I Never Met Alpo by Troy Reed / Buy on Amazon (US) / Buy on Amazon (UK)

Don’t be fooled by the title. Troy Reed did meet Alpo. In fact, they became as close as blood brothers. The title of this book is a statement. Throughout his fifteen years of interacting with Alpo, Troy became one of the only people who would get to know Albert Martinez. The man behind the legend, Alpo. With the book’s title, Troy Reed is saying that he didn’t meet Alpo initially, he instead got to meet Albert. And now, thanks to this incredible book, he’s giving readers a chance to meet Albert too.

The book starts out with Alpo’s first-hand accounts of his own life experiences, including the moments when the Feds busted him. Alpo explains his reasons for co-operating with the government and goes into full detail about the process. All we’ve heard for the past 30+ years is about how much of a snitch or a rat Alpo is, so hearing these explanations from the man himself is mind-blowing. This is nothing like what we heard in Alpo’s FEDS magazine interview. These few chapters from Alpo’s perspective are worth the cost of the book alone.

After Alpo’s chapters, Troy Reed begins documenting his own experiences of meeting Alpo for the first time. It was during Alpo’s incarceration at a witness protection correctional facility. After the success of Game Over, Troy Reed wanted to be the first to make a full-length Alpo documentary with the co-sign of the man himself. After connecting with an associate of Alpo, Troy was added to Alpo’s visiting list. The two men eventually met and Alpo found Troy Reed easy to talk to. From then on Troy would learn all about Albert Martinez.

Troy describes Albert (Alpo) as someone who is 100% self-conscious about their past actions. Alpo’s deal with the government meant that he had to be honest about his 14 murders to avoid the death sentence. This meant that he was allowed to speak freely to Troy about all of his past transgressions. But as he spoke about these things, Troy caught Albert’s compassion for the people he hurt and the families he tore apart.

Later in the book, Troy gives us the true story behind Alpo’s release from incarceration in 2015. Alpo was released into a witness protection program and given a new identity. The plan was for him to live a peaceful life in Maine as a changed man. For a while, Alpo seemed happy to be driving a Pepsi truck and interacting with the locals in Maine. But as this book documents, Alpo would eventually visit his old stomping ground, New York City. And after being treated like a celebrity by people who recognized him, he would slowly slip back into the person we know as Alpo. The same character depicted by Cam’ron in Paid in Full.

When I started to learn about Alpo’s appearances in Harlem on social media, I was shocked to know that this gangster from the 80s, who co-operated with the government, was casually walking around and living his life as if nothing happened. And I think many of us can admit that we were mesmerized by the boldness of Alpo.

Back in 2019, a clip surfaced online of Alpo being driven around Harlem while retelling his experience of murdering Rich Porter. Alpo even goes to the same location where he left Porter’s body in 1990. Troy Reed was directing this footage, and in this book, he explains that this footage was never supposed to be seen. The plan was to film for the Alpo documentary. Troy intended to make cuts to the final version so that you would see the compassionate side of Alpo. Viewers were meant to see that Alpo was truly sorry for what he did. But unfortunately, the footage was leaked online before we could ever see a final cut. The leaked clips show the cold psychopath that Alpo is believed to be.

Troy Reed explains the full details behind the leak, and also why he decided to make an apology video. Sadly, this leak meant that we’d never get a final edited cut of the Alpo documentary that he’d been working on for many years.

The latter parts of I Never Met Alpo focus heavily on Alpo’s descent back into his old ways. He was kicked out of the witness protection program after violating the rules. And after seeing all of the attention he got on the streets, it wasn’t long before he made the streets his home again. Alpo would later move from Maine to New Jersey to be closer to the action.

You can feel Troy’s pain and frustration as he writes about the events that led up to October 31st, 2021. That was the morning that we all got the shocking news that Albert Martinez aka Alpo had been shot and killed in his Dodge Ram 2500 pick-up truck.

