I have a comfortable office in a downtown corporate building. I have a beautiful window view of the port of New Orleans area and the Mississippi River area. With my signature "I Will Not Lose" chain hanging from my neck, beads clanking at every turn of my head, I look out the window at the sunny landscape and just think to myself: I'm very blessed. I look on my arms and there are no handcuffs. Only the baby blue and white rubber arm bands I bought from Foot Locker the day of my 23rd birthday. On my left middle finger is my "Man and His Cross" ring I got from the Grace of God. Anyone who knows me knows there is no bit of criminal in me. I am very somber and quiet, a change from my usually wordy and overly-PC jargon.
I'm sitting here, head resting on my left index finger, trying to figure out how to communicate this. I was born in Charity Hospital, and was raised in the 7th and 9th ward. I grew up in inpoverished and violent neighborhoods, but I was shielded from the drama of the streets by parents that somehow knew just when to pull me back in. I wanted no parts of being a thug and never wanted to portray thug life. I was spared a judicial conviction and a jail sentence. I was spared becoming a statistic to the streets. Yet, in this post-Katrina era New Orleans, a part of me embraces the hood. Places like black Uptown (because we locals know there's a Caucasoid part, too) and the Magnolia (C.J. Peete) housing development intrigue me for a reason I can't explain. Maybe it was the stories AJ and Neo would tell me while I would shoot the breeze at their homes. Tales of week-long DJ's, accompanied by card games and open Johnny plugs, dazzle and delight me.
Yet, I know the harsh realities of drug addiction, selling, and violence exist after the music stops. It's a life I'm neither built for nor wish to become a part of. I know people who have survived shootings, and it pains me to hear them recant the stories of stray bullets in a drive-by. As I read Nik Cohn's book and his conversations with Soulja Slim's mother and how he came up, it ignites this unforseen respect for him and a weird pride builds up within me. Soulja Slim was from MY city and people hail him as "one of the realest ever." Though I never met or spoke to him, I stood outside my window and it was very solemn, almost as if his spirit had visited me to confirm what I just read. I thought about being in a city I grew up in that I should no longer be in. People say I have too much to offer to stay in New Orleans, and sometimes I see it. The city has this unspoken air of comfort with being poor, yet boasts this spurious message of being rich and "bling bling."
I remember the Thanksgiving of 2003. I was at my aunt's house for the family dinner. I was eating gumbo and sweet potatoes (my grandma can throw DOWN on some sweet potatoes!), and I heard it. "Yea, they said on the news, some rapper got killed. Soul..Soulja Slim, they said." They continued to gossip and talk about how the thug life ends up in the cemetary and sang mocking renditions of "I'll Pay Fa It." Granted, I wasn't the world's biggest Soulja Slim fan, I acknowledged the man's talent and respected him as a musical artist. When I'm in Kenny's, I always ask my friend to play the song "Heata On Me" from his latest album "Years Later...And a Few Months After." I hear it and feel like the man is standing right there next to me, not dead and gone.
Yet today, it hit me. Soulja Slim has been dead for a little over 2 years now. New Orleans still feels him and touts him up as New Orleans' Tupac. Dr. Benjamin Chavis even paid tribute to him at the Hip-Hop Summit in the Summer of 2004. I think I will stop by his gravesite today. I never felt I had a chance to properly pay my respects to him right after he died, so I'm doing it now.
R.I.P. Soulja Slim
1978-2003
The Realest to Ever Come Out of the Magnolia
-B
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