Photograph by Suzy Gorman
See the tattoos on Ali Jones’ hands? The diamonds on his wrist and that platinum grill in his mouth? These are not the accessories of a bona fide gangster. They’re just pieces of a “uniform,” and the founder of the multiplatinum hip-hop ensemble the St. Lunatics—of which Nelly is a member—is not ashamed to admit they’re just a front.
He may sport them at award shows and flash them at photo shoots, but they’re nowhere to be seen when the soft-spoken rapper shows up on a Sunday in December at Mack’s Bar and Grill—the Hazelwood eatery Jones and the Lunatics opened in November—to chat before flying to Los Angeles for some studio time.
“A lot of rappers portray that gangster image, but it’s not real,” he says, dressed in a hooded DGK sweatshirt, gym shorts and red Cardinals baseball cap. “Why would you wait until you got fame and then suddenly become a gangster?”
He’s here to provide a status update on his oft-delayed album and to discuss the day last October when he claims he was handcuffed and Tasered repeatedly by a Hazelwood police officer after a routine traffic stop. Good or bad, the origins of both situations reside at the intersection of real life and manufactured public perception.
Jones says that Kinfolk, his collaboration with Gipp of the Atlanta rap group Goodie Mob, may finally be ready to drop at the end of February, after months of delays. (He’s confident that tweaks made late last year will build more buzz than the album’s first two underperforming singles.) But when it does, don’t expect any soul-baring tracks about the duplicitous nature of hip-hop stardom; the first single, “Go ’Head,” finds the duo ogling booty in the club.
“We’re just taking our time,” Jones says of Kinfolk’s slow roll-out. “When a song pops off correctly, we’ll put the album out.”
That’s Ali Jones, the businessman, talking. The guy who more or less decorated Mack’s by himself (“Everything but the carpet,” he says) and is still learning to cope with the constantly shifting beer tastes of the bar’s patrons. The guy who heads up record label Derrty Ent and spends hours on the phone with parent company Universal Records about upcoming projects by newcomer Avery Storm and fellow St. Lunatic Murphy Lee. The guy who didn’t expect to find himself in the middle of a dispute with the Hazelwood Police Department over his alleged Tasering, which, he says, has traumatized his “thought process.”
Almost two months to the day after the incident, in which the police say Jones assaulted an officer and Jones claims he was stunned dozens of times with a Taser, Jones is surprisingly calm. He doesn’t curse when he talks about the officer in question, and he doesn’t raise his voice when he talks about the burns on his back that are just now healing. (The Hazelwood Police Department did not respond to a request for comment, but Jones has been charged with third-degree assault on a law-enforcement officer, resisting arrest and property damage.)
In fact, Jones’ voice gets a little quieter when he talks about the altercation. With tattoos over his entire body, he says he’s no stranger to pain, but after the 20th shock he started to wonder whether the officer—who, Jones claims, was making racial remarks during the arrest—was trying to kill him. “He kept changing hands,” Jones says, “like he wasn’t getting a good one.”
The fact that he could withstand the pain, he believes, contributed to what he called excessive force. “I’ve seen videos of people being Tasered,” he says, imitating being electrocuted, “but I wasn’t doing that.”
Although the city has been “real cool” in the wake of the incident—Mayor T.R. Carr has even come to Mack’s to eat and talk—Jones plans to file suit against the officer in question. “I’m not trying to put a bunch of grown men in compromised positions,” he says. “I’m just trying to bring awareness.”
Ironically, he thinks it was his appearance that played the biggest role in the incident. “He might have seen the costume, but I’m not that person,” he says. “It’s a gift and a curse that I’m a big-ass black guy.”
