#Kids from South L.A.

[minaaaawaaaa]

Reblog/comment with your favorite things in South Park *fanon media. Here's some of mine, pairing-related separated since some people don't really care for that, which is totally fine

Craig being partly Peruvian (derived from Pandemic I & II); either not Thomas's or Laura's biological son and half-siblings with Tricia. Also him just being tall asf; I think his dad is supposed to be taller than the average adult male character. Also Craig balding early in adulthood LOL

Plot twist villain Cartman in larger-scale-plot fics

Also, Cartman still earning God's wrath when he really, really deserves it

Kyle being the absolute fussiest little shit you've ever seen, at any age, for good reason usually. This is pretty canon, but still it's important to maintain

I think it's never directly put out there in canon besides Tweek's name being so terrible, but the Tweaks have definitely had Tweek and half the town on meth for years

Tweek being super artsy and those practices helping him relax; visual arts, music, sewing/crotchet, etc.

Clyde Donovan, the most sensitive crybaby football player of All Time

Quarterback Stan, regardless of high school/college/NFL level

It's so sad but longtime-alcoholic-since-10 Stan :( I still love him

Not sure when/where it became popular as it isn't too evident in canon, but the weird Craig and Kenny often being pothead frenemies thing? Idk when or why it started but it's pretty fun

Burnout yet extremely dependable Kenny working a ton in high school and often shooting for custody of his little sister Karen once of legal age. Also him being a scientific/mathematical genius but never applying it to prioritize Karen's comfort and safety instead. Also him being super clean given his family situation

Stan being the 5-in-1 body wash friend and Kyle being a major skin care girlie

When ppl draw them in the show's style and when they make them actually look like they're 9

Adaptation of the wackier canon events into a more realistic context like maintaining Butters's eye injury through other means, Kenny being gone for extended periods of time, Stan secretly taking in animals, still playing superheroes. I recently read an anger management counseling fic where Cartman bit off a guy's finger in an argument which I assumed was a Scott Tenorman Must Die reference

Pairing-related

Tweek being closer to the Tuckers than his own parents; his own house being tidier but the Tuckers' being much more of a home

Craig's been gay since 2007, Season 11 episode 8, "Le Petit Tourette." No straight reason for asking to do "the coolest kid in the world's" laundry. Has a type for twitchy dudes--Thomas from that same episode and then his relationship with Tweek

Cartman's demented-ass crush on Kyle; Kyman shipper or not, that kid's got bigass issues. I do not ship Kyman but Eric's got a fucked up little obsession with Kyle. Bro saved his family from deadly L.A. smug because he couldn't live happily without having Kyle there to constantly argue with

Stan being the one to be super down bad for Kyle yet also be the one with more issues in the relationship. I love Stan but dude has way too much of Randy in him, he's gotta be a pain in the ass

Only Kenny calling Butters "Leo," with most characters not recognizing his actual name being Leopold; being sort of popular as a secretive background relationship and Kenny being very protective

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Ben Affleck on how Good Will Hunting was created (March 2020)

The way that movie started was [Matt Damon] was in a— it was actually a directing class, but he had taken all the acting classes at college. And I had already moved out to L.A. to start acting and he was about to come out to L.A. that summer. And I came back into town and he said, "Do you want to come to my directing class? I want to do a scene," and I was like, "What is the scene that you want to do?" "I have this idea about a guy who's a really smart guy but he's not educated." He wanted to basically play a guy from South Boston who's really smart and people underestimated. And I was like, "That's a really good idea!" And we sat down and he wrote some stuff, a scene, for that. And then after we performed it for a guy named David Wheeler [...] nobody seemed to like the scene in the class. But we thought it was good. And we thought— we used to talk about "We should really write this! We should really write this!" And we were just young enough to be so incredibly stupid and naive that we thought we actually should do it and that someone might make it. Which would have been on its face a completely absurd idea. But we pursued it and we had fun. So he had come up with the idea of this character and he was like, "Who do you want to be?" "I want to do a guy who's the Mercutio; the funnier character who tells stories." I mean, yes, I definitely wasn't the first guy to come up with the funny-but-likable best friend guy, who the audience gives permission to be a little more outrageous than the protagonist in some ways. You know, sidekick. That role was juicy. All I ever get to audition for is the bully throwing kids into lockers. And I want to be funny. And I think you could be interesting— there's an interesting tension between a guy who grew up in the neighborhood but is destined for bigger things, and his friends reluctantly recognizing that. So that was built around the idea of a scene saying: it's his friend, in fact—not the Robin Williams character—that gets him to push off from where he's moored and sail off into the world. Where he feels like— even his best friend feels like, "Yeah, love you and want to hang out with you, but this is where you belong."

[beardedmrbean]

A Los Angeles woman fatally stabbed her partner and possibly threw her two children from a moving SUV on the freeway before she fatally crashed into a tree Monday morning, authorities said.

An 8-month-old girl died and her 9-year-old sister was injured in the violence, which began around 3:40 a.m., Los Angeles police said Tuesday.

The children’s mother, Danielle Johnson, 34, got in an argument with a man whom she lived with, Jaelen Chaney, and stabbed him with a knife, police said.

Johnson then took her two children in a Porsche SUV, and at 4:30 a.m. that car was seen driving on Interstate 405 "when the two children were expelled from the vehicle while it was moving,” police said in a statement.

Investigators believe the children fell or were thrown out of the moving vehicle, the California Highway Patrol said. The infant died, and the 9-year-old was taken to a hospital with what police said were moderate injuries.

Johnson then sped into a tree in Redondo Beach, a coastal city in the Los Angeles region, at more than 100 mph, police said. She did not survive the crash, which occurred around 5 a.m.

Investigators later found Chaney, 29, dead in the Woodland Hills home where they lived with Johnson's children, police said. The deadly incidents were later connected and determined to be a double murder and a suicide, police said.

“We really don’t know why this incident escalated to such violence,” Police Lt. Guy Golan said, according to NBC Los Angeles.

The highway patrol said it was broadcast a medical emergency at 4:29 a.m. about the injured children on the freeway, and authorities found the infant with major injuries. The Culver City Fire Department pronounced her dead at 4:44 a.m., the highway patrol said.

Redondo Beach is around 30 miles south of Woodland Hills, which is in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. The 405 Freeway is the main artery linking the western part of the valley to the Los Angeles basin.

The surviving child is in the care of Child Protective Services, NBC Los Angeles reported.

[jules-has-notes]

2016 VoicePlay fall roundup — projects galore, frequent travels, and holiday cheer

As summer rolled into autumn, VoicePlay just kept rolling on their various creative fronts.

While the other guys were cruising in the northeast, Tony and Layne were hard at work back home, prepping and filming PattyCake's first Halloween video.

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California schemin'

Once the sailors were rested up, most of the guys headed for the west coast. They spent two days in Los Angeles filming collaboration videos, first with Kurt Hugo Schneider and then with AJ Rafael.

On the upside, their absence from Florida meant that they didn't have to take shelter from Hurricane Matthew. Unfortunately, Tony wasn't involved in the videos (for reasons that would soon become clear) and was supposed to be on a later flight than the others. He didn't make it out of Orlando before the airport was shut down.

From L.A., the guys hopped up the coast to San Francisco to perform at a benefit concert for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation hosted by the Alpha Epsilon Phi fraternity at Stanford University. With Tony stuck at home, the fellas called in their old buddy Paul Sperrazza from Vox Audio to pinch hit as their baritone for the night.

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Squeeze me in

After a few days at home, the guys hit the road again. They started with three days of student workshops in eastern Ohio.

During the week, they set their social media followers the challenge of finding them among the crowds of students and faculty at some of the schools. (Can you spot them all? The kids make surprisingly good camouflage.)

New Philadelphia, OH — East Elementary // West Elementary

Zoarville, OH — Tuscarawas Valley Elementary School

On the final day, they worked with the choirs from two local high schools, who then joined them for a show at Kent State Tuscarawas the following night.

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From there, the guys headed south to West Memphis, AR for another concert and a workshop at the local high school the day after that. One crafty fan brought them homemade VP logo cookies.

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A post shared by VoicePlay (@thevoiceplay)

students at West Memphis High School

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Next they flew up to NYC to perform at a fundraiser for the Lupus Foundation of America.

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Then they scooted upstate to Rochester for a show at Nazareth College before finally heading home.

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Happy holiday-ween

Once they returned to Orlando, it was time to buckle down on rehearsals for their second year at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, so that they'd all be able to hit the stage running in November. (Layne did take the time in the middle of the week to have dinner with their old friend Jeff Thatcher and introduce him to Doris, though.)

The extra twist this year was that, on top of getting themselves and their backup guys ready to perform their holiday setlists, these performances would also be their next step toward formally acknowledging Tony's departure. He wouldn't be joining the other guys on stage in Tomorrowland this season. Instead, they would alternate between two replacement baritones, Erik Winger and J.None, who would continue performing with them into the new year, until the group could decide on a new permanent member.

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No trick, all treats

At the end of the month, Geoff & Kathy announced that baby Castellucci was on the way at long last. They shared a short video documenting some of their challenging road to parenthood on Geoff's personal YouTube channel.

and baby makes three… er, five?

WARNING: This video contains footage of Kathy receiving many injections in her belly and buttocks. As a result, she engages in some pain-induced swearing. Understandable, but probably NSFW.

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One of the pumpkins from the baby reveal was then repurposed to create VoicePlay's social media posts for the day of Halloween.

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A post shared by VoicePlay (@thevoiceplay)

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North to South (Carolina)

After a week and a half at home, the guys moseyed up to South Carolina for a pair of shows in Aiken, this time with Erik Winger as their substitute baritone.

