The Rise And Fall Of Loon
Playboy Magazine US|September 2016

Chauncey “Loon” Hawkins was Harlem hustler royalty, a hit-writer for Puff Daddy and a crucial part of the Bad Boy Records family. He looks back at the wave that took him and the wreckage it left behind

Thomas Golianopoulos
The Rise And Fall Of Loon

The music video for “I Need a Girl (Part Two)” is peak Puff Daddy absurdity, a guys’ night out of epic proportions that begins with a helicopter landing and ends at a mansion party featuring a girl-to-guy ratio of about 10 to one. For Chauncey Hawkins, then known as the rapper Loon, it was the first time he felt like a hip-hop star.

Loon arrived on the Miami set that February 2002 afternoon with a plan. First, he selected his motorcycle for the video, settling on a Harley-Davidson chopper with ape-hanger handlebars that not only looked cool but provided a stable ride. He also decided to play to the camera. In his previous video with Puffy, “I Need a Girl (Part One),” Loon at times faded into the background. This time around he was more confident, brazenly elbowing his way into shots—dancing, champagne flute in hand, surrounded by women; leaning on a Ferrari 360 Spider as if he owned it; weaving through the streets of Miami on his bike alongside Puff and the R&B singer Ginuwine, appearing to be every bit as much a celebrity as his more famous collaborators.

But something else had changed since “Part One”: The fans on the set—the women in particular—weren’t there merely for Puff. “It was amazing to hear people actually screaming for me,” Loon recalls. “It was everything I had worked for, everything I had strived for.”

Then it all changed. Just as Hawkins had become Loon, Loon became Amir Junaid Muhadith, and then, in July 2013, he became a federal inmate in North Carolina. Far from the private helicopters and champagne flutes, Muhadith is loath to discuss the journey—his debauched life as Sean Combs’s wingman; the horrors of crack-era Harlem that he barely escaped; the sex, drugs and violence.

“How can I explain this without glorifying it?” he says.

This story is from the September 2016 edition of Playboy Magazine US.

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This story is from the September 2016 edition of Playboy Magazine US.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,000+ magazines and newspapers.