Bugzy Malone On Surviving Gang War, Jail And Being Stabbed With A Screwdriver | Minutes With

This episode of Minutes With features Manchester-born rapper @BugzyMalone, who was recruited into the notorious Little Hill Gang as a teenager. Bugzy tells us about his childhood growing up in the shadow of Manchester’s gang wars, how he suffered abuse at the hands of his step-father and the disturbing moment he was stabbed with a screwdriver as an 11-year-old boy. Bugzy reveals how the death of his best friend led him to write music from the heart and create a ‘blueprint’ for young people.

00:00 – 00:30 – Intro
00:30 – 02:43 – Manchester Gang Wars
02:43 – 06:26 – Stabbed By A Screwdriver
06:26 – 08:13 – It’s Kicking Off At Home
08:13 – 11:25 – The Fight
11:25 – 13:40 – He Pulls A Gun
13:40 -15:10 – Gang Became Family
15:10 – 19:22 – He Grabbed The Machete
19:22 – 21:49 – Jail Saved My Life
21:49 – 25:08 – Early Mixtapes
25:08 – 29:08 – Now He’s Gone
29:08 – 32:06 – The Blueprint for Real Strugglers

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Dame was my last best friend you know D sake over than my ex-girlfriend D was the last person that I trusted you know and I couldn’t get him back I couldn’t get him back in time and now he’s and now he’s gone [Music] I grew up in an area called crumel and life growing up was life going on was pretty interesting really in a way where by my my mom was doing her best to get me away from what was kind of going on in Manchester at the time which was a gangar um so I had family members that was involved in that and yeah I think my mom was trying to shelter me from it it’s interesting really cuz it was this one time where I remember getting attacked as a little kid I always bring it up to my mom but she says it didn’t happen she said she was watching me out the window but it was it was a little bit rough and then we moved from there we moved to a place called sedy Park I’m not sure exactly what was happening but there was some trouble there there was some we lived in like a flat we lived on the second floor there must have been problems with this these this drug dealing family um so that kind of kicked off and from memory what happened is they was in they was in AR flat one time and the guy the guy tried to drop a glass cabinet on me and it just missed and my mom said I was Brave and I just like ran over it and went into the house that must have been the last straw of some discrepancy my mom’s phone my uncle’s my uncles have turned up and flipping and the guy got mangled you know and it’s one of my earliest memories I remember seeing it out of I’ve got a song what song have I got got a song called the van go effect and I called it the van go effect because I’m trying to paint pictures with words to explain the situation um and just as a kid I remember hearing the situation I just heard the banging and the the Smashing and the screaming and that I reckon I was too young to know what I was see um and then that’s that and then we moved to then we moved to an area called presswich and then I went to and then I went to school up there where was your dad at this point dad went around had a stepdad from about 18 months old um so he was there but he was like working all the time did you get on with him like when I was young yeah when I was young there was a period of time where everyone just got on and my little sister was born she’s about 5 years younger than me um and then as the years went on there was big fallouts in the house it felt like my mom and my stepdad was breaking up for years you know and there was a lot of arguments and that kind of thing were you asking questions about your dad as well at this point yeah like as a kid like the kids in school were saying like how come you black how come you’re black and your dad’s white you I mean obviously I knew my dad I’ve been introduced to him but I I don’t I don’t know if I was interested in the technicalities around it you know just it just kind of was what it was my stepdad I loved him as a dad he took me to football training he got me Christmas presents without him I would have really got Christmas presence my real dad wasn’t like that you know but then what happened was he was he started to get quite nasty towards me I think in school cuz with mut to press which I was looking different got a song called m mem1 I say I’m in school looking like w Le Snipes Ben Sherman’s in a second on bike you get me so the the other kids was different to me they had a different family life all of nor North Manchester is kind of like that it’s kind of mixed lot of mixed race lot of black African Jamaican Asian Indian Pakistani Irish lot of Irish like in my in my first school no one was really poor people weren’t necessarily rich but they weren’t like us you know and it w until I started going to over people’s houses and there like carpets down and flipping it was like a nice environment I understood that we was living a little bit different it was an interesting stage really between year six going into year seven i’ stumbled across some some kids that was like like come out come and chill with us on this estate so I went to go onto the estate it was girls actually like girls seem to like me but boys was like threatened by me or something the girls was like come on to this estate and I went over there and the boys mustn’t have liked it and this one of the kids pulls out a flipping screwdriver and just start stabbing me in my legs and that and I had this second on bike flipping I don’t know if you remember the days when Tesco used to have like little advertisements you could buy a bike 4 qu second hand phone him up so I had this little U mountain bike and he pulled my bike off M he smashed it up I like got my bike I had to like run off basically um I found it quite embarrassing in fact I did find it embarrassing and I never so I never told my family I just like hid in the pants that I’d been stabbed in hid in my the fact that my leg