A group of fans, perturbed by some negativity they'd been seeing directed toward the guys in YouTube comments and on social media, had been conspiring amongst themselves to counteract that energy. They'd created a book of positive messages and images. The two friends who had volunteered to collect and deliver everyone's submissions also documented the presentation during the post-show meet and greet on the first night so that all the contributors could see the guys' initial reactions.

Ashley and Nancy present the book of fan love

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The second day also held a few surprises.

It can be nice to have fans in the service industry.

Aiken, SC show — pre-show chatting // post-show group hug with fan Ashley // prezzies!

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Sing, laugh, and be merry

And then it was off to the races. VoicePlay began their second annual residency in Tomorrowland for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Disney World in early November. For nearly 100 performances over the course of six weeks, they once again entertained thousands upon thousands of visitors to the Magic Kingdom.

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Hardcore mode

In between MVMCP shows, the guys continued doing their other jobs. Among other things, that meant Earl was lucky enough to be playing Crush in the Nemo live show when iconic professional wrestler Mick Foley was in the audience.

Earl meeting Mick Foley // the VP MVMCP B-team — Tony F., Antonio, Deejay, Joey, & J.None

Having a full cast of replacement singers came in handy during the second week of Disney World shows. VoicePlay had also booked a holiday concert down in Delray Beach for the Friday before Thanksgiving. So, while Winger filled in for Tony on the road, J.None and the rest of Echo took to the Tomorrowland stage in full force.

Eli and Ashley even left a day early and took a detour to attend a Carrie Underwood show in Tampa on the way.

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VoicePlaying for Gamecocks

At the beginning of December, VoicePlay headed up to South Carolina with Winger once more for their last non-Disney holiday concert of the year at USC.

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Bubblicious

In early December, some of the guys finally got to meet the British music blogger who had been singing their praises for several years when his vacation itinerary brought him to the Magic Kingdom.

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Caroling we roll along

Their final video shoot of the year was also the final entry in their first set of PartWork videos, a gentle rendition of "O Little Town of Bethlehem". With the announcement of Tony's departure drawing closer, the other four guys were all featured in this video in their usual roles, and Geoff did double duty to cover the baritone part.

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VoicePlates

As a fun little end-of-year treat, their pal (and former 4:2:Five tenor) Danny Alan stumbled upon some holiday paper goods that bore a surprisingly familiar looking design.

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The guys finally took the last few days of the year to relax and rest in preparation for their hectic start to the new year, but those are stories for another time.

[exhuastedpigeon]

give me a sign, I want you next to me

7,011 words Teen Evan Buckley/Eddie Diaz

Buck loves working at the 118. He loves living in LA. He loves his kid. He loves the life they've manage to build. The only thing he doesn't love is that his husband is across the world in a war zone. OR The 118 knows Buck has a really cute kid and a partner he loves, they just think that partner is his husbands ex.

“So Buckley, tell us about yourself.”

Buck had been with the 118 for approximately 48 hours before Howard - call me Chimney - Han had sat down on the back of the ambulance to watch Buck while Buck did chores around the ladder truck. The ‘us’ he was talking about was clearly Henrietta - Hen - Wilson, who was at least checking inventory in the ambulance instead of just asking Buck questions. 

“What do you want to know,” Buck looked up from where he was shining the truck. “I’m an open book.”

“Why’d you decide to become a firefighter?” Chimney asks and Buck is glad for the softball first question. 

“I like helping people,” Buck shrugs, “And the pay isn’t too bad.”

“How old are you?”

“Are you allowed to ask me that?”

“You’ve already got the job,” Chimney shrugs this time. “And I’m not in HR, hell if I know what we can ask.”

“I’m 28.”

“What were you doing before you decided to become a firefighter?”

“I was in the Navy for 5 years,” Buck didn’t go into detail about that time in his life because even though he’d processed most of the trauma and had a great therapist, he didn’t like talking about it with people who are basically strangers. “After I got out I traveled around South America for a few months before settling in Texas and working on a ranch until we moved to L.A. last year.”

Keep reading on AO3

[taylorhawkins]

"If I was to not know Taylor and go see his band play in a club, I would approach him after the show and say, 'How much do you charge for lessons?'" enthuses Grohl. "He's 50,000 times a better drummer than me."

Forget Dolly the Sheep: Hawkins seems like he's a clone of Grohl, only three years younger. With his mop of dirty-blond hair and goatee, Hawkins is looking kind of Skeet-like himself, and he's as skinny, antic, and hyperkinetic as Dave, maybe even more so. "I can't wait to go on tour so I can see if Taylor ever sleeps," laughs Grohl. Besides the ability to play like John Bonham, Stephen Perkins, or his idol, Stewart Copeland, Hawkins brings his own, surfer-influenced dialect to the Foo mix: a sample glossary includes "winger" (complainer), "Hessian" (hick, redneck, unsophisticated, burnout), and "flobe" ("when you fuck something up," says Hawkins, "like, if you've floundered, you're a flobe"). "He's the whitest Southern California surf kid I know," opines Smear.

Hailing from Laguna Beach, about 50 miles south of L.A. in Orange County, Hawkins just spent a year and nine months of constant touring in Morissette's backing band, which offered excellent preparation for the Foos' six hours of nightly rehearsal overseen by General Grohl. "You have to be an athlete to play these drum parts," says Hawkins. "I play really hard, and that's the key to playing drums for Dave Grohl-you've got to beat the shit out of the drums." [x]

[uzumaki-rebellion]

“Sinner & Saint: Creed III” Chapter 5

Masterlist HERE.

"When everything changed I had you When my life was rearranged I had you When I hit rock bottom babe I had you When I thought I'd been forgotten babe I had you When I faced all my fears I had you When I thought nobody cared I had you And that's why

Whatever you want from me You know you got it Whatever you need baby You're gonna get it You got me forever You got me forever"

Floacist – "Forever"

He had to take the chance at that moment, or else he wouldn't have the courage to try again.

The urge to kiss Athena washed over him as her lips ticked up into a wondrous smile as the wind blew her soft hair and the sunshine illuminated her beauty to the world. Damian feared she would disintegrate into the rays of sunlight like a misty mirage teasing him, and he dared to act by holding her chin and seeking sustenance in her lips. She welcomed the unexpected intrusion of desire and he wrapped his arms around her like she was life itself.

Heaven.

Her lips, her tongue, the gentle tickling of her hair brushing against his face, her scent... every molecule that made Athena a living, breathing soul blessed Damian to his core. She was the first woman he had ever kissed in his life and he would want no other after that.

He wasn't a virgin.

There had been several girlfriends and teenage sex for two good years before he was imprisoned, but Athena was the only grown woman he had ever touched like that. He savored every breath, the moist feel of her mouth, and the gentleness of her pliant tongue. It was a wise move to release her midway because she scrambled back for more and it was a lock for his heart. She had no idea how much of a lifeline she was for him being out in the world. The book she loaned him gave him the first foundation of looking at his circumstances in a different light.

Two weeks after running into her at the gym, Damian went to the downtown library and checked out three books by Thích Nhất Hạnh and listened to the audio of his lectures online. He had been raised Pentecostal in South L.A., but the first time he got into real trouble, his family sent him to a Catholic school. Spiritual matters didn't concern him much. Boxing and getting himself into a better situation was the goal. He lived with his grandmother down the street from Crenshaw Boulevard in Leimert Park and she had been a holy rolling bible thumper. She shipped him to an aunt in Eagle Rock to go to parochial school, but he always came back to his hood on the weekends. Big Mama Anderson died while he was in prison, and his older cousin took their grandmother's house as her own and refused to let him stay there when he got out because she had kids that didn't need to be around a loser. God died with his grandmother, but Athena awakened something new within him with her interest in spiritual matters outside of his upbringing.

His own relatives disavowed Damian, but Athena reached for him. She was the beacon he needed to stay the course and fight for what belonged to him. He was a junior Olympian. The most talked about Golden Gloves winner in the sport's history. To lose it all and watch Donnie reap the rewards — a man who was nowhere as good as him — burned like a motherfucker.

Donnie got by because he was Apollo Creed's son and Rocky Balboa took him in. Had he not had that connection, there was no way he would've gotten far on his own. The name opened doors because he sure as hell wasn't on anyone's radar when he tagged along with Damian to Inglewood. Donnie had an attitude and not much else, but Damian coddled and encouraged him to try his best. Their friendship was breezy and close, like brothers. When he won the Golden Gloves national title, it was Donnie who snuck Mary Anne's expensive liquor out of the house to celebrate Damian's new status along with the belt and ring that came with it. He had just turned nineteen, barely saying goodbye to eighteen, with the world by the balls… and then… it was over.

Having Athena in his arms rekindled a beast in him. He wanted everything denied in his past. Everything Donnie didn't deserve. Damian was the true diamond. Apollo's son was cubic zirconia. Donnie collected belts and multi-million-dollar fight purses, but he had never truly faced the best in the world.

Damian grasped Athena's hand and felt like a preening peacock. She was classy, sophisticated, educated, and gorgeous. Men and women on the boardwalk ogled her, and he puffed out his chest like he had the queen of the world on his arm.

Lost in the hazy intoxication of her presence, their stroll took them all the way to Venice Beach. Holding her hand made him protective, and he coveted the closeness they shared while meandering the weirdos and art hustlers trying to make a buck.

"Damian!"

A bulky bodybuilder shouted to him from the Venice outdoor gym known as Muscle Beach, which attracted narcissists to show off their sculpted abs and thighs. Damian worked out there every other day when he wasn't jogging on the Venice Beach sand.

