This story is true. Many of the names connected to these events have been changed to protect the guilty. Reader… Put on the offered seatbelt, helmet, and mouthpiece. You’re going to need them. As a boy in 1983, Isiko Muhammad El became an entrepreneur at age 11 when he made money hand over fist cutting yards on one hand, and on the other as a partner in the family business called Smiley's Handyman making home repairs with his oldest brother, Eric, and father, Larry Smiley Sr., all in the Woodbridge Edition of Forest Hill, Texas. In this same period, Larry Sr. moved his boys to the Forest Hill suburb of Fort Worth because he wanted his boys to experience the more progressive things life had to offer and he wanted them to know how to be team players and what it felt like to be winners. The Forest Hill Chaparrals was the champion little league team in the city almost every single year. Having an active DJ as a father playing music in the house from around the world and a musically inclined supportive mother created an itch for music that he could really never fully scratch. Isiko's father was transitioning out of entertainment and all of his DJ equipment was passed on to Isiko. Born Larry Smiley, Jr., the next year was a blur of a year for Isiko DJing in his room, making mixtapes, learning how to troubleshoot and repair his equipment, all while also continuing to learn to play music on a Casio keyboard. A friend, DeMargus Johnson, loaned Isiko a Synsonic Drums machine and from there the music really took a turn in a direction where money littered the pathway. Isiko started dealing with a local showcase producer who arranged for Isiko to make some money. Some money to the tune of $32,500. Isiko was paid to produce 8 songs for an artist from Detroit, Michigan. Took him two hours to do all eight songs. This showcase producer presented a bad contract to Isiko's dad for him and that first contract set the tone for Isiko's career. Back in the studio, the amber display light bulb burned out inside of the Sanyo receiver and was replaced with a blue bulb that cast blue light all over the room. This room became Isiko’s preferred place of peace in good times and his refuge when everything around him was influenced or outright ruled by crack cocaine. It’s the 1980s. A significant number of men and women in the Black community were addicted to this scourge and it greatly affected that first generation of children. Many of those children were sheep without wool and many of them were lions with huge hearts. Happening all around the country was the commercialization of Hip Hop, and along with it the demonization of these children—labeled as “super predators”— that were trapped in a world they were thrust into the leadership of way too early and adults classified and marginalized as vein-bangers and crackheads. All of this done intentionally and on purpose, mind you… Street organizations began a national migration. Some left Los Angeles because they were escaping the deadly wars their neighborhoods were engulfed in while others were escaping the madness created with and by and surrounding the CRASH Unit and Gang Injunctions. Some migrated as a consequence of their whole family uprooting to move to other cities such as Fort Worth, Texas. Many were not migrating per se. They were merely paying visits to cities and country towns to expand their drug networks and went into these areas to literally put boots on the ground there. And still, a significant number of ultraviolent gang members whom law enforcement claimed they failed in incarcerating due to insufficient evidence, many of them had help from the judicial system in migrating. This help came in the form of throwing these young men and even young women out of the state of California without regard to their actual family ties to the communities they were expelled from as well as the many others who just decided to leave on their own to get from under gang injunctions. All of these migratory situations and more put professional crack cocaine dealers in almost every major metropolitan area where there was a Black community. It is a strange coincidence that these migrations happened during the height of street organization shooting wars and the crack cocaine epidemic—the very same period of the rebirth of the Wars on Drugs and Gangs. By the time Ronald Reagan officially relaunched the War on Drugs in 1984, gang members carried Uzis, MAC-10 submachine guns, and semiautomatic rifles to enforce contracts in the underground economy. As President Ronald Reagan oversaw the “War on Drugs” in the 1980s, he simultaneously supported the removal of half a million families from welfare rolls, one million Americans from food stamps, and 2.6 million previously eligible children from school lunch programs. At the same time, violent crime increased alongside the zero-tolerance policing of the drug