H The Rise and Fall of Chauncey “Loon” Hawkins was Harlem hustler royalty, a hit-writer for LOONPuff Daddy and a crucial part of the Bad Boy Records family. He looks back at the wave that took him and the wreckage it left behind BY THOMAS GOLIANOPOULOS The music video for “I Need a Girl (Part Two)” One”: The fans on the set—the women in friendliest prison guards man the front desk. is peak Puff Daddy absurdity, a guys’ night particular—weren’t there merely for Puff. “It A bit past nine a.m., Muhadith, the man who out of epic proportions that begins with a he- was amazing to hear people actually screaming revived Puff Daddy’s music career after writ- licopter landing and ends at a mansion party for me,” Loon recalls. “It was everything I had ing the “I Need a Girl” series, enters the room. featuring a girl-to-guy ratio of about 10 to one. worked for, everything I had strived for.” His standard-issue uniform consists of drab For Chauncey Hawkins, then known as the Then it all changed. Just as Hawkins had olive-green khakis, a matching button-down rapper Loon, it was the first time he felt like become Loon, Loon became Amir Junaid shirt and black Nike sneakers. For a man of 41, a hip-hop star. Muhadith, and then, in July 2013, he became Muhadith sports a privileged, tight hairline. Loon arrived on the Miami set that Febru- a federal inmate in North Carolina. Far from And though he’s gained 17 pounds since being ary 2002 afternoon with a plan. First, he se- the private helicopters and champagne flutes, incarcerated, he’s still in excellent shape lected his motorcycle for the video, settling on Muhadith is loath to discuss the journey—his thanks to daily calisthenics, cardio and the a Harley-Davidson chopper with ape-hanger debauched life as Sean Combs’s wingman; the requisite lifting routine, though only to stay handlebars that not only looked cool but pro- horrors of crack-era Harlem that he barely toned. “I can’t get prison swole,” he jokes. But vided a stable ride. He also decided to play to escaped; the sex, drugs and violence. what’s most striking is his majestic beard, an the camera. In his previous video with Puffy, “How can I explain this without glorifying unruly gray-speckled mass that extends half- “I Need a Girl (Part One),” Loon at times it?” he says. way down his chest. faded into the background. This time around • • • Since this is a minimum-security build- he was more confident, brazenly elbowing his Situated about 20 minutes north of Durham, ing, little trouble brews here. Sure, tempers way into shots—dancing, champagne flute North Carolina, the Butner Federal Correc- occasionally flare, as is natural when some in hand, surrounded by women; leaning on tional Complex emerges like a squat concrete 300 men share any institutional facility, but a Ferrari 360 Spider as if he owned it; weav- box from the verdant undergrowth. It’s a sunny nobody would risk being sent up the road to ing through the streets of Miami on his bike spring morning, and the visiting room is awash a higher-security building. Muhadith scans alongside Puff and the R&B singer Ginuwine, with friends and family of inmates. A little the room. “I know all these guys,” he says. appearing to be every bit as much a celebrity girl plays Connect Four against a man with “You can tell who’s in here for drugs and who’s as his more famous collaborators. tattooed knuckles. A woman wearing a Tom in here for white-collar crimes.” Jesse Jack- But something else had changed since “Part Brady jersey hugs an inmate. The world’s two son Jr. served time here. Bernie Madoff is in ILLUSTRATION BY JIMMY TURRELL 96 H a medium- security building. “A spy, Spanish He is, in other words, firmly in the ith was 14, one of his friends was shot outside guy, Dominguez, was here,” Muhadith says. present—though at times he’s like an old building number four. “He told me stories about [former Panama- guy at a bar, reminiscing about his heyday. Fearing for her grandson’s safety, Evelyn nian dictator Manuel] Noriega.” “I’m actually grateful that those things hap- sent him to live with his godfather, the movie Muhadith’s trip here began in December 2008 pened,” he says, “because all those events led producer George Jackson (Krush Groove, New when he quit the music industry, converted to me to where I am now.” Jack City), in Beverly Hills. Suddenly Muhad- Islam and renamed himself Amir Junaid Mu- • • • ith was the original Fresh Prince. He was still hadith. In 2010 he moved to Egypt, where he The Harlem of Amir Muhadith’s