by Ellie Grace
for ya. You’ll get the last one.”
I nodded and mumbled, “Okay.”
T, top boy, here we go.
“This is my life and I fucking live it. Time after time these petty bitches will visit. Kids out hoping they’ll fix, but they just flip their hair and walk away. Lady in her heels broke one on the broken streets. She makes more than I make in a year in one week. The system is weak, but on the inside you could say that about me. Needed money like a flower needs bees. Everyone’s tryna spread their roots, but it’s weeds on thee. Stole ten bags of weed last week all to keep the job that’s not giving me enough for a new place to be. So who’s the bad guy? The dude supporting his family & friends or the guys in the suits in ties not giving a second glance? Take a life sentence or take a chance. Shouldn’t be a tough decision, but that’s life. I shouldn’t stand around and watch the days fly. I’ve seen life pass before my eyes way too many damn times. It’s like a slideshow now. No one should go around and cry. Let’s face it, it’s a cold world, so wipe those eyes. Tell everyone things won’t always be happy, but they might if you try.”
His tone seemed to grab me up by the ears and make me listen to every word he said. I listened as closely to each word, but what I heard confused me. Had it been T that stole the bags of weed from BP? Had he supplied his boss with weed? Was he trying to get out of that bad business? Was it him getting himself out or did someone stab him for not staying in?
“What are you telling me? Did you do this to yourself? Who stabbed you?” I questioned quickly as he sat there leaning back again.
There was blood on his teeth now. “That’s life Charlie boy.”
“You’ve got more time. Don’t do this. We can get you into a hospital. There’s still time…”
“I had a mission to show you Grime. I did that. I told you from the start don’t get up in your feelings when it bites you in the face. It’s just the reality we rap about. It’s true life and when you live, you feel it. I had to show you.”
My eyes were watering now and I was tugging at T’s arm for him to stand up. He only looked at me and smiled. “You spread Grime like the stickiest jam & if you’re ever in my part of London you tell everyone I was a good guy.”
“London?” I asked. We weren’t in London we were in D.C. the nation’s capital.
My fingertips felt sticky like I had wiped them over a messy countertop. I looked down at my fingers and something red had appeared on them.
“See you around Charlie.” T called like an echo.
I closed my eyes as T shoved my arm off of his. I fell back onto the ground, but it wasn’t cement. I opened my eyes to the dark library. I quickly looked around. I dashed up and down through the rows of bookshelves. The only lights on were the night lights. I went back to the hip hop section where the journal was open to the last few pages he had written. There were red drops on the pages that I knew had to be blood. As I quickly scanned through the book I realized that everything I had been through in the last few hours and been written over the course of weeks. T had gone through each of these events separately, but took me through them like a normal day.
Then I knew why I hadn’t recognized the streets and the neighborhoods. He had taken me to his part of London. All of the people I had seen I was only been reading about. The conversations weren’t happening in an American accent they had been spoken in a British accent. That’s why when I read the slang of the Grime lyrics it came out in a different accent.
It was all so real and yet it wasn’t. Had T been killed or did he kill himself? How did I know he was actually dead? I didn’t. The questions played in my mind over and over as I walked home. It was nearly breakfast time and only the street cleaners were out. I had taken the book out of the library with me for the night. It wasn’t like T could find me.
The journal had made it here to D.C. where his family had planned to move, but there wasn’t any writing after the rapping on the bench. There was nothing. I only had a simple name with hundreds of possibilities.
My sleep was horrible. My memories of what I read and thought I’d lived haunted my dreams. I didn’t remember waking up and moving to my desk, but I woke up there. Face down on a fresh page of paper in T’s journal with a pen in my hand. The sun was beating down on me from my apartment window. I had work in a couple of hours, but my mind was set on something else. I put the pen to the page and started writing.
Hello to anyone that’s reading this. My name is Charlie Boy. I’m or I was a DJ. I’ve always thought that anyone could rap and anyone could sing. I’m not saying everyone has the talent to, but you give them lyrics and they could. Rapping and Hip hop continue to be confused. Rapping can be about anything, but hip hop is about storytelling and emotions. Was Grime hip hop? No because Grime had its own rules that were so apart from hip hop. Saying this I think that gives Grime artists a leg up. My friend, T had said Grime needed America. The more I thought the more I saw why America needed Grime. Grime had the heart, the passion, the raw, rough, original, shock of cold water in the morning that we needed to hear. We flooded them with our music. Some crap, some good. I think it’s time for us to listen to them. My mission is to open your ears. So maybe you won’t like it or maybe you will. Pick it up or leave it alone. The world is full of opportunity. You try things and you see where they take you. That’s life.
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