This week we are publishing Part II of “Titan,” an excerpt from Baye McNeils’ new memoir, You Couldn’t Tell Me Shit! Coming of Age in the County of Kings, 1980-1985 about growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Baye’s book, a serialized memoir, is available on his Substack. Part I was published on this site June 7th.

---

CINCERE

On the way to the weed gate, we ran into Cincere U-Allah, another God from the Parkway. Cincere was a newborn (recent convert), so I felt obligated to challenge him. Didn’t want to be thought of as a slacker God.  

“Peace to the God!” I said boisterously. “How do you see today’s Mathematics?
 
“Peace God!” he replied and then gave a pretty simplistic recitation of the Mathematics, with just enough finesse to show and prove he was not just quoting from memory. He didn’t know Freedom, so after I added on to the cipher, I introduced them.  

Freedom acted normal…for him. Which meant he immediately treated Cincere like any friend of mine was his best friend. This always surprised people. Brooklyn brothers were generally standoffish initially. Not Freedom. Especially on the mish. Freedom, by nature, was one of them “the more, the merrier” type of guys when it came to the mish. I don’t even think he dug being high that much. He was high on Freedom. Weed distorted his natural buzz. He just puffed to be with people. If we weren’t doing it, he wouldn’t be doing it, either. It wouldn’t occur to him.  

I was NOT of that mind, I gotta tell ya. Not at all. I was more of a “kick-in or hit-the-bricks” kind of guy, which is ironic and selfish, ’cause cats put my broke ass on all the time. But Cincere spared me the guilt when he said, “Yo, God, I got half on this nic!”

“‘Nuff said, Sun! Right, Free?”  

“True indeed, God!” he said, laughing. And our two-man crew became a threesome.  

This, also, was far from unusual when you hung out with Freedom. If we got squared away and reached a sanctuary as a threesome, it would be a fucking miracle.  

“Yo, which gate y’all going to?” Cincere asked. 

“Serious Gold,” I said, matter-of-factly. It was the local spot, just around the corner on Lincoln Place. It was like the fucking bodega: everybody went there. The dread knew us well. Probably some of his best customers were Gods, and so he never gave us sacks half filled with stems and seeds like some other spots.  

“Seriously??” Cincere said with disbelief, the pun unintended. “Yo! I’m gonna turn y’all on to the spot!”  

Any weed smoker hears such boasts frequently, so I gave him the hairy eyeball. I preferred reliable to trekking to points unknown, to cop weed from cats unknown.  

“I’m talking two Els from a tre’, three or four Els from a nic, God!” Cincere added. 

“Fuck is an L?” I asked.  

Cincere’s jaw dropped.  

“You’ve never smoked an El, God?” Cincere asked. You would think I said I never smelled a vagina. “What do y’all smoke? Joints??”  

He said “joints” like they were something you wiped your ass with. 

“Freedom rolls some fat-ass spliffs!”  

“Word bond! Like a pro!” Freedom said. Overstating as usual, but his were far better than mine. 

I’d go through a whole pack of Big Bambu trying to roll a single fucking joint without it crumbling apart. It would look like a roll of toilet paper by the time I was done. 

“Where’s this gate?” I asked, curiosity piqued.  

“It’s over on Nostrand Ave and Pacific!”  

CUROSITY QUENCHED

I only knew Cincere by name and face, really. And only briefly at that. We’d built a few times, but I’d never gotten stim with him before. You get to really know motherfuckers once you get high or drunk with them. That’s when the real is revealed, usually. Then you know what you dealing with. Cincere’s reputation, however, as was the case with most people, preceded him. So the word was out, and in Cincere’s case, the word was: Shiesty. He was known for fucking guys’ girlfriends for the fuck of it. Don’t leave your girl around that cat, people said. Certainly not the worst rep to have. And he was a pretty mothfucker, exotic looking, family was from South Africa or some shit. So I could see why the cuties were doing backflips for him. Last I heard, though, he was on the run from some cats from Ebbets Field. Heard they were canvassing the Parkway looking for his ass for plying his trade with the wrong cutie.  

Smoking weed in a sanctuary on the Parkway was one thing, but trooping ’round the ‘hood with this cat, especially down Nostrand, that’s a whole ‘nother thing. I voted nah!  

But I knew Freedom, and he’d definitely be down to hit up this new weed spot. He didn’t spook easily. Hell, he didn’t spook at all! Cincere was just another brother, and Nostrand was just another avenue to him. He wouldn’t care if the gate was in Brownsville, Alphabet City, Harlem, or the South Bronx; it was all the same to Free. And it wasn’t a matter of his being courageous or ignorant, or anything like that. He was just cut from a different cloth. Or maybe danger in Colón, Panama, made the shit that passes for hazardous in NYC, USA, laughable. 

“Yo, Cincere, we’re headed right over here to Serious Gold,” I said before Free could speak up. Cuz I knew he was two seconds from striking up a new chant: let’s motivate to the Nostrand gate! “You want to go down Nostrand, God, knowledge-knowledge! (Peace!) Travel in supreme harmony!”  

“Awight, fuck it,” Cincere said, chuckling at my dismissal. “Next time, but I’m gonna turn y’all on to Els, anyway. You’ll thank me.”  

FREESTYLING FREE

So, the three of us headed down Classon Avenue toward Serious Gold. As soon as we turned onto Lincoln Place, though, we ran smack into Mathematics and Justice. Justice lived in Cincere’s building, 201, and Math lived on Lincoln Place over by Washington Ave. They were clearly coming from Serious Gold. Ain’t nothing else on Lincoln worth walking down that block for after dark, that’s for damn sure.  

