Ace Boogie
- Portrayed by: Wood Harris
A meager dry cleaner clerk turned drug kingpin.
- Anti-Villain: Even after becoming a drug kingpin, he has a strict moral code and good nature. When Rico starts to become more volatile, he gets shot and robbed by Calvin, and especially after Rico kills Mitch, that's when he quietly exits the game, and takes Rico down for good measure.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Those obvious undercover feds that tried buying from him come in handy near the ending where Ace works with them to have Rico arrested in D.C.
- The Confidant: When Sonny is kidnapped, Ace is the one Mitch vents to and puts most of his trust in. Unfortunately, the rest of that trust is put into Rico.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Downplayed. He does enjoy the spoils of the lifestyle, but he doesn't like Rico's colorful personality and senseless violence. This is a major contributing factor in his Heel–Face Turn.
- Shrinking Violet: A downplayed male example. In the first act of the movie, Ace is a slightly shy, quiet guy who prefers to keep his head down and turns down any opportunity to be put onto the drug trade. Once he fully ingrains himself into drug trafficking, he's still the quiet, lowkey one in his circle compared to his flashy, extroverted friends.
- The Stool Pigeon: After he finds out Rico killed Mitch, Ace collaborates with the undercover feds from earlier to bait Rico into going to D.C. for more territory.
- Working-Class Hero: This is how he starts. He's relatively fine working at his mundane dry cleaning job, but slowly becomes tempted by the glamorous lifestyle of his drug dealer friends and decides to make it a side hustle. When he gets found out, he fully commits to drug dealing.
Mitch
- Portrayed by: Mekhi Phifer
An established Harlem kingpin. He is Ace's best friend, and helps put him on in the drug game.—-
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Ice's nickname for him, "Money Makin' Mitch".
- Anti-Villain: He's much more ruthless and unrepentant of a drug dealer compared to Ace, but he's not as volatile as Rico and looks out for his people, especially Sonny and Ace. When Sonny is kidnapped, he drops everything to make his ransom as fast as possible.
- Blatant Lies: When Ice presses him about giving money to the rest of his family, he insists that "[He's] broke, baby!" To be fair, Ice is blatantly trying to mooch off of his success rather than actually thinking about the family.
- Cool Big Bro: He loves Sonny to death and always goes out of his way to spoil him.
- Family-Values Villain: He takes his family very seriously, namely his little brother Sonny and his chosen, drug trade "family" of Ace, Rico, and others. This mindset gets him killed, as he still trusts an increasingly unstable Rico to help him move a huge supply of drugs to make up Sonny's ransom, which Rico promptly kills and robs him over.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: When Sonny gets kidnapped, Mitch steps up his game hard and does everything he can to make up his ransom money. Unfortunately for the both of them, he put his trust into Rico.
- Those Two Guys: He's usually seen with either Ace or Rico, usually the former.
Rico
- Portrayed by: Cam'Ron
A close friend and associate of Mitch, who eventually links up with Ace through him. He has the honor of being even flashier than Mitch, and being much more ruthless than either of the other two.
- Ax-Crazy: Rico is crazy, to say the least. He'll shoot anybody for any reason.
- Blatant Lies: Ace points out a prominent scar on his face in the last act of the film. Rico claims he just got it from another one of his rough sex sessions. Ace noticing this after hearing news of Mitch's death shortly after he stated he'd meet up with Rico allows him to deduce that Rico killed him.
- Expy: Could be considered this film's Tommy DeVito or O-Dog, of whom the latter was actually based on the former.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: He gains a nasty scar on his face in the final stretch of the movie, which he claims a girl gave him during rough sex. In actuality, Mitch scratched him in their scuffle when the latter came to him for help making Sonny's ransom.
- Greed: His fatal flaw. He always wants to make more money above all else, or just have everything for himself.
- In the very beginning of the movie, he talks Mitch into a bet when the latter makes a nice shot tossing a paper ball into a can. When Mitch whiffs the betted shot and can't cough up the money, Rico decides to take all his food as compensation.
- When Ace gets robbed and shot by Calvin, Rico just tells Ace to sleep it off and get back into the game. At the very least, he did kill Calvin in retaliation.
- When Mitch comes to him with a huge supply of drugs, asking for help selling it all to pay for Sonny's ransom, Rico verifies the amount, then shoots Mitch dead so he can steal and sell it for himself.
- Rico gets caught by the FBI because he got a tip about an opportunity in Washington, D.C., set up by Ace out of revenge for his murder of Mitch.