war and mandatory minimum sentencing provisions; together, these factors rendered mass incarceration a foregone conclusion decimating Black families already weakened by poverty and economic conditions conducive to their failure. These conditions bred a desire to be better in the Black community. Hip Hop culture galvanized the need to be heard giving rise to art that painted the pictures and vocalized the soundscapes of the streets across America. There had already been a split in the culture, however because the New York Hip Hop artists that took money from corporate record labels with absolutely no ties to the cultural artforms of Hip Hop thereby commercializing it were presented as Hip Hop whereas the originators of it all were marginalized as the “underground.” Be that as it may, Hip Hop—even the commercialized expressions of the culture—seemingly had no alternative but to give accurate accounts of what it was like to be Black and living in any metropolitan area in the nation. Isiko, at the time Hip Hop began its transformation from dance music to street culture art, was a moderately successful crack cocaine and Boy-n-Girl dealer as well as an ultraviolent and hustling Crips gang member. Isiko became one of the regulars in the almost nightly smash-and-grab burglary activities. Six car-loads. Mustangs, Firebirds, and Vettes. Suburbans, Goodtime vans, and Duallies. All stolen. The whole frontside of buildings ripped off and looted. Clothes. Sneakers. Guns. Furniture. Kitchen cookware and plates. Guns. Home and car audio systems. Guns. ATM machines. Did I mention guns? These young boys were into everything you couldn’t ever even imagine. And these little dangerous mutherfuckers was the enforcement squad for Willie “Bootnose” Morris – one of the most ruthless and richest druglords of all times in the southern region of the United States of America. A bunch of little hungry mutherfuckers, all of whose parents were addicted crack cocaine and therefore preoccupied with their habit. Public Enemy was yelling it takes a nation of millions to these young hungry children, and they heard them. But when NWA said fuck the police they were listening. Too Short was saying pimp that hoe – they were listening. Rodney O and Joe Cooley said this is for the homies and the parties started cropping up all over the neighborhood, the walls breathing in and out with each chant in unison with the music, they cried to the music, they laughed together with the music, they made babies to the music, they ran around like children to the music for they were being the children they were because they were safe to be themselves in these parties... These children didn’t know their parents were addicted to crack cocaine and heroine and powder cocaine. They knew something was wrong. They had no idea what. Their parents were mere shells of their true selves, strangers to their own children and unapologetic about their neglect. This was happening all. Over. America. When it became a reality that artists could form independent labels and release their own albums and then say whatever they wanted to say on the record, in large part due to labels such as Ruthless Records, the hope of thousands of artists to one day make and release a record of their own moved out of the realm of possibility into that of probability. One such label was N-Side Job Records. N-Side Job Records was officially announced as a sole proprietorship on January 3rd, 1995 at the Tarrant County Clerk’s office by one Larry D. Smiley whom was 21 years old. At the time of this official filing, Larry – as his classmates called him – was incarcerated inside the infamously deadly McConnell prison facility in the state of Texas. Delivery of a Controlled Substance Namely Cocaine. Auto Theft. Burglary of a Building. Robbery Causing Bodily Injury. Credit Card Abuse. Two counts Attempted Capital Murder of a Police Officer. Money Laundering. Several Murder charges… This child was 15 years old when charged and 17 years old when first taken to prison—one of the youngest in Texas to ever be taken at the time. Then, in 1994, 14 African-American men were killed by guard-supported Mexican gangs at this prison facility. Larry, or Youngsta-Young, as he was known in the gang world, an ultraviolent Rollin’ 60s Crips member, was sent into this prison facility on June 18th, 1995 – where 16 African-American men had already been killed. Isiko made it known that he wasn’t having it. The immediate goal was to assemble the affected parties for a much-needed heart to heart about what was going to be what from that point on and in no uncertain terms. It did not matter what set one was from. It didn’t matter what gang. It didn’t matter what part of the world one was from… What mattered was the opposition seemed to have its collective ass hanging out looking for African men. And Isiko was not about to get shitted