Original subtitles

Previously on Magic City.

Magic City is the strip club in Atlanta.

Mr. Magic is the boss, okay?

I'm Michael Barney, aka Mr. Magic.

[chuckling]

The club blew up so fast and it became a icon in the city.

It became the place to be.

[Dominique] What we started as athletes

was the launching pad to the entertainment world.

That's Charles Oakley and Michael Jordan.

I didn't care who he was.

They came to see us.

We didn't come to see you.

I signed the $120 million contract in Magic City.

My jaw dropped.

[Mr. Magic] Well, I used to tell 'em though, when I felt the vibe

when this Magic City started getting out of control.

It's like Cirque du Soleil. It's all joy.

Something's gonna hit you. It's just a matter of when.

♪ Georgia ♪

♪ Georgia ♪

♪ Georgia ♪

♪ Georgia ♪

♪ We on the grind in Georgia all the time ♪

♪ It ain't nothin on my mind but Georgia ♪

♪ We ain't playin with ya ♪

♪ We on the grind in Georgia all the time ♪

♪ It ain't nothin on my mind but Georgia ♪

♪ We ain't playin with ya ♪

♪ Country name, country slang fiends at the liquor store ♪

♪ Black cruisin', craps shootin' fifty on the ten-to-four ♪

♪ Overcast, the forecast shows clouds from plenty dro ♪

♪ And we ready for war in the state of Georgia ♪

Yeah!

♪♪♪

[Mr. Magic] Atlanta was growing fast.

Everybody was coming to Atlanta.

We was rollin'.

'90 through '96, I think the greatest time is in that era.

It was an era I wish everybody could have experienced.

[Mr. Magic] MC Hammer was hot back then.

♪ Stop. Hammer time ♪

He was probably my hottest artist at that time

and it just kept escalating from there.

This is a picture of me and Tupac.

Oh, that's my baby.

Because we were Geminis, I can relate.

We laid in the back at Suge house in Vegas.

We had known them before they became

like the supersonic star.

Well, Ice Cube, Ice-T.

I danced on stage with Prince.

All the Falcon players, some of the Braves players.

Just everybody. Magic city was the place to be.

Money had hit Atlanta a lot more.

We had been staying in apartments,

and we decided to buy our first home.

Sold!

And it was a beautiful brick house

and I couldn't believe that we could buy it.

[Mr. Magic] It was a game changer.

Just to own that property was big for me at that time.

[Gail] Created a lot of good memories there.

Mikey grew up there.

I was born maybe three years before Magic was open.

I didn't know

adult entertainment was even adult entertainment.

I didn't know anything. Dad went to work.

Everything was normal.

[Gail] And I didn't want him to know,

so I protected that from him for a long time.

It started to get where it got bigger than me.

And where I came, way bigger than me.

♪♪♪

Atlanta is one of the top cities in the country

and with good reason.

Drugs were big.

Cocaine was big back then.

MC Hammer was partying a- a lot in Atlanta.

And then in the background you have Freaknik,

which is like the- the youth culture sort of rising up.

[Dominique] Freaknik was outta control.

It was like having a city wide party all night,

all day, for days.

I have to just emphasize it was so much drugs out.

That's when it really first started.

So we was getting some of that drug money,

you know what I'm sayin'?

You had cocaine, X pills and stuff like that.

All kind of people came in Magic City.

♪♪♪

My name is Dr. Dax.

I'm from here in Atlanta, Georgia.

I sold drugs

and I had a lot of money and a lot of time,

I spent a lot of it at Magic City.

Music in the early '90s,

when everybody was smoking chronic and weed.

Shit's slow.

And then some people from San Francisco gave me an X pill,

and it was the first time I felt affectionate, compassionate.

Everybody needs to eat these things.

I started selling them to strippers

and girls that worked in the strip club,

the house moms, all that shit.

♪♪♪

Girls started dancing faster and a little bit more promiscuous.

Things in the strip club

seemed like they were being tolerated further

because money was growing.

That's kind of the foundation for what Atlanta music was,

where we were like,

I'm not looking for a life lesson in the music.

I'm just looking to elevate, make my heart beat.

Everything was kind of based off a tempo radiating in sex.

The music was booty shake, you know?

Very sub heavy and with a danceable beat.

Fast, party oriented.

It was music based off the inspiration of Miami.

Differed a lot from what was happening in New York,

Los Angeles.

You need a different soundtrack for life in the South.

Magic City was the epicenter of booty shaking.

