He Broke His Father’s Heart When He Reached The Highest Levels of Gang Culture—But Rescued It Through His Fall

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, a story from a man you don’t know that you’ll be happy to have met here, to tell the story of how we went from street crime to—well, let’s not give it away—but to a better life. Is Brule Curry. Take it away, Brule.

Where my life actually began? It is in Virginia, in Richmond, Virginia. That’s where I was born at. My mother was married to my father, who I’m named after. And they had gotten divorced when I was about five. And that was very traumatizing to me because how my father and my mother had it up was because of my father cheating on my mother, and he was hanging out with another son that was the same age as me. So instead of spending time with me, he was with another woman and her son. That was very traumatizing to me. And we moved back to Johnson City, Kansas, where my mother was from, moved in with her mother. And then my mother met my father—my stepfather, but I called him father because he actually fathered me. And I was the one that pretty much introduced him because as a kid, I would go to his house ’cause he lived across the street. And him being a very young Black man… I think at that time it was hard on African American man, you know, because they were still going through that period of how to be a man, you know, and to make the work and to make the money. So it was a lot of pressure on a man to be a man. And he was that, though he worked all the time, but he drank a lot, so that would cause a lot of fights with my mother and him.

Of course, I would get in the middle of it. And then my mother would use me, as I would say, as like a blanket, because when they would get into it, my mother would come to me and lay down on me and tell me things. At a young age of nine, I can remember, tell me how she’s gonna leave him, and tell me things probably at a nine year should not hear. Of course, when they would separate, I would see him come back through the door, maybe four or five days later. So I felt like my mother was always lying to me, you know, giving me this false hope of peace and some joy in my life. And the older order I got, the more fights me and him started to get into because he started to be jealous of my relationship with me and my mother. So that kind of tore the home apart, and I knew I had to leave. When I left, I joined the military, and I would have to say, the military’s where I start learning how to—how to sell drugs. I was in Fort Bliss, Texas. By Warrest Mexico Go. And at that time, you can just go across the border and, you know, get whatever you wanted. It started from there, you know. And I would learn how to get the drugs from one company to the other without me being really the one to be looked at as doing it. And I did that by, of course, manipulating people. I worked as a mail clerk for a captain, so I was able to move around freely everywhere and get to know a lot of people. And, of course, find out the ones who liked to do drugs, so… And I make sure they would get ’em through other women, friends I would know, or whoever. But I knew how to keep myself out of the main light of it. So as my military career was starting to diminish, and it diminished ’cause I joined the military to travel. And then Desert Storm happened. Through Desert Storm, my orders got canceled go to Germany. So I lost any taste to, uh, be in the military anymore. So I asked to get out early, which they gave me an honorable discharge. But by granted me that, I still had this shame on me ’cause I knew I disappointed my mother.

And so I was lying to my mother probably for a year, and I was kind of living place to place in Texas, friends’ houses, and her thinking that I’m working and I’m doing good. But really, I was doing really bad. So then I get a phone call, though, from my mother, and she tells me to come home, that my stepfather, he left, and ‘Come home, and I need you to help me and take care of—you know, take care of the house and be the man of the house.’ So as I come home once again, about three or four days later after I’m there, he shows up again. So this time I really was broken, you know, and… And I just felt like, man, she just—you know, I felt betrayed like my mother. I couldn’t trust my mom. I couldn’t trust anybody and everything. So I ended up moving out, having my own place, and I probably was a full-blown alcoholic at that time. Then I found my first baby’s mother, which I met—we got married, but we had a child. And that, when I first seen her, it was like I seen an angel, you know, like somebody who now I can love and care for and give her something different than I had growing up, and being very broke and feeling that pressure like I could see my father probably felt. I felt like I had to be a man to take care of the household. I started going out, and I would—I was still diapers from stores. I would do all this stuff, not to get into that street game—game that I knew a lot of people were getting into. I was. I felt like I was trying to find a way out, but it seemed like there was no way out, you know. But I had this newborn baby.

