Everybody's Brother (8 page)

When I was young, I felt as if Evil wanted to put me in powerful positions. If I didn’t turn out to be famous, I honestly think I would have ended up being infamous. By now, I’m pretty sure I would have had my very own special episode of
American Gangster
. And possibly, in my tortured soul, I would take just as much pride in that achievement. There’s a certain pride in being good at anything. Even being good at being bad can be gratifying, whether we choose to admit it or not.

In a weird way, criminals are stars. There is probably not a rapper who doesn’t consider Al Pacino in
Scarface
a true hip-hop icon, for instance. But at the same time, I’ve learned that being a criminal is the polar opposite—the flip side, if you will—to being a star. That’s because when you have a big song on the radio or a big show on television—or in my case, both—everybody is suddenly more excited to see you.

Fame changes you only in the sense that it changes the way the world looks at you. I now know what it feels like to have people rushing toward you, wanting to get an autograph or grab a kiss or even take a handout. People just can’t wait to connect with you on some level
and share at least a moment in time, especially one they can capture on their cell phone and tweet. Being a thug was the other side of that feeling. Once I became known as a bad guy in the neighborhood, people were tucking their chains inside their shirts and literally were running in the opposite direction when they saw me, like I was a monster—which in a way I guess I was.

Long before I ever knew what it was like to be famous, I understood what it meant to be infamous. When I came around, people began to know what to expect, and I began to see them walk away as fast as possible in the opposite direction. They say that if you can’t be loved, then you should try to be feared—and before long, I began to feel other people’s fear most places I went. If stealing was my crazy, idiotic way of looking for love in all the wrong places, it definitely stopped working for me rather quickly.

Thinking back on the things I’ve done wrong, I’ve done some soul searching, and here’s what I’ve found: To me, all goodness and evil come from the same place. I was willing to accept whatever was natural to me, and both ways were natural.

And so I was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wanted to connect with people but could feel they had an attitude about me that I couldn’t tolerate. As a teenager, people made me feel so alienated and awkward. If they looked at me funny because I was different, I just made myself
more
different. If they scorned me or disrespected me, I might want to hurt them. Sometimes I wanted to be a killer. I wish I wasn’t serious, but I am. I think it was because I felt
so much hurt at times, I wanted someone to hurt worse than I hurt, and that turned me mean and violent. I knew I had it inside me to love unconditionally, but I could never get over the fact that people could reject me without knowing me, before I could even introduce myself. In my confusion, I felt like that made people expendable. I felt there was something defective about the hearts of people who could hurt me that way. Going after them didn’t feel wrong to me. It felt more like an extreme case of seeking justice in a universe where it could be elusive.

In my mind it went, “Now, I may be strange or peculiar and all those wonderful things that you call me. But let me take some initiative and show you why it’s better to keep your mouth shut about me, or leave me alone.” Not only would I give it to those who deserved it, I might get somebody who was looking the other way, who didn’t have the balls to be disrespectful, but was probably thinking it too. I could feel it. This sense is what still helps me identify certain energies. My assumptions have protected me for a long, long time now. And ask me now, my knowledge of self shines so brightly, at this point I repel these kinds of personalities—they don’t want nothing to do with me. My life is almost completely sucker free.

Thankfully, I eventually grew up a little and moved toward the light. Deep down, I think I really wanted to be loved more, not hated. That’s finally what saved me and helped me put aside for good my fairly comfortable life of crime. That desire to be loved may be what ultimately saved me from killing somebody and in the process ruining my
own life too. I began to realize that I actually did have a heart, and possibly I should start using it. Around this time I could feel a subtle shift happening in my soul—the Good was starting to edge out the Evil. I think it was because I wasn’t just listening to music anymore, I was starting to create it. It was music that would finally give me the key I needed to connect with people. It gave me this benevolence. Who uses a word like benevolence? Certainly no black kid from Atlanta Georgia with an eighth-grade education. But it gave me peace, I understood. And my understanding began to outweigh my anger.

When I was about fourteen or fifteen, Shedonna started dating a DJ named Al, who was deep into the hip-hop scene. He let me tag along with him to the studio, where I got my first taste of how music is made. Here is where my sense of music history really helped me out as I found my way into the music business. I knew all about soul singing before I ever tried to rap. This is where all those voices in my head and on the radio from early on paid off for me. Unlike a lot of kids, I knew my Jackie Wilson before I learned my Too $hort. When I got into rap, I went deep. So I already knew that rapping and singing had been done by the Force MDs and by UTFO, but to the kids who didn’t know, I must have seemed exotic. To some people, I still do.

