ORIENTATION

What is Mafia Money$?

“Send a GT vodka, sittin’ on top of mafia money, eatin’ seafood pasta.” 

- Nicki Minaj

I remember hearing these lyrics and them standing out to me, my interpretation being that if you’re sitting on top of mafia money that means you one of them ones. You’re powerful, and if it’s specifically money made off of mafia style operations, you’ve probably had to chop a few heads off on the way up.

The imagery of eating seafood pasta while in a fancy restaurant, knowing your money good, your work moving, and you got power behind you just made me feel like a fucking boss. Listening to music, especially rap music from Michigan or vicious lyricists like Ms. Minaj, always makes me feel powerful, or like a boss. It reminds me of who the fuck I am. I see myself in characters like Raquel Thomas, the head of a mafia-like crime family in a show named “Raising Kanan”. I started tagging Mafia Money$ on my content that expressed my inner rage or gangsta, not really knowing what it meant myself at first. So I thought to myself, what does Mafia Money$ actually mean?

As a storyteller, I love the use of literary tools and devices—metaphors, analogies, similes, double entendres, foreshadowing, alliteration, hidden meanings, etc. I love to speak in a poetic style. I specialize in curating crime and urban dramas and consider myself to be the “ghetto version” of Martin Scorcese, a prolific filmmaker who specializes in mafia style, brash and violent films. I focus on telling the stories of urban people who came up in the ghetto or are aligned with that way of life.

I’ve had to tell people over and over that despite the life I’ve made for myself, I am not as far removed from my origin as it may seem. I’m still with all of the fuck shit, and I don’t tolerate disrespect. I come from a certain way of life, ghetto mafia type shit, and rose through the ranks to land in a good spot. Some people don’t realize this because of my personable approach and kindness, but my kindness can turn into creative bullets. I’m never afraid to have a problem with anyone. The scariest parts of life, including a violent near-death experience, already happened to me before the age of seven. What is there left to be afraid of? Damn sure not another human.

Back when I was in Young Marines we had a marksmanship course, and even though I was only ten in a program that had ages up to eighteen, I came out the most accurate shooter. Present day, I’m a sharpshooter, literally and figuratively, as I am a meticulous creative always developing my ongoing portfolio of work. My work isn’t just entertainment, it’s storytelling. I’m always on a mission, and it’s usually for good. I’ll be a prolific shooter in my field by the time it’s all said and done.

As the chief creator, don, and head nigga in charge of a production community, Snow Global Universe, it’s on me to make that happen. I never needed an entourage behind me, or a leg up, all I’ll need is my Shoota, mobsters, and my pen to make my dreams a reality. When it comes to my pen, you either gon’ respect its abilities or I’m gon’ write you off the muthafuckin show. I’ll be laced in Snow Studios or Snow Global apparel while putting pen to pape’. All white, preferably.

I created the studios as not only a creative infrastructure to host all of my personal ideas, concepts, and works but as a collaborative laboratory for many different types of creatives to cultivate their passions. Not only is lifting as I climb important to me, especially when it comes to black and brown people as well as people who’ve had similar obstacles as me, intentionality, quality control, and presentation are equally important.

There’s always an aim, goal, or target with whatever I do. Any thing I put out is an intentional move with a strategy behind it. Sometimes I like the spontaneity of acting off instinct, but most of the time I’m calculated. I like clean kills, two in the chest, one in the head. If I’m gon’ do it, I’m gon’ do it forreal. And I’m gon’ do it thoroughly.

But the murder talk is just figurative. I always tell the ones coming up under me that you’re able to get the job done without risking your freedom or losing your life. 

When you reach a certain level, you don’t do the dirty work, you pay someone to do it for you. These days I pay hitmen, but those hitmen don’t wear ski masks and gloves, they wear suits and carry briefcases. I’d rather my “gang” be my law firm on retainer who are committed to battling it out in the court of law, than my cousins or brothers wasting their potential getting caught up in a jam in the field trying to have my back. I got lawyers that’s like shooters, and shooters that take the law into their own hands by playing the game.

Anybody can pull a trigger—in a moment of fear or a moment of passion, but systematically dismantling someone’s life, especially in their face, and making them indebted to you for life is a real kill. A kill they can feel, breathe, live in. A kill that you can watch with your feet kicked up, eating seafood pasta.

After sharing my story with people, they’d say things in regards to Tony Lee like “Oh, I would have killed him” or “he deserves to die”. I almost did kill him, twice. I’d also heavily thought about having him killed, I’ve spent less money than it would cost to get it done on a VVS diamond pendant. I have some people in my life who would’ve done it for a pound of weed, one in particular just out of love. He does deserve to have his lights turned off permanently, but as I got older I realized that the only one who suffers in that situation is me or my people. He’d be dead and gone, free of suffering while I waste all of my potential in a dirty ass prison cell being told when I can eat or go outside.

I believe in standing your ground. I believe in protecting your loved ones with lethal force if necessary, but I don’t believe in playing God, and I don’t believe a human has the authority to take a life if it’s not in self-defense. You can always get your lick back without risking you or anyone else’s freedom—that is if you’re smart. You have to study, strategize, and then wait until the universe pulls up in the getaway mobile with a passenger seat waiting to take you to slide through the opposition’s location.

