Lauded by Hip-Hop artists from Busta Rhymes to the Wu-Tang Clan, linked to drug dealers and prison gangs, The Nation of Gods and Earths — or, as they are popularly known, the Five Percenters — have inspired controversy for almost 40 years.

Until two weeks ago, Intelligent Tarref Allah, a 27-year-old Brooklyn native convicted of murder in 1995, was just a gang member in prison asking for special treatment.

AP, Feb. 17, 2003

Finger Lake Times, Nov. 1, 2002

Lord Premier was playing chess when the guards came for him. They entered his cell, cuffed him, took his books and papers. At first, they wouldn’t tell him what he had done. They carted him off to a prison within a prison at the Evans Correctional Institution in Bennettsville, S.C., a maximum security institution of 1,000 inmates. There he spent 23 hours a day locked up. For his hour a day in the rec yard he was shackled hand and foot. His crime? He followed the teachings of the Five Percent.