by Cash
“Man, like you, I’m Englewood born and bred.”
We wrapped Rick Kid’s body in bedspreads, loaded him inside his whip, and left that bitch nigga stinkin’ on a dark road in College Park.
Rest in peace, Toi, I thought as I slid into the passenger seat of Keisha’s whip and left the scene.
CHAPTER 21
I made it back to Nevada with no trouble. Before leaving ATL, I had gone to my money-stash spot and got another backpack full of Benjamins.
My boo was so happy and relieved that I made it back. I think she was more afraid of me going back to Inez than me getting apprehended.
I had compiled four tracks, “Ghetto Drama,” “Blood & Money,” “Your Woman, My Bitch!,” and “You Live in My Heart,” a tribute to my sister, and the intro skit. Now I was penning a joint for niggaz on lockdown:
It ain’t over my niggaz even though it feels that way/and every night I pray y’all soldiers see a better day/and for all my road dawgs/even though I made it home/I can’t leave y’all alone/so I rep’ you in my songs/and every time I reminisce it gets a nigga teary-eyed/I know you heard ‘bout my peeps, and knew a nigga had to ride/he fucked with my pride/so had to come strong/now he’s dead and gone/no apologies for splittin’ his dome/’cause I was forced to settle shit with the steel/being pro-ject raised with the will/that made it easy to kill/the shit’s fa-real when a nigga is broke/no fly whip, no hos/ no ’dro to smoke/so who’s to blame for these hard ass times?/my tribulations got me blind/and I can’t find peace of mind/so I get high to relieve the pain/and do the crimes/so when it’s my time/ the world gon’ remember my name/ y’all niggaz try to maintain/I’d rather die young than be a pawn in this dirty game/’cause in the game, it’s staring at the crossroads/or in a cell serving life, with a lost soul.
(Chorus & hook)
2nd Verse
Five long years of blood and tears in them white folks chain gang/remember how we would wild to keep from going insane?/Nothin’ to lose/Nothin’ to gain/But the world can’t feel our pain/if they ain’t never been locked down without a key to remove the chains/Nigga/how the fuck you figga that times can’t get so hard/ when you a free man/ and my ghetto soldiers are millions locked behind bars/paying dues for some shit they did that made the news/suckaz be screamin’ soldier/ but they can’t rock a soldier’s shoes/ if your mic tales were true/ you couldn’t wax about what you do/ My nigga/I walk the talk/ I’ll body bag your whole crew.
(Chorus & hook)
I put the pen down and rapped the lyrics over a beat I already produced. The first verse flowed phat, but I had to go back and rework part of the second verse, and add some bass to it before writing the third verse. By the time Juanita got home from school and hooked up dinner, I had the fifth track completed, which I titled: “For My Niggaz on Lock.” Then I penned a tribute to Inez over the instrumental of Tupac’s “Are You Still Down.”
When I wasn’t in my studio and Juanita was away, I spent hours thinking about Inez. Shawdy was too down for me to just forget. I had kept it real with Juanita, telling her the truth, that I had been intimate with Inez while in ATL. I wasn’t gonna lie about it, and I didn’t regret it.
Juanita said, “You still care about her, don’t you?”
“Without a doubt,” I admitted.
“I can understand and respect that,” she replied with no bitterness.
I would also think about Keisha. Shawdy was doin’ the damn thang! I had sensed her loyalty, but truth be told, I had slept on her gangsta.
The cipher was peace.
I went with Juanita mostly out of curiosity to see what all this Five Percenter, culture, science babble she stressed was all about. There were three other people there besides the four I had met that once: Wisdom Born. Understanding. And a female named Destiny, whom I was told was “newborn.”
I had never been a religious person, though if I would’ve taken time to think about it, I probably believed in God. I told the group I felt that way—believed in a Supreme Being—I just didn’t claim any certain religion.
“So,” responded Wise Professor, “you believe god is a mysterious spook in the sky? Somewhere up in heaven, looking down over you?”