"Dallas!" Damian called back.

The thick-neck white man with a spray-on tan, leathery skin, and thin blonde lanky hair stepped away from deadlifting two hundred pounds and trotted over to Damian.

"Thought you'd be out here today," Dallas said.

"Had a cheat day with a friend," he said, squeezing Athena's hand.

"Hey, got word on that spot near here for you if you're still interested. It's available on the twenty-second." Dallas said.

"Hell yeah," Damian said.

"I'll hit you up with details later," Dallas said.

Damian gave him a hand slap, and his good mood lifted even higher. Dallas was a popular regular with the body-building scene who befriended Damian, despite the ankle monitor and criminal record. He had a brother that rented rooms in his house on the beach scene right around the corner from the Venice Gold's Gym, and Damian wanted one. The price was reasonable for an ex-con, and Dallas promised him the first three months free as a favor. God was good.

"Where did you find this beautiful woman?" Dallas asked in a teasing tone.

Athena grinned, and Damian pulled her away from the spectacle of Muscle Beach. They ended their walk, dipping their toes in the sand and watching the ocean. He didn't want to rush things with her. She would think he was using her and trying to get over because she was rich and connected. He wanted things in place on his own to make him feel like a productive athlete on the rise. The clothes on his back were the nicest he owned, and it was better to keep his nose close to the grindstone. He had a place lined up to live, a trainer, and a warehouse job if things worked out the way he hoped. The plan was to train during the day and work the graveyard shift.

His cell rang.

"Hold on a minute," he said.

He pulled away from Athena and turned his back to the water.

"Hello?" Damian said.

"Dame?"

The voice surprised him.

"Kev—"

"Aye man, nobody told me you got out until I ran into Aunt Bibi. Where you at right now? I'm over at Big Mama's house. Shelly said you weren't staying there. What's up with that?"

"Ask her."

"This your house too, cuz."

"They don't act like it."

"Where are you?"

"The beach."

"What beach?"

"Venice."

"What's going on there?"

Damian turned back toward Athena. Her eyes were closed, and she tilted her head back to sunbathe her face as he spoke.

"Hanging out. Getting some air."

"Come through so I can see you. I'll wait until you get here. Need a ride?"

"I can get there on my own," Damian said.

He tapped his phone and slid it into his back pocket. It was time to end the date and face his family.

"Should we head back?" Damian asked.

"Sure," she said.

The wind blew her hair around again. If he were a painter, he could make the next Mona Lisa with her image. He recorded it to his brain-computer, too shy to ask if he could take a picture with his phone. Her windswept hair, the slight smile on her lips, and the comforting brown of her eyes were divine perfection.

"This was a great date. Thank you, Damian," she said.

"Dame," he said. "My close friends call me Dame."

"Okay. Dame."

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek before slipping her arm into the crook of his, and headed toward Santa Monica. They could've easily hopped in a Lyft for the journey back, but it was obvious they enjoyed each other's company.

"We should do this again," she suggested.

"I'll be a little busy the next few weeks. Training. Moving—"

"I understand. Just wanted to put it out there because I had fun," she said.

"I'm glad. I was worried you would find this… me, boring."

"A great lunch and fantastic conversation are never boring. You're far from boring, Damian… Dame."

"I'm sure you've had rich guys take you to all kinds of fancy places."

She stopped walking and turned to him.

"This was one of the best dates I've had in a long time. If all I ever did with you was eat well and walk on the beach talking up a storm and holding hands, that would outdo ninety percent of the men I've stepped out with," she said.

She toyed with a button on his shirt.

"When you have yourself situated, feel free to call me again for another outing," she said.

Damian looked into her earnest eyes and threw caution to the wind again. He touched her hair and drew her in close for another kiss that was longer than the last. They both grinned when they parted lips again. Putting on their shoes and socks, Athena stopped to check her cell as the ringtone played an anime sound effect. She swiped and scrolled her screen and her facial expression changed from bliss to an eyebrow arched.

"Something wrong?" Damian asked.

She looked at him with a gleam in her eye.

"Ricky Conlan just left prison. My brother announced they'll fight a re-match at the end of the year."

"Creed versus Conlan part two," Damian said.

"Donnie's only professional loss."

Damian watched her put her phone away, and they continued walking. The mood shifted between them as Athena took on a more serious energy. They parted ways at her car in a parking structure a block away from the café, and he declined her offer of a ride to his grandmother's house.

On the bus headed toward the Crenshaw district, Damian wondered how much money Donnie would pocket facing Pretty Ricky Conlan.

Donnie and Bianca never missed the monthly family dinner at the Creed mansion.

Mary Anne expected her children to come together and stay connected through buttered rolls, green beans, mashed potatoes, and good brisket. She cooked everything herself, along with a homemade seven-up cake. A.J. could join them because he had a medical convention in L.A. he was attending, so the evening was extra special, having all three Creed children together in one place for a home-cooked meal.

He noticed his sister was in a great mood. A lot of wine loosened her up. She chatted about her new work assignment with the Lakers and her planned trip to spend a girls' weekend at their family cabin in Big Bear. Her skin looked extra brown from the sun and her voice had a sing-song quality to it. Donnie loved when she was happy. It made him feel closer to her. The older they had gotten, the more closed off she became, even more so since he had married Bianca. His wife and daughter got along with her perfectly and Athena was the best ASL learner out of all of them, often having conversations with Amara that he couldn't keep up with.

A.J. was his usual stoic self, sounding like their father with his booming voice and a thick mustache. Amara was signing with Athena when his brother turned to him and eyed Donnie with serious energy.

"Are you confident that you will beat Conlan?" A.J. asked.

Mary Anne stood at the head of the grand dining table, cutting cake slices and passing around plates. She licked her finger on the icing of her own slice as she sat down, staring at him.

"Yes," Donnie said.

Athena stuffed her fork in her mouth with a look of doubt.

"You don't think so?" Donnie said to her.

Athena glanced around.

"I didn't say anything," Athena said.

"I know that look," Donnie said.

A.J. looked at their sister, too.

"You always know the odds and you have never been wrong about his matches," A.J. said.

Mary Anne and Bianca watched Athena carefully. She took another bite of her cake slice and signed for Amara to fill up the water pitcher with cold water from the kitchen. His daughter leaped at the chance to do anything for Athena and dashed away with the clear glass pitcher.

"I think Ricky Conlan is washed up. His last hurrah was facing you before he went in. It's a cash grab for him," Athena said.

Bianca openly relaxed and patted Donnie on his shoulder.

"I told you," Bianca said, grinning.

"If I were him, I'd let it rest and fade away, but he wants that last rush. So he'll end his career losing to you," Athena said.

A.J. rested his folded hands on the table.

"Who comes after Conlan?" A. J. asked.

Donnie looked at Bianca, and she tilted her head. Amara came back in with the water. She handed it to Athena and signed to be excused to play an RPG game in her famous grandpa's trophy room. Bianca gave her permission to go, and Amara took off like a rocket to get away from the boring adults.

"Now's the time," Bianca whispered to him.

Donnie cleared his throat and straightened his back. Mary Anne cocked her head and her eyes became hooded with contemplation like she knew what was coming next. Just like she knew when Bianca was pregnant before they did.

"I've discussed this with Bianca for months now, and I've decided to retire after the Conlan fight," Donnie said.

They held their breath for a long time around the table. Mary Anne pressed her hands together and placed the tips under her nose like she was praying, but the tears came down first.

"Whoa," A.J. said, glancing at Athena." I was not expecting that."

"Thank the Lord… oh thank the Lord," Mary Anne muttered.

Athena's face stayed neutral. There was no surprise or elation like the others with her expression. She studied him like she always did.

"I've accomplished a lot in the past seven years. I have nothing else to prove and I want to go out on top. My organization will start a new boxing venture, managing and promoting boxers. I've lined up key endorsements and partnering investors to make this profitable next move for me and my family. Boxing will still be a part of my life, but I'll run things outside of the ring and not in it," Donnie said.

A.J. grinned and held out his hand to shake.

"Congratulations little brother," A.J. said.

Donnie shook his hand, and Mary Anne left her seat to hug him.

"I have prayed for this day," she said, kissing his forehead.

"Making moves like I suggested," Athena said.

"Ma's input was tremendous. She knows how to make money with money," Donnie said.

Mary Anne stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders.

"You all know I majored in finance in college. I took your father's first million dollars and turned it into five million in under three years with smart investments and our own business ventures. We keep the money growing in this family," Mary Anne said.

She glanced around the table at all of her children and grew misty-eyed.

"If only Apollo could see what he gave the world," Mary Anne said.

Athena turned her gaze back down to her plate and fiddled with the crumbs of her cake.

"So where does that leave the biopic about Dad and Rocky?" Athena asked.

Mary Anne went back to her seat and sipped on some water.

"The producers are still negotiating with the studio. Rocky gave his consent to use the current story treatment as they shop it around," Mary Anne said.

"Will Donnie be a part of the story?" A.J. asked.

Athena tried not to give a tell on her face, but it was so clear in the furrow of her brows that she was still upset about the narrative.

"He has to be. I mean, it's an important part of Apollo's life," Bianca said.

"I think it will take away from Dad's narrative if it's given a huge chunk of screen time," Athena said.

Bianca's lips became tight.

"Part of the resurgence of Apollo's popularity is Donnie coming into the picture. We uplift the tragedy of losing him with Donnie carrying on the family fighting legacy and winning," Bianca said.

"Well, if we're going to add that to the story, then we should tell the whole thing," Athena said.

Donnie didn't like the growl in her throat or the surly look in her eyes. Mary Anne folded up her cloth napkin.