Booty music becomes

really the foundation for how southern hip-hop,

particularly in Atlanta, begins to develop itself.

We hope this has made

getting to know Atlanta a little easier.

But this is just a sample of what's out there.

The independent nature of southern hip-hop

is very much in alignment

with the independent space of a- of a club.

The environment of a gentleman's club is built around the DJ.

DC The Brain Supreme interview. Take one. Mark.

That's funny. [laughing]

It's weird hearing me called DC The Brain Supreme

in a professional interview.

I first got to Magic City on a accident.

And I was listening to the DJ

and the girls were complaining about it,

so I was like, "Magic, you need a DJ, man?"

He's like, "No, I don't need no DJ,

can you cook?"

And I was like, "Yeah, I can chef."

'Cause I do cook better than most people's mamas.

For real.

And the daytime DJ was like, "Hey man,

I gotta go run some errands. Can you cover for me?"

And I get up there,

and go hard.

[record scratching]

It was like, "Who is this big, sexy, articulate Black DJ?"

Who's this?

And it was a different style that they had ever heard.

[Mr. Magic] DC, he probably was the first highlight DJ.

DC was like our big brother. He always looked out for us.

[DC] I knew how to rock a party.

I was writing a song about Friday nights in Magic City

and Steve Roll'n, other half of Tag Team.

We was called Tag Team Crew.

Our first attempt at a Booty Shake record was

"Whoomp! (There it is)."

♪ Party-people! ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

The song was about Magic City.

♪ Tag Team, back again ♪

♪ Check it to wreck it, let's begin ♪

♪ Party on, party people, let me hear some noise ♪

♪ DC's in the house... ♪

We went to the studio. I had Magic City girls on it.

-♪ Whoomp, there it is! Hit me!♪ -♪ Whoomp, there it is! ♪

That's me in the Whoomp, there it is!

Whoomp, there it is!

I was supposed to be in his video,

but that night I got real high

so I couldn't wake up that morning,

so I missed the video.

♪ Whoomp, there it is! ♪ ♪ Whoomp, there it is! ♪

[DC] When we made the record,

the original cassette, the original record,

the last verse was about the girls at Magic City

'cause there was a pride in that, right?

♪ Shake that ass, make that money ♪

♪ Saying "shout to my girls at Magic City" ♪

♪ Hoes so fine, make you drop dimes ♪

♪ Stop ten on 'em maybe get that grind ♪

♪ Whack-ass clubs get a grip, take notes ♪

♪ Magic City's on, we ain't no joke ♪

♪ Ladies ♪

When the song actually came out,

"Whoomp! There it is," I'm like, no, that's not it.

That's supposed to be "Oop Magic City."

-♪ Magic City ♪ -♪ Making money ♪

- Magic City ♪ -♪ Shake that ass ♪

And in a month and a half, Tag Team was platinum.

The rest is history.

-♪ Magic City ♪ -♪ Making money ♪

You can trace that song

directly back through the streets,

directly back through these clubs.

It's one of the only adult entertainment club scenes

in the world in which the talent looks like the ownership,

looks like the audience.

♪♪♪

[Drake] A great strip club record.

First of all, the beat needs to be better than the rapper.

It has to be something that a girl want to dance to.

Not aggressive, but aggressive.

When you hear the vibe

and the ladies start vibing to the beat.

The beat that would last, that could hold the energy.

The production is just nasty.

Some blow your wig off type shit.

Girl dancing all hard,

bust a move and the wig fly all over there.

You need to say some super ratchet shit.

It gotta be jookin'. It gotta be jammin'.

It gotta be slum.

[DC] Back in the day, "Ice Ice Baby"

was the hottest record in the clubs.

I'm telling you, I didn't even know Vanilla Ice was white.

You're almost looking for awkwardness, to be honest.

You're looking for, like, a stop in conversation.

[DC] All it takes is for one girl to like that record.

Now it's in rotation.

And everybody keep running to the DJ booth saying,

"Who is this? Who is this? Who is this?"

I've been with DJs in clubs where you can pay them 20 bucks

and they'll play whatever song you want.

You know, this isn't all pure, nor should it be.

It's the music business.

There's an economy between the people picking the music,

the people boosting music

managers, labels, street patrons.

[Drake] By the way, at our strip clubs in Canada,

still to this day, you can't throw money you- you like,

pay for lap dances

like it's like 1982 or something.

So, it's a different culture.

♪♪♪

[Lil Mag] My earliest memory in this building

would be something like that.

You know, when people trying to, like, walk you down stairs.

Trying to look still,

through- right through the eyes or whatever.

