'A lot of hope died with him': How Doe B impacted Montgomery's rap scene before and after death

It was college night inside the Centennial Hill Grill and Bar. At least four guns made it through the nightclub's security.

As people partied, chaos broke out just after midnight, Dec. 28, 2013. Someone started shooting. A bullet struck Glenn Thomas in his leg, one of eight injured. He bled to death before making it to Baptist Medical Center South.  

Just 22, Thomas — who would have turned 28 this month and was known by his rap moniker Doe B — was going places and he was taking others from Montgomery with him. He was a lyrical genius, people say. He had the ability to push those around him to do better.

He wasn’t even supposed to be in his hometown that night. He should have been in route to Miami to record with Pharrell and T.I.

Darius Thomas was charged and convicted for the murder, but others will say he wasn’t what killed Doe B. They claim Montgomery — its lawlessness, its hate between neighborhoods and its ultimate jealousy of someone making it out — killed the budding star.

The city failed to protect Doe B, the man who was giving so many other young men hope that they could make it out of their poor neighborhoods, too. Montgomery pulled the trigger, driving a fatal bullet into Doe B and the city’s rap scene he promoted. His death started a yearslong strangulation of other rappers’ chances to achieve what Doe B did, or would have.

Family and friends buried Doe B in an all-white suit, white eye patch too. The flicker of hope in so many eyes vanished, and visits from major artists and talent recruiters died out too.

This city is too divided. That is what they say.

More:The danger of division: The Montgomery rap scene is a story filled with murder

Doe B was the fourth of Shirley Thomas’ five children. He was an outgoing child, always outside and in the community centers playing sports. He was always making noise, too, Shirley said — now realizing the significance that he had in the talent that would later blossom.

Dead for nearly six years now, rap in Montgomery cannot and is not mentioned without her son’s name. Some have said he was going to be the Notorious B.I.G. of the South. Doe B was more than just musically talented. He is compared to a northern star for the long left-behind neighborhoods of his city, guiding those with little hope of growing their greater potential.

The third mixtape he released was named "Baby Jesus." His explanation for the name, his manager Frank White said, wasn’t to be derogatory toward God, but rather to say, “’I’m the savior for the streets — I’m making way for the streets and paving the way for Montgomery, Alabama.’”

He wouldn’t be the last to make the parallel. In a tribute song to Doe B after his death, Daniel Thomas of the Dirty Boyz rapped, “When Jesus was born he was born to die for the people. One lived in Cloverland and the other walked through Egypt. When Doe B was born, he was born to provide for his people. … Doe B is to the hood what Jesus is to cathedrals.”

Willie Jones, known as CBM Debi, was 13 when he first met Doe B. Cote Block Music, named for the street the CBM boys hung out on, was more of a hood thing, rather than a true music group, he said. They were rapping, Jones said, “But when the Kid (Doe B) came, he made us take it serious. Everybody had to take it serious — he wanted to make you come to the studio.”

A few years older, Doe B would go on to impact Jones in life-changing ways. Referred to by some as Doe B’s protégé, Jones said, “If I wouldn’t have met the Kid, I never would have saw the vision. I have a vision now. I used to just be blinded. When he opened my eyes, it was like, ‘How you do that when you’re from where I’m at?’ ”

Where they were from, within Ridgecrest and south Montgomery, on a street more commonly known as Circle K, is a separate world from Montgomery as most know it.

In his song, “Really Real,” from his most recent mixtape, "Respect Your Minorz," Debi rapped, “For all the ones that’s hard-headed, don’t want to listen, it’s going to be penitentiary boy, no more detention. It’s going to be a casket for your a**, no more suspensions.” 

To him, that isn’t promoting living a deadly life, but, “I know they’re with it. I know how they were raised. I’m not a bad person. It’s preaching to them to be better. But 'I want you to know if you’re trying to jump into the streets, this is what is going on. I don’t want to lie to you, like everybody is gonna be a million-dollar dope boy.’”

The death of his mentor, the one who set the marker for people who couldn’t believe they could do it before they met him, was tragic.

Doe B, Jones said, was “the chosen one.”