However you feel about Alpo, that death signified the end of an era. The well-documented crack era of the mid-to-late 1980s was a unique time to be alive. And although there are many tragic stories of murderous drug dealers breaking up families, there’s one thing we can’t forget. The U.S was allowing the sale of narcotics to fund a war in Nicaragua. And when they had no more interest in doing so, they proceeded to make inner-city hustlers the villains behind the war on drugs.

There’s no denying that men like Alpo made their own decisions. And as Troy Reed shows us, Alpo was aware of his mistakes. But, in an environment stripped of opportunity, there weren’t many other decisions for men like Alpo to make.

With his release into witness protection, Alpo had a second chance to make that decision, and he chose wrong for a second time.

Alpo’s name is the biggest name on the cover of this book, and there’s no doubt that he was a unique individual that the world will never see again. But we cannot forget Troy Reed. Troy Reed has once again captured and documented an important story to the black community. He is the quintessence of black role models. I say this because not only does he pride himself on telling the stories that need to be told, but he takes his time to build with the subjects of his documentaries behind the scenes. In this book, he shows how much he nurtured his relationship with Alpo. From giving him money to help him live while on witness protection, to encouraging Alpo to stay out of New York City and escape falling back into the cycle. Troy shows his understanding of the pain and suffering that Alpo caused. He aimed to shield the family of Rich Porter from Alpo’s bold moves.

Troy Reed didn’t write this book to glorify Alpo or the life he lived. He wrote it as a means to present Albert’s truth to the world. To let the world know about the man who considered him a little brother. Because while people online type the most creative insults they can think of under Alpo videos, a book now exists that documents the cold hard facts behind an unfortunate story. Reed has given us the reality of what Alpo went through since killing his friend and snitching on his enforcer. Because of Troy Reed, you can learn the truth of who Albert Martinez is.

Unlike the media moguls you find on YouTube that cover black tragedy for clicks and ad revenue, people like Troy Reed and Gully TV are continuously showing that there is a way to be respectful towards the people involved in the story. And that is the carefulness and consideration we need to see from those who publish these true crime stories.

I Never Met Alpo is the closest Albert Martinez autobiography that we’ll ever get. If you’re into these true crime stories then don’t hesitate to buy a copy. You won’t be disappointed.

Jamil is the well-respected owner of the Gully TV platform. And he’s been in the presence of some serious people. Through the pure love of journalism, he’s found himself in some dangerous situations involving documented killers. Some of these names include Alpo, Haitian Jack, and Sean Branch. He’s also had heated phone calls with the likes of Jimmy Henchman. This book, Somethings I Been Thru is Jamil’s memoir where he documents some of these situations in detail.

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The memoir starts off with a brief history of Jamil’s (Gully’s) upbringing. Jamil grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania learning the ways of his father, who was all about making money and providing for his child. As with any inner-city that has been purposely made devoid of opportunities, the youth will gravitate to what their peers in the neighborhood are doing to get by. Jamil walked the street life that many of our people were subjected to back in the 70’s and 80’s. This led to him spending some time in prison, where he discovered his true gifts.

In the memoir, Jamil talks about writing stories in prison and finding out how gifted he was at painting a picture. His inmates would request stories from him, and soon enough, this led to him landing a ghostwriting gig for a popular author and publisher of urban literature. When Jamil was done serving his time, he landed a writing deal worth thousands of dollars. Something that made his mom proud.

But Jamil explains in the memoir that he had bigger ideas. He was watching the success that other street media platforms were seeing at the time. This was the mid-2000s when the likes of Smack DVD, Big Fendi’s The Come Up DVD, Sub-0’s series of DVD’s, and French Montana’s Cocaine City were selling in waves all around America. In fact, I used to buy these DVD’s all the way over here in the UK.

