Dove the Warrior's Page

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Male

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Muskogee

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Ok

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US

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My story with God

Gerald F Witherspoon Sr owner of Warfare Records 2020, singer, songwriter, rap artist, producer, author, and music publisher, “Dove the Warrior” was born in Wichita, Kansas to Victoria and Gerald L Witherspoon on Feb 13, 1980. His biological parents were both schizophrenic and bi-polar, court committed to mental institutions during his infancy, lost their parental rights and were declared too unstable to raise children.

His story, “I was born into a third generational curse of mental illnesses, stayed in 15 different foster homes until I was adopted at age 5 and grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Extremely blessed with an adoption by my first cousins Joquita and Fedro Simmons, who nurtured and provided for me and made sure that I took my prescribed medications twice a day. I also had an omnipotent and eternally wise God who put the ability within me at age 8 to know and understand that I was better off not taking the medication.

After being raised in the church it was nothing unusual to find me singing in the choir and soloing the hymn “Oh how I love Jesus”. However, I discovered my poetic ability in the 6th grade. After sleeping through class with only 5 minutes left until the bell rung, my loving teacher Mollie Miller who cared for me along with Carol Duncan the greatest teacher that ever lived despite all of my disruptive and violent behaviors, asked me to please just scribble something out on paper and she would pass me. Only because I respected her for treating me better than the other teachers did I scribble out something on the paper and turn it in. The assignment was to write a poem that could be used to advertise Griffin’s syrup and the poems would be judged. The next day Ms. Miller was excited to tell me that I had won amongst the other kids in all the other 6th grade classes that participated. Ms. Miller was not the judge!!!

My best friend at the time was Kenny “ Killa Klown” Reynolds who banged blood and had my back even though we would stay into it all the time. Kenny was the only real homie I had and after hanging with him for a while I went from running from every fight to winning most of them. After competing with Kenny to see who could learn the words the fastest to the song, “My mind is playing tricks on me” by “Ghetto Boyz” I had fell in love with gangster rap.

Before I knew it I was wearing dickies and houseshoes with red rags hangin out my pockets tied to my head and wrapped around my fist. I became obsessed with red, red socks, red hats, red shoes, red boxers, red pants and shirts, red candy, red pop, red everything, not to mention what happened when I heard the set-tripping song “Piru Love” which was hard to listen to without wanting to kill anyone wearing blue.

It was in the 7th grade at West Junior High during In-School-Suspension that I wrote my first song. I called it “eight ball rollin”. The song was about slanging eight balls of crack cocaine and jacking hustlers for their rims.

After Kenny got locked up I was pretty much by myself again. But now I was getting jumped quite frequently and getting kicked out of school for fighting. Not even halfway into my freshman year at Muskogee High School I was suspended for carrying a weapon and possession of illegal drugs with intent to distribute. It was at this time in my life when being jumped by your enemies had turned into being shot at by your enemies who had real intentions on killing you. And the few homies that I had gathered together had all ended up dead or in jail. I had lost interest in being part of a gang and just started representing South Side Thug. So it was time to stay strapped, pack your pistol at all times and watch everything around you, where you go, who you talk to, etc.

After Running away from home in 1994 and staying wherever, I met a rapper named Ak-47 from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma who told me that I sounded just like these cats named Bone Thugs n Harmony. I doubted that anyone could rap like me and I had never heard any other rapper tongue-twist like I did. After hearing one song from Bone entitled “4 the love of money” I was overwhelmed with how much we had in common. One of the three main things was that they referred to themselves as thugs and not gangsters, loved to smoke marijuana, and entertained ouija boards. I fell in love with the group and knew every word to all of their songs and it actually felt like they were someone I grew up with.

By 1996 I was recording pretty regular and went by the artist name “Byrd Melodies” and was known for songs titled “Backstabbing Traitors”, “Ridin’ High” “ConverSatan with Spirits”,“Keep the Pride Alive” “Thingz’ll Never “B” da Same” and “Bloody Mary”. I had also done some songs with a local group I grew up with called the “Thugg Family”.

Later that year I was introduced by Lawrence Stidham “a local studio owner” to the manager of Flesh n Bone who later became my manager. This was a very exciting time in my life and the very thought of getting to meet Flesh n Bone face to face was more than I would of dreamed possible.

It wasn’t soon after that when I hooked up with Francisco “Isco Say” Trotter and we started putting some professional music together. We had worked on the soundtrack to a movie called “G Mentality” which we also acted as main characters. We did a lot of shows together in different cities and states and the crowd just loved us. One of the coldest producers I had ever met along the way was Marcus “Big Man” Stidham who had arranged several songs for me as well. One called “Murderer” which blew my mind once I heard it on the radio.

I started meeting a lot of people over a short period of time like Spice 1, South Central Cartel, Aftermath, Lil Armaggedon, Partners n Rhyme, Boss, C-Note, D Flexx and was by all means starting to develop a little fame.

By 1998 I had been locked up 5 times, had crooked cops trying to plant dope on me pulling me over for no reason and writing tickets for the fun of it. Towards the end of the same year though, I had been offered four different record deals. I also had 7 different women starting to find out about each other. Talk about a year of decision-making. I was giving myself more time to think about which label to sign with and was leaning more towards signing with Flesh n Bone’s (FBI). But I was being forced to choose between these 7 women and didn’t have much time to choose.