"I think we should table this conversation for another time when we're all a little more sober," Mary Anne said.

"What more is there to tell?" Bianca said.

Donnie glanced at Mary Anne who did her utmost to stay poised. Athena leaned forward and Mary Anne reached out and touched her daughter's hand.

"Athena… please. Don't," Mary Anne said.

Athena stared at her mother and her eyes became shiny. She turned her head away, swallowed the last of her wine, and jumped up from the table.

"I'm going to go play video games with my niece if anyone needs me," Athena said with a slightly tipsy slur. "Enjoy the retirement life, Adonis."

His sister left the dining room and A.J. stared around in confusion.

"Ma, what was that all about?" A.J. asked.

Mary Anne spread her hands on the table.

"You all know how sensitive she is about your father's good name. She's worried that putting an emphasis on Donnie's mother will have folks making jokes again… about me and Apollo… and Amara seeing all of that," Mary Anne said.

"We've dealt with that before, but she acted like there was something we didn't know about that whole situation. What are you hiding from us?" A. J. said.

Mary Anne lowered her head to find words.

"It just still hurts me. Sometimes," Mary Anne said.

"Ma…." Donnie said.

She held a hand up.

"Donnie. Say nothing about it. You are a blessing to me. You're my son. Understand? How you got here is not your fault and I will not have you feeling sorry for me or for yourself just because I have a moment from time to time—"

"Ma, I don't believe you," A.J. interjected. "You can say what you want to Donnie about it, but this is something that's hitting Athena more than what you're letting on. We're grown now. You can tell us everything."

"I don't want to talk about the past. I want to talk about Donnie's future… your future. Athena's. Yours too, Bianca. This biopic is stirring up terrible memories, as we all knew it would before we agreed to let it happen. Anyone want more cake before I put it away?" Mary Anne said.

She stood up abruptly and for a moment, she looked around the table confused.

"I'll have another piece. It was so good," Bianca said, trying to divert Mary Anne's attention.

A.J. tapped his fingers on the table and turned toward Donnie.

"Excited for you, Donnie, proud of your career, man," A.J. said.

For a second, Donnie allowed himself to pretend that A.J. was their father. Practically Apollo's clone, his older brother was sincere and there was love in his eyes. Donnie latched onto it.

"Thank you, A.J.," he said.

They set all talk of the biopic aside, but Athena's absence from the table felt heavy to all of them.

Chapter 6 HERE.

Tag List:

@unfriendlyblkhotti3    

@cherrellek​  

@yomiloo

@goddessofthundathighs​

@eyeknowmywrites

[dweemeister]

July 10, 2024

By Tim Grieving

Before John Williams believed in himself as a conductor, the general manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic believed in him.

Ernest Fleischmann was a savvy and powerful impresario, born in Germany in 1924, raised in South Africa to escape the Nazis, a frustrated conductor and journalist who managed the London Symphony Orchestra for eight years and ran the European classical division of CBS Records before coming to Los Angeles in 1969 and transforming a “provincial second-rank orchestra,” as L.A. Times critic Mark Swed wrote, “into one of the world’s best.”...

... When Fleischmann saw Star Wars with his kids on opening weekend in the summer of 1977, he thought to himself: God, this score! “It’s really the score and the sound effects that have made that movie what it was,” he later said. “It was almost Wagnerian.” The LA Phil was scheduled to tour Japan that fall, but the tour was canceled at the last minute when the promoter went bankrupt. With his orchestra suddenly freed up, and Star Wars totally consuming the culture, Fleischmann saw a plum opportunity; he paid a visit to John Williams’ Brentwood home and asked the composer if the LA Phil could perform music from Star Wars in a concert of space-themed music. Williams said “Fantastic,” and created a special 28-minute suite from his already super-famous, record-breaking score.

The resulting concert on November 20th, 1977 at the Hollywood Bowl—the iconic outdoor summer home of the LA Phil—was a galactic party designed for young families, complete with a laser light show and readings by William Shatner. The sold-out audience went crazy for it, but the event also highlighted the deep tension between anointed priests of “high culture” and the hoi polloi. “We were criticized very heavily,” recalled Zubin Mehta, the LA Phil’s music director who conducted that night. “Our critics and colleagues said that we had sold our souls to Hollywood. It was really a children’s concert.” The grumpy L.A. Times critic Martin Bernheimer called it “artistic prostitution.”

Fleischmann didn’t care. He had the LA Phil repeat the “Music from Outer Space” program at the California Angels’ baseball stadium in nearby Anaheim, and he commissioned an album of the Star Wars suite and Williams’ new Close Encounters suite, recorded at UCLA’s Royce Hall in December 1977 by Mehta and the orchestra. According to veteran classical music broadcaster Jim Svejda, it was the first time a major American orchestra treated film music “in a very serious way. I think it made a very dramatic statement.”

[fatehbaz]

When Mike Davis thought about California, he thought about concrete. In 1998, [...] [Davis] took the stage at the founding conference of Critical Resistance, the Los Angeles prison abolition organization, and held up a hunk of his driveway. To a kid in the 1950s, “this is what the California Dream was made of,” Davis regaled the audience. In those days, concrete embodied the postwar promise of liberal capitalism: “great dams,” good union jobs, and tuition-free colleges. Now, Davis looked at his prop and saw “something rather sinister.” Concrete meant the prison-industrial complex -- and the life-affirming investments that mass incarceration had crowded out. “Each of those prisons,” lamented Davis, “is a school or a hospital that’ll never be built.”

If public works are the material expression of political priorities, then we can learn a lot about a place from what gets built. Davis’s focus was on prisons, as the antithesis of the colorblind “California Dream” he grew up on in Fontana, a steel town fifty miles east of Los Angeles. But follow the concrete into another outlying region, and the relationship between race, infrastructure, and abandonment becomes even more tangible.

Beginning in the 1960s and accelerating after the election of Tom Bradley in 1973, the City of Los Angeles transformed its port from a lowly backwater into the nation’s “gateway to the Pacific Rim.” The San Pedro Bay Port Complex -- an amalgamation of the facilities in L.A. and neighboring Long Beach -- is today the busiest port in the Western hemisphere. Its growth stands as a triumph of political imagination, made possible by concrete and other raw materials. In the port’s shadow, however, live some of L.A.’s poorest and most marginalized communities. Places like the aptly named Harbor Gateway: a thin ribbon that links inland Los Angeles to the harbor region to the south. What might this area -- the gateway to the gateway to the world -- teach us about the struggle against inequality under global urban capitalism?

---

L.A.’s port was not always so central to the city’s economy and self-image. Its turbocharged expansion under Tom Bradley was part of the mayor’s larger project to make Los Angeles a “world city” [...]. Bradley’s L.A. sat at the vanguard of what liberal technophiles called the “New Economy”: a growth machine organized around finance, high-tech, and logistics, unlike the industrial factories of the Northeast and Midwest. The rising cohort [...] saw the financial sector and Silicon Valley as potential sources of inclusive economic development [...]. To proponents and critics alike, the emergent New Economy conjured images of an ethereal world of fictitious capital and instant communications. [...].

Rhetorically and literally, the “New Economy” was still grounded in specific places and structures, as L.A.’s logistics sector made clear. [...] The volume of containerized cargo passing through Los Angeles more than quadrupled in the 1980s, from 476,000 “cans” in 1981 to over two million in 1989. The cost of shipping from Asia dropped by as much as 60 percent. Today, L.A.’s is the busiest port in the Americas and ranks ninth worldwide. [...]

“What develops in the outer fields of Los Angeles and other megacities,” writes activist and scholar Charmaine Chua, “is an architecture of urban capitalism that has shifted away from ‘public works’ -- infrastructure as a public good -- and toward remaking the globe as a logistical leviathan.” The restructuring of the U.S. economy, in other words, can be understood in terms of the things that governments built, and the places that were allowed to languish.

---

Much of the wealth of the port must also pass through Harbor Gateway -- a working-class, mostly Latinx community in the area known as Southeast L.A. [...] Harbor Gateway is a cartographic contrivance, and because of this, it’s also a jurisdictional orphan: some of its homes fall within the tortured polygon of Los Angeles, while others lie in unincorporated L.A. County. Historically, this has allowed officials in both governments to take on, or skirt, responsibility. It’s often made Harbor Gateway a “No Man’s Land,” with neither the city nor county eager to meet the needs of its working-class Latinx community.

This and other overlooked areas have not benefitted from L.A.’s logistics revolution. But to say Harbor Gateway has been “left behind” would be incomplete. As Geismer argues, policymakers’ worries about those Americans whom globalization “left behind” has reinforced the belief that pockets of poverty and unemployment are exceptions to national economic growth, as opposed to features of economic restructuring.

In historical terms, the fate of Southeast L.A. is closely linked to the rise of logistics via the process that Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “organized abandonment.” While policymakers built up the logistics leviathan, Southeast L.A. lost many of the resources -- including decent jobs and housing, well-funded schools, and healthy environments -- that allow people to live meaningful lives. [...]

---

[C]ommunities near the port must live with the environmental consequences: diesel fumes, noise pollution, and chemical spills among them. In the early 2000s, researchers determined that the port complex was the largest air polluter in Southern California, emitting the equivalent of sixteen thousand tractor-trailers idling 24 hours a day.

Chua describes the considerable ecological and health problems associated with logistics, which include elevated rates of cancer, asthma, heart disease, and depression. In many of these places, however, the etiology of serious illness can be hard to pinpoint. From 1947 until 1982, Harbor Gateway was home to Montrose Chemical, the nation’s largest manufacturer of the notorious pesticide DDT. The plant remains an active Superfund site; in some areas, DDT levels exceed 700,000 parts per million. For years, Montrose also dumped barrels of “acid sludge” -- totally legally -- just off-shore. As many as half a million lay on the ocean floor, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation.