Jamil knew that the way these DVD’s depicted the raw and gritty street life was the future of black independent media. At the time, no one else around him understood the vision, but Jamil saw it bright as day. That’s when he brought the idea of Gully TV to his publisher, who was sponsoring his work at the time. Failing to understand the idea and its potential, they rejected the offer. Leaving Jamil to go into business for himself.

Jamil went on to form Gully TV and began shedding light on some of the most infamous stories in black communities all over America. As Jamil details how he navigated these various interviews, it’s clear to see that he has deep intuition. He has a clear understanding of people’s psychology, and he’s able to use that as a tool to make them feel comfortable telling their truths. His work was so thorough that he himself embodied the brand. People began referring to Jamil as Gully TV.

In the memoir, Jamil’s detailing of meeting Alpo will likely send chills down your spine if you’re familiar with Alpo’s story. Jamil wrote this part so vividly that I felt like it was me meeting Alpo in Harlem. Like it was me looking into the eyes of a killer while he tells me not to cross him.

Jamil has no doubt been through some things. And it’s these things that make this book so content-heavy. Saying too much will give away the weight of the experiences as you read the stories. But just know that through Jamil’s work, he’s been threatened by some serious people (and some not-so-serious people). And he was threatened to the point where Jamil’s own family and friends backed away from him, fearing for his (and their) lives.

One of the documentaries that Jamil / Gully TV is well known for, is the one on the infamous street legend, Haitian Jack. Jamil spent some time at Jack’s mansion in the Dominican Republic, and in the memoir, he talks about Haitian Jack’s demeanor. He speaks on some of the things they talked about. Things that may or may not have made it to the documentary. But one important thing to know is that Jamil doesn’t just tell you how the documentary came to be, he also reveals how his professional relationship with Jack took a turn for the worse sometime after the documentary’s existence. These are the stories you never hear about when it comes to journalism, specifically in black culture.

And speaking of our culture. This memoir shows how we have a problem with how we treat our media platforms. You see, in our street culture, being in the presence of snitches (or “rats”) is strictly prohibited. And this taboo extends to media platforms, who are often ridiculed for allowing snitches to share their experiences. But the problem with this logic is that mainstream white-owned media is allowed to interview these same people without any negative blowback from the community. And in turn, this behavior restricts the growth of our black-owned media platforms.

Jamil shouldn’t be held accountable for reviewing snitches, because he himself did not commit their acts. He is simply documenting these truths so people understand the consequences. And as Jamil states himself in the book, after he shared with the world that he spoke to Alpo, it was as if he gave the green light for all other black-owned channels to begin speaking about Alpo. Everyone was too scared to do so before Jamil did, because of how they’d be viewed.

Jamil has a lot of knowledge to share in this memoir. He shares a lot of insider knowledge that people have shared with him publicly, such as details on the Tupac robbery on November 30th, 1994. If you want to be in the know on many of the urban legends in hip hop, you’ll definitely want to read this book.

Another thing I enjoyed reading about was Jamil’s perspective on Wayne Perry. I can’t put it better than the man himself, but I do understand his theory that Wayne Perry perhaps shouldn’t be so celebrated. He was a man that bullied and murdered his own people in Washington D.C, on the command of a man who was from out of town—that man being Alpo Martinez.

When I originally saw the number of pages in Somethings I Been Thru, I was expecting to read brief summaries on the various interviews that Jamil conducted. But I was pleasantly surprised at how full of jewels this book is, considering it’s under a hundred pages. There’s plenty of meat in these pages to sink your teeth into. There are no dry spots so it ends up feeling like a book that was 300 pages long. And you’ll still be left wishing for more true stories.

On a further note, if you’re currently following the murder of Alpo Martinez like I am—this death signifies the end of an era—just know that Gully TV was the first media platform to confirm the murder. His connections allowed him to break the story before everyone else could confirm that Alpo was the victim. It’s years of hard work and dedication that grant you connections like that.

Salute to Jamil “Gully TV” Lindsey for sharing a part of his story in these pages.

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