formative angry, though, and still hobnobbed with the subsisted as a television host and nascent voice years didn’t resemble the glories of the Harlem wrong crowd. He was classmates with Angelina on the religious-lecture circuit. Then, in No- Renaissance or the gentrified neighborhood it Jolie and other rich kids at Beverly Hills High vember 2011, he was arrested in Brussels Air- is today; some of the brownstones featured on but gravitated toward the Mansfield Crips on port on felony drug charges. The indictment Million Dollar Listing New York were crack the West Side. He was nicknamed Loon, as stated that Muhadith “knowingly and inten- houses when Loon walked these streets. In in “loony Loon,” for doing crazy shit, mostly tionally conspired…with others, known and his Harlem, kids grew up fast; Muhadith spent fighting, and he lived up to the moniker. “I beat unknown, to possess with intent to distribute” his boyhood fighting, selling crack, smoking the wheels off this white boy on my track team heroin in North Carolina between 2006 and weed, snorting coke, shooting dice and having for putting his feet on me at practice,” Muha- 2008. He pleaded guilty upon his extradition sex with older women. “I grew up exposed to a dith recalls. Embarrassed, Jackson threw him to the United States. According to Muhadith, lot of criminal behavior,” he says. out after a little more than a year. he had two felonies already under his belt and His parents, William “Hamburger” Hughley Back with his grandparents in Harlem, risked getting 25 years to life if he went to trial. and Carol Hawkins, were dubbed the Bonnie Muhadith slung crack. “I started hustling He couldn’t take that chance. He was sentenced and Clyde of 116th Street, hustlers who profited to be in the streets with my mother. In some to 14 years in prison. from Harlem’s heroin epidemic in the 1970s. sick, sadistic way that was my way of being Muhadith calls it “guilt by association. Burger was sporty, stylish. He also may not be with her,” he says. “Me and my mom are like brother and sister—that’s com- mon where I come from. But she put me through so much.” LOON WAS A PERFECT FIT FOR Carol Hawkins gambled, stole crack from dealers and even BAD BOY. COOL, COCKY AND HAND- helped herself to her son’s stash, which was hidden in a hollowed- SOME, HE PERSONIFIED TURN-OF- out stuffed animal. “My mom stole so much money from me THE-MILLENNIUM HARLEM SWAG. that it put me in debt to some malicious guys,” Muhadith says. Once he’d paid back his suppli- Everything was hearsay. There was no tangi- Muhadith’s biological father. Carol worked for ers, he made a deal with his mother: “I told ble evidence.” To hear him tell it: One night the drug lord Nicky Barnes, dubbed “Mr. Un- her, ‘If you stop using drugs, I’ll stop selling at Hot Beats Recording Studio in Atlanta, a touchable” by The New York Times Magazine. drugs, because you are about to get me killed.’ rapper he was advising asked Muhadith to in- When she became pregnant, Carol says, Barnes From that day on, my mother was drug-free, troduce him to a heroin supplier. Muhadith threw her a million-dollar baby shower. and I left the streets. I never sold drugs again.” complied, which he says was the end of his in- Born in 1975, Muhadith had everything • • • volvement but enough to place him under the growing up but supervision. “I was a great Although hip-hop was born nearby, in the umbrella of conspiracy once federal charges provider, because I hustled,” Carol says. “It Bronx, Harlem wasn’t fertile ground for rap- were brought against the other artist. didn’t change until he was about five, which pers. Rap was considered a reach, while crack, Muhadith says there are discrepancies in was when a lot of the crackdown started. Then on the other hand, was making a lot of people the case, including one that should have got- that crack demon came along.” Barnes was a lot of money. That route closed for Muhadith ten it thrown out: The indictment states that sent away in 1978, a few years before crack with his mother’s sobriety. he was involved in this conspiracy from 2006 replaced heroin as the neighborhood scourge. He started by writing rhymes in a diary. to 2008. But, he says, he didn’t meet the indi- By the time that transition was complete, in Eventually, after filling “notebook after note- vidual until 2008. Why did he even make the the mid-1980s, Carol, once a budding queen- book,” he found the courage to spit for hip-hop introduction? “That, um, was just me being pin, was a junkie.