Mike started off running across the stage

at five and six. He was here.

He's been raised around the strippers some.

He was a little bitty boy.

Yeah. We used to bring him up there.

He used to run around.

Some of them used to chase me around the club.

Fun stuff like that.

They just loved me cause I was Magic's kid.

You know, and they call me Richie Rich.

You know, pick you up, toss you around, that kind of thing.

I didn't know about that.

See, I found about that later.

I'm like, "Took my son to the club?"

"Oh, he was only in there for a minute, and it was nobody-

He was in my office the whole time.

I had his eyes closed and he didn't see anything."

I'm like.

"He took my son to the club."

So I just involved myself in things

that I needed to involve myself in.

That would, you know, help me keep a grip on things.

I didn't hang out in the club.

It wasn't my cup of tea.

I don't have anything against strippers.

I don't.

It's- it's a means to an end for those ladies.

They're beautiful.

The joy for me was, all the money I was making.

When I first got into the game, I didn't have any money.

Telling my mom, "Ma it's not as bad as you think it is.

And I know that's not the life you wanted me to lead,

but it's leading me somewhere."

[Gail] I would chat with 'em or have a drink with 'em

before I went home or whatever.

I would tell 'em, "You know, you don't have to do this.

You could do something else."

Women that wasn't dancers,

they looked down at the women that were dancers.

It's just-

It just wasn't for me.

They looked at what we was doing as foolishness.

It really was a blessing.

Because if they learned how to do what we did,

they probably would keep they man,

and that man won't have to come out here.

And it was hard on the family.

It was hard, but I tried to find the positive in it.

And the only positive, was the money to me.

What he did, he's very smart.

He would bring the money home so we can count together.

It was an eye opener because I hadn't experienced that before.

Mike Sr. brought a limo and we would go to dinner in the limo.

I mean, it was just fabulous.

Fur coats, diamonds.

Magic made sure we had the best of everything.

It was like a Saks or a Neiman Marcus.

All the stones.

And not being bourgeois. This is not boujee.

It's bourgeois. It's French

Not being bourgeois, but I already knew.

I dreamed of this life long time ago.

My fantasy became my reality.

♪♪♪

[phone ringing]

Let's talk investments.

Because at the end of the day,

the bottom line is always the coin.

Mhm mhm mhm mhm. Everything costs money.

These clothes, our wardrobe.

The shoes too.

If you giving thigh boots with the rhinestone razzledazzle

and all of the extra whoop de la.

We talkin', just upped your number on a stripper boot.

-[phone ringing] -Hold on my phone ringing.

Ms. Show Me The Money.

You ain't got it? [scoffs]

Anywho, it's adding up that the math ain't mathin'.

Because guess what? We're not done.

Ooh, child.

If you're a mother, none of it is cheap.

Access denied!

Hair: $300

Skin gotta be right: $400

The nails: $500.

The titties: $10,000.

Excuse me. It keep going up.

Cha ching, cha ching, cha ching! Coin is adding up.

Hell no!

Baby, it ain't easy and it ain't cheap.

And it all adds up.

♪♪♪

Mr. Magic,

he's in the business of entertaining entertainers.

Those entertainers are part of the draw

to why the audience goes there.

Dominique Wilkins, Deion Sanders,

MC Breed, Tupac.

I could see them on television,

but to be in Magic City

and to be fifty feet away from them in the club.

That's what made Magic City kind of different.

People could come take your hat off,

have a good time over in that corner.

I'm over in that corner and we all having our fun.

The next day it was no talk about it, you know?

As a DJ, I get to watch how people treat each other.

I get to watch how people hustle each other.

You know, we stuck together like sisters. For real.

There has always been a sisterhood within the community.

We was a family.

We hustled together. We got money together.

Don't act like getting money is the happiest go lucky thing.

We in the Alps singing songs and having a good time making money.

Making money is cutthroat.

There's always gon' be a offer you can't refuse.

♪♪♪

Oh, no. No, it wasn't for a dance.

Um, Strawberry.

She used to joan him.

And so joan means crack jokes.

This lingo I'm saying is from the South.

She used to joan him.

About his Jheri curls and all his jewelry.

So he got really, really tired of it.

I mean, he was like, "Look, I'ma give you my watch.

This watch is worth 55,000."

And just put it in my hands and said "Beat her up."

-Why? -Because she got on his nerve.

I was like, "Strawberry, you know what?

I'ma hit you and just knock you out.

Girl, he's gonna give me this money.

