By Roman Wolfe and Nolan Strong
Well known mixtape DJ Vlad the Butcher will bring the story of Mac Dre and his infamous Romper Room Gang to BET on an upcoming episode of American Gangster, AllHipHop.com has learned.
DJ Vlad, who originally hails from the Bay area, will direct the upcoming episode, which will debut around November as part of BET’s new programming block.
The DJ said he became intrigued by The Romper Room Gang’s legendary story while shooting his debut documentary, Ghost Ride the Whip, which focuses on The Bay Area, the Hyphy movement and Mac Dre.
“Mac Dre went on one of the robberies cause he wanted to see a girl in Fresno and he stayed in a hotel there. He ended up getting hit with a conspiracy charge because he refused to rat on his friends and ends up doing years,” DJ Vlad told AllHipHop.com. “Thizz Entertainment provided a lot of the footage. With American Gangster, the main thing is access and getting people to talk about what had happened. It’s pretty serious subject matter.”
Mac Dre, born Andre Hicks, was a Bay Area rapper who is considered the creator of the Hyphy and Thizz style’s of music.
The rapper put out a controversial compilation titled The Rompilation, which featured a number of Bay Area rappers.
A track on the album led to Mac Dre’s arrest, after the Vallejo Police Department connected lyrics in one of the songs to a string of credit union robberies.
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, The Romper Room Gang was also responsible for a series of pizza parlor robberies, narcotics sales, vehicle theft, drive-by shootings and other violent acts.
They hit a total of 8 different credit unions and were suspected in 27 more.
The dollar loss from the 35 robberies was in excess of $1.4 million dollars.
Mac Dre and 53 other members of The Romper Room Gang were eventually arrested and Mac Dre himself served six years on a conspiracy to commit bank robbery charge.
The rapper’s life came to a violent end in November of 2004, when he was shot and killed on a Kansas, City, Missouri highway, with automatic weapons.
Mac Dre’s murder touched off a war in the underworld, which resulted in murder charges for fellow Bay Area rapper Mac Minister, who allegedly murdered two others in retaliation for the killing.
"This [episode] is like ‘yeah I ran into banks with guns and ski masks and had shootout with cops.‘ Because of my experience of directing a movie in the similar vein really helped and the fact that I’ve been immersed in the Bay Area scene for years.”
In addition to Mac Dre, the upcoming season of American Gangster will document the lives of Larry Davis, Monster Cody and J. Edgar Hoover.