Circa July 2001…

I woke up to a pulsating synthesizer. Nepro Sub-Bass to be exact. The 80Hz blasting out of my Technics speakers was making my windows rattle so loud you'da thunk supermuthafuckas with superpowers was fighting right out in the parking lot. I raise myself off of the Triton’s keys and lean back in my shitty little Kmart folding chair. The bass decays out of existence and with its departure comes the realization that I just slept on my fucking beat machine all night. I wiped the drool first from my overgrown beard and then off of the touch screen of the Triton. My back was killing me from being in that position for six hours. I looked around because I wasn't quite registering reality yet and saw that my fifth of Bombay Sapphire was sitting on the floor by a glass with last night’s stale drink in it. I downed the stale drink and then took a slug straight out the Bombay bottle. I got a horrible case of heartburn from the double dose and felt like I had one those aliens from Alien trying to bust out my chest. I thought of her again, as thinking of her was my curse at that time. I think she left about two months ago and that was probably the last time I was privy to happiness. Sometimes I’d find notes with her writing on it, an old comb with her hair or a pair of her panties behind the bed. All memory of her existence in my world was fading fast. I didn’t go out anymore, I just went to work and on trips to get food and liquor. Often the homies would try and coerce me into hitting up the University of Maryland golf course for some swings on the driving range and some wings in the clubhouse, but nah. I’m fine wallowing in my own filthy apartment, jacking off and crying over the memory of the beautiful woman that used to love me. Making beats served as the only thing, due to the intense technicality of the Triton, that kept my mind off of her. I took another slug and wondered what time it was.

After a much needed shower, I came back to my bedroom and took another slug of the Bombay. It was an intensely humid July afternoon. I thought I knew humidity as a native Clevelander, but Cleveland ain’t got shit on this air that can be cut with a Swiss Army knife down here in the DC errea. The humidity was of no consequence to me, I was in my apartment with the air conditioning on ‘Kelvin’. For all of Kings Square’s faults such as rats, roaches, frequent break-ins to one’s car and mysteriously vanishing mail, the air conditioning did work well. It worked so well it could’ve sold easily in Dante's Hell with nothing more than word of mouth serving as the only advertising. It was at its best when the young ladies came over and would complain, “It’s cold in here.” I’d be like, “Yeah. I can see that.” Air drying with a towel around my waist like a kilt I went over to the Triton. I had been working on a beat the night prior, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I hit the button to pull up the sequencer, saw there was a beat I entitled ‘Cosmic Bus Stop’. I pressed the ‘play’ button. What blasted was a chaotic, futuristic number that had been built around a loop I pulled straight from the movie ‘Repo Man’. Since it was straight from the film, you could hear a door slam that really shouldn’t have been in the loop, but since this is Hip-Hop, things like that are of little importance. This was before I refined my chopping technique, so it’s a straight loop. Nothing fancy. The drum beat was a tad simple, but the hand claps came in nicely and the beat reflected my mood at the time; very dark, very sinister, seemingly without an ounce of hope. The lead synths stabbed their way out of the mix. The bass came in on the 4 as if it was lost in its own world. I let the beat play with all of the tracks enabled and freestyled as I finished preening. I blazed the other half of last night’s L and went to my kitchen to get some cereal.

Frosted Flakes was what my diet mainly consisted off. In Landover, Maryland, one’s choices are very limited. Up the street was Popeye’s and McDonald’s, but I do my best to never eat fast food, so I never really fucked with that bullshit. I’m usually too lazy to cook, so my routine was to go to the shitty Korean grocery up the block and get four boxes of Frosted Flakes and two gallons of soy milk and call it sustenance for the day. I sat on my tan couch in the living room, eating that which is g-r-r-reat and let Ash catch Pokemon in the horizon that was my 19” television. That new beat was playing in the background and I was digging it. I heard a tap at the door. I ignored it thinking that I’d have to cuss out the Jehovah’s Witnesses like I did the prior weekend. The tapping kept going. I wondered who in the fuck it could be. None of my friends would show up unannounced; we were all raised with the understanding that you’ve got to call before you come and not just pop over out the blue. I was going to just go back into my room and work out another beat, cause quite frankly, I wasn’t in the mood for humans. Something in me clicked though, and I must have had said “Fuck it” because I went to the door and looked through the peephole, but saw no one. I yanked open the door and looked to my right where the staircase was, and I saw three kids, one of which, Muhammad, I already knew. Muhammad was a nice enough teenager. He helped me move in the couch I was just resting my laurels on. I think he fucked up his back when he did it, but was too proud to say anything about it. He was about 13 years old and looked like a young Akon, albeit chubbier with way wider nostrils and a one-inch unkempt afro.

