the “Is there a heaven for a thug?” leitmotif. One could even argue that the upper echelon of the rap world, especially within the current 50 Cent mania, feels like a competition for the most anguished, dysfunctional back-story. And if that is case, then Drag-On has the makings of a star.
Drag-On still has a way to go. After an XXL photo shoot wraps near a housing project in the far reaches of Chelsea, a T-Rex—a futuristic motorcycle/car hybrid, owned by Drag’s record label, Ruff Ryders—draws more attention than he does, sitting quietly in his Audi sports coupe. Suddenly, though, one of the kids recognizes him.
“You were in Cradle 2 The Grave!”
“Do you know DMX?”
“Are you DMX’s brother?”
A pen is thrust in his face and he’s signing autographs. “I love when kids come up to me,” he says, white and green Subway packaging on the floor mats evidence of his illicit meal. “I sit and talk to them. I try to talk calm to them because if I get hype, they get hype and they start wyling.”
He has other reasons for trying to talk calmly. The 23-year-old South Bronx native has struggled with a stuttering problem since childhood. Surprising, when you consider his profession. Doesn't a speech impediment impede someone who speaks for a living?
“Nah,” says Drag-On. “As far as rhyming on the beat, I don’t stutter. I have, I have, I have... I have a hard time as far as just speaking, like conversation. It’s just hard. As far as just talking to you, just talking. There is a lot I’ve got to go through to get a sentence out. I got to really, like, think and sit back and organize a stutter. When you talk, you probably don’t have to think, you just know what you’re going to say. Me, I got to think and sit back and take a breath. As far as on the beat, though—I’m riding on the beat, the beat is like a wall that’s holding me up. It’s like a horse, I just sit on it and ride. If you took the beat out, it’s like me just walking.”
Mel Jason Smith was born 23 years ago to parents—15-year-old Terrie Smith and 23-year-old Melvin Marion Smalls—who’d already broken up by the time he arrived. For a time, he lived with his mother and his grandmother at his mother’s childhood home. His mother kept his father at a distance. After a couple of months, his father grew impatient to see his son. “My father kidnapped me one time and changed my last name,” Drag says. “So now I got his last name.” After young Mel Smalls was recovered and returned to his grandmother’s house, years would pass before he would see his father again.
His mother eventually got her own apartment nearby in the Bronxdale Projects. Putting food on the table was a challenge, though, and the want took its toll. “I didn’t like school because I was hungry,” he recalls. “You have to nourish the body so you can think. Me, I wasn’t really eating too well. So I wasn’t thinking about class, I was thinking about when my next plate of food was coming.”
Foundering in school, and unable to voice his feelings, Drag’s frustration often manifested itself in fisticuffs. “I was fighting a lot when I was little,” he continues. “I was just real emotional.”
Barely in her 20’s, Drag’s mother compounded the situation with an addiction to crack. “My moms was on drugs ever since I was a baby,” he says, shaking his head.
“She did pretty good for a while,” recalls Drag’s maternal grandmother, Daisy May Smith. “Then after a while she got caught up with those drugs and she just wasn’t able to take care of him. That’s how he came to live with me.”
At eight years old, Drag moved back to his grandmother’s house. The year was 1988 and he took solace in hip-hop, which was in its golden age. He loved Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane, but his favorite was Rakim. Emulating him at home, the stutter disappeared.
“It seemed like he was trying to write music all the while he was here,” says Smith, chuckling softly at the memory. “Sometimes I would check his homework and see some raps and rhymes stuff that he wrote on the paper.”
Soon, Drag’s passion for rap had him at odds with his grandmother. “I didn’t want the rapping to interfere with other things like homework, school and stuff like that,” she says. “I had this thing: I want him to be in at a certain time. The music would interfere with my curfew time.”
There was also the larger issue of his isolation from his biological parents. “He seemed like he enjoyed it here,” his grandmother say. “But I know often times he missed his mother and wished everything was OK with her,” she admits. “Most kids want to be with their mother. Then there came the day he was back with his mother, although things weren’t so [good].”
Back in Bronxdale as an adolescent, Drag watched his mother suffer through her addiction. He chronicles that period of life on H20’s “Life Goes On:” “There was a lot of shit missin’, talkin’ about she loaned it out.” It was a heavy burden for a teenager. “I couldn’t really deal with that situation,” he admits. “I was already stressed and it makes me more stressed, seeing her, watching her ruin her life like that. She didn’t really leave me; I kind of just left her.” At 16, Drag was trying to find shelter in pre-Giuliani New York City. Sometimes he would crash at a friend’s house, other times he would ride the subway all night, stealing a few hours of sleep.
After dropping out of school, Drag found a sense of purpose on Harlem’s famed 125th Street, where his uncle sold clothes and mixtapes with a 17-year-old from Washington Heights named Born. Born knew Darrin Dean, who along with his brother Joaquin, had started the production company, Ruff Ryders. Their first artist, DMX, was already burning up the streets.