was bleeding it I remember it being damp for days and sticking to my pants and all that to tell you the story of that situation it’s quite interesting so that kid that stabs me is in year nine or year eight when I’m just coming into year seven and he was after me in the you know when guys are looking for her their little group of guys was looking for me in the six weeks holiday so I stayed in for the whole 6 weeks holidays and go out and I didn’t tell my mom she’s like go out if you want and I was like nope I was scared and then by the time I got into school like a year went by when you just a kid in school making friends or whatever and then by about year eight year n this kid’s one of the toughest kids in the school now he barges into me in the in the corridor in the and and an argument kicks off but by this time I like he’s kicking off at home he’s getting quite violent at home but also happened in that six weeks holidays or just after the 6 weeks holidays my stepdad beat me up and he used to do boxing so he beat me up pretty bad and that had never happened before not really do you know what I mean he’d been like he’d been abusive and that but again like I I can only put the words abusive on it years later cuz really I loved him and really he was just telling me off but when I look at now the way parents treat kids he was a bit too far do you know what I mean he was angry for whatever he’d been through in life I just remember coming into the house one night an argument kicked off as it always would and um he stands up to confront me and just being in shock as a kid as a kid I’ve like pushed him back and he he just cracked me and that was that he beat me up pretty bad but my mom was in the room and my mom let him do it and walked out the room and I’m like 11 or 12 I could never and probably can still never wrap my my mind around how you would let another 11 12 year old kid get beat up and leave it to happen I just felt like um my mom could couldn’t love me you know and my stepdad wasn’t my dad and he’ show me that so I become a lone wolf and and and that was that that was that really and then there was a period of time what happened in this period of time was just to Rattle through it I find I find it quite deep you know I try to kill myself m that finds me I’m like hanging off this flipping thing he gets me down he flipping he’s there for me and that I go into school the kid that stabbed me we get into an argument he wants me a fight I say I’ll have you a fight like he’s he’s cool he knows how to kick off I don’t I don’t know how to kick off but I know I’m willing to fight and I’ve punched my punch bag when I’m in a bad mood so I’m not ready to go I turn up onto the his estate I have him a fight and I win this fight and was do there was a moment when I was fighting him I rang one of my friends he was like a kickboxer at the time and his brother was in the streets already he was much cooler than me and um I said I’m having a fight where you come with me he says yeah I’ll meet you felt like I am a little buddies with me and that we get onto the estate he’s flipping 40 50 people out there music drinking everyone’s like shouting the guy as if to say I’m there so I turn to my friend I say flipping I’m saying hit me hit me in the chest to to gas me up to have this fight he starts hitting me in the in the chest and that if anything it just scared me more for having this fight cuz I thought if that’s what punches feel like I’m in trouble um but then luckily the guy just kind of come out of nowhere tried to hit me obviously my stepdad taught me to Duck and he taught me to punch so I duck and I punch this guy and he flew back long story short I beat him in a fight and it was just a moment in a fight yeah You Ever Seen The Mask Jim Carry he’s on a fight in the in the mask yeah is how much of a nerd I was I was backwards at them times Jim car’s fighting and he starts beating this guy and he stops he goes I’m winning and like that happened to me in a fight like I’m on top of this guy and I didn’t know I had my Tempo was so bad all the things that have been happening to me at home and I had a bad Tempo but I never really let it out you know I remember looking at this guy and thinking right I’m winning and then obviously I got pulled up off him um and we just kept fighting we kept fighting and it was a point where he like bit me bit my arm and he bit my face I was kind of pulled him off me and kept fighting and then I bit him back and then I gouged his eyes when I gouged his eyes he screamed but when he bit me I didn’t scream so I started to understand that was tough you know I started to understand that like I could look after myself I didn’t have to just be a victim and what effect did it have on school and and life outside of well now I think I’m now I think I’m a kid cuz this kid’s that’s meant to be one of I remember going into school after I had a fight with this kid and some girl was like look there he is there’s no marks on his face and this other kid’s face must have been mashed up you know so so all of a sudden now the cool kids are touching me down and showing me respect well that was all too much for my ego so I thought I was double cool and um then when I did start to be kicked out like all the other kids had built a group friendship group grou I didn’t really have that so I just turn up by myself on a BMX all I really knew was like fighting on the streets the streets like scared me a bit so if I was turning up somewhere I’d be turning up to fight with one of the cool kids or maybe link up with someone that I knew from school and I remember one night on a park there was a gang called lhg little Hill Gang from where I’m originally from you know and where my family’s from but I don’t know none of these kids I maybe I’ve maybe come across them with my uncle I’ve never chilled with them and they used to just come on a part he used to beat everybody up and they used to flipping Rob everybody’s stuff and