In this music, money, and drugs version of a whodunit, Keegan Hamilton follows hip-hop label Lock ‘Em Down Records’ run-ins with the law for St. Louis alt-weekly Riverfront Times. I was drawn into this story because it reads like a potboiler.
After a five-year stretch of multi-agency surveillance, the label’s offices are raided for suspicion of drug trafficking and co-CEO Dewanzel Singleton is arrested. The raids were triggered by purported slang Singleton used in the wiretaps, including references to look-alike girls and a medium-rare steak, but Singleton says the police found “no drugs, no money, no guns. Nothing.”
Hamilton writes, “If the DEA’s version of events is true, then Dewanzel Singleton has led an improbable double life. And if he’s innocent, Singleton is the victim of an equally astonishing string of coincidences, betrayals and poor judgment.”