“I always had confidence in him,” says Born, who now works as Drag’s road manager. Born began pestering Darrin Dean. “Every day I used to talk with him, ‘Like, yo, peep out my man, he’s nice.” So one day Dean was like, ‘Bring him to the studio.’” Shortly thereafter, Drag-On signed with Ruff Ryders, becoming one of the first acts to be distributed through their new deal with Interscope.
Released in early 2000, The Opposite of H20, sold a respectable 602,000 units, even while saddled with tepid keyboard beats and tinny, disposable hooks. He also had the misfortune of releasing a debut album around the same time as the first lady of Ruff Ryders, Eve, who had just become the down-ass chick du jour. “He was always the Ruff Ryder that no one paid attention to,” says manager Danny Lewis.
After the album, Drag faded from the spotlight. DMX helped secure him a bit part in the movie Exit Wounds (reading from a script, Drag is similarly free of his stutter) but his music career was on hold. “I was totally confused with the whole thing,” Drag recalls. “Ruff Ryders said one thing and Interscope said another.” The upshot was that neither party offered him a chance to release another record.
But while he says he never stopped writing, much of the last three years have been spent dealing with some serious personal setbacks. A set of twins was lost to a miscarriage, his mother has developed throat cancer, and he’s been in and out of jail on various assault charges.
He still struggles with his temper, losing control at times and lashing out in violence. “I’m not a bad person,” he says, voice unsteady, “just don’t make me nervous. ‘Cause then I start thinking that’s it either you or me.”
Most notably, there was the run-in with a limo driver who chauffeured him home from the airport in September 2000. “He was saying a whole lot of racial things,” Drag-On says. “At first, I let it slide. I told him, You’re whyling. You are not going to have to help me with my bags, even though that’s what you’re supposed to do, pop the trunk, and I’ll get my bags out. I told him don’t get out the car, ‘cause if you get out the car, you make me nervous. As soon as he got out of the car, I tore his ass up. I’m glad I whipped his ass, though. He deserved it.”
He feels a profound sense of remorse, though, about a 2002 incident at a movie theater that could have cost him his freedom for a long time. “A dude was following me on the highway. At first, I thought he was trying to race me. He was so close to my car, so I rolled down my window, ‘Fam you’re too close to my car. I’m not trying to race.’ I rolled my window up. I guess he must have gotten offended. So now he’s tailgating me. I stop, he stops. He gets out the car, I get out the car. [We have] words. I have a stuttering problem, so when I’m amped, I really can’t talk. I got back in my car and tried to leave him. He followed me to the movie theater! He jumps out with a stick like, ‘What’s up with all that shit you’re talking back there?’ So I had a chance to get to my car, pulled out a bat and I cracked him in the [head]. It come back to its either you or me. You got a stick, I get a bat.”
The incident, which earned him five years of probation, was a turning point. “I hate that that happened,” he says wearily. “After that I started going to church. I’m a heavy believer in God.”
Drag-On found his faith in an unusual place. A childhood friend who’d become a minister told Drag that he was praying for his salvation and that God would soon reveal himself to him. On a rain-slicked highway one night on the way back from the studio, a van swerved in front of his car nearly sending him spinning. But the words, painted on the side of the rainbow-colored vehicle appeared like a vision. “Jesus Loves You,” they read. Drag took it as a sign.
His faith has helped him come to terms with his parents, which is reflected in his lyrics. “My moms got cancer,” he rhymes on “Tell Your Friends,” an insistent, Neo-produced record featuring Jadakiss, currently gaining momentum on mixshows. “So I ain’t celebrating till the doc’s got an answer.”
“I let bygones be bygones,” he says of his relationship with his father, recently rekindled. “And he apologized. Now I’m close to my father.”
His father, who also struggled with drug abuse, is now clean and has a new family. “Her name is Amber,” Drag says pulling out a picture of his 5-year-old half sister. “I just met her five months ago. She’s beautiful.”
His career is going through a rebirth as well, thanks in large part to DMX. “X showed us so much love,” says manager Lewis. “He put Drag in Cradle 2 The Grave. That was the beginning of the road back.”
Ruff Ryders have a new distribution agreement through Virgin Records. Drag will again be the first artist released. His new album has the fitting title, To Hell and Back. “On my first album,” he says. “I think people didn’t get the chance to really know me. I don’t want people just to know Drag, I want people to actually know Mel. Once you know that person, I feel that you’ll automatically love Drag-On.”
You can feel the love in air tonight, as Drag strolls into a sweltering Chelsea nightclub for the release party for the Diplomats album, Diplomatic Immunity. Cam’ron and crew receive him enthusiastically. The room is thick with artists: Keith Murray, Nore, and Jadakiss, who rolls in a half an hour after Drag. As the DJ plays “Tell Your Friends.” Drag stands close to the wall, sipping a drink with his friends. He looks happy. But with Mel Smalls, the pain is never that far away. “He got the eye of the tiger again,” Jada says, admiringly. “His hunger and his pain is back in store in him, you know, so it should be a good look for him.”
In today’s rap game, pain is more than love—it’s big business.
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