Antoine Clark started urban true-crime magazine FEDS in 1998. Although FEDS appears to glorify crime by regularly profiling well-known killers, kingpins, and pimps, Antoine insists that FEDS’ mission is to act as a deterrent; only criminals whose lives have been destroyed by their crimes are featured on the covers. The strength of FEDS unparalleled content kicked open many doors for Antoine. When he started FEDS, his vehicle was his office; today he runs FEDS from offices within The Source Magazine building in Manhattan. But success breeds drama, and Antoine’s four year rise to the top is no exception. Antoine discusses the future of FEDS, dispels a vicious rumor about him, and speaks on possibly suing Damon Dash.
Antoine, how’d FEDS get started?
FEDS came about in ’98. In 1987…I was shot at close range with a .357Magnum. I was paralyzed…but I still wanted to be in business. I had a production company called Warning Records and had gotten a deal through Quest, Quincy Jones’s label through Warner, but things didn’t work out. I took money I made from the record business and put it into starting FEDS. I’ve regained use of my legs but at the time…I didn’t have a lot of money to move around to get sports figures or recording artists so I used what I had: people in prisons and a whole neighborhood full of crime. I had an interest in acronyms, and I was playing around with them one day and the name FEDS just came to me: Finally Every Dimension of the Streets. I modeled FEDS after Time Magazine; that’s why the name has four letters and the covers have the red border.
How did you come to run FEDS from the Source building?
After FEDS came out, I became friends with (Source co-owner) David Mays. He said he really liked the magazine, and offered us some space in the building. He said he wanted to see the magazine grow, and help out any way he could. I have some big news concerning me and the Source…everybody will find out about that real soon.
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How many cities does FEDS go to? What is the frequency?
FEDS is quarterly, and it’s in all major cities. Internationally we’re in Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, England, France…We’re sold out of Border, Tower, Wherehouse, Coconuts…many major retailers, all independently distributed.
What’s been your hardest story, emotionally speaking?
The Santra Rucker story. Her PO had just started as we were going into the story. It just hurt me so bad to see her and talk to her, knowing there was a possibility that what I was writing could help her parole or stop it. I thought it was really unfair that she got twelve life sentences [and] it was hard to know that what I wrote could affect her like that.
What’s been your most dangerous story?
The gang war stories. We wanted to tell them…that you shouldn’t kill over the colors. Not to say you shouldn’t wear the red or the blue, but just don’t kill over it. It could have affected me cause the gangs…they have some young guys that might not understand what we were trying to do. Every other thing, with killers, pimps… I even did a story with a person that ate prostitutes, but that didn’t affect me more than the gang stories because I just wanted them to understand and not take what I was saying the wrong way.
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Tiffany Chiles, publisher of rival street zine Don Diva claims you’re a police informant? How do you respond?
Maybe Tiffany doesn’t know the word snitch doesn’t come from the street; it comes from prison. A person becomes a snitch by telling on somebody else…and word gets around about them in prison. The prisoners we interview would never mess with us if they thought we were snitches, and not one person we’ve ever interviewed is ever gonna say that about me.
What’s the future of FEDS?
We’re pretty certain we’re going to put out books. That’s why we have our own distribution company. We already have plenty of ideas for books, and films. In fact, the idea for the movie Paid in Full that Damon Dash released was ours. Paid in Full came from the story we did in our first issue on a member of a drug cartel named AZ. The story was on AZ and his partners, Alpo and Rich Porter, told through AZ’s eyes. AZ had had a script for a movie for a while when we did that story, but nobody would touch it until we covered it. Everybody from Tribeca films to Court TV was calling us wanting to know about our other story ideas. We would have done the movie but we didn’t have the funds cause we were just getting started. After a few more issues came out we had a sit down with Damon Dash; he wanted to buy FEDS because of the stories. We wouldn’t sell it, so went and did the movie on his own. He used the first issue where we covered the cartel, and the fourth issue where we interviewed Alpo to pitch the idea to Miramax films so they could see how hot the story was and get a vision of the movie. The film ended up coming out on Dimension Films, a division of Miramax. The worst part about it is none of the guys’ kids knew what was going on. Like Rich Porter’s daughter…AZ and Alpo are alive but Rich Porter was murdered, and so was his little brother, and now she has to go to school and hear all these stories from the movie about her family. Damon didn’t even reach out to Rich Porter’s mom or anything. Damon Dash’s next movie The Untouchables is also another one of our ideas. I am seriously considering suing Damon Dash because we’ve been robbed. For all you guys doing business, you better watch what you say because everybody’s not your friend.