---

There was no golden age of capitalism in Southeast L.A. The California Dream served to mask corporate abuse [...].

But the abandonment of places like Harbor Gateway has also intensified in times of austerity. Longstanding ecological violence is exacerbated by an approach to governing that privileges the logistics sector above all else. The human costs of that choice -- cancer, respiratory damage, heart disease -- are well documented.

This makes Southeast L.A. the underbelly of global capitalism -- of cities’ reliance on logistics amid grave social and environmental harms. Behind the promise of the just-in-time supply chain is a world of slow violence and premature death, distributed through racial and spatial disadvantage.

---

All text above by: David Helps. “The Politics of Concrete.” Protean (online). 21 July 2022. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, personal use, criticism purposes.]

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Marianne Williamson

(Madam President)

Stephen jay Morris

12/15/2023

©Scientific Morality.

All my life, I’ve been told that I exaggerate. Little did I know that this gave me the talent to work for the American news media! You should have seen the headlines of my local newspaper, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. For example, there was “The Biggest Rainfall Coming to L.A.! Many Will Drown!” And (my favorite): “Communists Rob a Grocery Store!” As it turned out, some Russian tourist had taken a red apple without paying for it. At the neighborhood food market, you could buy The National Enquirer. My favorite headline of theirs was, “I Had Gay Sex With John Wayne!” Of course, this was all designed to get you to buy the tabloid.

Well, nothing has changed since then. On cable T.V., they want you to watch their commercials, so they try to captivate you with sensationalism. “Oh! My! Bob!” or “Donald Trump wants to be dictator!” The fat fuck must have somebody tie his shoes for him, for Christ’s sake! Yeah! That’s right! Then there are the mouth pieces of the Right: Nick Fuentes, the Gilbert Gottfried of the gentile race! I am terrified of him. Matt Walsh, the Catholic mental case with a Fidel Castro beard. Dennis Prager, the covert narcissist who thinks God worships him. He would do anything for attention. If he was guaranteed survival after committing suicide, he’d do it. “Look at me everybody! I’m special!” Indeed, you are, Dennis; indeed you are!

Like the Navy versus the Army in football, the two-party system is going to last forever. Both parties are controlled by the 1%--the Conservative elites and the Liberal elites.

With all of these apocalyptic predictions and end-of-the-world scenarios, why even bother to vote? They want you to stay home.

Want to upset a conservative? Tell them that Trump is no different than Biden. Or tell a Liberal Democrat that Biden is like Trump! Watch the steam come out of their ears—like Herman Munster. They are both senile, old farts.

We’ve got the presidential primaries coming up, however, that’s all heading south. The Democratic Party’s Central Committee wants to cancel the primaries. The Democratic Party has already done so in Florida, but three other Democratic candidates are fighting the decision. Good luck on that score!

One candidate who’s caught my eye is Independent, Marianne Williamson. She is from the New Age Left. Though I despised the New Age movement in the 70’s, some new agers I’ve met are very Anti-Authoritarian Left. They and I are from the same generation of late Baby Boomers. We are both the romantic idealists of the counterculture. I can’t vote for Abbie Hoffman, he’s dead! So, I’ll vote for the Hippie candidate.  Williamson’s policies are like those of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR never survived to implement his “Economic Bill of Rights,” so maybe she can continue FDR’s reform of America.

She is not Christian. So, what! I don’t give a poop if she channels Elinore Roosevelt! If she can help put America back in order, my vote is for her.

And now, what’s this shit about Trump wanting to make America fascist? With what army? The orange puke can’t even navigate a ramp! To accomplish it, he’d need the support of the 1%, the U.S. Military, the CIA, FBI, Wall Street, mainstream Protestant denominations, and other establishment entities. Do you really think that Trump has the support of the CIA? Me neither.

With all the hysteria going on, I say, bring it on! Hail, Trump!

Just kidding.

Marianne Williamson for president! I’m not kidding.

[boricuacherry-blog]

Erlandson is tall and affable with dyed-blonde hair that hangs in his eyes and a loose, almost nasal Los Angeles-native drawl. One of seven children in a close-knit Catholic family, he actually hails from San Pedro, California, the recently reanointed punk-rock mecca a half-hour south of L.A. Erlandson's boyhood paper route included the home of Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn, but Erlandson missed out on his hometown scene at the time, preoccupied as he was with good old 70s rock.

Now 32, a fact he gives away freely but sheepishly, Erlandson was a late bloomer. He attended college at Loyola Marymount, where his father was a dean, and also held down an accounting job at Capitol Records. Then he caught the punk-rock bug. "I started late," Erlandson says. "I didn't really experiment with anything bad for you until I was 27."

Within the band, he's known as the Archivist, the guy who keeps track of all the live tapes and jam sessions. On a musical level, he's the guy who really gives the songs their crackle. He played most of the guitars on Live Through This, while Love concentrated on lyrics and vocals.

Like Love, Erlandson is a Buddhist, though after she introduced him to the religion he became the most devout practitioner.

What kept them together was a love of god-awful clattering. "We were one big, screaming mess," Erlandson says. "I was just like 'Ok, this is cool, this is noise.' I was always into the No Wave thing, but it never caught on in L.A. I was like, 'Wow, I finally found someone who's into doing this stuff.'" With Pretty on the Inside, Love's vividly scabrous lyrical tone - part self-immolation, part outwardly directed paroxysm - was well established, and beneath the cruddy goth-punk caterwauling there were hints of New Wave sense and songcraft sensibility. Erlandson and Love were a couple and lived together, before he dated Drew Barrymore. He says Billy Corgan kept getting in between their relationship. "There's that cartoon side of her that is intimidating, but deep down inside there is a sweet little kitten," he claims. He would go on to date Kristen Pfaff, who became their bassist and would tragically die in 1994.

"I love him so much," says Drew Barrymore, who is dating Erlandson. "And I have a family now from Eric, too. He has such a huge, amazing family. Seven kids. I never thought I'd have a sense of family until I had my own kids. I want two: a boy and a girl. My daughter will be named Ruby Daffodil."

-Rolling Stone article, 1995

[novumtimes]

L.A. County children abducted by parents are still missing

Authorities are still searching for a brother and sister who were abducted by their parents earlier this month during a supervised visit in South Los Angeles. The children — 2-year-old Willow and 4-year-old Wyman — had been in foster care since last year, when their newborn sibling tested positive for drugs, ABC7 reported. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the children’s parents — Tiffany Bryant, 39, and David James, 53 — fled with Willow and Wyman from a Department of Child Support Services facility. The parents were driving a brown Buick Enclave SUV with a blue paper license plate in front and a missing license plate at the rear of the vehicle, according to authorities. The four were last seen around 3:10 p.m. in the 8300 block of Vermont Avenue. News station ABC 7 reported that James and Bryant left the third child, now 15 months old, at the Department of Child Support Services during their supervised visit. A spokesperson for the agency could not be immediately reached for comment. Willow is described as 2 feet tall and 28 pounds, with brown eyes and blonde hair. She was last seen wearing a blue shirt, pink and white shorts and pink and white Nike shoes. Her brother Wyman is 2 feet tall and 35 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a blue shirt and gray shorts. Authorities said there is concern for the kids’ well-being, but they did not provide any additional information. Anyone with information can call the Sheriff’s Department’s Missing Persons Unit at (323) 890-5500. Anonymous tips can be made with Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS (8477). Source link via The Novum Times

[wellthatwasaletdown]

No question about it. He definitely dumped her but I think that he planned it strategically around the time that he was going on his Latin America portion of the tour. He was about to leave the states and it was the perfect time and a perfect excuse not to mention all the shows that he planned for 2023. If he didn’t do it, then he was gonna have to wait a while// I’m kinda agreeing with thenuther anon that it was mutually decided. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere anymore and with all the Jason stuff with the kids and custidy and the nanny stuff , idk I feel, she as well knew they wouldn’t be able to go any further at the time and agreed to end it 🤷🏻‍♀️

There was no way she was mutually agreeing on anything. She wasn't willingly going to give up on the relevancy that dating Harry Edward Styles gave her. Why wouldn't she be able to travel with him? She and Jason shared custody. Flying from L.A. to South America is just like flying around Europe from London. They also did two weeks at time on occasion, so if she wanted to travel to Australia or Asia, she could have.

Even if she couldn't travel, the tour was ending July. That wasn't a long time. It wasn't like it was the start of his tour in 2021. If they had taken the break back then, I would have bought it. But, we're talking about the woman who flew to New York from London for one day to watch the same show that he was going to do in London two days later.

[frilly-interference-dazzling]

A Way to Live It Up, for Me! 👻

I don't want you other guys to do what I did.

I didn't start it, but I make it out. I don't fully enjoy it, but in the real world as a person I wanted to be carried around by someone older who I like.

My singing teacher in college for the group class wanted to. She was tall, as well as strong and pretty big, from Up North, from Minnesota, which is West of Wisconsin. I could tell sometimes only singers lift, and some violinists have you sit on their lap or pretend to, since maybe singers lift.

I came home from college, across the bridge from New Orleans, and in Louisiana there the kids wanted the lift. In Mississippi, kids maybe starting or about to start puberty did it. The Mississippi River.

A question I have here is battling the idea of if I deserve to be touched and loved.

