The murder of infamous drug kingpin and federal informant Alberto “Alpo” Martinez drew a considerable amount of public interest in large part due to his character in the 2002 crime drama Paid In Full, played by fellow Harlemite rapper Cam’ron.
Damon Dash, an executive producer of Paid In Full, revealed that Martinez’s death opens the door for a sequel to the film, which he plans to spearhead in an attempt to bring the story full circle and give viewers closure.
“Paid In Full is a reflection of everything I’ve learned and I am really going to see it through now that there’s an ending,” Dash explained to Page Six. “So this is going to dramatically change based on what happened Sunday. I was stuck on how to really approach it and this is actually giving me more clarity.”
Dash, a Harlem native himself, was one of the most prominent figures involved in the making of Paid In Full, which was released under Roc-A-Fella Films. Having come of age during the ’80s and witnessed the events that transpired amid the crack epidemic that ravaged the neighborhood, the brash mogul made it his personal duty to tell the story of Harlem’s most famous hustlers from that era in an accurate and tasteful fashion. And he plans to follow that blueprint if he were to ever follow through with a sequel to Paid In Full.
“Paid in Full was a classic,” boasted the 50-year-old. “To even touch it again, I got to come better. So the story got to be straight. Everybody’s thinking it’s got to be tight, and based on the fact that I have creative control, I can do things the right way. Sh*t’s going to be incredible.”
He also revealed that a sequel to the film would also glean inspiration from former kingpin-turned-entrepreneur Kevin Chiles’ book, Crack Era: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of Kevin Chiles, which was released in 2019. “A lot of it talks about the environment and what a lot of people were going through,” Dash said of Chiles’ book. “I just like the way he broke down the mechanics and logistics of hustling.”
Given its status as a cultural classic and one of the greatest crime flicks of its era, a sequel to Paid In Full is already highly anticipated and will hopefully see the light of day sometime in the near future.
Until then, check out the original trailer for Paid In Full below.