bounce and when he when he came this night I was like he aren’t robbing me cuz I was just angry and I just wanted to fight and flipping get into problems anyway me and this one kid we get into an argument I’m saying you’re not robbing me I had a mate that was there that I remember from school he had a little cor over I said no don’t run he didn’t run and then as me and this kid are arguing and you can see I’m not scared of him he pulls out a gun and as he as he pulls out this gun I’ve only at this point seen guns on television so I don’t understand the ramifications of getting shot you know so I um I said put that down come on the grass and I’ll smart your head and he’s freaking him out I’m not scared really I’m naive and he’s like he’s like I’m from cheah Mill I’m from cheah Mill crumel where where my first house was he next to cheah Mill all my family is from cheatah Mill so I started naming he’s like who do you know from cheatah Mill so I started naming even the straight members in my family and then when I got to a certain uncle’s name he classed my uncle as his uncle as well because of my uncle’s position in the hood everyone just respected him he give the kids money and that kind of thing and that was that that’s how I ended up up in a gang me and his kid made friends me and his kid started chilling and he was interested in making some D looking after himself as well and that was that you know we got to the streets the gang would come to get me from school so I’ve been like I’ve been like flipping geography and 15 man would turn up from cheater Mill balled up glove door looking for me and he just burst into my lesson he’d be like bgs come come and that was that do you know what I mean and then we’ just be and the teachers thinking what’s going on here and we just be out on the roads you know so quite quickly I was making myself at home in the gang you know I had nowhere to live my household was dysfunctional so I understood everybody’s home situation which is where when you see a lot of the stabbings and all that going on on the street that’s where it really kind of stems from is the the household being all over the go the gang became my family you know and I loved them and I would have died for them you know and and they would have died for me and what about um the police you have any Runnings with pleas talk yeah that was just like every week in it I was what you call a persistent young offender you know get that means I would get arrested nearly every week some of these kids was rougher than me tougher than me you know cooler than me but when I look back now a lot of their moms loved them so they had love at home and I I just didn’t have access to that so when they would go home and have like a family situation I’d be like tagging along with people which would just mean I was on the streets longer than other people and I would just get arrested a lot but I remember being in a few occasions where people have been stabbed to death you know and you just there between that and understanding the full story of my uncle emn1 I’m talking about my uncle’s face got tore out by the pellets of a shotg on night Frankenstein you know like as you hear in your uncle story and really I was trying to be like him I didn’t have a a father figure to look up to I didn’t respect my stepdad anymore my real dad wasn’t there for me he didn’t care he treated my mom bad I didn’t like it so my uncle became like the the guy that I really looked up to so I was hearing stories about him plus spending time with him and trying to be like him you know you see gang cultures are a b in them days it was a business it’s a game you got to be serious about the rules of the game if you’re not serious about the rules of the game you get your brain splattered you know so and I got caught slipping a few times I got my too I got my tooth punched out off an older guy one night had a couple of fights lost a couple of fights with a couple of older guys um got chased with guys trying to shoot us got arrested on attempted murder charge nearly done a long time in jail so a lot was going wrong because I wasn’t organized you know and then the more that I started to understand the way that my uncle had built what he’d built the more I understood that I wasn’t being serious about the whole thing you know I went to like a little gathering of my uncles and um I went in there I’m blacked out got my knife on me I’ve got my gloves I’m got my body with me like I’m in the game now a it and I’ve got a little rep reputation as a as a young guy people aren’t messing with me and really I’m looking at the my family I’m thinking I’m going to be the main one out of all the cousins I’ll be the one that takes our name up a level a long story short my uncle had had I tried to call a truce between two guys the two guys had turned up no one was supposed to bring weapons one guy brought a weapon he he blows the other guy’s brains out in my uncle’s house and that took an effect on my uncle’s mental health so then he said he was flipping lay with the guy holding his head together waiting for the ambulance to come at that time my uncle’s mental health was just kind of up and down and that so he used to snap and when he used to snap it was would snap bad I ended up saying the wrong thing at this discover him one night and I remember was this machete in the kitchen with like dried what looked like dried blood on it and flipping and I’ve said the wrong thing and he snaps I actually speak about this in my new in my latest album in my last freestyle I say when he pulled the Shetty out I really could have pissed my pants but I was young okay because I’m 15 it all happened in this short period of time and he he sends my cousin to go and get this machete because what he says is my punishment is I’ve got to lose a finger my cousin goes in obviously he’s scared and he likes me he don’t want me to get chopped you know and my uncle had done certain things so everybody’s really