I was nineteen when I first became a father. The girl who became my baby’s mother grew up in the projects with me. She lived at the top of the hill. Her mother was real loose with having neighborhood boys come over, it was never an issue. I remember they had bunk beds, and the middle of her bed had a depression, like a sinkhole. And I’d come up there sometimes in the middle of the night.
I was just a horny little motherfucker, and that girl was a little cutie-pie from the hood. I wasn’t loyal to any of the Park Hill girls I got with; after my first girlfriend broke my heart, the concept of loyalty went right out the window. I was just trying to fuck anything that moved.
And then she accidentally got pregnant within three months of knowing me. Like a lot of things in the ghetto, it was an accident. It was rough, because I was still too young to understand how my world had just changed. I was running around in the streets. I was still dealing. I was scared, too. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I was also kind of upset at the whole situation, because again, it was nothing we were planning for, but here it was.
Teenagers in the hood need to understand something: Children are for married couples. People shouldn’t be having babies unless they’re married. They’re not taught that in the hood. Motherfuckers are having babies at the drop of a hat. “Oh, I’m having your baby.” “Baby, I’m not even with you like that. We’re not even married. I was with you for a week. I was only with you for two months. Or maybe not half a year. You’re not even supposed to have that.” But it doesn’t happen like that in the hood. If a woman gets pregnant in the hood, she’s on that shit. And back in the day, abortion wasn’t even an option. They don’t believe in that shit.
With my son’s mother, I gave it two or three months to see if we could make it work, but we weren’t really connecting, so I left. I let her live her life, instead of being stuck with me through our child for the rest of her days. But I wasn’t about to just up and leave them, either; I’m no runner—I’m not abandoning anybody. That’s a big reason why I’m still in New York City today—because of family.
*
A lot of raising Dontae happened through trial and error. It wasn’t the thought of caring for a baby that was the issue. Since I had taken care of my younger brother growing up, the idea of raising a child didn’t really faze me. I just didn’t have a lot of stable families as role models. My mother was never married and was always working, so I didn’t have a lot of structure growing up. A lot of the time, I didn’t know what was going on.
Truth be told, I was mostly upset about having to spend more money. But don’t get it twisted—I love my children and would do anything for any of them. When I was home, I was always around. All my babies know who their father is.
And Dontae was another reason for me to get out of the street life. He’s a big reason why I went to college. But at the time, I still couldn’t earn enough to feed myself and care for him and stay out of jail. The kinds of jobs available to me at the time didn’t pay enough to feed a family. So I made the best of it, and then Wu-Tang started taking off, which necessitated me being on tour a lot more. I would go out, tour around, then when I came back I’d make sure Tanya had what she and Dontae needed to get by. Back home, one of my female workers who used to babysit me when I was younger also babysat my son. My son’s mother would give him to CeCe, who used to take him all around the neighborhoods. CeCe loved my son.
It just so happened that one day CeCe was in Stapleton, and some dudes started shooting, as they do in the hood. Guy—the dude I used to hang with back in the projects—was in the mix. He was trying to kill a dude named Shawn Berry, and they were shooting at each other. During the shootout, Shawn picked my son up and used him as a fucking human shield. Dontae got shot in the hand and the kidney.
He was two years old.
I was in San Francisco when I got the news. I flew back as soon as possible. My son died twice on the operating table, came back both times. They got him stitched up and pulled two bullets out of his kidney, which he lost. He dislocated two fingers, and some of the nerves in his spine were damaged. He’s had many different kinds of therapy since then. A lot of it.
When I first saw Dontae in that ER, they had my baby boy cut wide open, operating on him. I was just fucked up mentally. And the crazy thing about it was that black people, we don’t have any sort of therapy to help with something like this. I didn’t know about none of that. Instead, I self-medicated; I got high and I got drunk.
RZA and the others didn’t make it any better, ’cause they didn’t give a fuck. In fact, they were just giving me shit. I didn’t get no mental support, they didn’t send me any money. You know, basically, RZA thought giving me a check for the work I did, that was good enough. I didn’t get any support from these dudes who I thought were my brothers. Matter of fact, they rubbed their fame and their wealth in my face even more. They made my life even fuckin’ rougher, much worse mentally.