on. After unifying the gangs, the house cleaning sessions began. If one wasn’t really on the set they claimed but wasn’t exactly a buster either, Isiko made sure these men were accepted by their sets and then fully brought up to speed on what exactly it means to be members of these gangs. Not one of these men knew the history of the gangs they claimed. Yes. There are podcast on YouTube today that cover the history of these gangs such as the highly respected and accurate Kev Mac Videos where the key players and founders document their experiences with other gangs and gang members. But the one aspect about these street organizations that even Kev Mac has glossed over is the ultimate fact that the founders of the whole Crips and Bloods paradigm were among the exact same children that the Black Panthers for Self-Defense served breakfast and lunch to every day in South Central Los Angeles. None of these men knew who Raymond Washington was or that he built his organization on the blueprint of the Panthers and even called them Junior Panthers. They had no idea that Michael Concepcion will tell them to their faces that the Bloods and Crips were started to be the push-back against the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations such as the Aryan Nations. They didn’t know that they wore the color B.L.U.E. for Black Liberation, Unity, & Equality and red for the blood of the people, and flew the Blue and Red Bandanas as the people’s flag in opposition to the USA flag that was never sewn together to represent them. The meetings went just like Isiko thought it would. These were manchilds—they were going to ask the hard questions. If this is for Black Power, why the fuck are we killing one another? Nobody was yelling Black Power when they came through and took off a block driving by. Where the fuck was all this Black shit when my daddy was smoking bricks, my mama was turning tricks, and I was out there hitting those licks? Fuck you mean—we ain’t here to eat, nigga? Isiko told these men they had all been lied to and that they all had more than likely been misused by older gang members from Los Angeles, but said it was too late to be turning back, and just told them what they were actually a part of and gave them the opportunity to leave if that’s not what they signed up for. And many did leave. Of those that stayed, Isiko began the weeding out sessions. Everybody learned what a Fade is—everybody got their ass beat. Everyone. The weak were put in positions that required a talented body to fulfill obligations centered around money-making operations. The strong were put in positions to make whoever put their hands on an African wish the fuck they never even thought about it. Isiko’s leadership was ruthless, unrelenting, and dedicated when it came to opposition. Period. His leadership was kind, efficiently effective, and equitable when it came to his team. Period. Everyone else? Everyone else respected and even deferred to Isiko on matters affecting prisoners in general. More and more of Isiko’s childhood friends and fellow Lake Como Crips members began appearing inside the facility. The Lake Como Crips is the official name of the first generation of Crips in the Lake Como Community, situated on Fort Worth’s west side, and is a conglomeration of Rollin’ 60s Crips and Grape Street Watts Crips running the turf. With 20-some-odd men from the same place and in the same gang, the dynamics changed inside McConnell Unit, especially Seven Building. Isiko sent an emissary to talk to the emissary of Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate, Azteca, and Tango Blast (which was new at that time). Each of these gangs had been involved with the murders of the African-American men. Isiko asked why these things had happened. There came back claims of snitching, rapes, locker break-ins, assaults on ranking members of their gangs, cell-mate fights, gambling cheating, drug deals gone bad and drug packs jackings, and bullying. Isiko slept on this information, sent word that there needed to be a truce so that he could not only look into these things but also take care of them inhouse, and then personally asked around about what had been happening. It turned out that the real problem was rooted in the sloppy manner in which the Mexican gangs were handling their business. While some things could not be confirmed or put to rest, it was clear that another gang was at the root of all of this madness—the Blue Bandana Gang. The Blue Bandana Gang was a band of TDCJ guards who were mining the McConnell Unit of the cash money that illegally floated around the inmate population. These guards supplied the Mexican gangs with everything they needed to create a drug economy there and made sure their investments were protected. They did this by making sure the Mexican gangs had “freeworld” knives and tools to make “Zipguns” (a kind of projectile