Black Caesar

Shit’s getting’ to me. What the fuck am I doing? They say if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. They lied. I feel like I’m working everyday. I remember when I first met my man Rondo. I always knew ‘bout ‘em. He was like the ghetto godfather. He made the game look easy. When I was discharged, I had no work, no prospects, no fucking future. Jimmy kept tellin’ me that Rondo could get me some work. “He can set us up,” my brother said. Jimmy and Blue had been slingin’ chronic for Rondo for a while before I actually met him. Jimmy said that Rondo saw the potential in the three of us and knew we could turn his highest profit. Man, if it got me off these streets, put food in my baby’s stomach, gave me somethin’ to live for, it couldn’t hurt.

Then when I met him, I realized he had somethin’ else in store for me. “I’m trynna get out,” he told me. He was looking fa his replacement. He had been fooled by the bright lights, easy buckets, and obliging women. At first, it was like drug dealing was in his DNA. He had a sixth sense for sniffing out narks and undercovers. Slingin’ was all too easy to come by. Then he told me how the shit turns on you. One day you’re on top of the world, then the next day you keep checking to see if the world’s the one tappin’ on your window at night. You lose sleep over this game. Paranoia becomes your new sixth sense. Being a foot soldier is nothing. My brothers don’t know how easy they got it. Jimmy wanna be a boss so bad. I’m just trynna protect him; this business would eat him alive. One thing that Rondo told me that stuck heavy with me was when he said, “The longer you stay in it, the faster it tears through you. Yo soul starts to bleed out in yo sleep and ain’t nuttin’ you can do ‘bout it but get a rag in the morning to clean up the evidence.”

My girl got pregnant when I was in the army. When I got out, my daughter Sabrina was one. She was almost four by the time I became in charge of everything. Still too young to understand how daddy was making a living for her and her mama. She just knew that daddy and Uncle Rondo kept the lights on and the water running. My girl Audrey wasn’t too young though. In the beginning, she was apprehensive. She saw what the drug game could do to people. But when the money started rollin’ in, she was cool. Never in her life did she think she’d be rockin’ a mink in the ghetto winter. I was puttin’ diamonds in my baby girl’s ears. My grandmamma ain’t have to work to support her kids’ kids. Still, my soul was bleeding in my sleep, and I was running outta rags to clean it up wit.