The mystery of who gunned down legendary Harlem rapper Big L nearly 30 years ago might finally be solved, the family told The Post this week.<\/p>\n
Lamont Coleman was shot and killed in his prime in a Feb. 15, 1999, drive-by shooting on the corner of West 139th Street and Lenox Avenue \u2014 the gritty spot prominently featured in his rhymes. He was just 24.<\/p>\n
Since then, two more members of Coleman\u2019s immediate family have also been killed in a two-block radius<\/a> of where he was fatally blasted nine times.<\/p>\n Lamont Coleman\u2019s photo on the cover image for \u201cThe Parable of Lamont Coleman\u201d documentary Versus<\/p>\n Lamont\u2019s childhood friend Gerald Woodley was arrested three months after the murder, but later released due to lack of evidence.<\/p>\n The family insisted this week there is more to the story and they will be telling it in a new documentary, \u201cThe Parable of Lamont Coleman,\u201d due to come out before the end of the year.<\/p>\n The film chronicles the decades-long web of relationships and betrayals around the enigmatic \u201cLifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous\u201d rapper, whose songs like \u201cFlamboyant\u201d \u201cM.V.P.\u201d and \u201cDanger Zone\u201d made him an underground hip-hop sensation<\/p>\n \u201cEverything will be answered,\u201d Big L\u2019s brother Donald Phinazee told The Post. <\/p>\n \u201cFor the first time, my family\u2019s true story will be told, and it will be shocking,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n There are never-before-seen home videos, unreleased footage, and new testimony that challenges the old narratives and will finally tell the complex story around Big L\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Where it will be shown will be announced at a later date.<\/p>\n A new documentary about the life and death of rapper Big L and his family is in the works.<\/p>\n The family did not shy away from saying that Big L was a product of his environment.<\/p>\n \u201cLamont was no saint,\u201d Phinazee admitted.<\/p>\n Leroy \u201cBig Lee\u201d Phinazee, Big L\u2019s older half-brother, was a leader of the notorious Harlem street gang known as the 139th St. NFL Crew, according to a 2017 book titled \u201cEthylene: The Rise and Fall of The NFL Crew<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n NFL, or \u201cN\u2014-z For Life,\u201d was known for extreme violence, drug trafficking and allegedly involved in dozens of murders and was often mentioned in Big L\u2019s lyrics.<\/p>\n Big L did a performance at Gauchos basketball Gym in Bronx, N.Y. in 1995. Versus<\/p>\n Before Big L\u2019s murder, Phinazee was imprisoned for a probation violation when he sought revenge on three rival gang bangers \u2014 Including Woodley. He allegedly contracted a Brooklyn-based hitman, and tasked his little brother, Big L, with identifying the targets, according to the book.<\/p>\n Leroy\u2019s street ties led cops to believe Big L\u2019s murder was a retaliation for his brother\u2019s actions or possibly a case of mistaken identity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a good possibility it was retaliation for something Big L\u2019s brother did, or Woodley believed he had done,\u201d said a spokesperson for the NYPD.\u00a0<\/p>\n Big L is out on the street in a puffer coat in 1989. Versus<\/p>\n Woodley was gunned down in 2016<\/a> at the same intersection where Lamont was murdered.<\/p>\n On his first album, \u201cLifestylez\u201d Lamont immortalized this stretch around West 139th Street and Lenox Avenue as the \u201dDanger Zone.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2002, Leroy was 33 when he was shot and killed just two blocks away from where Big L was gunned down. His son, also named Leroy Phinazee and known as \u201cLittle Lee,\u201d was shot and killed in 2019 on the same streets. He was 29.<\/p>\n Their mother died in 2008.<\/p>\n Big L poses for photos at the Ambassador East Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother died of a broken heart,\u201d said Phinazee, who remembered only good things about his famous brother. <\/p>\n Coleman was raised in Harlem by his mother Gilda \u201cPinky\u201d Terry, alongside his older step-brothers, Donald and Leroy.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have an idea of what Harlem is like, but no one really knows besides the people who lived there,\u201d said Phinazee. \u201cThere were good times \u2014 basketball, music, parties.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother loved Earth, Wind and Fire, The Temptations.<\/p>\n A Big L mural was painted on the side of a deli in Harlem on the corner of West 140th Street and Lenox Ave. Shutterstock \/ Here Now<\/p>\n \u201cShe bought us this little DJ machine, and we went crazy with it. Lamont got so good he started doing freestyle battles \u2026 he won this trophy \u2014 it was bigger than him.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1985, Phinazee took his then 11-year-old brother to a Run-DMC concert.<\/p>\n \u201cLamont was mesmerized and after that, all he wanted to do was rhyme.\u201d<\/p>\n Coleman\u2019s focus was on his music, even later competing with superstar Jay-Z in rap rhyming competitions, ending with J-Z being so impressed by Big L that he wanted to sign him to his Roc-A-Fella record label, which later became Roc Nation<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHis talents had no limits, his potential was infinity,\u201d said Phinazee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mystery of who gunned down legendary Harlem rapper Big L nearly 30 years ago might finally be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2471,4542,469,75,84,83,57,238,58363,9,24,63,3355,58],"class_list":["post-170908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-documentaries","tag-guns","tag-harlem","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-metro","tag-murders","tag-mysteries","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-rappers","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}