about 150 of us showed up here one day. i told everybody gather here at the get-together and hang out. this was the last meeting we had before before a bunch of stuff went down. the royals had become too big, and federal agents were gunning for the boss. two feds from chicago came, sat me in a room with a big family tree on the wall of royals with an 8 by 10 picture of me at the top. they told me where i got my drugs from. they told me who i got it from, who i fronted it to, how much i paid for it, how much i fronted it out for. they told me routes i took to get to the drug house. they told me everything, man. the feds also told benny that they were building a case against him for racketeering, which carried a 30 years to life sentence. but they needed more evidence to
you can t get any more all-american than this. a man doing yard work at his quaint suburban home. but it wasn t always this way for benny ivey. benny was once the highest ranking member of the simon city royals in central mississippi. potholes. yeah. i m sorry, y all. i didn t pave the roads. my first introduction to benny is driving back to the south jackson neighborhood where it all started for him. where are we heading now? to a couple places i lived as a kid. like a lot of royals, benny s early life was tough.
i can t believe these apartments are even still here. that s the building we lived in. my family started breaking into houses, burglarizing so that everybody could smoke crack every night. yeah, that s how my life was. are we ready to leave here? i never thought that it was ever a possibility to even think about living a better life. i thought the cards were stacked against me, and that s just the hand i had to play forever. they called us white trash. i ve been a junkie and a white trailer park cracker my entire life. i tried meth at 15 and that was it? that was it. like many other young men in mississippi, poor and addicted to meth, benny ended up behind bars.
all-american than this. a man doing yard work at his quaint suburban home. but it wasn t always this way for benny ivey. benny was once the highest ranking member of the simon city royals in central mississippi. potholes. yeah. i m sorry, y all. i didn t pave the roads. my first introduction to benny is driving back to the south jackson neighborhood where it all started for him. where are we heading now? to a couple places i lived as a kid. like a lot of royals, benny s early life was tough. my parents were drug addicts. uncles, aunts, they were all drug addicts. nothing was hidden.
he was admitted to a 12-month rehab program and started working as a contractor. it was the first steady job he d ever had. and the lady i worked with gave me lots of new recipes to try. that s when i met christina. at first she wasn t interested in me. christina had a young daughter and was wary of this wiry, tattooed ex-gang banger. i convinced her that i wanted a real life. no, it s cistill cuttable. it s cuttable. and she took a chance with me. benny and christina were married in 2013, and benny legally adopted natalie. barbecue ribs, mac and cheese. they settled into a new house and a new life. when you think back on 15-year-old benny, do you think you could have ever imagined he d be sitting here? this is a whole other life