IT WAS OVER. THE MIAMI-DADE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM tried. They washed their hands free of me. I was a degenerate, mindless, uncontrollable street thug. T’s family didn’t press charges, and no students would admit to seeing me hit him. I was let go but permanently expelled from school. In fact, if I was within one hundred yards of Southridge I could be arrested.
I was relieved. I didn’t fit in anyway. If the schools don’t take a young brother, the streets sure will. The dope boys will embrace a wayward kid with open arms. In that warped moment in my life the streets seemed like the better option.
“Damn, bruh, they say you brought out the National Guard at Southridge,” joked Wood when he saw me later that week.
I wanted to ask a favor of Wood. I’d been burning to ask him since the first day I moved down here.
“Well, bruh, let me take you out to get your mind off of shit,” Wood said.
The favor had to wait. Wood was going to take me to Strawberry’s. After Biggs went down so did Heart of the City. Strawberry’s was the new spot. All the shot callers went there. Professional athletes from out of town frequented the place. It was the grown-up nightclub. Pac-Jam over on Twenty-seventh Avenue was for teenagers, but Wood carried weight in the city. No bouncer in Miami was crazy enough to tell Wood where he couldn’t go. That evening he took out a stack of thousands and we hit the town. When we pulled up to Strawberry’s, the crowd was gracious, to say the least.
“Looking good, baby boy,” said one bouncer. He gave Wood daps.
I was a duck out of water, but I followed suit. Inside, the deejay spun the latest records. Hip-hop had just started to rock in the club. Our resident hip-hop ambassador, Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, was putting our flavor to the music. Strawberry’s was his club. Our women liked to get loose, so to speak. Folks in Miami like to get freaky, period. No one stood by the walls looking like statues. In our clubs people got down like a bunch of horny bastards. Luke threw a bunch of parties in Miami. He was the most well-known promoter. That’s how he got his start in the music game. He brought all the big acts to Miami to get it popping. He was the first hip-hop mogul, but never gets his due credit. Before Memorial Day weekend’s urban beach week, thousands of people flocked to Overtown Come Alive. Miami Bass music got started in clubs like Miami Nights, Studio 183, and Strawberry’s. Miami Bass got the booties shaking, and clubs around America followed suit. Alongside Luke, other pioneers were rocking out clubs. Uncle Al, Sugar Hill DJs, Prince Rahiem, Disco Rick and the Dogs, Le Juan Love, Crazy Legs 59, Clay D, and Half Pint had also set the tone of the Miami music scene. JT Money and the Poison Clan were the first group in Miami in which each member rapped. All of the previous acts added to Miami’s unique sound.
That night I saw Wood talk with the owner and converse with the deejay. Like I said earlier, dope slinging was temporary. Hollywood didn’t plan on being a dope boy all his life. He was stacking his bread, hoping to open a club and get into the music business. Every hustler knew the life expectancy of the coke life was short. Hustlers don’t live too long. Don’t be fooled by the Steven Seagal flicks. You will get touched in those streets.
I observed Wood when he was making those moves. He wanted out bad. Hanging at Strawberry’s and all the other nightclubs was as much business for Wood as pleasure. That night while we cruised home, he turned up NWA. Those brothers Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, MC Ren, and Eazy-E were from a city far away in California that we had never visited, but when they spit those raps, we felt it all the same. Their music got to our very souls. Luke’s booty-shaking hits got the club crunk. We loved it of course. Luke was our hip-hop godfather. Who could get mad at a guy who had the ladies turning tricks and “popping coochie” in the club?
Luke was also one of the few people back then outside of the drug dealers who tried giving back to the community. Luke’s peewee football league saved a lot of young lives. Luke was definitely one of the heroes in Miami’s inner city. However, his music catered to the raunchy side of things. He was catching hell from the U.S. government, who thought his songs were too vulgar and risqué for the American public.
Outside the club in Miami’s streets we were really feeling that “fuck the police” type of music. Straight Outta Compton spoke to every black man in America. West Coast and Southern brothers had a lot in common. The music we generate is more laid-back and party-friendly than the music emanating from the concrete jungle where our brothers up North reside. However, I loved Kool G Rap. His music was believable. Miami’s inner city was the grittiest in America, so we wanted that gutter music.
Wood used to ride around bumping the hard-core shit all day. It was the sound track to the lives we were living. But Wood’s favorite emcee wasn’t on the radio. I rapped for fun. “Bruh, I’m telling you that you can spit. You can rap, bruh,” said Wood. “I can hear you on one of these records.”
“Nah, bruh. Those boys are the truth. I just kid around,” I fired back.
Word had spread throughout the projects that Wood’s wild young brother was also the best with the pen and pad. Rapping was the only other thing I did well besides busting heads. Crews gathered in Richmond Park and threw their best lyrical jabs at each other. It usually started with jokes about the opponent’s mother. My competition had way more material to throw at me than I did. That’s actually how I learned to become extremely witty with my rhymes. I used the food-stamp and welfare insults and turned them into jokes about myself. Neutralizing the competition’s ability to tear me down left them with no ammunition. After emptying my opponents own lyrical clip, I ripped them to shreds. I enjoyed it. So did my crew. They were even getting paid off my rap battles in the park by placing bets.
My rhymes were always ahead of my time. I was rapping from the perspective of the older G’s I idolized, and it made the competition fear me. They were rapping about girls and fly kicks. Meanwhile, I’d hit them with:
Nigga know me from way back in the days / before rapping nigga I was selling crack in the day / before trapping nigga I was still packing that AK.
People were coming from far and wide throughout Miami to battle me. It was too easy. They started off with the usual “your mama broke and on welfare in the projects” jargon. Unknown to me, Wood was lining up emcees for me to devour.
He planned to take his record-label ambitions to a Gordy level. Our father had used his hustling money to start Suntown Records, the first label of its kind in Miami. But prison brought an abrupt end to it. Hollywood was betting on larger success with Ted “Touche” Lucas. My father had taken Ted under his wing so to speak. He showed him the ropes in the music business. Ted looked up to Hollywood, so when he came up with the idea to start pushing their own acts, Ted followed suit. The first group they signed was an R&B group called Nu Vibes. I believed Wood saw me as the true face of the fledgling label because on the ride home that night he was trying to convince me to become an emcee.
“Bruh, ain’t nann nigga cold as you with this rap shit,” he said. “All we gotta do is get you exposure. We gotta get you up there onstage.”
I was never a shy kid but I thought those musical types were soft. All the money in the world couldn’t get me on a stage, glistening like Snow White and doing dances. Strutting and posing wasn’t part of my routine. I was too damn thugged out for that. Trading freestyles under the ficus tree in Richmond Park was one thing. Getting up onstage in front of thousands of people was an event I wasn’t ready for. I always wanted to rap, but I didn’t have the confidence to think anyone would take me serious.
“I’m just saying, bruh. You have something a lot of homeys out here don’t have,” Wood said. “You got options, bruh.”
The only option I saw was the one that had made Wood such a superstar in the hood. I blurted out the favor I’d been burning to ask.