I am from South East Coast and North East Coast Florida. I met a girl from L.A. a little younger in my class with white blonde hair, blue eyes, and nice maybe pretty fair skin. She was taller. She had a nice full solid figure. I bet if we were from the same area, she would be shorter. I moved to the New Orleans area and stopped growing so much. I grew again over an inch since moving back to Florida at 19/20. I was the best at gymnastics classes, too, age 1 3/4 - 9.

[90363462]

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Cover Story

THE O.G.

Ice-T was there at the beginning and helped shape what rap and hip-hop became. And you know what, he’s still there

Written By Kyle Eustice 

| February 15, 2023 - 1:18 pm | Updated 3 days ago 

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Tracy Marrow was born in Newark, New Jersey, no one’s idea of Easy Street, and especially not in 1958. Newark hit its nadir in July 1967, when Tracy was nine (although by then his family had moved to another part of New Jersey) and the entire city was convulsed with race riots, stemming from systemic police brutality and harassment towards the Black community. Police brutality, as backdrop and theme, has perforated Tracy Marrow’s life. Or Ice-T, as he’s better known.

When he was in third grade, his mother Alice died from a heart attack, and he was raised by his father Solomon, who four years later also died of a heart attack. Thirteen-year-old orphan Tracy was sent to live first with an aunt nearby, then, propitiously, with an aunt in California, in View Park-Windsor Hills, a predominantly Black, upper-middle class neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles.

By eighth grade, he had moved to Crenshaw, where he attended Palms Junior High, a predominantly white school. From there he went to Crenshaw High School, where he got his first exposure to gangs. Crips and Bloods stalked the halls, forming a gauntlet repeated across South Central. Although never inducted, the future gangsta rapper was “affiliated” with the Crips. And he did petty crime to make extra cash on top of the social security benefits he started receiving at 17 from his father’s death.

Crenshaw High was where Tracy had his first experience performing music, joining a group called, quaintly, The Precious Few of Crenshaw High School. At 18, he became a father.

Photo Credit: Christian Witkin

After high school Tracy went into the Army, joining the 25th Infantry, where he discovered hip-hop when he heard one of his fellow soldiers blasting “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang. Something clicked — maybe, he thought, he could go back to Los Angeles and start throwing rap parties in the same vein as local electro pioneers Uncle Jamm’s Army, who were famously minting money at the time.

It worked out better than that, as you know. He was the foremost pioneer of the West Coast gangsta rap sound. But he had more to say than just gangsta, and, like Public Enemy later on the East Coast, waxed politically, releasing the rebellious anthem, “Killers” in 1984.

“A man took an ad on T.V. / To enroll in the police academy,” he raps on the song. “He’s very talented, outstanding proof / From his clean-cut appearance to the shine on his boots / When it comes to graduation, he's number one / An expert with a rifle and also a gun / Three weeks on the beat and his weak nerves crack / And fires four warning shots into a kid's back.”

THERE’S NOT NOBODY IN L.A. THAT’S GONNA SAY ICE-T WASN'T FIRST.

ICE-T

You could call it prophetic.

His professional moniker came from a nickname his friends gave him when he got home from the army. He would entertain them by accurately reciting memorized passages of novels written by Iceberg Slim (itself a professional moniker, for a pimp-turned-writer called Robert Beck). His friends, who called Tracy “T,” would say “Kick some more of that Ice, T.”

In 1986, when rap was young, and still outside the mainstream, Ice-T released “6 ’N The Mornin’,” riddled with real accounts of criminal life. It was a big hit. A year later, he had a major label deal with Sire Records and a hot debut album, Rhyme Pays. It sold 500,000 copies, a huge amount for a rap record at the time.

His next album, Power, came out in 1988 and furthered his trajectory, but it was 1991’s O.G. Original Gangster, his fourth album, that defined the era and made Ice-T the undisputed godfather of gangsta rap. With songs such as “Escape from the Killing Fields,” a powerful rewrite of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” and the Grammy-nominated “New Jack Hustler (Nino’s Theme),” featured in New Jack City, the 24-song LP painted a vivid picture of the carnage and devastation that comes from a life of crime.

Photo Credit: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin

Photo Credit: Stephen Lovekin

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Paul Natkin

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Metal Hammer Magazine

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin

Photo Credit: Stephen Lovekin

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Paul Natkin

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Metal Hammer Magazine

Photo Credit: Raymond Boyd

Photo Credit: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin

Photo Credit: Stephen Lovekin

RIGHT WHEN I WAS GETTING READY TO GET INTO HIP-HOP, I WAS STILL IN THE STREETS. I WAS MAKING MONEY HUSTLING.

Part of what made Original Gangster so intriguing was its musical diversity. The way he rhymed on “Mind Over Matter” differed greatly from his cadence on “Mic Contract,” and what he did on “Body Count” — which he later adopted for the name of his rap-metal group — was the polar opposite of what he did on the spellbinding, chilling, spoken word track “Ya Shoulda Killed Me Last Year.”

Less than a year later, Body Count, the band, would substantially ruffle the feathers of police everywhere, the National Rifle Association, Time Warner Board member and NRA shill Charlton Heston, and CLEAT (Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas) with the release of the controversial, vastly misinterpreted “Cop Killer.” A song built on (understandable) rage, “Cop Killer” sparked boycotts across the country and precipitated Warner Music, buckling under the pressure, dropping Ice-T (and, trivia note, parent company Time Warner jettisoning Vibe magazine, because, you know, all those rappers look the same…).

For the last 24 years (while still releasing music), Ice-T has played Detective Odafin Tutuola on TV’s longest-running police drama, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He got his first acting role in Breakin’ in 1984, when hip-hop was an exotic animal to most of America, and Ice was just in the right place at the right time. He had a more meaningful role in John Singleton’s classic New Jack City, as Detective Scotty Appleton.

In 2018, Body Count won a Grammy Award in the Best Metal Performance category, for “Black Hoodie.” And on Feb. 5th this year, he performed at the Grammys with other rap immortals, in a slightly early celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary. On Feb. 17th., a day after his 65th birthday, when he can officially start receiving his own social security benefits, he’ll get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I interviewed him for this cover story at the toney and very discreet L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills, the day after his Grammy’s appearance.

Photo Credit: Christian Witkin

Photo Credit: Christian Witkin

SEE, THEY THINK RAPPERS AND BLACK PEOPLE AREN'T CAPABLE OF MAKING ART. YOU HAVE TO BE THAT ANGRY BLACK MAN. I'M NOT TRYING TO KILL NO POLICE.

When did you realize you had a talent for rapping?

I used to write raps for the gangs in high school. I would write little slogans and raps for them before I even knew what hip-hop was. Saying rhymes has always been a part of Black culture. Hustlers would call it toasting.

Saying rhymes was something I knew how to do in high school, so when I went into the military after I got out of school, that's where I got turned on to hip-hop, because I was in there with cats from New York, and they had tapes and they were playing this new music and I was like, “What is this, you?” The first generation of hip-hop is unrecorded or tape-recorded hip-hop, before anyone ever made a record.

We're talking the DJ Hollywood era.

Right. But there was tapes going around of hip-hop and parties, so I got a taste of it very, very early. And then “King Tim III” by The Fatback Band came out, and they were rapping. Teena Marie had a little rap on a record, and then Sugarhill Gang came out. When that came out, I felt like I could do it, because I already had been writing rhymes. But my intention was to come out of the Army and throw parties. I had gotten a lot of stereo equipment in the military. I bought a bunch of equipment, and that was my plan — to come back and actually be like Uncle Jamm’s Army. There was a big underage a scene in L.A., like people who are 18 that aren't 21 who still want to party. So that's where those dances came in. That's what the scene was in L.A, and there was tons of money being made. Uncle Jamm’s was able to fill the L.A. Sports Arena several times. Like what a rave is now, yeah, they were doing it.

Egyptian Lover was one of the DJs, Bob Cat was a DJ, and I was the one of the only people they would let rap. I just started to get more attention from rapping than carrying all that equipment around. I hooked up with Evil and Henry, they were called the New York City Spin Masters, and they were some of the earliest DJs on the West Coast that could scratch, because they were really from Brooklyn. I saw them at a show, and I introduced myself and I said, “Man, you know, I want to go with you to your parties.” And they would hit three or four different house parties or situations at night. On the flyers, there would be four or five DJ crews. So they would go from one to the other. They wouldn't just stay at one. And I started traveling with them, and I would jump on and MC.

That’s how I started rapping around L.A.

Your first single, “The Coldest Rap/Cold Wind-Madness,” in 1983, preceded the World Class Wreckin' Cru with Dr. Dre and Egyptian Lover’s first album, On The Nile. Tell us about that time.

Photo Credit: Christian Witkin

ONLY THING THAT’S CHANGED IS CAMERA PHONES. RIGHT NOW YOU'RE SEEING IT—THAT’S IT. THE SAME BULLSHIT’S GOING ON. I THINK COPS ARE SLIGHTLY A LITTLE BIT MORE ACCOUNTABLE BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY’RE BEING WATCHED.

There’s not nobody in L.A. that’s gonna say Ice-T wasn't first. There was other people out there at the time. There were groups like Disco Daddy and Captain Rap, but there wasn’t more serious music where people were like, “OK, this is cool.” My first record was done…I was at a beauty parlor called Good Fred’s — this is when I had the perm — and I would say rhymes to the girls, just rapping. A guy named Willie Strong walked in, and he owned VIP Records, the famous record store Snoop Dogg stood on in the “Doggystyle” video. It’s one of the most famous record stores in L.A. They had what they called Saturn Records. I don’t think any other record ever came out on Saturn Records. I think they created that label just for me. They said, “You want to make a record?” And I was like, “Sure.”

It was kind of like Run’s lyric: “So Larry put me inside his Cadillac / The chauffeur drove off, and we never came back.”