Well, I chose a lady by the name of Martinca Thomas. She was from a small town about 15 miles west of Muskogee called Taft. She was the daughter of the sweetest lady I have ever met in my entire life. It wasn’t long after choosing her that she became pregnant with my only son. She was independent, had a kind heart and believed in working. One of the only things I didn’t think I could deal with was the fact that her father was a police chief and she had one brother who was a cop and another brother who was a correctional officer, and I absolutely hated police. Not to mention, she later became a sergeant at a local correctional facility. Anyway, she would always encourage me to think positive and forget about my past, leave the streets alone and to quit taking penitentiary chances. I was at that time smoking a whole lot of weed, drinking myself to death, and involving myself in a lot of violent situations.

She knew that I was very bitter towards my biological father for not being capable of raising me. I didn’t understand how that could happen and didn’t want to accept the fact that he was mentally unstable. She would encourage me to go and visit him but I would aggressively refuse.

I finally went to visit him and one of the first things he said to me was that any woman worth having your child is worth making your wife. Ever heard of people who are so smart they’re crazy? This was the prime example. God bless his soul.

I was amazed to find a drawing on his wall that had mountains, trees, birds and ocean-side all in the same position of a picture that I had been drawing since I was in the third grade. We had a long deep discussion as he shared his collection of poems and songs with me that he had written over a very long period of years some of which were even about me. We then shot a game of pool, went to play a game of basketball and shortly thereafter he died. Thanks to my wife I agreed to go see him and thanks to him I realized she was worth marrying.

Her mother was a Christian in deed. Not just some church- attending, hallelujah but wouldn’t help you if I had to, judgmental hypocrite. She was a loving, caring, encouraging and uplifting type of person. No matter how evil you acted she always looked for the good in your heart. She started inviting me to come to church. Well I agreed. And that is when I met Brother Vincent Thompson.

This dude amazed me with how much he loved God and Jesus Christ. And he also amazed me how after Sunday school, worship service, brotherhood meetings, etc., he was that brother that’s still talking about God throughout the week. Still pleasing God by reaching out to people that were in need all week long. Being a Christian to him was not something that you did on Sunday at church but it was a lifestyle that you practiced and lived every day of your life because you believed in it. And if you didn’t believe in it you just left it all alone.

This brother changed my life by being an example and not just some good preacher. I knew that if God had changed his life after being on drugs and other things that were apart of his past, and could change him into a true servant of God who didn’t need anything that the world could offer him and that all he needed for a real peace of mind was a real relationship with Jesus Christ, I wanted that too.

He led me through the sinner’s prayer and I believed what we prayed and I felt God’s presence revealed in me and I cried with tears of joy for what the Lord had done for me. I knew I was saved and born again, I knew I was forgiven of my sins, and “Lucipher” the devil who thought he had my soul for eternity had been forced to let go and that God himself had given me the gift of eternal life through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ his son. The peace that Brother Vincent had testified about, he also loved me enough to tell me about, and then prayed to God for me to receive it. And the most important thing is that I believed in it, wanted it, asked for it and received it.

It was the greatest peace of all Hallelujah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There were several things that God revealed for me to do after I got saved. Forgive everyone that I held a grudge with. Start loving everyone that I had been hating. Quit teaching and encouraging others to live the thug life that I was living and start preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I was given a strong desire to not only separate myself from the lies that the devil had used to deceive me and lead me astray, but to also spend the rest of my life leading others into the truth and showing them Satan’s tricks for destroying their lives.

I started feeling absolutely content and had perfect peace once I started doing just that. It was like finally doing exactly what I was created to do. I changed my name from Byrd Melodies to Dove the Warrior and a few months later strangely enough I was walking through a mall in Ft. Smith, Arkansas when I saw this book full of names and their meanings and searched for mine. I was amazed to find that even my name from birth, Gerald, meant Warrior and included the character of one standing for uncompromised truth and ready to defend those he loves. Not to mention the first scripture in the bible that caught my attention was Ephesions 6:12-17, which I made a reference to in the first gospel rap song that I wrote entitled Spiritual Warfare.

This was just one of the many supernatural encounters that convinced me that God himself had anointed me to battle against satan and his army. I was ready to go back into the same dark places I once corrupted and shine the marvelous light of his truth. Preaching deliverance to anyone that was allowing satan to hold them in captivity.

After coming into an understanding of God’s love for his people I also began to see clearly that the devil’s main objective was to mislead and destroy as many people as he possibly could. This evil bastard was using anything and everything he could to lead people astray. There are many ways that he chooses to deceive people but one way that some people don’t realize is through music. And my heart repented because I myself was guilty for allowing the devil to inspire me to teach and encourage others even little innocent kids to smoke drugs, kill their enemies, sell drugs, pimp women, disrespect all authority and even die for the love of the street life through my music. This was my message to the world and I had a lot of listeners.

I cannot say that I have never led some one down the wrong path, some who are even dead now and others spending precious years of their life incarcerated. But I can say that I am forgiven and that God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for my sins and now I am accountable to obey the truth that I know and I have no desire to spread those lies any longer. I am so thankful that I never sold a million records now that I realize the impact it could have had on many lives. Hallelujah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I have offered my music as a sacrifice on the alter of my heart, Lord hear my prayer. And may lives be strengthened and every precious soul that listens be taught and encouraged to follow the Lord. Selah

- Dove the Warrior, I Cry War

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