So I remember going to, uh, Calhoun, which is in Junjes City—is referred to as the ghetto, and I knew everybody pretty much in the city. So I hooked up with somebody from New York City that would go there, and we became good friends. So this is where my really… My drug selling began, and I remember starting just with an eight ball of crack cocaine. And my idea at this time was just to put food on the table. And I had to do this, you know, I had to do this so I can make it for my family. Well, of course, that led to—not the eight ball—led to oounces, and then it started leading to half kilos, and then, you know, from there, even bigger. So I start trafficking drugs. And then the people I hung out with, all of them were—they were killers. I mean, just be transparent. They were killers. They were drug dealers. And that’s all how they thought day and day, you know, day in, day out. As it grew that big, it really consumed me, you know, where it wasn’t no more about my kids; it wasn’t about my wife. It was really about me, you know.

And you’ve been listening to Brule Curry tell one heck of a story—a tragic story. In the beginning, you experienced, but so many young people experience in this country: too many broken homes, the divorce that chattered them, and the father who was hanging with another woman and hanging with another boy. And what heartbreaking thoughts that boys and girls around the country experience when they experience that. And then we learn about as inevitable—well, inevitable—broken family and his steps straight towards the drug life and drug trafficking. When we come back, more with the story of Brule Curry here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And we do it all from the heart of the South: Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can’t do this show without you. Our shows will always be free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to Our American Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That’s Our American Stories dot com. And we returned to Our American Stories and with Brule Curry telling the story of his life. When we last left off, Brule was telling us about his rough childhood, an unstable family, and so much more, including selling drugs. Let’s return to the story. Here again is Brule Curry.

If anybody knows about drug selling, to sell drugs in New York City, you can’t just—anybody can’t just go and sell drugs there. You have to have—well, we would call—a crew that had to have bodies, you know, that knew they would kill to keep those territories because very territorial. And I was just with that type of a crew that had a lot of clout. I remember being in New York, and I had a friend that had murdered somebody, and I was there. I witnessed it, but I helped him, you know. And I held that in, like I felt like part of it, but I wasn’t a part of it, you know. But I was going down real fast. They knew rap stars. I’ve smoked marijuana with famous people that being videos and even learning that in that industry, those guys were just as broke as I was trying to find money. They were hustling, but their hustle was selling albums. And we even had connections where rap stars would give us money to flip the money, ’cause when they get record deals, they give ’em this money to cut these albums, you know, and to cut these albums. They gotta pay that stuff back. That’s just a front to, uh, money up front to get the album made, you know. And this was back in the nineties. So, going further, being in, uh, New York, I had this dream that I was gonna get murdered, like at some—I was gonna die, you know what I mean? In this situation, I seen had this dream of these angels taking me off the block. And, uh, that’s the last time I went to New York. So I left out there and listened to that dream, and I believe that that was a warning telling me to stop that life. For less, I would—my life would go to death. But, of course, I didn’t stop, but I just stopped in New York City, you know. But when I first left, I, uh, went back to college and I tried to change my life and start with the drugs. But I started getting into other crimes.

So I started knowing club owners, dating high-profile—I mean, women who had money, you know, uh, lawyers. And they doing the most too, you know. But that’s where drug dealers make the most money. So, we being around these type things, it’s hard to get out of it. But I got into like, w-more of different crimes, like insurance frauds and different schemes with documents, you know, what I’m saying, to get money and different stuff like that. At this time, I’m like thirty years old. And being thirty years old, I’m with kids going to school that are like twenty-one, twenty, twenty-one, but I looked younger, so they never knew. So this is kind of where my AKAs started. And I started living by AKAs from—from probably thirty years older than my forties. And I would go by Emmanuel some places. I’d go by all these crazy names. And I laugh now because it’s like crazy how we can get so deep and the devil can get you so deep and lost from who you are in Christ. You know what you were created to do, you know. And he was just getting me so lost within myself of who I was, you know. And these women I would date, they would later sometimes find out who I was, because, you know, they—women were searching, they were searched for you, you know. And then they still would call me by their AKAs, you know. But, yeah, I dropped out of school with two classes left. And at this time, meth is really big in the scene in Kansas City. This is like early two thousands. I don’t know nothing about no myth, but I know how to make some money and I know how to talk to people. So that’s what I do. So I start getting with some big-time people that on the meth part. And I’m talking about like they would have businesses that would be twenty-four-hour businesses, but in the business they’re selling meth out of it and going to farms out here in Missouri, you know, where they would be making it on these farms. And I didn’t—this was crazy to me because I knew about cocaine, I knew about crack, but this was a whole other level of really poison. I took that to another level too. And, of course, when I go into anything, I go in to do it big, and that’s what I did. And I never forget when I left Kansas City. One reason why was because I felt like the Feds was on me. So I had my mail going to my auntie’s house because she lived in Kansas City. I never had nothing going to where I lived. Everywhere I would go, I felt like they were watching me. So I fled back to Judge, the city to my mom’s house. My mom knew something wasn’t right. I could tell, but I ended up finding a place, and that’s when I catched that five-year case. Because just all this stuff catching up with me: a guy had owed me money. So what I do is I send some guys to beat this guy. When I sent him to beat him up, I just have to be in everything. So I went to, and the guy got put in the hospital. He got beat up real bad, severely, that he had to be hospitalized. And that’s when he told my name that I did. So I went to prison that time for distribution and battery.