slinging weapon that literally knocks the top of your head off). These guards made sure that the maintenance department was manned by Aryan Nations gang members – Aryan Brotherhood and Aryan Circle. These were the drug runners, weapons craftsmen, and money handlers, and all of it was stored and distributed in, by, and through the maintenance department. Isiko identified the men who were admittedly guilty and seeking to be shipped to a different prison. Isiko sent a list of names to the Mexican gangs with a demand to stay out of Africans’ business while these men were being dealt with (he sent the names so that when they were shipped out to other units the Mexican gangs would be assured that their concerns had been dealt with and therefore foster some semblance of peace). In the meantime, Isiko had conversations with a lot of different men to give them a heads up on what was about to happen. He told them to tell all of their people that the next time commissary is announced to go stock up because with what was about to happen, a 30-day lock-down was going to be the sacrifice that everyone would give resulting in the murders to stop and for there to be the kind of peace that bred prison prosperity for those looking for it. A few days later commissary was announced and everyone who could go went. They cleaned out the commissary. Of course, nobody warned the Mexicans and Aryans. Isiko made sure everyone was ready and then… He waited. And just as he expected, the Major sent some guards to bring him in for a talk. There’s a mole in the squad. The conversation was short and to the point. The Warden walked in and simply listened. The Major told Isiko, “If one man dies in whatever you have going on, I’m burying your ass under death row.” Isiko replied, “Can I go back to the cell now? I was reading an interesting book on how to start a record label and you interrupted that for this.” The Major and Warden looked at each other, nodded ever so slightly and then a long look into Isiko’s eyes. That was that. And for the record, that was a kind of unspoken greenlight to do whatever he needed to get the unit under control. Anything except killing anyone else on that unit. Isiko sent the very first fade at an African from Dallas, Texas, whose brother came to his rescue—Isiko personally dispatched the brother. The next fades went to those admittedly guilty men whose names were on the list. Isiko handed a copy of the list to his Lieutenant saying, “Don’t kill’em. But. Make them wish they was dead.” The two-hour “warning” lockdown came due to all of the people getting sent to the infirmary beat half to death all in one day. When it was over, Isiko called a meeting in the passive rec yard with his top guys. They went over how it was going to go to be the most effective without causing too many of the squad to be shipped to other prisons. Isiko listened intently and made a quick decision: “Remove the Aryans by every means, and I mean right now. All of them, no stragglers.” They sprang into action and all hell broke lose at the McConnell facility. Isiko went back to reading his book – Everything You Better Know About the Music Industry by Kashif. Thirty minutes later, the lock-down bell started ringing. Isiko left his book on the bench and got out of the passive rec yard before it locked him in. He walked out into the lobby area and on into the main desk hallway. The main rec yard doors were still open so he stepped out on the rec yard. It looked like a scene from a civil war movie minus the canons and muskets. The guards were in riot gear on top of the building and outside the fence shooting canisters of tear gas onto the yard. Mexicans stood looking around, surprised, horrified, and pissed all at the same time. Whiteboys were running everywhere. One ran towards the doors Isiko had just come through and just as he was about to run past him Isiko kicked him in the face. When he fell to the ground, Isiko Lake Como Donkey Kong-Stomped his head. Isiko knelt and spat in his face, “Rich Rollin’, bitch…” He looked around and caught the eye of his Lieutenant and made a breaking motion with his hands. His Lieutenant nodded and started yelling “BREAK THESE HOES, CUZ!” Isiko made his way off the yard just as the guards made it to lock the doors. He went back into the passive rec to retrieve his book and then headed to the dayroom sink to try to get the tear gas off of his face. Water made it burn more so he just sat down and calmed down. The whole thing was over in about five minutes. Whiteboys lay bloody all over the rec yard. Crips, Bloods, Disciples, El Rukans, Muslims, and neutrons moved into a corner at the southern end of the yard and laid down spread eagle. The Warden and Major walked around the yard looking at every face involved. The one face they were looking for was not on the yard. The warden decided to lock down the entire prison