The third season of the Starz BMF series will premiere on March 1, 2024 and new cast members have been announced. Saweetie will play Keeya, a former college athlete who’s now on the tough street of St. Louis and Lil Baby will make his acting debut as Payne, a foot soldier from Atlanta.
Cynthia Bailey of the Real Housewives of Atlanta will play Gloria, Detective Bryant’s ex-wife, 2 Chainz will play Stacks, a distributor from Atlanta and Ne-Yo will play Rodney “Greeny” Green, an entrepreneur who is all about making money.
Season 3 of BMF will continue the storyline of the inspiring brothers, Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and Terry “Southwest Tee” Flenory who founded the Black Mafia Family, better known as “BMF” in the 1980s. Here are 10 facts you didn’t know about BMF!
1. BMF turned hiding drugs in vehicles into an art form.
The crew got creative to hide bricks of cocaine in the vehicles they used to transport them. In the early years, they would spray dog repellent on the dope to throw off narco dogs in case they were pulled over. The organizations tactics evolved as the amount of weight they trafficking increased.
Cars would get pulled over too frequently, so they started using vans and limos. They had mechanic specialists, who would modify their vehicles, adding secret deoxygenated compartments, that they referred to as “traps.” According to Jabari Hayes, one of BMF’s former drivers, they would pay about $70,000 for a limo and then spend an extra $70,000 to add the traps.
With the Lincoln Navigator limos, you would have to pull the emergency brake while hitting the rear defrost button and opening the moon roof. That would open the lock on the compartment.
Big Meech explains that their vehicles were priceless, so they didn’t mind spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on them, because each time a drive got pulled over and the drugs went undetected, the organization was able to continue to push weight, earning millions.
2. Drivers could earn up to $25,000 per trip.
Depending on the size of the haul and the distance, BMF’s drivers were paid between $8,000 and $25,000 per trip. The most lucrative drive was the one from California to Detroit, or Atlanta, especially if you were driving one of the Lincoln Navigator limos, which could carry up to 200 kilos.
Along with driving the shipments of pure cocaine from California to the labs in Detroit and Atlanta, cut cocaine had to be picked up at the labs and driven to BMF members in Atlanta, Detroit, New York, Washington, D.C., Missouri, Florida, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee. The drivers picked up cash from those dealers and took the money back to the labs in Atlanta and Detroit, where it was counted and paid out to drivers and distributors.
3. Big Meech played a major role in Young Jeezy’s success.
Big Meech helped promote Young Jeezy during the early years of his career, around 2003. He paid to advertise parties for Jeezy and would give DJs in Atlanta money to play his music. Demetrius also suppliued expensive cars and jewelry for the rapper’s videos.
Although they had a strong bond, Jeezy didn’t sign with Meech’s BMF Entertainment record label, instead, in 2004, he signed with Bad Boy Records, and joined the group Boyz n da Hood. He also signed a solo deal with Def Jam. Meech wanted to sign Jeezy, but when Bad Boy and Def Jam made their offers, he advised the rapper to accept the contracts, and the rest, is history.
4. To advertise the record label, Meech put up BMF Entertainment billboards.
By 2003, Meech was focused on transitioning out the drug game and into the music industry, and he wanted the world to know, so he put up 5 BMF Entertainment billboards, around Atlanta. At the time, Jermaine Dupri was using billboards to promote his So So Def record label, so Demetrius didn’t think doing the same, would be a big deal.
Unlike So So Def, BMF was known for selling drugs, so the feds weren’t happy about the billboards. The tagline on the billboards was motivated by the movie Scarface. In the film, Tony Montana looks up to the Miami sky and sees “The World is Yours” on a blimp. Likewise, the billboards Meech placed around town declared, “The World is BMF’s.”
5. Club Chaos
On November 11, 2003, Meech and his BMF crew were in Buckhead, partying at Club Chaos when they were involved in an altercation with Anthony “Wolf” Jones, former bodyguard of P. Diddy. Wolf saw his ex-girlfriend with BMF and he called her out, and some say he got physical with her. Security threw Wolf out the club, and he waited in the parking lot.
A few hours later, Meech and his bodyguard were on their way to their vehicle when they ran into Wolf, waiting for them. Guns were drawn, and sadly, Wolf was shot and killed. Meech was also shot on the rear end. Meech was arrested in connection to the murder, however, since he was shot on the back side, he claimed that he was running away from the gunfire. He was subsequently never indicted, but was placed on house arrest.
6. Big Meech charters plane to take 300 people to Cancún, Mexico.
After being released from house arrest, Meech cut off his ankle monitor and was ready to celebrate so he decided to charter a plane, to take 300 people to Cancún.
They were serving Cristal on the plane and BMF members explain that it was a full blown party in the sky. Meech refused to sit down on the plan, and demanded that the pilot let him fly it, since he paid for it. Meech had a two level penthouse with an Olympic-sized pool for himself and he bought an entire hotel for everyone else.
Numerous celebrities attended the legendary, all expenses paid trip, including Juvenile, Da Brat, Bone Crusher, Lil Jon, Meagan Good and of course, Young Jeezy, who discusses the trip in the following video:
7. Big Meech’s jungle themed birthday party.
On June 21, 2004, Meech had a safari themed 36th birthday party, nicknamed Meech of the Jungle. He rented an entire mega club, Compound and dropped $100,000 to rent wildlife. There was an elephant, an ostrich, a few zebras and a pair of tigers.
The party showed that Meech thought he was an untouchable. In Terry’s eyes, however, Meech’s lifestyle was attracting the attention of the feds, and he was right. In a van parked outside of the club, the feds kept a close watch on the party, as they gathered evidence, building their case against BMF.
8. Big Meech vs Southwest Tee
After Meech caught the case at Club Chaos, he was put on house arrest, and Terry was left overseeing the organization by himself. Tee let the crew know that he wasn’t happy with Demetrius, and warned BMF members not to communicate with Meech because the ankle monitor he was given was unlike any Tee had ever seen before. Tee was convinced that Meech was going crazy after he put the billboards up, and the Cancún trip and jungle themed birthday party pushed Terry to a breaking point.
It got so bad, that federal agents listening to the wire, were nervous that Terry would try to take Meech out. Things got even worse between the brothers when Demetrius found out that Terry was repressing kilos of cocaine behind his back. Terry would allegedly take 4 ounces out of each key, which means he would make an extra 20 kilos out of every 100. When Meech found out, he stopped doing business with Tee, and instead, started getting cocaine directly from his supplier in Mexico.
9. BMF members didn’t miss an episode of HBO’s The Wire
The feds listed to members of BMF discuss episodes of HBO’s The Wire, as they gathered evidence from their wiretapped phone conversations. This was coincidental because many federal agents also loved the series, which depicted the real lives of both the agents and members of BMF.
BMF members would often discuss how what they were doing in real life, was being mirrored on the show. They would critique strategies and even decided to dump their phones and only communicate face-to-face, after seeing an episode where the same decision was made.
10. BMF earned $270 million, without violence.
By conservative estimates, Meech and Terry are believed to have earned $270 million in profits between 1989 and 2005. Every major drug organization in the history of the United States, resorted to violence to take power, but that wasn’t the case with BMF.
Meech and Terry took power through a vision and their words. Meech explains that you don’t have to use guns to make money. Reckless violence was frowned upon by the crew because it attracts the wrong attention.
