Eugene Henley, Jr., the former Nipsey Hussle manager better known as Big U, turned himself in to federal authorities on Wednesday night after being charged with leading a “mafia-like” criminal organization.
The criminal complaint against Henley and six others alleges that they were involved in a huge array of criminal activities: extortion, kidnapping, fraud, embezzlement, prostitution, and even murder.
Even more than the alleged criminal activities, though, what’s notable about this case is that it drags out into federal court a part of hip-hop culture that was previously mostly whispered about: “checking in.”
If you haven’t encountered the idea of the check in before, you could do worse than to read the section of the complaint against Henley and co. that addresses it directly.
“The ‘check in’ is a term used when someone travels outside of their home city to another city,” it reads. “During that travel, the individual must ‘check in,’ or meet, with the local street representative of said city to pay a ‘tax’ or ‘fee’ for permission both to move about freely and to have an event or conduct business in that other city without the risk of harassment or danger from criminal elements.”
Who is Big U?
Big U was a former leader of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, dating back to the 1980s. He served 13 years in prison after a 1991 arrest for attempting to rob an undercover cop of 33 pounds of cocaine. He has a long history of working with rappers, including managing Nipsey and Kurupt. He also started a nonprofit back in the early aughts—the same nonprofit he is now accused of embezzling from, allegedly moving charitable donations from NBA figures like Draymond Green and Shaquille O’Neal directly into his personal bank account. (He also has a son, Daiyan Henley, who plays linebacker for the Los Angeles Chargers.)
Big U has made no secret of the idea that he’s the man who prominent figures have to check in with when traveling to Los Angeles. In fact, it’s integral to his brand and persona.
His podcast is called Checcin’ In With Big U. (As a footnote in the complaint against him notes: “Crip gang members often replace ‘ck’ with ‘cc.’”) He was one of the subjects of a 2021 docuseries called Hip Hop Uncovered that dug into the practice.
Being public about checking in, as it turns out, can be a great way to get attention from law enforcement. To judge by the complaint, federal authorities were big fans of Hip Hop Uncovered, as they cite it multiple times. (“If I don’t pick up the phone, that can mean death for somebody,” they quote him saying on the show.) They incorporate public statements he and his co-defendants made about checking in during interviews. They even quote the lyrics of the Checcin’ In With Big U theme song (“When your feet hit the street, check in. ‘Cause if not, shit get hot.”)
How “checking in” works in hip-hop
Big U is far from the only hip-hop figure associated with checking in. Trick Trick (who is not accused of any wrongdoing in this case), says in Hip Hop Uncovered that he does a version of the practice in his city, Detroit. This artist’s enforcement of what he calls a “No Fly Zone” for artists who don’t get his OK has made it to mainstream press outlets.
Back in 2018, 6ix9ine claimed he was harassed during a concert in Texas, to the point of having to cancel the show, for not checking in with J. Prince Jr., the son of the founder of Rap-A-Lot Records. (J. Prince the elder has strongly denied the long running rumor that rappers are supposed to check in with him when visiting his home region).
6ix9ine explained what checking in is during one time he was forced to tell the truth without exaggeration or equivocation, and with his literal freedom on the line: on the witness stand in the Nine Trey racketeering trial in 2019.
When asked to define it, he replied: “When you fly into somebody else’s city, their community, their hood. Not every city does it, but usually like other artists will check in with other, you know, gang members there or someone who holds authority there.
“The term checking in is whether paying your respects, paying some money, doing a feature with an artist there,” he continued. “If you’re gang affiliated, they expect you to check in. Even if you’re not gang affiliated, they expect you to check in.”
6ix9ine explained that during his contentious Texas trip, “We didn’t check in with Rap-A-Lot. I guess they wanted us to check in.”
During that same day of testimony, though, he explained that he took part in an assault on two other rappers who hadn’t checked in with his gang when they visited New York.
What is in the Big U complaint?
The accusations against Henley are, of course, for behavior much more serious than tough talk on a podcast. Henley is accused of using check ins not simply as a way to get some extra cash, but rather as extortion, manufacturing the very danger he is supposedly needed to protect against.
Essentially, the complaint alleges, he wins both ways. If someone prominent doesn’t check in with him, he would use violence (or sometimes just the threat of his fearsome reputation) to get a payment. If they did check in, then he would get money for that too.
Termaine “Luce Cannon” Williams is also named in the complaint. One of the sources of evidence against him? His own YouTube page, which includes a video in which he “walked through the checking in process and walked through the fact that he would rob any celebrity who did not check in, including at an Airbnb, a restaurant, a carwash, or anywhere.”
Speaking of YouTube, Williams and another subject of investigation, Zihir “Bricc Baby” Mitchell—who was himself charged in a related federal case late last month —were both affiliates of No Jumper. They are so closely associated with the brand that No Jumper founder Adam22 made a statement attempting to control the damage.
“A lot of the shit that people are getting caught up for—especially with Bricc—I’m not seeing anything that says anything about stuff that he’s done in the last two years since he’s been fucking with us,” he said on Instagram.
When it comes to checking in, a confidential witness in Henley’s case (identified only as “CW-1” in the complaint) broke down how it worked: “NBA players or other celebrities would need to work with and get approval in advance from HENLEY to ensure their safety at events in Los Angeles such as parties, gambling games, or advertising shoots. CW-1 said that these celebrities would have to seek and/or pay HENLEY for protection and approval or face retaliation from the Big U Enterprise.”
It is unclear at this point if the five-figure charitable donations made by the likes of O’Neal and Green (and allegedly embezzled by Henley) have anything to do with this scheme, or if the money was donated for other reasons.
What the criminal case does outline is one particular checking-in-related case. A boxer (unnamed, but with the initials A.B.) fixed a large money dice game back in 2019, costing “several prominent NBA players” millions of bucks. Big U allegedly found out about it and was upset—not about the cheating, but because he hadn’t been informed beforehand and offered his cut.
Henley allegedly turned the situation to his advantage, charging the players $100,000 to get back their money and threatening A.B. However, that doesn’t seem like that straightened out much of anything at all—except for Henley’s pockets—because when it was all done, according to investigators, the NBA stars got calls from A.B.’s affiliates, saying that they still owed the boxer.
The future of “checking in” culture
Checking in, for all its complications, is not the real problem. Rather, authorities say, the reputation Henley needed to uphold in order to continue his operation meant he could not tolerate any public disrespect. That led him, the complaint alleges, to murder a rapper he worked with.
That rapper was identified in legal documents only as “R.W.” but was identified in other reporting as Rayshawn Williams. Prosecutors’ story is that Williams was recording for Henley’s label, but was being lax about studio time, and even recorded a diss track about his label head.
“[E]nsuring that no one disrespects HENLEY—and that any such perceived disrespect is met with reprehensible violence—is a core tenet of the Big U Enterprise, and even more so when that disrespect is displayed publicly,” the complaint explains.
Williams’ perceived public disrespect, authorities say, is what led Henley to murder the rapper and drag his body into the Las Vegas desert.
It remains to be seen what effect Henley’s arrest will have on the culture of checking in. It has long been a mysterious practice at the intersection of hip-hop and gang culture (Henley has been publicly associated with the Rollin’ 60s Crips for decades, but prosecutors allege that his criminal organization, while it sometimes employs Rollin’ 60s members, is “distinct” from the gang). But it’s one thing for the practice to be defined and debated on podcasts and subreddits, and an entirely different thing for it to be at the center of a federal takedown.
Whatever the outcome of the case, law enforcement scrutiny of the practice of checking in may well change this one hidden corner of the entertainment landscape forever.
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