The book I'm writing about my life titled "I AM ME"

Im straight from the hood.The notorious south east side of chicago.
I wouldnt expect you to know too much about it cause chitown has always been ran by the mob. any and everything can be held and kept secret in chicago. Lord knows they killed our first black Mayor, Harold Washington to place Richard M. Daley in office. But anyway.....

I honestly have to say that my past revolves around the chaos from my mother, I don’t think that I was just targeted for no reason I’m just a victim of my mother’s childhood as well.
She was the black sheep of the family so that made me the outcast, that’s how it works.
Mom had me at 17 and by being just a kid a lot of her anger and sadness was placed upon me.
Daddy was never a factor cause he was the man out on the streets and I guess mom out of stupidity failed for his boyish charm, so out of that much, I can atleast thank him for that.
I can remember mom giving me a bath as an infant in a bathroom or kitchen sink and she would sing twinkle little star to me.
She loved me but the problems didn’t start until her late 20’s.
Crack is a bad muthafucka. Mamma brought me up with respect and honesty.
I can admit that the ass whippings that I got were harsh. I still remain with scars from the beatings I used to get.
Grandma and Grandpa beat mom so she beat me.
Strange that she didn’t want to break the cycle then,
But honestly I don’t think she knew how.
So now I am left with the burden, an offspring of a battered, abused, neglected and regretted teenager.
At this time i was living in the Robert Taylor Homes 4022 s. STATE st. south side chicago.
Most of my peers as you can see in the hip hop community glamorize the ghetto as if it is a certification of who and what is real.
For me i hated the steel bars and the concrete.I couldn't figure out for the life of me to why i was there. watching many episodes of the Cosby's on my
black and white 13in television (cant forget about the hanger or safety pin for reception) was 1 of the only way's to escape my reality. when you live in the ghetto everything is different, everything. The atmosphere in every way is totally different then any place you could ever be. Some might say that your in a whole of another world. I agree.Pissy stairways and hallways,roaches of every kind including the flying kind lol , rats, mice, maggots, slugs, crackheads, dealers, killers and child abusers. Everything you could think of was there in the worst way.I could say out of everything though that i hated the most, is the muthafucking elevators not working right when my mom or aunt decided to go to Aldi;s for grocery shopping. when i tell you going back in forth up them muthafucking stairs with groceries is a bitch and don't live on the 16th floor, please believe it out ways everything. What's crazy about it, people actually be stuck in them elevators when they dont work. People rather take the elevators though. Grimey muthafuckas knock out the lights in the staircases to make it easy to rob people so, the majority take the elevators. another thing about going up the staircases, you must avoid at all cost touching the handle bars up the stairs cause nasty muthafuckas do some nasty ass shit. you wouldn't imagine what be on them bars. piss, shit, spit, etc. the nastiest shit you could think of was there.

When you first enter the robert taylors, you are greeted by a search from the homie strapped up appointed by the nation (with a pistol) working 's'. those who dont know, 's' is just a short term saying for security.
niggas would frisk you down and will demand to know who you are visiting. the city started building security post there but the city security guards stayed out of nations business because there just trying to earn a living and if they interfered, they were murdered.

Growing up in Chicago was hard. Most people watched Cooley High or Good Times and had this image of Chicago like it was just fun and games, to me, there’s no difference in L.A and the Chi but the palm trees and a whole lot more Mexicans.
My grandmother was an alcoholic, my grandfather was a woman beater and now my mother was introduced to crack somewhere between me being 9 or 10.I can remember me being chastised to her not giving a fuck, so to that, I did what any other ignorant child would do, I hit the streets. And did I.
This was the beginning of a child growing up to be a man at an early age. I found out a lot like hunger, losing good friends to gang shoot outs, hustling to make a meal. You know what’s funny? Before I got into selling powder and crack my first hustle was helping people at a grocery store. I would earn 50-cent helping people taking their grocery bags to their car. There was my other hustle too, pumping gas at a gas station, the funny part is crack heads figured it out and took over? I honestly feel like I started the gas station hustle. You are probably laughing right now but I am serious.
So any way, there was this place called Harold’s chicken shack, I would take $1.10ct and go get me a bag of fries with extra mild sauce and I would meal my ass off. I still love Harold’s to this day.

