Philadelphia; The City of Brotherly Love is looking more like Beirut every day, with YouTube blasting bloody images from hip-hop street DVDs into homes worldwide.

Don’t shoot the messenger, Yo! “I’m gonna kill you,” hisses an anonymous voice through the phone. Calls like this, from restricted numbers, come almost hourly at the home of Philadelphia rapper Darren “Chic Raw” Martin. He usually ignores them, but sometimes, out of frustration, Chic can’t help but answer. Such threats are the price of fame in Philadelphia. Based on a few mixtapes, a little radio play, and a number of DVD appearances that feature his snarled raps, the 22-year-old MC has become a big name in the city’s underground hip-hop scene.

So who’s making the threats? Chic’s best guess is that the callers are rap rivals of his Top Shottas crew, hoping to make him squirm. But he doesn’t doubt that the threats are real. On this sunny July afternoon, the curtains are drawn in the sparse North Philly apartment Chic shares with his girlfriend. They’ve lived here two months, and it shows; the walls are bare and there is no couch, only chairs. Chic still doesn’t feel safe in the downtrodden neighborhood.

Between bites of instant noodles, he gestures toward the locations of numerous shootings that have occurred nearby. Tall and lanky, Chic has thin, brown scars on his forehead and oval eyes that widen into saucers when he becomes animated. His forearms are adorned with tattoos of his rap alias, his crew, a bar code, and a pair of theatrical masks around which “Laugh Now, Cry Later” is inked. But Chic isn’t laughing. Not since the January shooting that sent one bullet through his left arm and one into his chest. Cocooned in scar tissue, the second slug remains centimeters from his vital organs. “It still feels like something’s stabbing my heart,” Chic says.

And that wasn’t the first time someone tried to kill the Germantown, PA, native—it was just the best attempt thus far. Chic’s Philadelphia is a city tormented by rising crime rates and gun violence, where the intersection of rap and reality is a blood-soaked crossroads.

Thanks to his reputation in the city’s hip-hop scene, Chic has been dissed by plenty of rappers. Despite the attention, hip-hop isn’t paying Chic’s bills. With his 19-year-old girlfriend pregnant, Chic has taken up a construction gig laying down sheetrock and sanding floors. He’s not concerned that doing menial labor will hurt his reputation as a rapper. He is worried that an enemy will see him and try to kill him on the job. Besides a target on his chest, what has the street buzz really earned Chic?

For Beanie, Gillie, Cassidy, and Chic Raw, violence occurred in familiar neighborhoods. In a recent street-corner argument, Chic scoffed at fellow rapper Ives “Stretch” Artis’s thuggish boasts and mockingly dared Stretch to shoot him. Stretch declined, but, several days later, he allegedly shot and killed Haitian cab driver Leis Desir, a father of four. Cops say Stretch made off with $7. “If I can, I’m leaving,” says Chic, who admits that Philadelphia is draining him.

Fellow rapper Chaz “G.A.G.E.” Scott, a neighborhood friend, has signed a deal with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Records and moved to Georgia. Chic and his girlfriend dream of their own fresh start in Atlanta, where the hip-hop scene revolves around platinum-selling records instead of virulent dis-filled DVDs. However, for now Chic remains in his very hot Philadelphia apartment with his very pregnant girlfriend, awaiting opportunity’s knock.

Unfortunately, the only thing he’s heard recently is his phone buzzing with another death threat.

(This story was written by Complex Magazine a few years back; www.complex.com )

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