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I mean, picture a young man coming from

Jamaica at seven and a half years old didn't get my first pair of shoes till seven and a half

didn't know where my next meal was coming from and now I'm owning a big club in Washington Heights

I'm setting 25 teens a day up here I'm setting 15 out there I'm sending 20 down to my brother in Virginia I'm setting 25 teens a day up here. I'm sending 15 out there. I'm sending 20 down to my brother in Virginia. I'm at the height of my career from coming from no shoes. You know what I mean? So how do I say no today? That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank, it's like six inches. And then he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. Here's the reason I made it out of that place alive. What's up everybody? Welcome back to The Connect. My name is Johnny Mitchell. You guys, today is

part two of our story with unique Mecca, the kingpin from Harlem, who rose from abject poverty

in Jamaica, didn't even own a pair of shoes till he was seven years old to becoming the biggest

drug dealer that Harlem and Uptown, New York has ever seen.

Make sure to check out his book, Aurora in Harlem. It's available right now on Amazon, and it talks about

everything that we cover, but in even more detail from the streets to prison and everything in

between, and then go check out his YouTube channel, Unique Mecca Audio. And of course, if you want to see all the behind the scenes footage of us filming with Unique and all of the interesting, crazy places that he took us while we were in New York, go over to the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. It's the best way to support us, you guys. Okay, let's get into the episode.

Okay, so last week we left off with Unique in the early 80s as a young man working at his brother's Erb Gates in the South Bronx. Now, at the time, this spot was bringing in about $3.5 million a year. That's what it was turning over. And that was in 10 and 20 bags. It sounds like a lot of money, but as you're going to see in a sec, that wasn't even a drop in the bucket compared to what was coming for unique. So how does a spot that profitable get shut down? Why would you ever quit if you were making money like that? You know, the police came enough, you know, where after a while with them coming, then they start kind of like leaving the police car out front and, you know, things like that to shut it down. So now nobody's going to walk past the police car to come in. Damn, so now Unique is back out on the streets. Devastating to lose out on that kind of money. And besides, at this time, Unique was back on freebase. If you watch the show, you know that Unique was a base head for a couple of years there in the early 80s.

And to support his habit, he took to jacking drug dealers.

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