The Gottis' Next Label: 'Not Guilty,' They Hope

"The name Murder Inc. was just a gimmick," Gerald Shargel says by phone. "The idea that these guys seriously modeled themselves after mobsters is ludicrous."

Shargel, by the way, is one of New York's most celebrated defense attorneys and a very popular figure among mafiosi in trouble. Among his former clients: the late John J. Gotti and his son, John "Junior" Gotti.

The Associates

Irv and Christopher Lorenzo grew up in Queens, during the elder Gotti's heyday, after the Dapper Don had murdered his way to the top of Gambino heap. Irv started off with a considerably less-threatening image, as DJ Irv, a teenager who mixed songs in the basement of his family house and spun records at a public park. In an early demonstration of promotional skills, DJ Irv somehow pushed a track into the hands of a local disc jockey who played it on the radio.

His fans soon included LL Cool J and he eventually landed a job at TVT Records, where he discovered Ja Rule, among others. He moved to Def Jam and there so dazzled his employers that in 1997 he was given $3 million to start his own label.

By then he was Irv Gotti, and cultivated an image as the don of hip-hop. By then, too, he'd met Kenneth McGriff, who is 11 years older and was something of a local legend. As Supreme, he and some 200 fellow gang members sold crack out of a Queens project. He'd been hailed as a thug entrepreneur in the lyrics of several songs.

Gotti seemed in awe of the guy and the two struck up a bizarre relationship that mixed business and the high life. So why would an up-and-coming rap executive crave the company of a drug dealer?

"Irv Gotti was actually just a middle-class kid, who never hustled, never had a criminal record," says Ethan Brown, author of "Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler."

"He comes from Hollis, which is a part of Queens that has some rough parts. But those are the streets below 205th. Gotti was raised at like 210th. That might not sound like a lot of distance, but people from that part of Hollis weren't considered serious."

The mob lingo, the Al Capone suits, all that hanging around McGriff -- to Brown it smacks of overcompensation. Which might explain why Gotti took the whole mob shtick as far as he did. Rap is a genre obsessed with the image of the outlaw, and it helped the careers of people like 50 Cent, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg that they had actual criminal records. Gotti, to his apparent grief, had grown up as a law-abiding citizen.

Ultimately, associating with McGriff proved a fiasco for the Gottis. An internal audit found that Murder Inc. had generated more than $50 million during its first five years in operation, but not long after the Gottis were indicted in January, Def Jam severed its relationship with the label. Other major labels have reportedly declined the opportunity to partner with the pair. The finances of the place are said to be a disaster.

'Black Italian'

Irv and Christopher Gotti are hardly the first luminaries in rap to swoon for the mob.

"There's too many mob references in rap to even count," says Ronin Ro, author of "Gangsta: Merchandising the Rhymes of Violence." "It started in the early '90s with Kool G. Rap, this mid-list rapper signed to Warner's who rhymed 'lobster' with 'mobster.' But then it became really fashionable and everyone was doing it. This became the era of black Italian."