I'm gonna give you 10,000 tomorrow.

Let me beat your ass." Magic stopped all that.

I had my white boots on, girl I was ready.

See, I still never asked him. How did he find that out?

Nah, that don't ring no bells to me.

No. No, man. No.

He's like, "You are absolutely not taking that watch."

"Give me that watch."

So he made me give the watch back.

Why would she say that?

I don't want to talk about what somebody said,

because I can't verify that, it- it wasn't told to me.

And I really don't want to tell the story, but-

♪♪♪

He came over to me, and he was like,

"Somebody said you was talking about me."

And I'm like, "Wh- I don't even know you."

And I think it was because

I was talking to all the other players and not him.

I think that was the root of it.

We had a little confrontation and I'ma leave it at that.

Magic made me get up in front of all his friends and apologize.

He would give her a watch if she slapped me.

If that was the case, she should have slapped me.

But, would it have been worth it in the end

to lose a longtime friend over something like that.

You understand?

And I grew up fighting, so that was my element.

Club environments create

ecosystems that provide different illusions of power.

So the dancers have power.

The customers have power, because they have the money.

The establishment has power, because they regulate the trade.

I think what becomes dangerous with customers

is when that power is enmeshed with entitlement.

And that's when dancers can be vulnerable.

Entitlement, I think, is the biggest threat.

Yes. Um,

I had a lot of friends that get killed.

Two girls in particular. Um-

that I still think about.

Brown Sugar. Her name was Brown Sugar.

And then Obsession was her best friend.

We was all in the dressing room getting dressed.

Everything was good, you know.

But the next morning,

they found 'em in um, a rental car,

tortured and killed.

Um...

we went to the funeral, and her mom left the casket open

for us to see what they did to her daughter.

And she felt like that would scare us from being out there.

But, it didn't affect me.

Not for me to stop doin' what I was doin'.

I couldn't see myself not being a dancer.

I could never see myself not being out there like that

because I loved it so much, you know?

Dancing is the only place that has no doors,

but it's the hardest thing to walk out of

or walk away from.

[train clacking on tracks]

♪♪♪

[indistinct conversations]

I get along with Gemini women.

Gemini men can suck my dick.

[indistinct conversations]

Bye, baby.

-There it is. -Yeah.

We always do that shit.

How many is here?

[banging on TV]

How you doin? I'm Jermaine Dupri

and I produce records, rap records, hit records.

At 17, 18, I had money.

The money, he says, is being put to good use.

I was driving around Atlanta.

Nice cars.

Definitely thought I was gon' get into Magic City

at a earlier age.

People were gon' be like,

"Oh, Jermaine, we thought you was twenty one."

No.

So Jermaine Dupri owned Atlanta.

You know, for a long time, that's all I thought of,

was just Jermaine Dupri-Atlanta.

They were like, the same thing.

But I feel like,

New York and L.A. never took Atlanta hip-hop serious.

Yeah, there's no respect for southern hip-hop in '94,

from New Yorkers I mean.

You know, this is The Source Awards

when poor little Andre comes up on stage

and says, "We love you. Why don't you love us?"

Or whatever he said.

[Andre] I'm tired of folks, you know what I'm sayin'?

Close minded folks, you know what I'm sayin'?

It's like we got a demo tape, but don't nobody wanna hear it.

But it's like this, the South got something to say.

That's all I got to say.

They didn't care about what was happening in the South.

That's not where their brains were attuned to.

Yeah, the funny thing about that Source Awards

made me actually feel

how disconnected southern hip-hop was.

I was trying to find what was our mixtape,

what was the thing in Atlanta that we were gon' do

that would break music?

Hi, my name is Big Boi, aka Daddy Fat Saxx,

aka Sir Lucious L. Left Foot. The L stand for lavender,

'cause the ladies like to put lip gloss on my lapel.

I used to be married, but not no more.

What's happening baby? [laughing]

Them Source Awards, when they booed us,

that's when they really fucked up.

'Cause it really made us mad.

Open your mind, if the city is like light years ahead.

We were recording, working on music.

Like, you know, it'd be late,

the kitchen was still open at Magic, you know what I mean?

We might have just recorded a song,

and then take it in there and just test it.

I distinctly remember one of the songs that we knew

was gon' be the one was "Bombs Over Baghdad."

♪♪♪

Sort of ashamed to say this now,

but, I remember going to OutKast's label to listen

to their new album.

They put on "Bombs Over Baghdad,"

and I was like, "Is this a joke?

Is this a real song?"