for that riot. The Mexican gangs were pissed. Lockdowns come with building and cell searches. They had to ditch all of their weapons. Without their weapons, and with all of their drug runners and weapons craftsmen on their way to the hospital in Galveston and then on to everywhere else in Texas beside the McConnell Unit, their whole operation had not only been crippled to shut-down status, they now had to face the Africans in hand-to-hand combat. A faceoff they knew they had no win in. The 30-day lockdown was very fruitful. The kitchen workers were the first to be searched and let off of lockdown partially. The guards hated having to prepare and then serve food for 2,500 prisoners. When these workers were let out of the cells to prepare and then serve food, notes were delivered. One long letter after the other was slid under the cell door to Isiko. Each Mexican gang wrote hoping there was still a truce in place between them. One particularly noted the savageness of the Aryan beatings and declared their solidarity with the Africans – the nerve of that one, Isiko thought. The 30 days came to an end. Isiko was called to the Major’s office. He didn’t go. The Major went to him instead. Isiko didn’t appreciate being ushered into the hallway where everybody could see them but no one could hear as if he was snitch. Every eyeball on the block that could see was glued on the meeting. What did he do? Nothing. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t nod. Didn’t shake his head. Nothing. The Major was furious. He sent Isiko back into the cell pod with a warning: “One prisoner get’s hurt by a gang member and the assault charge is yours.” Isiko: Blank stare. Peace was established at the McConnell facility. The Mexicans didn’t have drugs, weapons, or money. The Aryans had effectively been sent on about their way scattered around the state emptying out a nice chunk of whiteboys out of the maintenance department. The remaining members of the Blue Bandana gang were put on their heels with no Mexicans with drugs, weapons, cash to give them, and no Aryan buffer-zone between them and the Mexicans. And Isiko and the African gangs were now in control of the unit. Isiko came up with a plan to stimulate the economy. He put a tattoo parlor, a dice and parlay house, a cigarette, dope, and liquor spot, a smokehouse, and several stash spots on the third floor. The standing rule was if you weren’t up there to score cigarettes, dope, or liquor, smoke or drink, gamble, get a tattoo, or put something into any of the stash spots, you could be thrown off of three-row. As in, I hope you can fly, thrown off of three-row. After seeing the African gangs in action in the riot, everybody understood how sticky it could get up on three-row if they violated the rules. And so, everything ran smoothly. Even the guards started going into the smokehouse to get a smoke so they didn’t have to walk all the way out to the parking lot. What galvanized Isiko’s leadership is once the money came in, he called the gang heads into the stash house and divided the money evenly among them all. Hundreds of dollars every week. Isiko was the unit Shot-Caller after that. After being shipped from the McConnell Unit to the Darrington Unit right outside of Houston, Isiko began his spiritual transformation. His longtime friend and accomplice was there. Nolan sent word for Isiko to meet him at Islamic services. Isiko sent word back saying that he’d rather meet up in the gym. They met in the gym. It had been a long time since they had seen one another. Nolan was one of Isiko’s accomplices on the charges elsewhere mentioned. Their attorney had a field day in court with those cases. They were able to get dismissals on most of the really violent charges and so there was some light of day at the end of the tunnel for these young warriors. Nolan, a Muslim in the Islamic Community, invited Isiko to attend. Isiko, having had a bad experience with another community, declined. Nolan, knowing Isiko, said, “Cuz. We have recording equipment and a jammin’ ass live band down there. We have concerts and everything.” Isiko, “And you said the next service is when?” And there it went. The men in many of the Texas prisons not only get to find themselves in the Islamic communities, but they also get access to women. Yes. Women. No. These are not co-ed prisons or co-ed services. These women are guards. The Islamic community is the one place inside a prison where a woman looking for love and not ashamed to consider a convicted felon inside a prison as a suitable mate or husband, this is the one place she can find such a man. They do their due diligence so don’t get that twisted. How? They ask the homosexuals if a man is one of their sisters or husbands, and the homosexuals are usually quite honest. So, of course Nolan and Isiko passed that test, then, to have several newspaper articles floating