The power of ubiquity is almost God-like, and while the media can be a scary source, there’s a lot of power in the tool. To be in millions of places at once? To reach millions and display your existence, tell your story, and look humanity in the eye and speak your truth is true power.

That’s true gangsta shit. You can’t have that power in a cell or a graveyard. 

My pen is my gun, and my snowflakes are often bullets with people’s names on them—like this memoir for example. Like a ghetto Santa Claus, I made a list that started when I was six years old,  I checked it twice, and anyone who disrespected me with malicious intent has a spot on it. Anyone who ever disrespects me will have to face my pen or my camera one day, and when that day of reckoning comes they’ll know that I was never the one to play with in this or that life. 

I have a nice list that has a lot of names on it, too.

I’ve never had to prove a point to anyone and if I’m flexing it’s solely to celebrate myself, not to impress or prove something. I move on no one’s time but my own, and I always show that in due time. I’m too powerful to be a victim, and too smart to be a convict.

At the core of everything my company and storytelling works entail, I’m on mission to take care of my community while keeping myself in a position to push all of my resources and excess funds back out to ghetto boys and girls, victims of domestic abuse, children in foster care, and lgbtq+ youth through my production community’s non-profit arm, Ghetto Navy Foundation. Mafias have values and f[r]amily is a core value of theirs, as it is mine.

Every excess dollar I obtain will be given to those causes. I know what it is like to have nothing—not even a will to live, so it doesn’t take a lot to keep me content, fulfilled, and able to maintain a high quality of life. I believe in taking care of mine.

That’s what a real gangsta does.

As I fulfill my day-to-day passions there will always be things and people in my personal life that I have to directly address—#MafiaMoney$ style in an effort to leave my nightmarish past behind, continue to learn and heal, and be a vessel and voice for all those that come up under me.

Mafia Money$ is a learned survival strategy from lived experiences. The “dollas” are pieces of information collected throughout the journey. It means standing on business while always remaining in a good—mentally and financially wealthy—position. And as the founder and chief creator of a developing media empire and non-profit, you already know what position I’m in.

—

Snow Global Universe — June 1st, 2024.

Mafia Money$ University Graduation

Valedictorian Speech

I advanced in this university of life within the last few years with just a few college credits. I had no firm identity or college degree, and graduated at the bottom of my high school class with a 1.6 high school GPAfrom a low performing high school in the ghetto of Saginaw, Michgan. All I had was a will to live in a reality similar to the ones I’d created in my head as a form of escapism. I’m leaving this graduation as the valedictorian of Mafia Money$ University, primarily known for its School of Hard Knocks. 

I’m not only a ghetto boy, but I’m a survivor. I’ve been a victim of severe child abuse, a villain with identity issues, and now I’m an anti-hero on a mission to save ghetto boys and girls all over the world.

A lot of people like to think that we live in a black and white structure of life where everything is good or bad, but we all exist in a grey area. In the Academia of Humanity, I’ve frequented predominantly white institutions, predominantly black institutions, predominantly Hispanic institutions; institutions with large Indian populations, Asian populations, etc. I’ve also frequented institutions that reflected the diversity of America. I primarily subbed in special education, but I’ve also subbed in AP, IB, honors, general education, alternative education, and autistic classrooms, communicating with the future of life. I’ve collaborated on the facilitation of learning with professionals with doctorates, masters, bachelors, and certificates from PWIs to HBCUs, as well as professionals with degrees from The School of Hard Knocks. I’ve learned from all of them. 

Halfway through my academic journey I came across a life changing perspective in a book called The Four Agreements It said: Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. 

While some people at the university were heroes in my stories, and villains in others’, I know that it’s a different story in another reality. That’s just how Iife goes, and I ain’t mad at it. I take something from everyone, good and bad—heroes and villains. I digest the information in my Snow Globe, and I learn something from it. I am graduating with my honorary bachelor’s degree in Creative Escapism from The School of Hardknocks, and my honorary master’s in Language Arts from the Academia of Humanity, but I’m forever a student of the game. 

I’m always learning, always studying life, always experiencing humanity. Just unconfined and self-directed learning, learning from my dynamic humanistic experience. Although I understand the weight of them, I personally don’t need a degree from academia with antiquated learning models or one that wasn’t created by people with my struggles to validate my processing of inherent knowledge through continued life experience. 

Knowledge is true currency. Knowledge can’t be owned and shouldn’t be hoarded; it should always be continuously transferred. When I see the official currency of America I don’t see myself or anyone who looks like me reflected. I don’t see evolution. I’ve learned from this university of life that no one owns evolution, we all contribute to it. An undeniable stack of currency is necessary to get into a wealthy position, and me and mine are coming to get it. 

Mafia Money$ University is about survival of the fittest, and with a mob of creatives and collaborators behind me, I’m in great shape. From here, I will go on to be a professor of the game, and a leader of community evolution.

I will walk into my new beginnings as a community leader with an unbreakable frame of mind, a passion for change, and a heart full of love and understanding. As I go on these missions to spread the teachings of self-belief while painting those red lines white, and obtaining a doctorate of Creative Administration from a Life of Fine Arts, I want you to know that this isn’t a conclusion. Now that I have an undeniable stack of currency that proves that I am who I say I am, it’s a reintroduction. 

My name is Mx. Snow, and I am every creative.

End of Commencement