Decoded (6 page)

This is the shit you dream about / with the homies steamin out /
Back-back-backing them Beemers out
¹
/ Seems as our plans to get a grant / Then go off to college didn’t pan or even out / We need it now, we need a town /
We need a place to pitch, we need a mound
²
/ For now, I’m just a lazy boy / Big dreaming in my La-Z-Boy /
In the clouds of smoke, been playin this Marvin
³
/ Mama forgive me, should be thinkin bout Harvard / But that’s too far away, niggas are starving /
Ain’t nothin wrong with aim, just gotta change the target
⁴
/
I got dreams of baggin snidd-ow
⁵
the size of pillows / I see pies everytime my eyes clidd-ose /
I see rides, sixes, I gotta get those
⁶
/ Life’s a bitch, I hope to not make her a widow / Now see, the life’s right there / And it seems right there / It’s not quite near, / And it’s not like we’re / professionals movin the decimals /
Know where to cop? Nah! Got a connect? No!
⁷
/ Who in the F knows how to be successful /
Need a Personal Jesus, I’m in Depeche Mode
⁸
/ They say it’s celestial, it’s all in the stars / It’s like Tony La Russa /
How you play your cards
⁹
/ Y’all ain’t fucking with me! / The ironies are /
And at all costs better avoid these bars
¹⁰
/ Now let’s start, on your mark / Get set, let’s go—get out the car! / Going in circles, it’s a vicious cycle / This is a crash course, this ain’t high school / Wake up, Muttley, you’re dreamin again / Your own reality show, the season begins /
Step one in this process, scramble up in your projects
¹¹
/ And head to the heights where big coke is processed / You gotta convince ‘em that you not from the Precinct / Please speak slow, ’cause he no speakey no English / If he takes a liking after a couple of trips / If your money is straight, he’s gonna give you consignment / You’re now in a game where only time can tell / Survive the droughts, I wish you well … /
Survive the droughts? I wish you well?
¹²
/ How sick am I? I wish you HEALTH / I wish you wheels, I wish you wealth /
I wish you insight so you could see for yourself
¹³
/ You could see the signs, when the jackers is schemin / And the cops is comin, you could read they mind /
You could see from behind,
¹⁴
you could redefine / The game as we know it, one dream at a time / I’m American dreamin

A Love Affair with Something Tragic. (2:15)

It was the best of times it was the worst of times /
I wake up hit my shoe box
¹
I snatch out a few rocks / Put the rest inside now I’m ready to ride / Put the bomb in my socks so cops can’t locate the vials / I ain’t freshly dressed but got a Colgate smile / That’s right / (I woke up early this morning) /
Throw on the same clothes I had on last night
²
/ I got loads of capers to come up with this paper /
I got money schemes that come to me in my dreams
³
/ Hit the block like a veteran / Fiends need they medicine /
I’m the relief pitcher
⁴
/ Their clean-up hitters / It works I hit the Ave stash the bag in the dirt / Put the rest in my small pocket I start clockin / (I woke up early this morning) / Same routine I’m runnin game to fiends / Exchangin cash for crack rocks / Back and forth to my stash box /
Hundred dollars a week
⁵
/ Shorties got the Ave watched /
Fiends swarm I’m gettin rid of this bomb
⁶
/ As I / (I woke up early this morning with a new sight over life) / Good morning / (Never read the Qu’ran or Islamic scriptures) / (Only Psalms I read was on the arms of my niggaz) / (I woke up early this morning with a new sight over life) / (The sunshine was shinin’ you were on my mind) / (I woke up early this morning)

W
hen Big Daddy Kane’s first album,
Long Live the Kane,
came out, in 1988, I was still in the streets. I basically accepted that I’d be a hustler who happened to rap in his spare time. I thought the rap game was crooked and a little fake back then, but I admired people like Kane for making it work. Kane was playing a role, hip-hop’s first playboy: He had the silk robes and pretty girls in all his videos, all that. But his flow was sick:
cuz I get ill / and kill / at will / teaching the skill / that’s real / you’re no thrill / so just stand still and chill as I build
 … He was condensing, stacking rhymes one on top of another. Trying to keep up with him was an exercise in breath control, in wordplay, in speed and imagination. He was relentless on the mic.

I went on the road with Kane for a while—he knew me from that mix tape I was on with him and Jaz. I think he was considering starting his own label and might’ve had me in mind for a slot. I’m not sure, and nothing like that ever materialized. But I got an invaluable education watching him perform. Kane was like a hip-hop James Brown when it came to his live show. He had a bag of tricks for creating momentum, where to put in his hits, where to pull back. He would have his DJ, Mister Cee, cut off his big hit “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” after one verse, and before the crowd could relax, he’d throw on something even hotter and dial up the energy even more. Kane would hit the stage with the gold rope and the double-breasted silk suit with no shirt and the girls would go crazy. Scoop and Scrap—his dancers—would do choreographed moves that Kane would step in and out of. But the rhyming was always forceful and nimble, so the guys in the audience would get their minds blown by Kane’s mic skills and ignore the ladies’-man routines. He just had an incredible amount of showmanship—even today I use some of the ideas I picked up back then about pacing and performance in my own live show. He was generous, too: He’d stop the show and bring me out when nobody knew who the hell I was. Cee would put on a break beat—“Spread Love,” by Take 6—and I’d just go in on it in the breakneck double- and triple-time rhyming that me and Jaz thought we’d pioneered. The crowd would go nuts.