My experience of hip-hop was expanding, and I was inspired by Grandmaster Melle Mel. Fusing the urban sensibility,
urban urgency with social conscience—stylized on stage with spikes and leather. Melle Mel is truly the godfather to me. His theme song to
Beat Street
was prophetic, the best rap song ever. I studied the hip-hop masters Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force. Everything stemmed from them, they influenced the native tongue. They were putting out what hip-hop was supposed to be, a renaissance if you will of all the four facets of hip-hop: graffiti, DJ-ing, MC-ing, and, of course, dance. At the time, Queen Latifah also spoke to me, along with N.W.A., 8Ball, Heavy D, Biggie, the list goes on. But if there was anyone who helped shape my style, it was Tupac. I felt connected to Tupac’s earlier approach, long raps like “Trapped” and “Brenda’s Got a Baby.” Storytelling was my forte when I started to write. I was carrying a rhyme pad with me everywhere I went, writing long story raps. The first song I ever wrote was called “Raiders of the Lost Rhyme.” Too bad I don’t remember the lyrics.

As stupid and stoned as I may have been back then, I already knew I wanted to be a rapper, but I felt I needed some safety in numbers. Having spent so much time in my young life on my own, it seemed like it was time for this lone wolf to get some kind of gang going for myself. Any kind of gang would do. At that moment, I could have met anyone in the world, and taken another bad turn and ended up dead. But instead I met a man who would help change my life—and who’s still helping me change it right now—my man Gipp. In the movies they would say we met cute—I went over to his house to buy some
weed. I was in the same class with his younger brother, so we knew each other by reputation alone: I knew Gipp was a rapper and he knew I was a robber. Eventually it was music that brought us together, and before long I had found my mob.

Big Gipp:
Before I even knew CeeLo, I knew of him, because in the neighborhood, Chickenhead was infamous. He was not someone to be fucked with. Lots of good people were afraid of him. Hell, bad people were afraid of him too. CeeLo was always at Greenbriar Mall, and always with older kids. He was a known entity. If someone had done someone some wrong, the first person we were going to ask to slap somebody was Lo. CeeLo would be the smallest person there, and he’d walk right up and hit the biggest person there. He wasn’t afraid of anything. I swear, back then Lo would walk up and fight a lion if someone asked him to.

CeeLo was a terror. He used to get on the train and do robberies hands on. He wasn’t into having no gun, and he wanted no help. He just robbed people by himself most of the time—a lone wolf. And you’ve got to remember CeeLo was just this little guy, so at first, they didn’t perceive any threat. So I guess you could say that those poor people were the first—but not the last—folks to go broke underestimating CeeLo! The people who didn’t think he was a threat—well, that became one mistake in their lives that they would remember.

How far did CeeLo go? From my vantage point, he went exactly as far as you can go without actually
murdering anybody. CeeLo walked right to that edge and then stepped back just in time. He was one of the young cats who were hanging with the big dogs. And the big dogs respected his game—like he was a top prospect they had their eyes on. The truth is that CeeLo probably could have done very well in a life of crime. But CeeLo stopped just short of becoming a lifer, and thankfully for me and a lot of other people, he ended up having a different life entirely.

So I knew of Lo and respected him from a safe distance. Then one night Lo came over to my house, and the very first words he ever said to me were “Yo, give me some weed!” That night we were cool, but CeeLo and I didn’t say much to one another.

I never even knew he did music until one day I was over at a friend’s house with my crew, Khujo and T-Mo. CeeLo showed up and he and Khujo started rap battling. In the middle of his freestyle, he started singing. And that was the first time I ever saw someone rap and then just burst into singing. I was like “Damn, that was incredible!” To see that kind of style from some kid from the South—it was amazing and got our attention right away. From that moment on CeeLo was in our crew, our family, one of us. He still is today and always will be, whatever else happens.

Right around this time, I found myself thrust into manhood in the worst possible way. One Sunday morning my mom was on her way to my grandmother’s house to bring her some food after her hip surgery, when the van she was driving flipped over. They think she was reaching down to get something when she lost control. By the time the ambulance got her to the hospital, she was permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

There are some things in this life all of us would prefer not to ever remember, and this memory is the very worst of them for me. This was one of those real-life nightmares that started bad and somehow just kept getting worse. Mom spent the next three years in and out of hospitals and the Shepherd Center for spinal cord injuries. We couldn’t afford to pay for nursing care, so my grandmother, who was a licensed nurse, took her in. She set up a hospital bed right in the living room and that’s where Mom stayed. Like a small child, my mother was totally dependent on her own mother all over again. It must have been the worst kind of torture for such a strong and restless woman to be totally helpless. My mother had lived her life in a state of constant motion, never stopping too long to feel sorry for herself. And now she couldn’t even lift a finger. Shedonna dropped out of college, where she had been studying nursing, to help out with her care. And I did what I could to pitch in.

As Shedonna remembers it, “When my mother was
injured, it was so tremendously difficult. Of course, our poor mother suffered unimaginably—as did our grandmother who took such good care of her. During that time, Lo was definitely the strong one between us. My mom had always tried to be everything to everybody—a go-getter, everyone’s friend. So to see her like that in that position, in that state where she couldn’t move, couldn’t drive, and could barely talk, it was very horrible for her, and all of us too. But it was hard for all of us in different ways.”

Again, my sister probably knew me better than I knew myself. She saw what was happening. “Lo was discovering music around that time in a serious way,” she remembers. “I think that may have saved him and stopped his life from taking a very different turn. It became clear that Lo had real talent that could take him places. He was finally finding his path and his place in the world.”