“He was very smart with it, with the music. He could touch a lot of people. It was more than just the music. When you met him, you could understand,” Jones said. “He was very inspirational … he was making a way. They looked at (his death) like taking him took the way.”

Doe B’s death set the city's music scene back, Mac ‘Dukie’ Hopkins, a local music manager and event promoter, said.

“We have other cities out there that when they talk about Montgomery, the first thing they usually say is, ‘Man, you killed Doe B,’" he said. "They don’t look at it like a person killed Doe B. They look at it as a city did.”

Doe B was remarkable in his ability to travel across the division of Montgomery’s different sides of town — making friends and music throughout the city. That, though, is in part what ultimately killed him, some believe.

Darius Thomas, Doe B’s killer, grew up with him in Cloverland. The two went to school together, Shirley Thomas said, along with the other two men charged with murder that night.

In Doe’s major hit song, “Let Me Find Out,” the first person seen in the video is Darius Thomas.

“Doe B’s choice to hang out with another side of town is what upset the guys from where he was raised because they had beef,” Jerome Davidson, a local music manager and radio DJ, said. “The bigger he got, the more jealous they got. Most of the rap beef you see is about jealousy or territory.”

Jealousy was strong.

Doe B was signed by Grand Hustle Records, T.I.’s label. He was the first person to land a major record deal from Montgomery since the Dirty Boyz signed with Universal Records in 2001. He had made it to MTV, to BET, to 106 & Park. He was making music with major artists, including Birdman, Juicy J, Kevin Gates, Rich Homie Quan and T.I.

He represented a new era of Gump Town rap — and as Thomas from the Dirty Boyz put it, looking at the three rap groups popular in his era, “Doe B was our seed, and he had the elements of all three groups. That’s what made him so lovable because he was able to reach all sides of Montgomery.”

“He brought a lot of hope to the younger guys to be themselves,” Thomas said. “When he died, I think a lot of hope died with him.”

Gunned down in front of hundreds within a night club days after Christmas, Doe B’s life came to an abrupt end much too early. In a song released after his death, "Why," Doe had rapped, "Lord, when I die give me bulletproof wings." 

In the same song, in T.I.’s verse — written after Doe’s murder — he rapped, “What Doe B did for Montgomery, no one could ever take from you. Why’d they kill him before he could get to the money?”

Doe predicted his demise in several of his songs, rapping in another, “I’m going to pray for you while you prey on me.”

The city’s stigma, Thomas said, based on Doe’s death and the numerous other rappers who have died in Montgomery, is that, “If you make it, you die.”

White, Doe’s manager, didn’t know he was at the Rose Supper Club that night. White did his best to keep Doe B. out of Montgomery in general.

“He knew I didn’t like him going out,” White said. “I knew the level of where he was at and the prior instances that had happened already, it was better for him not to be in Montgomery if he didn’t need to be, for any reason.”

“I have a better chance of walking outside and getting struck by lightning than there ever being another Doe B. Just the genius — people even now don’t understand the full genius of what he was,” he said.

That genius included his work ethic, which drove him to stay in the studio and continue to record songs even as whole mixtapes were just released.

“It’s very rare,” White said of that level of drive. “Regardless of the upbringing, it’s rare. That has to be instilled in you, it’s nothing you can learn. You have to want it so bad.”

There was his incredible gift of writing great songs, too, he added.

“His ability to put stories together using metaphors and words — it’s just unexplainable. Then to know most of what he did rap about, he lived. He was around it. He saw it, and it was true stories,” he said.

Doe, White said, “was an inspiration because he was unique. You could tell being around him, he was not the average person. He was born with instincts, whether it was hustling or music, he was going to be good at whatever he did. … I bet the world that Doe was going to make it. I put the house on it. I would do anything just knowing where he was going.”

Finding out about his death — “It was like I had everything sucked out of me,” he said

“He was such a good person and I knew his heart," White said, "and I knew what he was about to do. Not just for himself."

He was taking care of his family, but he also was about Montgomery and its hip-hop scene — the whole city, no boundaries — shining a light on the talents here. 

"I have no doubt he would have made a lot of positive changes in this city amongst the youth" White said. "We talked about it several times, what he’d do if he got the money. He wanted to take care of his people, that’s all.”