I went to this recording studio, and they had this music by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and there was some people singing on the track. They pulled the vocals down and said, “rap.” And I basically made “The Coldest Rap” with all the raps I had in my head, like my walking-around raps and stuff I was saying to the girls.

I made a hook on the spot: “I’m a player, that’s all I know / On a summer day, I play in the snow,” which is a cocaine reference. “From the womb to the tomb, I run my game / I'm cold as ice, and I show no shame.” I made that up on the spot. “The ladies say I was heaven sent ‘cause I got more money than the U.S. Mint” — stuff I was already saying. That was “The Coldest Rap.” It was done in one take, and they said, “Cool.” I think I made maybe two, three hundred dollars on that record.

Well, you were getting paid for music. That had to be pretty cool.

At that time, there were no real rap scene, and it just put me in the game out here. That record led to me going to the Radio Club. There’s a guy that ran the Radio Club called Alex Jordan, or A.J., and another white cat called KK, basically by way of New York. They said, “Ice-T is the only person who got a rap record. Will he come and perform at this club?” I get a call and I'm like, “Yeah,” and I went there. That was a big moment because I walked into that club and everyone in that club knew my record.

Photo Credit: Christian Witkin

GANGSTA RAP IS THE PERSON SAYING, “I'M DONE ASKING FOR YOUR HELP. FUCK YOU. I'M GONNA TAKE IT. I'M GONNA DO IT MYSELF.”

See, what happens is, if they play your music in a particular place like a restaurant or a club every night, you become a star in that room. No one else knows it, but at that particular place, you're hot. And that was a moment where I went in there, I did my song, and everyone knew every word to that record. That was my first real taste of what fame was. I was like, “Oh, shit!”

Now, no one else on Earth knew two words to that record, but in that club, I was hot. That club was a cross of the upscale white kids that were just touching the hot hip-hop.

People were there like Malcolm McLaren. Madonna came in. I actually put Madonna on the stage. I had become the stage manager because I came there so much. They said, “Hey, you can run the rappers? Take them downstairs, audition them?” So Madonna came in, and they were like, “This is some new chick.” She had a single called “Physical Attraction.” There's a picture of me standing on stage with Madonna way back when she was a kid. She did well that night.

That’s where I started, and that led to being in the movie Breakin’. They had heard about this hip-hop scene that was popping in MacArthur Park at the Radio Club. They came in there and said, “We’re gonna use you guys as the dancers” — that’s where Shrimp and Shabba Doo and all them got picked up — “and you could be the rapper.” Then they gave us a chance to make a song, and we made “Reckless” [featuring Chris “The Glove” Taylor]. Eminem said that's the first rap record he ever heard.

“Killers” came out right after “Reckless.”

And what happened to “Reckless Rivalry” that was in Breakin’ 2? It remains unreleased as I understand.

Yeah, that was just a movie song. That was a song called “Go Off.” But The Glove and Afrika Islam scratching on it. Yeah, we need to hunt that record down! There was another record I did called “Combat” they still use in breaking competitions.

“Killers” is often considered your first political rap. What made you change course? 

“Killers” was my version of Run-DMC, because I rap back and forth to myself like it was two rappers. So I rap one way, then the second verse sounded like how Run and them would rap. I think it was just coming off songs like “It's Like That” and “Hard Times” that had a little political undertone and things of that nature. I think that inspired me to do those songs.

I didn't start rapping until I was 27. It wasn’t like I started late, I was just that old when hip-hop started.

Was the Army where you realized you didn’t want to be entangled in street life anymore?

The Army wasn’t what made me want to get out of gang life. I was aware of gang life when I was in high school. At that point, I realized if you become part of a set, you immediately turn yourself into the enemy of the rest of the city. You're not in a gang, you’re from a gang. I wasn’t living in any of the neighborhoods that really had gangs. I was living in a View Park, which is like an upper middle class Black area above Crenshaw, on the west side. So I would go to Crenshaw, and that's where the gangs was, but I'm not from any of their neighborhoods. Now, Crenshaw is mostly connected to Rollin’ 60s. When I went there, they had Eight Tray Gangsters, Hoover Crips, Harlem Crips, which is the 30s, and they had some Bloods there.

I was just like, I can be affiliated with these gangs, but there's no way I should jump into no set because I'm not from they neighborhoods. I was aware of gang banging and understood the principles of it. Near the end of high school, I started hanging out with the hustlers and cats that were more about getting money, right? That's a whole other click of cats.

But when I came out in the Army, I was brought back into the crime world because my boys who were like small-time criminals when I left had now elevated to jewelry heists, and they had elevated to all kinds of other types of crimes. So I just fell back in with them. I'm doing that and on the weekends, I'm doing the rap shit.

At some point, you got into a car accident. You were admitted as a John Doe, right? Due to criminal activity you didn’t carry an ID.

Right when I was getting ready to get into hip-hop, I was still in the streets. I was making money hustling. I went to a club called Carolina West. It went from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Everybody knows when you come out of those clubs, your eyes aren’t working. Well, here I go, and I decided to drive home. I would close my eyes at the corner or at a stoplight, which is a bad idea. You can't close your eyes when you're in a car. I fell asleep and rolled right into an intersection. I was in a Porsche, got hit, and I was ejected into the passenger seat. Thank God I didn't have on a seatbelt because the accident broke the steering wheel off of the car, but I went into the passenger seat, so that put me in the hospital for 10 weeks. I had a broken pelvis, a broken femur, a broken foot — the whole left side of my body was smashed.

And they John Doe’d me ‘cause I didn't have an ID. When you in the streets hustling, you don't carry ID because you want to cap aliases so you can keep it moving. I didn't have that, and they didn't know who I was. I went to the county hospital and was in a bad position. Then one of my friend’s mothers was like, “Where’s Tracy? Where he at? We ain't seen him.” And she found me in the hospital some kind of way, and said, “Well, he's a vet.” She got me moved to a Veterans Hospital in Westwood, where it was much better, and I was able to heal.

How did that affect you mentally and emotionally? The D.O.C. fell asleep at the wheel, lost his voice, and his rapping career was over.

It just changed my life as far as what I was doing hustling ‘cause a lot of the stuff we were doing was basically parkour. We would take the jewels, and you’d have to catch us. It was very athletic and stuff, jumping over cats. So now I can't move, I can't run. It made me slow down a lot and forced me to focus on music. But no one had never made any money in music yet. Run and them hadn't even really bought cars yet. I’m coming from a zone where it's like, “Why you want to rap, man? You better get this money. Like, who the fuck wants to rap?" Like Grandmaster Flash said the other night [at the Grammys], this was just something that was entertainment for us. It was a pastime. It was not something you do to get paid. No one ever was gonna be a celebrity doing this shit.

How did losing both of your parents so young affect your ambition?

I think what happens when you lose your parents young, you just realize there's nobody to fall back on. There's no one who's supposed to take care of you. I think when I lost my moms in the third grade, I didn't get really cry or nothing. I didn't get it.

I'm from the age when you're a kid and somebody passes, they just take you off to the side, you end up with an aunt some place. You don't go to the funeral, you don't see nothing. You’re just isolated. And then I was with my pops for a while, and then in seventh grade when he passed, I was more like, “What’s going to happen to me?” They shipped me out to L.A. to live with his sister. And she was kind of like, “I'm taking care of you because I got to.” I knew early in life I was on my own. I don't have no brothers and sisters. I just realized there was no where to fall back to.

If I was fucked up, I was truly homeless. I was truly out there. And I got a lot of pride, so I would never would celebrate Christmas or any family holidays because I didn’t want to be in anyone else’s house over their holidays. That wasn’t my place to be in your Thanksgiving bullshit. So I ate a lot of Thanksgiving dinners at Denny’s and hamburger spots.

That kind of makes me sad, Ice.

It’s nothing to be sad about. It’s like, you can look at a poor person and be sad for him, but then to them it's their reality, so I don't feel any special way. And honestly, I went through what a lot of people my age still haven’t. They've still have their their parents. They’re still about to go through it. I got past that hump early.

Do you still think about your parents?

No. I was too young. What am I going to think about? My mother died when I was in third grade. I can't remember that much about her. I remember the night she died. I remember that. And then my father, I remember him disciplining me, but no, I don't think about them.

“6 ’N The Mornin’” was inspired by the Schoolly D single, “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?” It was made with a Roland TR-808. Tell us about making that song?

It was just me on the beat. My buddy Randy and I were messing with the 808. I had been inspired by Schoolly D, of course, because he changed the format when he sang about a gang. And I was like, “Oh, shit!” I didn't know that was OK. But when he did that, I said, “OK.” Like I said, I used to make these gangster raps, and so my boy was like, "Say that shit you be saying when it’s just us fucking around.”

There was a record by Beastie Boys called “Hold It Now, Hit It.” And it had this weird break in the song where it was like, “Hey, Leroy!” And then it came back on. So “6 ’N The Mornin,'” I wanted a break that had nothing to do with the record. That was what kind of influenced the way the beat was created, to where it would stop and then start. You know, “Word.” That was from the Beastie Boys.

I read that Licensed To Ill is one of your favorite albums.

Real talk. We’re all influenced by different things. So you say, “Man, I want to record what that does.” When we made the song, it was B-Side to a song called “Dog'n The Wax.” I made a record called “You Don't Quit” with Unknown DJ on Techno Hop Records. I was trying to get him to do one with Henry and Evil E, my DJs. And he was like, “Nah, you gotta give me another record.” So I did that. And then the B-Side was “6 ’N The Mornin’,”and like Chuck D says, the B-Side wins again.