Kane put me on a song on his
Daddy’s Home
album in the early nineties. The video for the song was pretty low-budget, which worked out okay, because all the director could afford to do was something that looked real: They ran the cameras in the middle of the projects and filmed a bunch of hungry New York MCs spitting in a cipher, surrounded by a crowd. It was me, Scoob Lover, my man Sauce Money from Marcy, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, fresh off Wu-Tang’s debut,
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),
and a kid named Shyheim, a sixteen-year-old babyfaced kid who was down with the Wu.

Shyheim was almost a decade younger than me but was already making some moves in the business. On “Show & Prove” he was rapping with grown men—including some veterans and future legends. In the video he waded through a grimy crowd, arms dicing up the air, oversized fitted to the side, stalking the concrete circle like he owned it. He looked even younger than he was, but he had a voice that sounded like it had been through something in Shaolin. I knew kids like that in Marcy. Maybe I’d been one.

WASN’T BORN HUSTLERS, I WAS BIRTHIN’ ’EM

In the game there’s always a younger guy who has an old soul and an understanding of things beyond his years. I mean in the street game, but it also applies to the music industry. An older guy will see a kid and think,
Man, that kid moves differently from the rest. He’s ready for this life.
They know that if they find the right kid, they can put him under their tutelage and he’ll get it fast, step right into the rhythm of the life. But it starts by the other guy watching him, trying to pick up clues.

If that sounds predatory, it’s because recruiting new workers is one of the most predatory aspects of the game. When you’re doing it, it’s hard to see it that way because everyone comes into the game as a recruit—including the ones who eventually become recruiters. And most of the “older guys” doing the recruiting are barely out of their teens themselves, so they still know what it feels like to
want
to be put on.

When I wrote a song for my first album inspired by the tension between older guys and new recruits in the streets, I called Kane and told him, “Man, I wrote this song and I really want Shyheim on it.” We tracked down Shyheim’s people and in the end they said he couldn’t do it for whatever reason—and at this point, I hadn’t even made an album yet, so they weren’t feeling pressed to let him do the song. But even though Shyheim is the one I was thinking about for the record, it didn’t really matter that he said no. It was still a record I felt like I needed to make, I just needed someone who could represent what I thought I saw in Shyheim.

The next day I saw this kid I knew walking across Marcy. He looked like a little star already—the swagger in his bop, the clean gear. I knew his older brother, Andre, a little better, but Andre was a kid to me, too. I had this verse that needed a younger voice on it, but a young voice that was rough and full of ambition, and I just got a feeling from this kid. His name was Malik, but he’d soon rename himself Memphis Bleek.

I didn’t just give him the verse, which I’d already composed. After all, I had no idea if he could pull it off. First there was a test. I collared him and said, “Look, I’m making an album and you can be on it, but you have to learn this song in twenty-four hours. You don’t learn it, then you’re not on it.” He took the paper I handed him and looked it over. I’d written the verse down for him in some chicken scratch, and when he held it up, I could tell he was thinking,
Shit, I can’t hardly read this.
But he took it and went home.

He came to my apartment the next day and spit the whole thing like he’d been doing it his whole life. That same day we went over to the producer Clark Kent’s house, where Clark had a basement studio. When we got there, I ordered food for everyone. I asked Bleek what he wanted and he sort of casually ordered six bacon cheeseburgers. I looked at this kid, and back then Bleek was a thin dude, and I was like,
Word?
I’m thinking he’s trying to take advantage of me. But I went ahead and ordered them, and when they came, I sat the bag in front of Bleek and told him to get busy because I was going to make sure he ate all six of them. As he unwrapped the first burger I was thinking that the stomachache he was about to have would be lesson number one for this little nigga: Don’t take advantage of people’s kindness. But Bleek wasn’t paying me any mind. He hunched over those wrappers and ate every single one of those burgers and was like,
Bet, let’s get to the booth.
He was hungry. And nervous.

These little tests I gave Bleek had a direct parallel in the lyrics to the song I’d given him. It was called “Coming of Age,” and the key line is when my character in the song offers Bleek a thousand dollars to ride around the hood. He replies
A G? / I ride witchu for free / I want the long-term riches.
He passes the test by showing that he’s down to learn and is already thinking about the bigger picture rather than coming for a handout.