Seattle terminates contract with former pimp turned ‘Street Czar’

Sources at Seattle City Hall told The Post Millennial that his contract was not renewed following the spike in shootings and gang violence within the city. Taylor was paid over $100k for six months of work. Last July, he signed a $150k contract with the city.

Last Friday, Taylor released a music video called "Like Me," and rapped about his pimp career which glorifies the lifestyle he claimed he had left behind.

"You wanna be an American pimp, like me! You wanna keep yo little b*** in check, like me! Pimps really don't wanna be like Mike, they wanna be like me," Taylor rapped from a yacht alongside his wife who was one of his prostitutes.

Taylor was featured in the 1999 documentary American Pimp which examined "pimping subculture," and is known to have bragged about impregnating the young girls he pimped.

In 2000, Taylor was convicted of seven prostitution-related counts, three involving a 16-year-old girl on the charge of child trafficking, two involving adult women and two counts of money-laundering. His bail was set at $2.2 million at his preliminary hearing in 1998. Taylor insisted that he was not aware of her age.

Seattle officials and the local media referred to Taylor as a "civic activist" in large part because his brother, Che Taylor, was killed by police in 2016 during an attempted arrest for drug possession.

The shooting was ruled lawful when a gun was found at the scene. Che Taylor had been previously convicted of rape and robbery and had multiple outstanding warrants.

After the shooting, Andre Taylor formed the group "Not This Time" which seeks to "engage with local community members, the families of those who have lost their loved ones to police shootings, and those who work inside the system, to demand more police accountability and safer communities."

Taylor and Not This Time were the driving force behind anti cop initiative 940 and led mass "demonstrations" downtown in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

In 2019 Not This Time was paid $100,000 to host an event called "Conversations With The Street." Taylor appeared with Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan at a May 30 press conference, commending the mayor for speaking out against Floyd's death and pledging to speak out for young black men amid the unrest.

Taylor spoke out against the methods of the occupied protest, saying in a Facebook video that "That CHOP area is attracting this kind of activity and it’s unsafe, I told them, 'All those people that were supporting you guys, they're going to start walking away from you, especially all those white people that were following you... They don't want to be associated with any part of that violence.'"

"So don't just leave," Taylor told the activists, according to the Seattle Times, "leave with something." He also counseled them to register nonprofits and set up websites to advance their cause.

In response to criticism after Durkan hired Taylor, spokesperson for the Mayor Kelsey Nyland said, "Not This Time was one of the many community organizations working with the City on Capitol Hill."

Taylor was involved in the closed meetings where Mayor Durkan allegedly negotiated payouts for various groups in the CHOP including $100,000,000, unused city facilities and funding that the Mayor announced after the dismantling of CHOP.

"Me, as a black man has the right to be paid for my genius or for whatever my organization can provide," Taylor said. "Black people as a whole have not been in a place to be compensated for their genius or their work for a very very long time." Taylor told KOMO News. "I know the term 'Street Czar' is quite provocative."