A PERFECT ‘FITTY’
Rapper has son of drug king star in ‘BMF’
Those behind the new 50 Cent-produced Starz series about a real-life Detroit crime family didn’t have to look too far to find one of its lead actors.
“BMF,” a drama premiering Sunday about the pair of brothers that founded the Black Mafia Family, stars the actual son of drug kingpin Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory — as his dad.
While Big Meech was serving out the second decade of his 30-year drug conviction, handed down in 2008, his son Demetrius Flenory Jr. turned to 50 Cent for advice on how to break into the music business. Instead, the rapper moved him out to Los Angeles, bought him an apartment and sent him to acting school for 18 months.
“His dad didn’t even know,” 50 Cent told the Daily News, laughing. “We didn’t want to get his hopes up and then be like, ‘You know, the kid can’t act.’”
Now, Flenory Jr. is playing his own father in “BMF,” a twisted introduction to his family tree. Da’Vinchi stars as the other brother, Terry “Southwest T” Flenory.
“Me and Da’Vinchi, we busted our a-es to make sure everyone’s part was told right,” Flenory Jr. told The News of his costar, who plays his real-life uncle.
“BMF” opens at the beginning of the Black Mafia Family, started by siblings who would eventually run most of the cocaine business in the U.S. by 2000. But in 1989, when the show begins, Big Meech and Terry are just trying to get by.
“When you look at Detroit in the ‘80s, it had been a city in decline for the last 15 years,” Russell Hornsby, who plays the Flenory patriarch, Charles, told The News. “What their family was doing was surviving, and not at a high rate either. Detroit had let their people down, the state had let their people down, and I think that the boys were looking to really live.
“They got tired of surviving,” Hornsby added. “When they’re kids, when you look at the tired face of your mother, at the tired face of your father, you look at yourself at some point and say, ‘I don’t want that for me.’”
Demetrius and Terry worked their way up from selling dime bags on the streets to an empire. At BMF’s peak, they mingled with rappers Jay-Z and Fabolous, and its legitimate enterprise, BMF Entertainment, which takes credit for launching the career of Young Jeezy, even though he was never officially signed there.
By 2005, the Drug Enforcement Administration was handing out indictments like candy.
“For kids, at 15 and 17 years old, it was the only option,” 50 Cent told The News. “It’s not like a career path for you at 15. There were points where, to pay the rent, it was that or get evicted.”
“BMF” is sprawling, from the nuclear Flenory family to the rival drug dealer Lamar (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) to a cop (Steve Harris) who turns a blind eye if you ask, to the local pastor, played by Snoop Dogg. The violence is brutal and unending. The slang and clothing are so specific to the minute and street corner that it feels like a time capsule.
“In the ‘80s, it was the crack epidemic; now we have the opioid explosion,” showrunner Randy Huggins told The News.
“In the ‘80s, we had the rise of unemployment; look at what COVID-19 has done to unemployment in this country. In the ‘80s, hip-hop was becoming itself. I remember Run-DMC going to the Grammys wearing their shell-toe Adidas. Now, hip-hop is the dominant force. We’re able to look at where we were and where we are now and how much has changed.”
50 Cent said he considered beginning the show at the height of BMF’s empire, in “the heyday of them blowing through money fast.” Instead, he took it all the way back to the start, to a house of cards built on loyalty and bravado and to young men who saw no other options.
“When you think about the men who built America, when you talk about Kennedy, when you talk about Nelson Rockefeller, when you talk about a lot of people in this country, a lot of these people didn’t start off where they ended,” Huggins told The News.
“The American dream, to me, is opportunity.”