HAYWARD — Hayward rapper Spice 1 is still recovering from a bullet wound he suffered shortly after midnight Monday while sitting in his car in the driveway of his mother's home.
The 37-year-old Spice 1, whose real name is Robert Green, described the shooting by phone from his hospital bed Thursday night.
"I was just sitting in my car," Green said. "I parked in front of my mom's house. I went to sleep because I don't like to wake her up that late."
Green's mother, Jean Green-Craven, a medical assistant at Kaiser Permanente, said her son had been at a photo shoot all day Sunday and had eaten dinner at a friend's house before driving to her house on Chiplay Avenue late Sunday night.
Green was sitting in his black Cadillac Escalade listening to music, eating a plate of leftover spaghetti and probably talking on his cell phone, Green-Craven said.
She said her son often parked in front of the house and sat in his car while talking on the phone.
Green said he had dozed off, but then heard a jiggle at the passenger-side door. "So I woke up. I see the dude and I start banging on the window. He got scared and ran and fired the pistol while he was running away."
The bullet went through the passenger-side window, grazing Green's chin before striking him in the upper left side of his chest.
"I was going to go after him, but he ran," Green said. "I stuck my finger in the (bullet) hole. I said, 'Damn, that was a bullet wound!'"
Green
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said the shooter was wearing a hood, making it difficult to get a look at the man's face. However, the shooter was not wearing gloves and Green thinks he was Hispanic.
Hayward Police Lt. Reid Lindblom was able to release only a few details on the investigation of Monday's incident.
"We have a few leads that we are looking into, but it's nothing I can talk about at this point without compromising the investigation," he said.
Green's mother was in bed with her husband, Jerry Craven, when she heard a loud banging on the front door. She answered the door and saw her son pulling off his jacket and shirts.
"I can't believe those fools shot me!" he told her.
Green-Craven saw drops of blood falling onto her carpet and a hole in her son's chest. She called 9-1-1.
Green got a glass of water from the kitchen, saying he couldn't breathe, then collapsed, Green-Craven said.
An ambulance arrived and took Green to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley.
He received several stitches where the bullet had grazed his chin. The bullet passed through his chest, puncturing his lung before lodging in the muscles of his back, Green-Craven explained.
"They couldn't get it out," she said. "He's going to have to live with that bullet."
Green explained from his hospital bed that a rod was placed in his side to get to his lung. Despite that, he seemed in good spirits Thursday and said he was doing well. "I'm holding it down," he said.
"He's in quite a bit of pain," his mother said. "But it's good pain because we know he's coming back. He's a strong man, so we know he's coming back."
Green grew up in Hayward and graduated from Mt. Eden High School in 1989. His rap career began in the early days of the Bay Area gangsta rap scene. In the 1990s, two of Green's albums went platinum, selling more than a million copies. Other recordings went gold, selling more than 500,000 copies.
Green, a prolific artist, has released more than a dozen albums since 1991 and has worked with a long list of rappers, including Tupac Shakur and Too $hort.
His latest album, Thug Association, was released this year.
Green-Craven said that her son has been living in Las Vegas for about five years but has been staying in the Bay Area and is planning to move back here.
Green-Craven and Jerry Craven said they had heard from neighbors that several cars in the neighborhood had been broken into the night Green was shot.
Lindblom said he was not aware of other auto burglaries in the neighborhood that night.
"Every neighborhood has some crime issues, but this is not a bad neighborhood," he said.
Jerry Craven said that their suburban street is too dark at night and that he wants better streetlighting. The couple suspects the shooting was the result of a random crime.
In a profile of Green in 2000, The Daily Review reported that Green had been involved in a rapid-fire shootout in the mid-'90s at rapper Too Short's studio in West Oakland. Sometime after midnight, gunmen fired several bullets into Green's Jeep, according to the article. It isn't clear what the motivation for the incident was.
Green, who wasn't hurt, reportedly jumped out of the Jeep and chased after the perpetrators, firing his .44-caliber Magnum at them as they escaped across a nearby field.
On Tuesday, a rapper Green had collaborated with in the past, Pimp C, whose real name is Chad Butler, 33, died while in bed in a Los Angeles hotel.
Green's manager, Scott Bibiano, also known as Six, said he did not believe there are any connections between Green's shooting and Butler's death.
"The chances of that happening to two legends in the rap game back to back are pretty slim," Bibiano said Thursday. "But it's two totally random things that happened to happen within a day of each other."
Butler likely died of natural causes, the L.A. County coroner told the Los Angeles Times.
Bibiano said that he and Green had returned from performances in Las Cruces, N.M., and El Paso, Texas, shortly before Green was shot.
He said Green's new album is selling well and that fans are concerned about the shooting.
"There's a lot of good support and a lot of love that he's been getting," Bibiano said.
Green said from his hospital bed that he has been getting e-mails from fans all over the country, as well as from Japan and Germany.
He also said he is working on a new album.
"The album I'm working on now, I'm just trying to drop some good music," he said.
Of getting shot, Green said, "It gives me something to work with."