around the unit that spells out that these two, along with Snowcone Loc (or Pretty Snow as he’s also known), are adherents to the Code of Silence when faced with investigators, and on top of that to have stimulating conversation and also be professional power lifters on the weight team with lean and muscular physiques… Well… She’s already got hot-buttery panties. These two not only could get it. They did get it and regularly and in every private space the unit had to offer. Men like Isiko and Nolan have fathered children while in prison with there being no conjugal visits. As irresponsible as it may seem, men like these get things done, they make things happen even when it’s impossible to do so, and they continue their lives the way they want regardless of the situation they find themselves in. And women appreciate this about men like Isiko and Nolan. It’s one hell of a story and you – the reader – have found yourself looking at the foundational reason or why this is a great opportunity to invest in. There are 17 stories that branch off of this one story summarizing how, why, and in what environment The UrbanFire Binge Networks came to be. N-Side Job Records, from the Darrington Unit, released the first ever Gangsta Rap record from inside the prison. A guard brought in a recorder and drum machine to Isiko, the record was made, and they released it – the sales proceeds going toward paying Paul Hampel to represent Isiko at his parole hearing… You can’t make this shit up even if you were a master story-teller. N-Side Job Records officially changed its name in 2000 to Inside Job Recording, Publishing & Distributing Company. Due the effect that Napster had on the recording industry, Apple released iTunes on April 1st, 2003. May 1st, 2003 Apple announced that iTunes had sold it’s 1-millionth download and so we headed in the digital downloads direction by shutting down our release efforts to focus on providing post production services to production houses (as Stillwaters Media Lab, the name of our studios from the beginning) while we did our due diligence in research so we could move confidently into the development of our next phase. The next phase was not only digital distribution. We set our focus on what would also be next after downloads. We learned that there’s a segment of the tech world that is underpinned and governed by Moore’s Law wherein everything (not just transistors) doubles about every two years concerning information delivery. We had already changed everything about the company. We officially changed our whole name to Over The Fire Entertainment or OTF Ent. We chose the name based on the essential element of fire in that it burns off the impurities of everything pure and we built the company on this “purifying” foundation so-to-speak to empower our audiences to tell us what they love. As this takes place the more our audiences support these pure artists and their content, the more money content producers make accordingly. As this takes place, the more exposure to our current pool of over 3 million relevant brands our audiences receive. we set out to create an ecosystem that was absolutely true to the artforms to where the best examples and exhibitions of the artforms made it to the top of our charts and therefore got paid an unparalleled amount of the revenue it helped generate. We knew then that we were headed to internet TV and radio based on these findings so we added a “K” (to signify we are a broadcast company broadcasting from below the Mason Dixon line) to the name and began to move accordingly. What that looks like is KOTF TeleRadio Network, Inc., the owner of The UrbanFire Binge Networks (The UBN) and The Ecosystem of Resources (The ER), has positioned these assets right smack in the center of some of the largest problems facing the African American and African communities. We are a live broadcast, on-demand, and live pay-per-experience radio, television and movie streaming platform with an added bevy of resources geared toward increasing the likelihood of success of our creative partners and active business advertisers. The main problem our target clients face is the individual’s mindset in a team-sport environment or industry. No one can and, as far as anyone paying attention can tell, no one has done anything of significance on their very own yet the apparent prevalent notion is that it can be done alone. The ER is a viable solution-set for many of the problems this mindset creates in the careers of business owners and content producers. Staring into nothing, Isiko had this to say:

Everything has always been about the music. Music kept me sane in the darkest most violent time of my life. Music gave me a voice when I thought nobody else cared to listen. Music saved my life when I was walking around this bitch trying to make somebody kill me. Music saved my life, Cuz. Music saved my life...