worried you know so then my my uncle picks me up and slams me through a table like puts his foot on my head I’m like flipping just on the floor I’m having to like grab myself so I don’t flip and piss my pants anyway he goes in he gets this machete he says put put your hand on the Bible put my hand on the Bible and he and he goes to chop my hand I pull my hand out I run away and for me just something changed in me man from that moment on I just like I stopped trusting anybody you know and then what happens in your gang is your gang ends up turning on you you are all turning on each other no one’s low in that life and I just kind of become like a lone wolf I had like one or two friends and after that I just decided like I wasn’t going to be f with again and um and I was going to make some serious money I earned some money I I save some money but then I got depressed I had a I had a boxing match when when I I went jail when I was 16 was in jail representing Manchester I remember just being s in jail and I’m feeling lucky that I didn’t I didn’t get much longer how much did they give you just under a year 16 so young offenders young offenders and what what had happened is in the court case he says one year to run concurrent with two years for this offense to run concurrent with another year by the end it racked up to like8 but when I asked the the the guard how long have I actually got he says on good behavior you’ll get out in under a year so really that was like I don’t know as a as a gang member you seen people get 5 years 6 years s years so in your head you think n if I do two or three I I’ll still have a life when I go out you just don’t want to do a life sentence in that I almost felt like jail kind of saved my life cuz it pulled me out of the streets when it was getting quite chaotic um and I made a plan from joil to succeed I had to I had to reconsider what I was trying to be a street guy for what had happened is I’d got carried away in the I got carried away in the the the lifestyle of being a gang member and what that basically is is you hurt people people try and hurt you somebody dies for no reason and I started to understand like actually I’m a hustler and then when I got to as I had the time to think I thought like why am I hustling I thought I’m hustling because my household hell where I come from there’s no carpets smell these arguments all the time over though um and actually I thought like I’m not interested in losing because I know where losing puts you it puts you in a place where you don’t want to come out of your house and you flipping you can feel suicidal and depressed if you’re not careful you know so at that point I already had trust issues cuz of my family so that sort of made me stop trusting anybody to be in control of my future so it’s at that point I decided to become the the designer of my own destiny you know I I decided to to plan it out and how it was going to look so then that’s what made me pursue music but I just wanted to get to a place where we’re talking about your dad again cuz you thought about fixing that with your real dad I never I never really spoke to him again in fact I felt like my motorbike had a bike accident I bleeding on the brain or whatever and after it had happened the news was was reporting it like I was I was dying and he phoned me and when I woke up on a hospital bed the nurse was like your dad’s phone I’m thinking which Dad’s this cuz I didn’t speak to any of them and when I and when we had the conversation I said Look by the way it’s all over between us I said even if they they come back to you and say I’m dying don’t come looking for me and I won’t come looking for you and that’s what I had to do I had to take had to take my emotional investment out of these dysfunctional people that was going to pull me down into hell with them music was in the beginning days where I was trying to make my career go off I think a lot of people they asked for me to put my old mixtapes on Spotify I think what people like about their mixtapes is I didn’t expect anybody to listen so if I was and when I was depressed and in a really vulnerable place I would just I would explain that in songs Just early stage of the music career like what what you where it started yeah like I live in this guy’s house and he had a brother that lived in London um his brother come from London I remember being in the kitchen this he’s so I feel so silly saying these things out loud I’ve never even said these things out loud and cuz I’ve been kicked out of my house I’m in the kitchen downstairs cuz obviously you feel uncomfortable when you living in someone’s house there’s a mom a dad there Brothers in there you SW stay out of everybody’s way right and I’m sad you know and my mate is my gang mate I don’t want to go crying to him that I’m sad I remember going in the kitchen I’m just crying to myself in the dark and the brother must have come down for a drink he switched on the light and see me there you know and and I was doing music at the time and he was like yo man just keep with doing your music you’re going to make it and that and that’s really what them old mixtapes were remember a song where the lyrics are something along the lines of a I used to believe I could trust anybody but now I feel like I cannot trust a soul and I’d just be in the bedroom I had a little box room and you’re literally talking like a bed and by the way I’m very grateful that they let me stay it was an amazing time for Mez I nowhere else to live and it was a little bed and then you talking half the length of the bed or the width of the bed was like a little walkway where you could just fit like your trainers you know what I mean and that was my that was my bedroom he said that he could just hear me there writing lyrics and that’s where a lot of my early mixtapes kind of came from and as time’s gone on and I’ve done better in my life and obviously fans have identified with the stories that I’ve told cuz I’ve been