It was a hit. We didn't look at it like a hit, but it hit.

Would you say that is what opened the floodgates to albums like Rhymes Paysand rapping about gang life, street life?

Oh, it opened up the floodgates to up my life and my ability to talk about things that I was comfortable with. You got to understand, early on, it was like, if I’mma rap, I'm feeling like I gotta rap about parties and shit. I didn't know how long I was going to be able to rap about that stuff because there's only so much content to that. But when they finally said, “Oh, OK. We can rock with this,” I’m like, “Oh, shit. They want to hear this shit?” If you listen to early records, I’m just beating around the bush with hip-hop.

And that was kind of the point you made in the LL Cool J feud — how many times can you say you're “bad” in one song?

Right, right, right. I always compare it to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If I came over your house, you made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I ate it and I go, “Wow, this is so good, you should sell it.” You’re like, “Sell this?” You sell it and it’s a big hit. That’s how gangsta rap fell in my life ‘cause I got all these experiences, criminal shit I've been through, but I didn’t think it was available to use in music.

Then when I hit with “6 ’N The Mornin’,” I'm like, “Oh, this is gonna be easy. I’m in now.” Now, I know what they want to hear and I got a million of this shit. That was the birth of Ice-T. You know?

If you look at me in Breakin’, I'm trying to rap like rappers, like hip-hoppers. I'm trying to dress like them. One of the big moments in my life as far as how I looked was Russell Simmons. I did a party and I was in the crowd at a place called Casa Camino Real, and I was in my street clothes, you know, the way I dress. They called me on the stage, I got up there and I did my thing. Russell said, “That’s your look, man.” He said, “You ain't got to dress up like no rapper.” He said, “Just come out like that. They want to see that L.A. style. Do your shit.” And that's when I started back wearing the Fila and all the fly shit, you know?

I thought I had to dress like Melle Mel and them because I'm trying to be part of hip-hop. But Russell was like, “Nah, fuck that. Be you.”

Looking at older videos, you do look pretty cool, especially in “I’m Your Pusher.”

That's dressing like a L.A. drug dealer, but a rapper didn't dress like that.

In 1990, when you formed Body Count, Charlton Heston attacked you for making “violent” music, and caused Warner Bros Records to drop you from the label. At the exact same time, as the NRA spokesman, he was advocating for approval for a bullet nicknamed the “Cop Killer,” because it pierced police officers’ kevlar shields.

How ironic is that?

What was your reaction at the time, and how did you handle that?

We really didn't give a fuck about Charlton Heston. He was the least of our problems. I mean, we didn't give a fuck about him at all. I thought he was just trying to get publicity, you know, he's an actor. We were dealing with the real cops and the real government, people like that. That whole “Cop Killer” shit just went out of control. It started with one thing, and the next thing you know, I'm on the news with the president and I'm like, “Lord have mercy.” In the meantime, Black Flag had been making records about cops like “Police Story.” You got rock groups called Millions of Dead Cops. It was kind of like a weird moment where we were catching a lot of heat for something we didn't even think was so bad.

You suddenly became a target.

Yeah. We’re just doing rock music. We’re just talking that shit. They thought it was a call-to-action to kill police, and it couldn't have been further from that. It was a song about rage, somebody mad enough to go after the cops, a cop killer based on police brutality. But they were like, “You’re trying to tell people to go do it.”

See, they think rappers and Black people aren't capable of making art. You have to be that angry Black man. I'm not trying to kill no police. That was just a minute in time where they were just out of control and they were going after our head. It was supposed to be over for me at that point. They were trying to blackball me and blacklist me. I was never really worried about the cops as much as I was worried about running into a cop lover.

Oh, what would be the Blue Lives Matter guys today?

Anybody. You’re in a restaurant and you run into somebody who’s like, “My Dad’s a cop,” and they want to start some shit.

Did that ever happen? 

No, no, it didn’t, but it could happen. And that's what happens with any kind of beef. Say for instance me and Method Man were fighting — which, Meth is one of my best friends — but for me to say that, I could run into some Wu-Tang Clan people and they like, “Oh, you got problems with Meth?” You can end up in some shit or an altercation. Whenever you got beef out there, you don't know how it's gonna come back at you.

In 1991, there was the Rodney King beating and the L.A. Riots. In 2023, the horrific police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Has anything really changed?

Only thing that’s changed is camera phones. Right now you're seeing it — that’s it. The same bullshit’s going on. I think cops are slightly a little bit more accountable because they know they’re being watched, but they still get off. It’s too much power. Until they put one of these cops on death row and let ‘em know people aren’t having it… from being a cop all this time on TV, I’ve figured it out. They fuck over who they think they can get away with fucking over. They fuck over people they think can’t fight back. When we’re on Law & Order and they go, “Oh, they're from the Upper East Side. Tread lightly," what they're really saying is these people got money and they can sue the shit out of us.

But if you're in the projects, it can go any kind of way because they can't do nothing. “Lay him on the ground, treat him like shit.” Only if you look up and say, “My father is the District Attorney,” you're not going to lay on that ground because they know you can fight back. They take advantage of people they don't think can fight back. It's not as much racism as, “Who can I get over on?” And like I said in “No Lives Matter,” Black and brown skin has always stood for poor.

But they’re not laying people down in gay communities. They’re not doing that. At the end of the day, they know who they're fucking with, you know what I'm saying? Don’t get me wrong — you could run into some racist cops out there. There’s racist people all over the world, but it's not that simple. It's like you saw those Black cops whip on that man in Memphis. They did it because they felt they could get away with it.

Do you think it was because of their race?

They got caught out there doing some dumb shit because apparently he was messing with one their girls, but I don’t know what the fuck they were thinking about. They knew they were getting filmed — like, what the fuck? It’s abuse of power. That’s all it is. When people say, “Ice, you don’t like cops.” Nah, I don’t like bullies. I don’t like racists. I don’t give a fuck what you are or what your job is. That’s it. Period. I’m not judging you because you’re the police.

You mentioned your Body Count song “No Lives Matter.” What do you think about the Black Lives Matter movement? Has it been effective?

I think the term has been effective. I don’t really know, ‘cause anything that’s moving positive, they’re gonna try to take it apart and say, “Oh, this is a problem, and the money’s not going here or there.”

I'm not connected to the organization, Black Lives Matter. I don't even know who runs it. I don't even know what their agenda is, but I have connected with the term. I heard a comedian say, “Can we just matter?” We matter. Black lives are important. Black lives matter. I mean, goddammit, can we have a little bit of something? Shit. Dogs' lives matter. You know? It’s the very least, and people are pissed at it. I tried to make it clear in my song that if we were talking about gay people, if that was the problem, then that would be the slogan. But right now, we talking about Black lives or women’s lives, if that's the topic. But don’t be mad. Don't try to claim every motherfuckin’ thing. Can we have the word? God damn!

Here we are, it’s Black History Month. What has hip-hop done well? Is there anything to improve?

I don’t know really if it can improve. Hip-hop just evolves, and it's just gonna continue to evolve. It'll fuck up. It'll right itself. Like any other organism, you know?

What has hip-hop done for you?

I like to say it saved my life because it derailed me from what I was doing, which was negative, and it gave me a chance to do something positive. Once I found out that just being me was a brand, I was able to express myself. Whereas somebody like Public Enemy comes from this militant area, gangsta rap is the person saying, “I'm done asking for your help. Fuck you. I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna do it myself.” If anybody goes, “Oh, well, that's bad?” Well, let's bring up the Kennedys or let's bring up the mafia. Like every motherfucker that came over here, some people weren't handed shit and they just had to go get it. So that gangster is absolutely negative. After some point people go, “You know what, I'm tired of marching. Yeah, we ready to get gangster.”

It goes into another type of energy. So when they saw N.W.A and us come, they were like, “Oh shit, these are motherfuckers that really ain't asking for help. They're going to take it.” And that energy is needed. We don't have to want to fight nobody. Somebody asked me one time, “What is gangsta? What is your gangsta?” I said, “I don't back up well.”

That’s a great answer.

I’m not out here trying to push the line. I’m not out here trying to do something, but when you tell me what I can’t do “or else,” I’m not that guy. That’s what I’m about. I’m not trying to be a bad guy, but I don’t back up.

I was asked yesterday what someone can expect from you, just as a person. The first thing that came to my mind was the word “humble.” How do you stay grounded? 

You know what it is, though? You get what you give. Some people, like yourself, are very pleasant to talk to. So that's what you get back. Other people aren’t, and I can give them that, too. You know what I mean? So some people are assholes, so I can play that game. You know, my thing is like, I'm as nice as you let me be.

I'm trying to be nice. But if you want to go that over there, I'm very seasoned in that area too. Like, if you want to get stupid, I’m very well versed in being a motherfucker and a bitch ass… I’ll go there worse than you've ever thought. You don't have to be like that to good people. And let me tell you, the most dangerous people I've ever met are the nicest people I've ever met. It’s not the guy who's always talking tough. It’s the guy who will pull a picture of his kids out, but during dinner could pull your fucking eye out of your fucking head.

I interview a lot of West Coast gangster rappers, and they are always the most polite, but you're not going to mess with them.

Because they got that switch they can turn on and off. Appreciate the fact it’s off. What people do is they want to poke it. They want to poke the lion. They want to see it and it’s like, “Why?” People meet me and they’ll say, "You’re so nice," and I’ll say, “Well, you're not my enemy.”

SOMEBODY ASKED ME ONE TIME, “WHAT IS GANGSTA? WHAT IS YOUR GANGSTA?” I SAID, “I DON'T BACK UP WELL.” 

Kyle Eustice 

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