By the age of 11 I move to the madden park projects nick named newtown and i was intrigued by gangs, they hung together, protected each other and made sure each other had a meal and boy did they have the girls and money. At the time I didn’t know how to get in but what I really didn’t know is that I was already in by just hanging with them every day. School was like a gladiator arena. Fights was going down daily, I caught a lot of ass whippings and gave a lot too.
We had stupid gang names growing up like I was apart of the eagles and we would fight the jets.
Now doesn’t that sound like the N.F.L.? Now we must have been extremely bored to actually fuck each other up over that dumb shit. So that was school. One day coming from school in the projects we had elevators that work every now in then, dumb Asses would jump from elevator to elevator for fun to one day get caught between the wires and die. I was one of those dumb asses until I seen a nigga get caught and damn near got smashed and that was enough for me, him too of course. On this particular day I was getting IN the elevator and there was a bag on the floor and my thoughts was candy. Out of curiosity I picked it up to look in it and there were balls of white shit that I kind of knew of what it was but I took it to momma any way. This was my introduction to my third hustle crack cocaine.


When I took it to momma she got excited, I never seen my mom get that excited since the day I started walking and feeding my little brother. Troy most of the time would be over his auntie house away from the ghetto while mom showed me how to rock up the white balls that I brought home from the elevator.
She had bagged them up for me (I helped) and we started selling the shit. She took atleast a week out of her life to show me the ins and outs and within a month I was a bone-a-fied hustler.
You already know what came with the territory; yeah I was strapped with a 38 special that mom bought me because niggas made me feel uncomfortable.
So now I am in different world with the real gangs now and I almost became apart of a gang that soon became my rivals. There was this older cat that watched me grow from 11 to 14 hustling and he liked me as his little young nigga. He took me to another level of the game showed me how to move big dope and not petty hustle anymore. This nigga right here I loved him cause he was the closest thing to a father. His name was key20.which I became little Key20.
He was in the wrong hood to be a black p. stone and after I became one I was too. I felt like I was fighting the whole world after that because my dumb ass was too enthused to be what I was and tagged the walls with are graffiti and trust me when I say that I was fucking up. Royally!
I was forced to use my weapons of mass destruction (ha, ha) because them fools were really trying to harm me. I don’t want to go in to detail but just know it was do or die. One morning I woke up to gunshots. I didn’t ever pay them a mind but they were extremely close. See I stayed on the 7th floor and big Key20 stayed on the 4th floor. Everything was cool until the police and the ambulance was all in the building. From my living room window you can see down to Big Key20’s crib and that’s where they was. I hurried downstairs and they were taking the homies mom out and all she screamed was they killed my babies and I was really fucked up from that. The police wouldn’t let me go no further then what I was and I couldnt like that, I was scared as fuck. Big Key20 was carried out in a bag, his sister and his baby brother. His mom died at the hospital. This was after 2 years under his wing and after that I started banging. I hated the G.D folks after that. Momma didn’t give a fuck and all she wanted to do was get high, so all I knew was gang bang. So I started hanging out in terror town, which is where big key20 would take me all the time and that’s one of the many places where the stones ruled. Every day I would still go home though. I was in school when everybody found out I was the nigga tagging the walls and I was little Key20. My dumb ass tagged the inside of my school folder too and this big head ass nigga named jug head peep it out. Mind you this, he was my friend before all of this, and this nigga grabbed my folder and show the whole class. Now what do you think happen next.
Even the teacher feared for my life. It was on. For 10 minutes the teacher couldn’t control the class. Niggas was slapping their fist in their palms saying after school nigga. I swear that room got cold ass hell. I was shivering like they turned the A.C on sky high. I was trying to play it off cause I wasn’t a punk but I was scared as hell. Man the time started flying, I was so scared that a nigga got sleepy, I’m talking tired as hell, I am sure you‘ve been there before.
Bell rings! The teacher, which I recall Is M.S Johnson (I think) yelled out saying Rankin come to my desk please. I was so happy she did that cause them niggas couldn’t wait to fuck me up. She kept me after school for 30 minutes talking to me telling me how stupid gangs was and how more stupid I was to bring that shit to another gangs house. I didn’t want to hear it but I was glad to hear it at that moment. So I was let out the back door, boy talk about a walking dead man. I walked out creeping.
Coast was clear. So I strolled, made it 2 blocks up and it was on. All I heard was ‘there he is’ and it was a world-class track meet after that. Thank god I was fast as hell because I literally ran from atleast 35 people, boys and girl’s (no exaggeration).