quite vulnerable about it and I’ve gone on to make money and study hundreds of hours of psychology and psychologically get myself in a good place like my head was gone like I was probably genuinely experiencing psychosis was a mad man unpredictable you know and I had to fix myself and it’s that simple I had to develop structure and build a business and earn some money and and build a life for myself there are circumstances and situations that you that that Do stand out that come out in your music like for example like you know your cousin passed away when my little cousin died D um I met him when I was about eight and what had happened is there was another black family around the corner from my mom’s when I was young and we must have walk past each other in the street and I was like Mom can can I go over to his house and and chill and he was called Aon we had the same name so he wasn’t my cousin because you you’re eight nine whatever the age was you call each other cousins right um so then Dane came over from Jamaica when we was about nine I could relate to I could relate to Dane more I had some money and a and a a decent life at the time but they understood struggle like I did when I got locked up they get sent back to jail because I wasn’t there to look after d so so so so so we had to look up sorry me sry so we had to look after himself and and um and he had a he has a fight with a guy and he wins the fight and he send him back to Jamaica and um he send him back to Jamaica and they told me that he was um I got out out of jail and I found him man I told him I I told him I was going to see told him told him I was going to bring him home you know I said I’m getting my money up I’m going to bring you back I said stay stay out of trouble man I said you make is dangerous stay out of trouble sake stay out of trouble and then and be careful you know and um and I remember part life one year before my career took off I got told that um they fell off the top of a bus and cracked his school he had bleeding on the brain and that he was um and he’d been he’d been in a a coma then he came out of the coma and I prayed I prayed to God and this man is stupid because I didn’t understand I didn’t understand the power of faith I didn’t understand the power of belief I didn’t understand the power of God so I I asked if if he can survive and he don’t have to live like a vegetable like Let Him Live but if he’s if he has to live like vegetable for for the rest rest of his life he’s got no Quality quality of life let him go and then part life came one year and I got called and told that you know his body couldn’t his body couldn’t handle it once he come out of coma um and and yeah he passed way Dame was my last best friend you know D sake D was the over than my ex-girlfriend D was the the last person that I trusted you know and I couldn’t get him back I couldn’t get him back in time and now he’s and now he’s gone people go on like I’m talented when really all that’s happened is I’ve kept going people think I’m handsome people think I’m in good shape that boy was all of that so yeah so I decided that I decided that I was going to make it my job to reach into the households of these kids you know and offer them some support um and explain to them how it’s done you got to learn to speak well you know cuz you don’t how can you get your education your mom’s an alcoholic your stepdad’s Bing you how do you do it so you’re going to get in trouble you’re going to have fights you’re going to end up robbing people you going to end up in a gang I I relate to all I understand all that but what I say is you’ve got to educate yourself find the things that you’re interested in learn to speak well build your principles so you’re not a scumbag a lot of my old gang friends the reason we fell out was I was back in the gang I was back in my friend because it’s like no one gets to hurt him cuz he backs me up so that’s why I was in gang violence I didn’t want to hurt no one for no reason even though it ended up happening you end up in these mad robbery and mad situations go down you know but then eventually you have to build your own principles and become a better person like people that don’t know my music will listen to my music and be like oh he just talks about the same thing all the times it’s not that I’m doing that I’ve studied hundreds of hours of psychology so what I do is I take my stories and I break them down and I put the details the nuances that the a therapist can’t tell you the government can’t tell you and I break down how you transcend that situation if your moms on drugs here’s how it if your mom was a prostitute if your dad was a drug dealer if your uncle was kill people whatever it is I understand being there and that’s what I’ve committed myself to doing that’s what my music is that’s what my new album is my new album is the blueprint for real strugglers you know because I get I get so many of these messages that I can’t help everybody so now what I try and do is with the fact that my mom taught me to paint and the own the the last good days of my life was spent painting I just try and take that artistic education what I’ve got and make artwork that’s why I speak down on these other rappers really I got respect for these other rappers but actually I believe none of them are artistic like I’m artistic none of them are creative like me none of them have come from the dark where I’ve come from and got to the height that I’ve got to that’s my that’s my whole argument and Within These works of art that I’m making goes over people’s heads sometimes but that’s fine I don’t mind cuz the people I’m trying to speak to they hear the message and I was a very sensitive kid um and I felt like I had to hide that from a really young age and being disingenuous especially with yourself like it’s growing up and not being able to be yourself is is unhealthy it’s it’s a really unhealthy start because you’re suppressing things from the get gu