Hip-hop artists Jermaine-Corday Philpott and Dujon Edness each have different personal reasons why they feel disdain for Bermuda’s violent gang culture, but they are united in their desire to fight back with music.The duo met with The Royal Gazette near Purvis Primary School a location seen as neutral ground in the neighbourhood of Cedar Hill, Warwick.Police cars on patrol slowed several times as they passed by during the interview.“I wish they knew we were talking about something positive here,” Mr Philpott said.Over the coming months, the pair hope to release music, individually and as a group, with a portion of any monies raised donated to anti-violence community groups.“I have lost a lot of friends to shootings and it’s no secret I was in a gang,” Mr Philpott said. “I was part of a Crips set out in California. Even there, guys fought fist to fist first. It didn’t always lead to guns.”Like their rivals, the Bloods, the Crips are a mainly black US gang with household notoriety. Mr Philpott lived a gang life in California for “a couple of years”.“One year free, and one in prison,” he said. He returned to Bermuda in April.Two names in the grim roster of Bermuda’s gun victims stand out for him.“Shane Minors, I went to Northlands with him,” said Mr Philpott, who goes by the stage name of Flamez. “I was working construction, he was doing work as a plumber, so I used to see him around.”Mr Minors was shot dead in December, 2009. In February of this year, Colford Ferguson was murdered as he worked on a house in Somerset. Among the bereaved was the victim’s brother, musician Desmond Smith.“Desmond’s my uncle,” Mr Philpott said. “After that, I felt the best way to do something good, something I believe in, would be donating part of the proceeds of my music to a worthy cause. My uncle told me about Stand Up Bermuda, and I wanted to do something charitable through my music.”The two friends are each creating mix tapes of their work, to distribute as best they can by themselves. As a collaborative enterprise, their working name is NTO.“It’s an acronym for New Thug Order,” Mr Philpott explained. “I came up with it when I lived in California, but the people I was running with were not the most upstanding citizens. Thug means having street smarts, not going around beating people up and shooting people. It’s a way of taking back a name that a lot of people put a bad spin on.”Stand Up Bermuda, founded by ex-gangster Jahma Gibbons, has organised community service ventures, such as neighbourhood clean-ups, in response to the surge in gang-connected violence seen in Bermuda.“We’re not about violence, and we don’t have information about why these things are going on,” Mr Philpott said. “I don’t really get myself involved with gang talk. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t lead anywhere. At the end of the day, you’re always looking over your shoulder.”Mr Edness uses a stage name, J.$Hamar, which can be used to find his mixes on the free music site datpiff.com. “I’ve been making music since I was 15,” he said. “I have been writing poetry since primary school.”Mr Edness, a Cedar Hill resident, described how the connection he feels with his neighbourhood has changed with the gun-related deaths of the last eight years.“I knew Shaundae Jones, and I knew Kumi Harford and Jahmiko LeShore,” he said.Mr Jones was shot dead by an unknown assailant in Dockyard in April, 2003.Mr Harford was gunned down in December, 2009 Antonio Myers was this year sentenced to life in prison for that murder. No one has been charged so far with Mr LeShore’s March 1 killing.“There was a time I expected things to stop,” Mr Edness said. “But if it’s all about ‘hoods now, then round here is mine.”Bermuda has become more divided, he said.“Everywhere’s like that now. Different ’hoods all have different sets, and you don’t know who’s who. A lot of guys have created their own gangs that don’t even have names.”Like Mr Philpott, he feels that “a lot of different Bermy people are emulating a life” when it comes to gun violence.Drug dealing is the root cause, he said.“I feel a lot of these shootings come about because different guys have been swindled in drug deals. A lot of Bermudians, male and female, have an ego problem, trying to act all tough, and they don’t realise what it’s going to come to,” he said.“What the average guy in this Island needs, if they think it’s such a task to get a clip and shoot somebody how about just living life?”For him, living life revolves around polishing up his mix tape, with the help of producer Shannon Tuzo, by early next year, around the same time Mr Philpott finishes his own.“We’re working on an NTO mix, which is still untitled,” Mr Philpott said. “It’s a lot of new stuff for both of us. We have been selfish as artists, so it’s good to put our heads together on something like this.”He likened their musical friendship to that of US rappers Method Man and Redman, who work separately and also collaborate.“I’ve always felt like I’ve been on the wrong side of the tracks, and of the law,” he said. “I wanted to give something back, but I had a feeling things needed to change before I put anything out into our melting pot of confusion here in Bermuda. Now I just want to do it. I’ve lost too many friends.”