“What’s up Muhammad?” “Nuttin.” “No really. What’s the deal?” “We wanna make a song.” “What are you talking about?” “We wanna rap over that beat you’re playing.” “I ain’t playing no beat. That’s the radio.” “Nu-uh. That ain’t the radio. My cousin got a beat machine. I can tell you making a beat cause the jont just keep looping and looping. We been outside your window for the last hour freestyling to it. It’s jive tight, Joe.” Here’s where I had a problem. Landover is full of hungry muthafuckas. I’ve got a lot of technology in my house; so much so that I moved my shit in at night. No one in the neighborhood except for my downstairs neighbor, Wes, really knew that I had this shit. I could see letting these kids into my crib and them telling they wild-ass relatives about all the equipment I’ve got, and me coming home one late evening from Mason to find all of it gone. But for some reason I got like the Grinch right before he carved that roast beast. My heart grew three sizes at that moment, and I thought about these three young brothers and the area that they live in and the fact there wasn’t shit for Black kids to do around there but watch BET, drink, get high, fight and fuck at way too early an age. Plus I had renter’s insurance if worse came to worst. So, I said, “Fuck it. Come on in.”

I let them in and led them straight back to my bedroom where I housed the studio. The beat was still playing loudly and the three kids came in and immediately started to bob their heads and freestyle. I cut the beat off, reached down, grabbed my Bombay and took another slug. After wiping the excess gin from my beard with the back of my hand I sat on the granite that passed as my folding chair and I asked the three, “So what’s y’all’s group’s name?” Muhammad, obviously the oldest at 13, tells me, “Dem Lowlife Boyz.” “Alright,” I say, wowed by the originality of the group’s moniker, “What’s y’all’s rap names?” Muhammad again speaks on behalf of all Dem Lowlife Boyz, “I’m Lil’ Mo, this nigga,” as he touches the shortest one that resembles the little kid off of the Fresh Prince on the shoulder, “is Lil’ Rico. And this nigga,” as he points to the kid that is obviously in between the ages of Muhammad himself and Lil’ Rico, “that’s Lil’ Mike.” “OK. I got it.” Looking at the youngest two, I ask them “How old are y’all?” Lil’ Mike, who has the aura of a bad-ass kid, says, “I’m eleven and Lil’ Rico is nine.” Word. Lil' Rico looked like a young Sam Cassell, slightly more handsome though. Not quite sure what I’ve gotten myself into, but fully aware that I need to keep some sort of tranquility in the studio environment, I ask Dem Lowlife Boys how they intend to make this track. “Do y’all gotta hook? Did you write your lyrics?” Muhammad is like, “We ain’t write nothing. We was gonna freestyle.” I’m never a fan of even the best MCs I know talking about they’re about to waste my time by freestyling on the mic while I’m engineering, so I was especially skeptical of these pre-pubescent muthafuckas expecting that they was finna freestyle over this fresh-ass beat. Muhammad adds, “We good at freestyling. We be freestyling all the time. Lil’ Mike’s got to freestyle. He can’t read.” I turn my head dubious as hell towards Lil’ Mike and I’m like, “You can’t read?” Lil’ Mike is like, “I don’t be fucking with that reading shit. I write my lyrics in my head like Jay-Z.” Great. The future of America right here in my room and they’re fucking semi-literate. Fuck it. I boot up the computer, prime a Pro Tools session and make Dem Lowlife Boyz do a mic check so I could get the levels right. Everything seemed to be in order, so we laid the track down.

To their benefit, I would have to say that I was impressed with their performance. Considering that they were coming off the top of the dome, they sounded a lot better than most people my age who try to freestyle. Each Lil’ Lowlife Boy did their part in one take and they actually did have a hook, albeit they didn't rhyme all the time and they did lose the beat at the end of the song. Each had their own freestyle crutch too. Lil’ Mo couldn't rap for more than 6 bars without having to start over with that bullshit New York rappers love to do; “Yo, yo, yo, yo…” Lil Rico, niggas just don’t know him, but Lil’ Mike, niggas indeed do know him. When they were all done, I took another slug of Bombay and started laughing. Lil’ Mo is like, “What’s funny?” So I’m like, “Nothing. Y’all was alright. It’s just, why in the fuck is y’all so violent? I mean, ain’t none of y’all smacked a nigga out and left him in a ditch with their grandma, nor has any of y’all strapped an R22 grenade across anybody’s chest. Why do y’all rap about that shit?” Lil’ Rico looks at me like I’m the lame in this room and says, “Man… that’s what the streets is trying to hear.” Maybe he’s right. No matter, how many cuts have you heard in which the illiterate one catches the most wreck? I made them leave since they wanted to do tracks all night. Fuck that. I ain't the babysitter. After kicking them out the front door, I smiled, went and ironed, shaved, showered, took another slug and hit up the homies to see what was up for the evening.

In retrospect, I’m glad I did the track with the kids. At the time it really didn’t matter to me at all, but I think I did a good thing that day. I made them a copy and they were fucking ecstatic. Dem Lowlife Boyz were ghetto celebrities around Kings Square that summer. I would come home after work and here them playing their shit with a bunch of their peers and everyone was feeling it. I have no idea what became of Dem Lowlife Boys. I had heard that Lil’ Mo had a kid, Lil’ Mike had gotten shot and Lil’ Rico was victim of some kidnapping shit. Whatever happened to them, I hope that they are safe now and have realized that life can be so much more than what they knew over in Landover…