So I was goin’ through all that. You know, I got on records, I did all this, I did that, I got soundtracks. I didn’t get any flowers from my brothers, they didn’t send me any cards, none of that shit. The only person who was really there for me was Meth. Meth is family, we got blood together. Meth was in love with my son’s baby mother’s sister, so we related like that.
And I was in a fuckin’ position, because when it happened, I wasn’t with my son’s mother, so I kinda blamed her, and she felt like it was her fault. And CeCe, my girl worker, the dudes in the hood pressed her so fuckin’ hard, they forced her not to snitch. She didn’t ever really tell me what went on. She slipped off her rocker; she went crazy, literally nuts, and she was never the same.
I told her, “You gotta make a fuckin’ choice, you gotta tell me what happened.” And she didn’t wanna tell me. To this day, she still don’t wanna tell me. So I had to hear little bits and pieces from outside sources and all this stuff and I’m like, “Yo, how you gonna sit here and not tell me what’s goin’ on, but you in my house, you in my son’s mother’s house like this?” Finally we had to disown her.
And ever since then, Guy, the dude that accidentally shot him—I knew it wasn’t meant for my boy—thought I was gonna come and kill him. So they called the police on me, they thought I was going to set up some retribution, had me under surveillance, do all types of shit to make sure they knew where I was—they were scared for their lives. They’re still scared for their lives. Of the people who had anything to do with that shit—there’s like five motherfuckers associated with it—three of ’em are dead as of today. Now, I had nothing to do with any of that—sometimes the streets serve up the best kind of karma.
Dontae had a hard recovery, there was a lot of rehabilitation and such. It deprived him of his youth. He spent his whole childhood—from three years old to almost sixteen—in and out of fuckin’ hospitals. He had asthma, and had to go through the ordeal of losing a kidney from the bullet and being forced to use a shit bag for many years. He had to wear diapers for years. My boy’s left leg is still messed up. He walks with a limp to this day. It was fucked up.
Between his asthma and other things—he got hit by a car, broke his arm, and right after graduation, he broke his leg in three places while playing football—my son went through so much fuckin’ pain, but the pain made his mind jump. He was also strong, and he never let any of it whip him.
My son just graduated from college. He went and got a bad bitch and he’s living on Staten Island, so he’s good now. Well, mostly. He went to school to get a degree in film. I told him, “You don’t need a degree for film, you can just pick it up and learn it.” But now he gotta pay back those student loans on some shit that he really can’t get any money from. You can’t get no money from being in film unless you know how to do the damn thing. So I told him he needed to go back to school and learn certain things. But he’s kind of resistant—he wants to do film, and nothing but film.
And as I see him struggle with his career, I realize something that parents, especially black parents, are doing when they raise their kids. It’s not really our fault, because of how we were raised. Looking back, I spoiled my son a lot, and I don’t regret that at all. But I would have been sterner about him picking a career that was more secure and made surer, more consistent paper. That’s how a lot of immigrant groups get ahead in a couple of generations. They’re not letting their kids pick something fun like film—not to say film isn’t a profession, it’s just not secure. Parents should guide their children to make money first. Young people often want to pursue something a little bit impractical rather than securing their future.
Like my son. He’s got a degree, but he’s still struggling because his field is competitive, and budgets are low even if he does get work. It’s a start, though. At least he’s not in the projects pumping crack and ducking the cops. He’s never done a bid, or even been arrested. He’s got a smart girlfriend, and he’s making his way in the world without resorting to crime. His kids won’t be doing that, either.
I remember this one time, right after my son got shot, I was walking with him down the street. He was limping along, and I was guiding him by holding his hand. It was frustrating for him—he wanted to walk by himself, but he was hurt and was gonna need some time.
I will always remember the way my man Tinker rolled up in his whip and hopped out. He’d heard about what happened to my little seed, showed him a lot of love, and even got him to smile. He even gave my little man a hundred dollars before he hopped back in the car and drove off.
A few weeks later, Tinker got killed. He got shot in the head, but was able to draw his gun and get off one shot. He killed his killer; they canceled one another out. I cried when I heard about it.
Shit like that killed me a bit; it was like a constant influx of bad news. Whether it was my boy almost getting killed, or a friend like Tinker getting killed, all that made everyday life hard to deal with sometimes. But if I was truly gonna give my son a better life, I had to get back to my music career. It needed to be solidified so we could take care of our peoples and our seeds, and break this constant cycle of violence.