I'm looking at my fellow Source Heads

and they're like, "We did not get that record. Period!"

We're like, "Okay, we take this crazy motherfucker to the club

and see how they gon' act."

And they went crazy.

♪ Yeah, inslumnational, underground ♪

♪ Thunder pounds when I stomp the ground (Woo!) ♪

We didn't understand it.

We didn't see the genius in it that we would see later.

We just didn't get it.

And fun fact, the girls that in the "Bombs Over Baghdad" videos

are some of Magic City's finest.

We went right to the source.

We had to bring the girls out.

♪ Bombs over Baghdad ♪

♪ Don't pull the thang out, unless you plan to bang ♪

I had to rediscover them as an adult hip-hop fan

who now knows better than to just be like, "Uh!"

And for the record, I would never do that today.

Magic City has been magical.

I think it's more magical than Disney World.

[Oprah] Uh, let me read you a quote. One quote she says,

"Jermaine has taken me places I haven't been before."

[audience laughing and cheering]

Please explain that for the people. Yeah.

♪♪♪

[Jermaine] So at this time, I was dating Janet Jackson.

She always heard me say,

I was going to Magic City every Monday.

She came to town, I told her I was going to Magic City,

and she was like, "Well, I'm coming."

And I'm like, "Nah, you not coming with me."

"Why am I not going?

What's going on in Magic City that you don't want me to see?"

Oh, I'm thinking, man, I can't take Janet in here

if something happen, it'd be crazy

But I have to take her, this my girlfriend.

So I'm like, "Fuck it. Okay, let's go."

So we come in and we was drinking.

We was eating, we was having fun.

And this guy, his name is Manish Man.

He had created this thing with him and the DJ,

"Every time Jermaine comes in here, play my song."

Me and Janet in there with about twenty five dancers.

She was having fun and I'm feeling the energy.

And I hear this "Rules Of The Game" and I'm like, "Yo."

♪ Rule number one, my niggas gotta chase the cheese ♪

-♪ Number two ♪ -What song is this?

I go to the stage, I start throwing the money.

This was just like, so much money,

It was a brilliant plan. It worked.

I put it on my album, I signed him,

I gave him a deal and everything.

And then I started realizing

the strip club did the exact same thing that the mixtape did.

It brought awareness to the artist.

The strip club was our mixtape.

The International Olympic Committee has awarded

the 1996 Olympic Games to the city of Atlanta.

[cheering]

Atlanta's got its arms around it,

ready for it,

prepared to put on the best Olympics

the world has ever seen.

The Olympics was, uh, it was a big deal coming to Atlanta.

This whole city changed. Just nobody could see it, yet.

Amongst all of this Black entrepreneurship,

a lot of poverty.

Lot of homelessness.

This is all happening at the same time

that the city is being gifted this opportunity

to become that international city

that Maynard Jackson predicted it to be.

And that creates attention.

They were on the streets, heavy.

Red Dog was big back then.

The police department has a unit called the Red Dog Unit

in place to run every drug dealer out of Georgia.

It was much easier

once the Olympics actually was locked in here

that they were like,

now we have the excuse to tear down everything.

Everything that was happening around '94, '95

prior to the Olympics,

felt like a push toward getting old remnants of Atlanta out

that may not be as accepted by corporations.

My perspective is truth.

The way it went down, was...

♪♪♪

We'd flown to Tennessee to a party.

Someone called Mike,

saying that DEA agents had been in our house.

Again, Mike didn't tell me.

I found this out later.

So he says, "Hey, you want to get out of here?"

"Let's go home." So I'm thinking, really?

We're having a great time. I think, "Mm, okay."

So we get to the airport and they put us in first class.

Okay.

They must know who we are.

Sure did. Right?

We get to Atlanta,

agents came out of everywhere.

Ceilings, seemed like they came out the floor,

out the windows.

And came up on us and handcuffed Mike.

♪♪♪

So it's definitely a process having to get ready, you know?

Gotta make sure I got my smell goods on, my oils.

My lips are good. My teeth is clean.

You know what I'm saying?

You gotta be a bad bitch before you go upstairs.

They are looking.

Y'all ready to go see where the magic happens?

At Magic, I just feel like I'm performing somewhere.

I just feel good. Like this me.

I felt like I wasn't even here.

I don't know where my mind went.

I honestly feel like I'm closer and closer to my dream.

Every time, it like really amazes me.

I'm just like, wow.

I definitely feel like Magic City is a gateway,

for you to be great.

We got thirty more minutes. We got the last leg in here.

Gotta make it count.