“Yeah,” I said, somewhat defensively.
“Who taught you to believe that?” His tone unchanged.
“My Ma Duke, I guess.”
“And who taught her to believe that?”
“Probably her Ma Dukes.”
He took me back generations until we reached the point where it became obvious that my concept of God and religion was really a concept taught to my ancestors by white Europeans and white slave masters from America, who had brainwashed black people around the world.
Wise Professor said, “We are the supreme beings. The Asiatic black man, the original man. We’re god. I’m god. You’re god.”
I must’ve had a look of disbelief on my face.
He continued, “You’re just eighty-five right now; you don’t know your true culture. God is the sole controller of the universe, the Supreme being or black man that understands his true culture—Islam.”
He explained that Islam meant. I, Self, Lord, and Master. And in the case of women, I, Self, Love, Allah’s Mathematics. Islam, he said, is for the black men, women, and children’s true culture. It’s their “way of life.”
I’m not the type of nigga to go for the shell game, no matter what form it comes in, so I was quick to question the claim that any “man” is God. I could go for the black man being the original man. Shit, somebody had to be here first. And Wise Professor’s explanation of how the white man came into existence wasn’t impossible to believe.
“I can show and prove that the black man is god,” Wise Professor claimed.
“Show and prove,” I challenged him.
At home that night, I continued discussing with Juanita all the things Wise Professor had to say, plus the other things they’d discussed amongst one another. Some of the shit I hadn’t understood.
“That’s because we were speaking in Supreme Alphabets and Mathematics,” explained Juanita.
“I feel you,” I said, respecting her thing. The cipher had been serious. The type of love for the hood and our people they had expressed was different from the type of love I had for niggaz and the hood.
My love for the hood meant that no place was better; I liked the shit that went down on the daily. And I missed that mafucka when I wasn’t whippin’ the block. My love for my niggaz meant I wanted to see ‘em get cheddar and shine. Or get married and square-up, if that’s what they wanted to do. It meant that I would ride with ‘em if they needed a killa for the job. And it meant they were immune from my heater as long as they showed me the same respect.
To Juanita and Wise, having love for their people and the hood meant something much different. It meant educating them, teaching black people their “true” culture, delivering them from the triple stages of darkness and helping them become clean and purified mentally as well as physically. It meant uplifting black people. It damn sho’ didn’t mean the type of love I stressed for the hood. Or maybe it did, just taken to another level.
“What did dude mean when he said I was eighty-five?” I asked Juanita a few days later. “Is it cool for you to explain that?”
“Yeah, I can explain it.”
She wrote it down on paper for me: 5 percent – poor, righteous teachers who do not believe in the teachings of the 10 percent. 5 percent who are all wise and know who the true living god is. He teaches that the true living god is the Son of Man, the Supreme Being, the black man from Asia who teaches freedom, justice, and equality to all human families of the earth. Otherwise known as civilized people, and also Muslim and Muslim sons and daughters.
10 percent: the rich, the slave makers of the poor, who teach the poor lies to believe that the Almighty, and true living god, is a spook that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Otherwise known as the blood suckers of the poor.
85 percent: the uncivilized people,
poisonous animal eaters, slaves of the mental death and power. People who do not know their own origin. Those who worship what they know not, who are easily lead in the wrong direction, but hard to be led in the right direction.
As soon as I finished reading what Juanita had written, I was thinking, How dude gon’ call me uncivilized? Nobody had led me in the wrong direction.
“I chose my own course in life,” I told Juanita.
“Not really, boo,” she said. “See, by the time you chose what direction to go in, the powers that be already conspired to make you feel that that was your only way out of the hood. So, in essence, you were led in the wrong direction.”
I got mad as hell. How my shawdy gon’ say some ill shit like dat? Like I had been a sheep, being led to slaughter. Crackers hadn’t made me do shit. Wasn’t any white folks in my hood.