That really kind of hit home to me, you know, it did. But at the same time, only for a little while. I’ll get out again. And at this time, I met my third wife. And when I met her, she met me kind of liking the brink of me about to go in, you know. So we’re not married, we’re just kind of seeing each other. But when she sees me, she never—she was the first woman. After ten years, I would say, that I actually told her my real name. It really threw me. It, like, scared me, and I felt something inside, like, that this was somebody I was gonna get married to. That’s her, you know. I never forget thinking that it was different, not her like just to have a fling with. It was like her—like somebody who would be special to me, you know. I’d be around her with wads of money and buying stuff, and she never would question that. She never would be like—like, wonder, I don’t know. And that just threw me, ’cause I didn’t have respect for women, because I felt like all women just wanted you for your life, that wanted you for money, ’cause that’s what I did, you know, all the time, for all these years. But she—she seemed to like me for not just for money or who—what I did or who I was. So it was like peaceful to me. Okay. So, back up to the five years, I just—I just meet my wife. I ended up doing my prison time with the five years, but I’m not married to her yet. I’ve only known her for like about four months. And I’d go to prison, and this woman waits for me—actually, waits for me. M. I mean, like, I kind of did wrong by her. I really cared about it. But I still was doing—selling drugs and, and kind of showing her how to selling drugs, ’cause that’s what we do when we’re doing. We bring the mess to the house, you know. But, uh, she stays here and waits for me, and I—I come home. And, uh, she gets pregnant, and we have my baby, Brielle. And when we have Brielle, I have this dream. Brielle’s probably, uh, at this time when I had the dream, she’s probably not even a month. And I have this dream again, a dreams that—that come true, you know. And the dream I have is that sh-she’s in my arms and the police come to arrest me and I go to prison. So—so I tell my wife. I say to her—and I—I say to her, ‘Uh, wouldn’t that be something if I get arrested, you know, with her in my arms?’ And my wife’s like, ‘You’re talking to this craziness.’ ‘No, you’re not going to prison.’ ‘That would not happen,’ you know, ’cause I did stop selling drugs, but I was still using drugs and I’m on parole. And, uh, ’cause I would kind of go to people who I knew, ’cause, you know, when you sell drugs at that level, you still got your little people, and then they know, you know, they have respect for you.’ So kind of come through the back door and I do my smoke, my little weed, and stuff. So anyways, I get a knock on the door, and guess what? It’s the police! And they had a hunch that I had drugs in the house, and I did. I think I had just smoked—maybe who knows how long ago? Well, I had. I had the drugs underneath my baby’s bed—in the wrong place. And now looking at it, it sounds so bad. ‘He had it on the baby’s bed!’ No, I hit it there because you think people won’t go there. So I have my baby in my arms. The police come, and they get her, and I have to call my wife to let her know, and she’s left with this baby. And that really broke me. You know that—that broke me to pieces.

And we’re listening to Brule Curry share his story. My goodness, what a crooked course it took to New York City with his crew, because you got to have a crew when you hit the streets of New York! Back up, Muscle, and there he is. And he has this dream that he’s gonna get murdered in the city. There are angels that lift him up, and so he leaves New York, but he does not leave a life of crime. By the way, these dreams kept recurring. He meets that third wife, and he’s about to go away to jail. And when he’s freed, he talks to her about a dream that he’s getting arrested and his little girl is going to be separated from her dad in prison. What a horrifying dream to have! What a horrifying dream to have it! There he is, can’t shed that old life, still