Finally I made it home sweating and beating the hell out of the door. Thank god they stop chasing me cause momma was to busy smoking dope while I was barely breathing beating on the door.
When she open the door, she was complaining about my hard knocks claiming she thought I was the police and then she noticed my dilemma by saying ‘boy, what’s wrong with you’? Me being not able to talk at the time she got mad an inpatient with me and started shaking me repeating the question over and over again, so then I cried. I told her and she got mad at me because I was involved into the gang shit. She can make me a drug dealer but get mad when I’m in a gang, what type of shit is that? (laughing) so anyway, she beat my ass of course, just a little harder then thousand ass whippings I had before then. So her being scared for my life she made me stay home, my little brother too so that we don’t get hurt. LETROY was 4 and a half years younger then me and my hustling took care of him keeping food and the rent paid, clothes on his back etc. but now that I couldn’t go nowhere we were back to being younger again. What I mean by that, mom would usually be gone and when there were no food in the house we would cry in the window looking for her crying together repeating, ’momma’ over and over again saying that we were hungry I would hold him to stop us from crying and it never work. So being the leader I am I ended up making the biggest mess of the century trying to cook. I had popcorn seeds all over the floor, flour, eggs cracked, and rice everywhere. (ha, ha). When momma came in the house she was furious. I got my ass tore up (ha, ha). We ended up eating dry ass raisin bran though. I tried, back to the future though.
So now that I am older I was able to not make as big of a mess ass I did like when a nigga was 8. I would take potatoes and cut them up to fries and get to frying. That was the shit, I was a dependable big brother for LETROY.
I would take onions, chop them up and make batter with flour and make onion rings. You already know the other ghetto meals, syrup, bologna, government cheese, mustard, mayonnaise, sugar, noodle and peanut butter without the jelly sandwiches. ( ha, ha ). But hell, we survived. Sugar water was the shit. Especially when there was no milk and we’d put in our cereal. LETROY was a chicken head though. He had another name for it at the time but I cant recall it at this point. But I learned how to fry that too. Growing up though I was a loving brother but cruel too. I used to get him in trouble a lot of times when he didn’t have too. Young and dumb at times I was and I regret it to this day. One day I had to take out the trash and on the way there it was some older teenagers there by the trash incinerator smoking weed and talking loud, I minded my business and threw the trash away. One of the kids was younger and noticed who I was and yelled out ‘that bitch ass nigga Is a hook’. The word hook was a disrespectful word for the gang I was in and the older kids walk up to me and started pushing on me. I got struck in the face I was push to the ground and kicked. I was so mad at the time I couldn’t cry. So me having anger in my face they thought I was being tough. So one of the niggas, I really honestly hate to talk about this but fuck it. They had a squirt gun, you know a water gun, I guess while the other guy was kicking and punching me, the other was putting his piss in the water gun and then came and sprayed it on me. The anger that I had bottled up in me made me cry smelling what was being sprayed on me. In a rage I tried to fight back and only got myself beat black and blue. An older man saw what was happening to me and said hey leave that little boy alone. And they ran and he took me home. He wanted to take me to the hospital but scared to do so cause it was only me and my little brother at the house, and they would have taken us at the time. So mom came home the next day and saw me and got another gun for me pissed off.
She had walked me around the projects to find the ones who did this shit to me and found them. I guess momma thought they would be scared but all it did was start more shit. They told my momma to her face that they was going to kill me. Momma went off ,they were calling her a crack head bitch and suck my dick and etc. and we went home cause the crowd was getting bigger and we were getting more in danger. So momma took us home. She packed LETROYS bag and sent him back to his aunties house.
I stayed home and momma left the gun. I walk around in the house with it like I was real tough. After a while I thought I was Billy bad ass with the strap. I shot somebody before I felt I can do it again, Even though I couldn’t sleep and still have nightmares to this day because of it.
So I got bad enough to go to the store. I was a marked nigga and really didn’t know it after being out of school and staying in the house for 3 months. So coming into the store I was noticed, even with the gun I was scared coming out the store it was beef. Niggas walked up on me, I pulled out the strap they got scared not thinking a little nigga like me would have one, I thrived off the fear and I started calling them names and shit calling them bitches one of them kept saying that he was just playing as I pumped myself up to shoot at them all. People came out the store screaming I had a gun and ran while I think sickly I love the feeling of that power. So one got tough and said ‘you
Are a bitch and aint gonna shoot nobody and walked up on
Me, pissed off I shot him in the stomach, chaos broke out ,others fell and some ran and I smashed. Made it upstairs sweating and scared I left home and went to my aunts house to get away. Told her what I did and my mom and auntie sent me to Indiana where my dad side is from and my grandmother was there also. Mom had to move too because the crib got shot up and our windows got busted out. So me and letroy was on the greyhound together while mom stayed at my aunts and move in about 3 months.