I went in to my studio room and penned the final track on side-A of my demo. I titled it “Young Gun”: This is my story not a song/my name is Youngblood/it should be Young Gun/while y’all was out rockin’ a party/I was clockin’ my first body/whip fast/ski mask/clip blast/dipped with the cash/rolled a blunt/got high and drunk/went deep up in your girl’s ass/not yours, his/the nigga at home with the kids/while she was with the young one/Youngblood, the Young Gun/call it my story, not a song.
I completed the lyrics then tested them over different beats until I found a track that worked. My studio room had become not only a sanctuary against boredom, but it was also an outlet for my rage. Juanita’s people, Wise Professor and ‘em, was sleepin’ on me if they considered me eighty-five! Murder Mike had probably thought the same shit!
As the months passed by and Juanita’s belly grew large with my seed, I had come to embrace the teaching of Five Percenters. Which is only the teaching of truth, of knowledge and of self. Knowledge of one’s origin and true culture. Enlightenment. All of which opened my eyes to things that I’d been blind to, or not exposed to, before now. I came to understand how certain things that were perpetrated against blacks in America generations ago, continued to affect the present generation. And though I still felt that on a conscious level my choices had been my own, I understood the dynamics that influenced my decisions and what had been important to me: the fly gear, the bling, the street fame, respect, even my blatant disregard for my life, and the enemies I targeted. On the other hand, being a thugged-out nigga was part of who I am. I had regrets, but no apologies.
The further along I got in my studies, the more knowledge I gained. I became aware that although I had always been a good father to my seeds, I had contributed to the decimation of the black family by not creating a true and strong family structure. The one thing I had trouble with was seeing all black women as queens. I had seen too many shawdies that were flat-out bitches and hoes!
But the science behind that was that those shawdies were going against their true nature and weren’t conscious of their true worth. Just as many dudes were not conscious of who they were.
Now that I had progressed beyond the Supreme Mathematics, Alphabets, Student Enrollment and lessons one through thirty-six, I could relate to the science certain rappers, like Wu Tang Clan, Nas, and Mob Deep were spittin’ on wax. Before I had knowledge of self and became God Body, I would listen to those artists but not really understand the science in their lyrics. Also, I remember trippin’ when I read that Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu had named their son “Seven,” a number. Of course, I was eighty-five back then, and the science was beyond my comprehension. I knew now that the number seven was “god” in the Supreme Mathematics, and the7th letter in the Supreme Alphabet was god.
I would build when we held a cipher, and Juanita and I would build together at the crib. The science brought us together even closer than before; she was my earth and I was her sun. Our child would be our star. When I saw the eight-point star daggling from the necklace around Juanita’s neck now, I knew what it represented. The black family.
Juanita gave birth to our star, a seven and a half pound boy whom we named Justice Lord McPherson, giving him her last name because I could not take a chance and sign the birth certificate. So in the place on the birth certificate for “father’s name,” Juanita wrote my attribute: Young Lord Magnetic.
I regretted that I wasn’t able to be in the delivery room with Juanita when Justice came into the world, but my Earth understood. However, I was able to welcome them home a couple days later. My son was paper sack brown, a combination of me and Juanita’s complexions. Otherwise, he was all me.
With the strength shown by generations of black women, Juanita was up and about, back in class, being a mother and wifey, and taking care of the house soon after coming home from the hospital. I still spent hours in my studio room working on the B-side of the demo I was making. The B-side would reflect my evolution; knowledge is wasted if it is not used or shared to enlighten and uplift my black people.
