Hot Sauce

It's a Thursday night barbecue at the Dope House.

Oh, yes. Nestled in the backstreets of downtown Houston, (interestingly enough, just a stone's throw away from the Municipal Courts-HPD downtown complex) is The House that Dope Built.

And there's a party going on — a modest, discreet one, if you will, but a party nonetheless.

Fajitas and tortillas are cooking up on the big-ass black grill on one side of the patio, and a group of people are shooting the breeze on the other. Who are they? The South Park Mexican will tell us. The rapper says the congregation is the Dope House Soldiers, a clan of aspiring artists (who are known only by number) ready to jump on the mike if the Mexican gives 'em a shot. Among others, there's the luscious Latina redhead (No. 14) who bounces up and down in her red cutoff shirt and gray sweats whenever she busts a rhyme, and the tall, lanky brotha who just happens to have only one arm (No. 18).

They're not the only ones here. There is the Mexican's sister, Sylvia Lynn, his brother, Arthur Jr., and his father, Arthur Sr. And they all work beside the Mexican at the Dope House, which is a record label. Friends, family, co-workersŠ whoever.

Decked out in a black mesh Nike shirt, well-starched black jeans and black-and-white Air Jordans, the Mexican sits in a wood-paneled office, where his sister works. It's quiet here: The lobby is getting painted, and everyone's staying outside for fear they'll get high off the fumes. Here the Mexican explains where he's coming from, so to speak, as a gangsta rapper, a performer who will also be playing the Watcha Tour this weekend.

"I rap from the streets," he says, grabbing his crotch in what is the first of many crotch-checks soon to come. "I don't rap for kids that have good homes. I don't rap for kids that have Jesus in their hearts. I don't rap for none of those kids, because they already have it going on."

True that, true that. His music, which can be described in some instances as Cypress-Hill-Goes-Gulf-Coast, isn't necessarily for the "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" crowd. "I rap for all the crazy muthafuckas," the Mexican says. "For all the muthafuckas that need help. For all the muthafuckas that are lost. I let them know that I've been lost and needed help just like them, and I put that in my lyrics."

It's obvious that those people are picking up on those vibes, or else kids all over the South wouldn't be buying the Mexican's "dope." His third and most recent album, Power Moves: The Table, has sold more than 60,000 copies all over markets in the South, and his second album, 1998's Hustle Town, is still selling at 70,000. The record is selling more because its first single, "Mary-Go Round," his open letter to the demon weed, is beginning to get airplay at various radio stations. "That's why everybody who follows me are the sickest, craziest, most ill people in this world," he says. "People that love me are the fuckin' scum of the earth, and that's who I want to love me, 'cause that's who I want to help and change. My fans are crazy about me, drop-dead loco. They know all my lyrics by heart. They love me and I love them. And they ain't no less of a person than what I am. I'm just a crazy muthafucka that just decided to start rapping, you know."

The Mexican (a.k.a. Carlos Coy) grew up in Houston. Correction: Carlos Coy grew up in South Park, which is, as everyone who lives there knows, a whole different movie than Houston. You can say that the Mexican's musical career began when he was ten years old. When he was ready to go to the fourth grade, his mother moved him to Garden Villas Elementary. There, the Mexican took up the violin.

In the span of a year, amid all the other kids who had been playing for years and years, little Carlos perfected the violin to rank at first chair. Some teachers were on the skeptical tip. "A lot of teachers would tell my violin teacher that I was, you know, some kind of fake," he says, "that I was lying, that I was taking private lessons."

The Mexican moved on to middle school, then high school to further his violin playing. But it was in high school where the three G's — gangs, grudges and girls — caught up with him. "I was 17 years old in the ninth grade before I decided to go ahead and leave school," he says. "One more year in high school and I would've went to jail for fucking all those little young bitches, you know."

He dropped out and, in 1986, survived the only way he knew how: by selling drugs. He was soon the only Hispanic in an all-black neighborhood to own a Cadillac. Needless to say, the street drug trade began to take its toll on the Mexican.

"[I was] tired of selling crack to your homeboy's mom," he grimly recalls. "[I was] tired of looking at dope fiends being pregnant, trying to buy dope. [I was] tired of seeing my homeboys getting shot and killed, set up for the murder, you know, getting jacked for their cocaine, getting jacked for their cars."