So now I am with my little brother on a greyhound going to INDIANA. We stayed at Grandma’s and shockingly she was a saved women going to church. It was cool in Indiana.
It was way different from Chicago. So we stayed for three months and went back to another project. Called the IDA.B WELLS homes my old address 3720 s. COTTAGE GROVE



and still were on the Chicago south side which you ask me it was hell on earth.
Transferred back to school still gladiator school as usual fighting and carrying on.
When I was younger also I accumulated a gift to write because as a child I tried to harm myself and did not succeed. I ended up with a case worker
(child psychologist) that ended up having me write how I feel every day to find my pattern of behavior so as a child I have been writing. The kids in school was big on rapping and I noticed they were only doing what I was doing (writing)
but it really didn’t interest me yet until I did time in juvenile (bad school for boys) for shooting a gun. In juvy there was this kid that wrote raps every day and I was bored and with nothing to do in a 22 hour lock down facility I began my interest into music. I wrote R&B first to be different. I didn’t want him to think I was copying after him. So in my own world I wrote raps and I was infatuated with tupac at the time because growing up people said I looked like him and to me, he spoke about my life like he was watching me. So I loved tupac for that. So to that I wrote my life down and spoke it like he did. And that began my new level to my life story. When I got out of juvy, I started hustling again and this time I bought me a karaoke machine and a mic and hook the mic up to the water pipe with a hanger so that It would hang down like a studio mic. I got real creative too. I would take three tapes, record on one, take a brand new tape record on that one to add the extra adlib to make the song better. I would repeat that over and over until its sounds like a good song out of a studio.
I got tired of rapping over instrumentals and decided to take my money to a real studio. I look in the phone book saw a studio and call and the guy had me come down. I got on the bus happy as hell too I just knew I was the shit. I made my first song and I was on top of the world. I played it for every body. Back then everybody said I sound like tupac.
So I kept on making money and going to the studio. Back then I was the rapper Key20, I had used my gang name. So the guy that ran the studio heard my music and put me in one of his talent shows. I did it and they loved me. So now I was really hyped about it. Now I was feeling like somebody loved me. Rapping has been my way of feeling appreciated for being alive. Every time I rocked the mic I was the shit getting off. People that would normally pass me by actually stop to meet me to shake my hand or take a picture with me. So then all my dreams began.
One day in the hood I was walking around and I met a girl name LATRISHA SHAW nice looking girl and wasn’t a hood rat so she immediately struck my attention. Who knew she would still be my friend to this day. So we started dating and she was everything to me. We had everything in common, we had so much in common that we both thought we were both lying about the things we like. And we both actually did. We ended up together for a year, being16 that was a long ass time for us. The thing that frustrated me with the relationship was her mom and step dad would put her on punishment from me. I mean for whatever she do. If she didn’t do the dishes right she was on punishment from me. That shit made me mad so I would do stupid shit like knock on the door and demand to see TRISH. They would shut the door on me and cuss me out. I would scream outside they door to TRISHAS windows yelling ‘I LOVE YOU BABY’,’I LOVE YOU TRISH’. With their sick and twisted minds they thought it was funny. So after a while of that shit I got tired. I stayed her boyfriend but I ended up cheating on her with a girl that sung on one of my first songs that I made. A very big mistake, I used protection and the condom broke. This bitch burnt me with gonorrhea and I paid for it too. I told TRISH and she went to the health department with me after she laughed at me and told me a hundred times that’s what my ass get. I didn’t care I was just glad she didn’t leave my black ass. So about another 3 months of the same bullshit, I run into another chick that was black and Chinese, every nigga wanted her cause she was prettiest hot chick in the ghetto, but what’s so funny, she wanted my narrow ass. So here I go again doing the same shit again because I haven’t seen her in 2 weeks. So now I am stuck on the pretty bitch. I stop fucking with trish and it tore her apart. I felt bad but It hurt not being able to see her all the time, I wanted somebody that can do what they wanted to do. So TRISH moves on.
Didn’t want too but I kind of forced her. I miss her a lot and I would see her just to say hi. We almost got back together until she told me that the guy she was with was good to her. So when she said that, I let her be. Stupid, but I let her be.
So a month later TRISH pops up 3 months pregnant. I feel stupid and happy all at the same time. All I can do is think about is family and marriage. It was too late, she had strong feelings for the guy and it turned out that he left his family for her, so she was not a cruel person so she was not going to desert him after that. Now I’m crying and sad because my stupid ass made a huge mistake even leaving my best friend in the first place. So every day I came to see her his ass was there. I would do stupid shit to piss him off like, grab her ass, titty, steal a kiss all in his face. So TRISH got tired of that shit. And told me one day I need to stop. The bitch I left her for was everything that she wasn’t. she was just a pretty face. Now I feel like a dumb ass getting cheated on and everything. I got beat up by 15 niggas literally fucking with that bitch. The guy she cheated on me with kept on disrespecting me every time I’m with her like talking about
How her ass was and shit, so one day I ask him in front of all his guys for a head up fight. They put it on G.D that they wasn’t going to jump me. But by him being one of the head niggas over there after I whipped his ass they fucked me up too. I was in the hospital for 3 days. So after a while my seed was born. I could wait neither. Growing up I always wanted a child of my own. Why because I knew that child would love me no matter what. I bought a lot of clothes for him, I damn near skipped preparing for him, I was happy.
On his birth I was there. Talk about the weirdest experience of my life. To me, it was gross as hell but what came out of her was everything to me.it was my life. She let me name him after me.I had a j.r!