I wrote: Imagine a time/when all black people shine/when the biggest crime is being culturally blind/a hood where all our kids grow up the right way/imagine it, gods/ it’s a fantasy, the blind say/a whole generation/receiving proper education/no more petty crimes/now we’re legal paper chasin’/no more tax evasion/no more charges to be facin’/ no more mental sedation/or crack heads basin’/we got doctors and lawyers/architects and engineers/investment brokers/CEOs and women peers/we can unite and fight/take the hood to new heights/have mad peaceful nights/ much more than civil rights/I love being black/to all my thugs and college cats/still spittin’ ammo at your dome/but not the kind that come from gats…
Juanita helped write the hook and the rest of the track, and she titled it “Evolution.” She couldn’t rap a lick, but she wrote hella poetry, which is the cousin of rap. In fact, I planned to use a poem she wrote titled “Gods of the Earth” as the Outro when I completed side B.
By the time I finished the whole CD Justice was almost four-months old. I was still laying low, used to not going out the house much by now. I’d remained in touch with Inez and with Lonnie through her. My dawg was maintaining; he and his family were safe and laying low somewhere. Inez, Tamia and Bianca were at peace. I was always glad to know that. Inez was being a soldier, maintaining love for me, but I wasn’t gonna sell her no empty box of dreams; she deserved more respect than that. Which is why I told her to go on with her life, find a man who would love her, the kids and treat ‘em all with the utmost.
I verbalized to her, for the first time, what she had to have already concluded: there was no way we’d ever be able to be together again. My legal problems prohibited me from ever returning to the ATL or living a normal life. It also wouldn’t be wise for Inez to try to come to me.
“I’ll always care for you,” I told her.
She cried, of course. It was hard to tell her that I had a four-month-old son and someone I loved, but I told her as gently as was possible over the phone. I made it clear that my new family had nothing to do with us not having a future together.
“My problems with the law won’t allow it.”
Inez knew that was the truth.
“Is it Juanita?” she asked, though I hadn’t given her the slightest hint.
I couldn’t lie to her; she’d been too real with me.
“Yeah.”
“I figured you were with her,” she said with pain in her voice.
I didn’t want her to say goodbye like that, for several reasons. Most of all, I truly did care about her. We’d rode down and dirty together, Bonnie and Clyde-style. It was important to me, for her to know that I had mad love and respect for her, and circumstances, more than anything, had torn us apart. I promised her that I wouldn’t forget her and Tamia, and as long as I breathed, she’d hear from me. There was still pain in her voice when we said goodbye, but I felt she had appreciated my honesty.
I considered Juanita my wife even though we hadn’t walked down the aisle. Our vows were to each other, and we didn’t need a paper document to quantify what we meant to one another. The harmony between us was incredib
le, like we were of one mind. Sometimes I’d be trippin’.
If the hood could see me now!
But my evolution did not make me weak or hen-pecked. It simply allowed me to appreciate my beautiful, strong Earth, my black woman. Juanita submitted to me because that was her rightful role, one that she embraced because she knew that it was right and exact. I am the sun. She’s the moon, and received her light from me, which reflects to the star, Justice Lord, our son.
CHAPTER 22
I was lying on the couch in the living room, with Justice climbing all over me while Juanita read aloud the thesis she had written for one of her classes. She was a few months away from earning her B.S., and then she’d go on to medical school.
“So, what do you think of it?” asked Juanita.
“It’s good,” I said.
“Did you understand the basis of it?”
“No doubt. I’m not as intelligent as you are, but I comprehend,” I offered.
“Intelligence comes in many forms.” It was one of her favorite sayings. “Come to
mommy, Justice. Let daddy relax.”
Justice wasn’t hearing that, though. He was spoiled, but not rotten and he was always up under me since I was home with him all day while Juanita was in class or doing intern work at the hospital. Today, she didn’t have class and didn’t have to go to the hospital. A rare day when she got to chill. Maybe study a little. Later some gods were coming by for a cipher; for a while now we’d held a monthly cipher at our crib.
“Come to mommy, Justice.” He shook his head.
I laughed. “He doesn’t—”
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The front door came crashing in.
“Don’t move motherfucker!”
“Let me see your hands! Get ‘em up! Now! I’ll blow your ass away!”
Juanita screamed.
Then she was thrown to the floor.
