I was raised in a fairly tough city, in a fairly poor area. Poverty prevailed and the social injustices to blacks and those who were just downright downtrodden were ignored by the political capitalist machine. West Philly is where I was born. My mother often had to work late nights and day shifts to keep up with the apartment and bills, so I spent inordinate amounts of time on the playground trying to keep up with my friends as they all passed me, skill wise, at basketball.
She worked on her knees cleaning carpets, making sure that there was enough food at the house to feed me. On the weekends, she knit scarves to sell to rich kids who were looking for something homemade, but "not from Mom". She was a shell by the time I was even able to recognize her, but she always wanted what was best for me.
There were a bunch of rough and tumble gangsters that would ride through town in a beat up Chevy. On the bad days, they would fire their guns into the air, scare little kids into running from the streets, under stoops, staring out with beady eyes waiting until the thick sub-bass would finally pass. The police, they did nothing. They started making trouble in my neighborhood. Me and my boys, we tried to stop them. One little skirmish, and my mom, she freaked out... With good cause. 2 of my friends were cut down in a hail of gunfire after tense words were exchanged -- me and my guys, we hadn't even threatened physical violence at that point. They had just opened fire. Mom... I'd never seen her cry so hard. I had almost been shot. If I hadn't been so quick on my feet... I just hate to think of where I'd have ended up. She told me I had to move in with some west coast relatives - her brother, some stuffy judge and his wife.
They flew me out, and when the jet landed, I hailed a cab. I thought that my rich uncle might have been decent enough to get me a limo, but my entire perusaul of the pick-up lane turned up empty hands. The cab I did find... It reeked of incense on the inside, but it was the only one available. There seemed to be a queue around the block, all reserved, so I thought man, "Forget it." I needed to get where I was going. The cab was a Chevy. I had flashbacks.
I pulled up to the house at dus - a mammoth hillside cancer that had been dug so fervently into mother nature with little regard to her natural beauty - and told the cabbie cleverly that I would 'smell him later'.
Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel Air.