I was on cloud nine and I kept him to myself a lot while she would work and I was daddy. Crazy but he didn’t cry unless he was hungry. I would play with him and talk to him all day because he was my baby. I finally got him to move like he was happy with the song ‘I believe I can fly’ (R KELLY) I used to sing it to him because he had my ears and you can admit I do have some flyers on me. (ha, ha)
So its was our song. Me and trish wasn’t getting along because I wanted us to be a family but she was in love with someone else. So we would argue. I had this fix in my mind that we could go to Indiana and make it. She was always apart of me, we did everything together, I didn’t mention we had a job together and I had her cracking up on how I quit. The boss was an asshole and me being the I don’t give a fuck, voice my opinion ass nigga; this one particular day there was a new grease strainer that came in (by the way we worked at CHURCHS CHICKEN) and I didn’t know how to work it. So I ask the boss how to work it, he screamed at me saying what am I paying you for if you don’t know how to do it? So you know I’m pissed off. I quietly told TRISH ‘baby I am leaving’ she laughed at me saying ‘baby you playing right’? I said no I am leaving, I was serious ass hell and she was dying laughing saying ‘you better not leave DRE’. DRE is what she used to call me. So I politely went to the back to the store, yelled out his name and when he went to the front I was out the side door. The store was mostly all glass so he could see me, and I laugh waiving at his punk ass while he had to cook and batterd chicken all day. I felt like I got my point across and it was the shit too.


So these were the things we would do together and had fun doing it, good or bad. So now it being to late for me and her was very hard to swallow. Her guy I mentioned earlier was a security guard and lived in an uppity neighborhood. He would criticize her daily for little shit she had explained to me. It was stupid shit like he had to have his eggs done with parsley and a drop of vanilla extract.
He constantly downed the hood as if he was better then everyone. So enough about him, I just really wanted to have my family and relocate us to Indiana hoping for a better future. She was in love though and I hated her for that.
My mom made it out of jail and move to a place named TERRE HAUTE,INDIANA. The court system moved her there to start a new life in order for her to get us all back. I at the time was in and out of juvenile and staying at my aunts.This child given to me was my answer to living.
Every chance I got which was almost every day, he was with daddy. One night pissed off at TRISH I said a lot off mean things to my girl at the time, by the way her name was CHINA, I was furious because I didn’t want knowone but her and my kid. So after a long night of venting, I rest
And by the sound of a hard restless knock on the door, I awake to LATRISHAS mom yelling ‘DRE get your clothes on your son not breathing!
This is where my whole life change.This when i stopped caring and my heart got colder.

Thanks for taking the time out to read this, i will be writing more soon.