Rapper sentenced for cocaine conviction

C-Nile to serve nearly six years for role with Gorilla Records drug ring

11/21/03

By JOE DANBORN Staff Reporter

When he was in the recording studio or onstage in Mobile-area nightclubs performing as C-Nile the Golden Child, Afori Malik Pugh rapped about escaping from the thug's life.

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Pugh, the main artist signed to the small-time Gorilla Records label, had a pair of cocaine convictions and a marijuana conviction, receiving suspended prison sentences each time. Music, he proclaimed on one track, helped straighten him out.

"I changed my life ... I once was blind but now I can see," he rapped. "It feels good being out of the game."

Pugh, however, will serve nearly six years in prison for taking part in the crack cocaine ring run through Gorilla Records, a federal judge in Mobile ruled Thursday. The rapper was a runner for the drug organization dismantled in April by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, according to court documents.

Pugh, 29, pleaded guilty this summer, admitting he conspired with at least eight others for more than five years to smuggle some 20 kilograms of powder cocaine from Houston to Mobile, where it was cooked into crack and sold. Authorities said the gang was among the largest crack distributors in south Alabama by the time it broke it up, and that the record label was created as a front to launder drug money.

Since a federal grand jury returned the initial indictment in April, nine people have pleaded guilty in the case. A 10th -- Leroy Vidal Jackson, a man already serving time on a federal gun charge -- was convicted in an August trial in which several of the others testified he was a founder of the group.

Pugh's new album is titled "Who Can I Trust?" In the album's liner notes, Pugh, now calling himself C-Nile the Frozen Child, writes, "To all of the kids out there that look up to me, I want to apologize for my wrong doings & hopefully you'll learn from my mistakes."

On one track, Pugh also laments the consequences of his drug running.

"It was nice clothes and expensive cars," he says. "Now it's CO's (corrections officers) and penitentiary bars."

Still, at various times on the album -- which begins with audio from a television report about his arrest -- he rails against people who cooperate with federal agents.

"I never thought anyone close to me would turn snitch ... on me," raps Pugh, who was the first Gorilla Records defendant to make a plea deal with authorities.

"I done seen (people) go downtown and get to trippin', mouth get to flippin', now you're workin' for Deborah Griffin," a federal prosecutor who handles drug cases.