IT WAS POURING RAIN THAT DAY. PASSING SHOWERS are customary during Miami summers. The sun emerges after about fifteen minutes of thundering, but that day the rain didn’t stop. I’ll never forget how violently the sky roared that night. I was boxing with someone from the crew. The sparring kept us in shape. My name blared over the in-house intercom. I was being called into the main office, then I caught a glimpse of Ced racing across the yard toward me. He nearly ran over everyone in the cafeteria as he made his way toward me.
“Watch out, bruh!”
Inmates were yelling at Ced to be careful, but he kept on running like a bat out of hell. I made my way down the stairs to meet him. When our eyes connected, I knew. He didn’t have to utter a word. Things were getting crazy in the streets. The younger hustlers out there weren’t respecting the game like back in the day. Dudes were straight setting each other up. Bodies were left cold and crumpled all over the Beans. Things were crazier than when I’d been out there trapping. The chain of events gave me the intuition to understand that Ced was about to confirm my deepest fear. In prison we got the news of anything happening in the streets before the cops made it to the scene. We even knew what was about to happen before it popped off. Incidents that occurred in prison often trickled out into the streets. By now Black and the rest of the crew were gathered at the top of the stairs.
Ced paused to catch his breath. “You wouldn’t believe what happened, bruh,” he said.
“Wood,” I replied.
Ced nodded.
I can’t explain the anguish that took over me. Imagine breathing without a heartbeat. Picture standing without legs. Then you fall down inside. The world around you ends. Every feeling at your core turns cold. You’re left empty inside.
I didn’t want to believe Hollywood was gone. Those who’ve lost a loved one can relate. Denial offers a bit of momentary peace, but then the horror sinks in. Wood wasn’t coming back. They say the hardest men aren’t supposed to cry. I cried so much that night even the guards felt sorry for me. Black tried consoling me.
Hollywood’s rep made him a target. He had everything every dope boy wanted, but he was the type to give you the shirt off his back. Violence was his last resort. Someone wanted to take the king off his throne. Word on the street was that Hollywood and his right-hand man, Fatso, got ambushed. Three rivals armed with AR-15 assault rifles converged on them while they were parked at the corner of Northwest Twenty-fifth Avenue and 152nd Street. The attackers emptied more than fifty rounds through the windshield. I don’t even know if my brother had time to pull his gun. I still wish I was there. I’d probably have died alongside my brother. It would have been the best way to go.
I stood there as pain consumed me. It subsided to anger. Then I was overcome with rage. I grabbed the shank I kept in the grooves under the toilet and searched for anyone I thought might have had a hand in Wood’s death, but the fighting didn’t ease my pain. It didn’t make sense. Cutting somebody wasn’t going to bring Hollywood back. He was gone. All I could do was go to the chaplain to get permission to attend Wood’s funeral. I asked to be able to attend with some dignity, but the warden wasn’t having it. I arrived at Wood’s funeral dressed in my jailhouse suit shackled from head to toe. The large crowd that gathered showed just how much Hollywood was loved. They tried hard not to stare at his shackled younger brother. Miami had lost a prince.
I sat next to Ted. I looked at my brother’s corpse in that coffin and realized that I had to make a change. This mess I called my life wasn’t cutting it. Rap was going to be my best shot out. I would have to make it so.
I turned to Ted. “Bruh, I’m gonna be on the straight and narrow. I’m not going back to prison when I get out.”
It didn’t matter if Ted believed me. I wanted out of the madness that just stole my heart. I wanted the world to see who Hollywood was. He could live through my rhymes. I wanted the world to see how we lived in the streets of Miami. If I offered folks a lens to see what we were dealing with, then maybe things could change. My dream was to become a street journalist. I knew rap could give me that opportunity.
Tupac Shakur was doing it. Everyone on the cellblocks was really feeling that cat. His music had a message. He was taking the ghetto’s pain to the mainstream. Over in Houston the rapper Scarface was doing much the same thing. They were both emcees whose blueprint a brother like me, going from the pen to the mike, could use as a guide in the fog.
I began writing as soon as I got back to my cell. The lyrics that spilled out on the page were the things that weighed heavy on my heart. I didn’t edit or rewrite anything. I was pouring out my soul. In addition to Hollywood, I had already lost five of my closest homeboys while locked up. So it was evident that brothers in the streets didn’t live long. I began to write:
Now picture me as a killer
Young black dope dealer I’m doing this one for my niggas
Who ride for this
Who even lost they life for this
And them niggas who survivin this
They don’t live that long
Those are lyrics from the song “They Don’t Live That Long.” Titles came later. I wrote what I was feeling at the time. Most times I was venting.
By the time I finished, I had written about four hundred songs. I mailed the notebook to Ted so he could know I was serious. I spent the rest of my days at Desoto focused on rapping. I promised the inmates in Desoto that I’d take our stories to the mainstream. They believed in me. Life is ironic. I had sought all my life to find somewhere I belonged. Love had eluded me all these years. I found it in those prison walls, among brothers I’d have died for.
“Let the young homeys know this isn’t the place, bruh,” Black would say. “They don’t gotta take this fall.”