“Peace to the Gods!” the three of us shouted at the same time as the two of them had. It would have been funny if it weren’t so commonplace. 

Math was lugging a JVC as big as a suitcase. His Kangol was pulled down over his fly-ass Cazals. No lenses. Math was always fly. His gold front glinted in the streetlamp light. He was the coolest cat I knew. He used to scare the shit out of me until we got high one time and I saw the real cat beneath that ‘hood mask, just a brother trying to survive out here, is all. Justice, on the other hand, still made me nervous. He was this short cat with a big ego and was always smiling when he looked at me, like he knew something suspect about me. Which he probably did cuz we’d gotten stim together several times, and I had a tendency to run off at the mouth once I got high, so I probably said something suspect that I couldn’t recall if my life depended on it. That sounded like me. And Justice, man, he had the most dangerous smile I’d ever seen. It wasn’t just the gold fronts, either. It was just that his eyes never matched the smile, like he was two souls trapped in one compact frame. And neither was up to any good. He reminded me of those cats on Franklin Ave. 

Anyway, everybody knew everybody…except Free.  

Freedom lived on the block for years, but none of the Gods really knew him except Mas and me, cuz he never came out. He was always on punishment, and a week or two after getting paroled, he’d somehow violate it and wind up back on lockdown. Whole summers, whole winters…no Freedom…except on Sundays on his way to church, being towed by his grandmother or aunt, or both. So, none of the Gods ever got a chance to meet him. They’d just see him in his church get-up and crack jokes.  

One day, must’ve been in ‘78 or ‘79, he joined a game of “Chinese” we had going. It was just White Boy Chris and me, and Chris was cracking my ass with his specialty, a reverse baby cut with some wicked english on it. That shit would come off the wall rolling, no way to return it. Then here comes Free. He was just Julio, then. He joined the game, making it a threesome, claiming he’d never played the game before. Chris had too much pride to play with a scrub (though he called me a scrub all the time) and opted out, but I played on. I played to win, too. But Free caught on, right quick. He was a natural and athletic as hell! He actually beat me one game.  

I recognized his brilliance that day, and he knew I had because, from then on, I never laughed at him. Many of the others did, and with good reason. He was funny. Looked funny, dressed funny, and was shameless. But not me. I’d seen that mind at work, deconstructing Chinese handball in a three-piece suit and dress shoes. And before I knew it, even before I found out that he’d hustled me, had played a variation of the game back in Panama religiously, I was laughing with him…hugged up, all the way to the weed gate whenever we hooked up. 

I introduced him to Math and Just. They gave him a quick once-over and immediately pegged him as a cornball posing as a God. They didn’t even bother to mask it. I was sure Freedom read their faces, too. He missed very little. They were about to bounce to, no doubt, smoke the weed they copped when, out of the fucking blue, Freedom started kicking some lyrics, freestyle, to the beat Math was pumping from his box.  

The tune was an uptown, the Honeydrippers’ Impeach The President. Not sure who the DJ was, but he was nice. Probably Fantasy. He lived in 201, too. He was cutting it up to perfection, and Freedom rode the rhythm like a prize fighter, stick and move!  

Yo, check it, I’m the man from Panama, from around Colón   

Where Noriega’s running shit from a cocaine throne 

Now I’m up in BK with my man Unique  

A mental titan, he enlightens every time he speaks  

Mathematics Universal, you do the math  

Just I-See Equality, on the righteous path  

Cincere U-Allah got half on this sack 

And knows a gate on Nostrand Ave where the sacks are fat 

And in case you don’t know me, I’m Free the Dome 

And I’m known for fresh lyrics on the microphone 

I might dress like a choir boy, shirt all clean  

But my schemes run deeper than you’ve ever seen  

That’s why Free is my name, and staying free is my game  

And if you ask my tribe of honeys, they’ll tell you the same 

You can’t cage the mind, can’t cage the soul  

They call me Free ‘cuz the party people pay the toll…  

PATOIS

The four of us were pumping our fists and yelling, “Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho, Go Freedom, Go Freedom, Go Freedom,” as he spat his lyrics. 

I’d heard Freedom’s freestyle lyrics plenty of times, and they were hit or miss. But apparently, he’d been spending his downtime working on his lyricism, cuz this one wasn’t bad at all. He always had flavor, no question. But lyrically, he reminded me of Deborah Harry’s freestyle rap on her big hit that summer, Rapture, where she spent half her bars talking about Fab Five Freddy, men from Mars eating bars, cars, and guitars, and shit.  

But Freedom was undoubtedly audacious, and his mind was deft and agile, the way he worked not only my name but Math, Justice, and Cincere’s names into it as well. So all four of us spurred him on til he started repeating himself. When the beat stopped, Freedom took a breather, and Math and Just were no longer snubbing. Freedom was astounding, and he knew it. He caught my eye and covertly winked very fucking knowingly. He was a manipulative bastard, too. 

“What y’all getting into?” Math said, clearly moved by the energy Freedom brought to the cipher.  

“We’re gonna hit the dread up,” I said. “And then we’ll see what’s what. What y’all holdin’?”  

“We got a nic,” Math said, but I knew Math ass. If he said nic that meant they had at least two nics. So, I glanced at Free cuz all I had was a buck fitty. That plus Cincere’s two fitty was most of a nic. But I wasn’t sure how much of that fitty spot Freedom was willing to part with. I couldn’t be spending the man’s hard-earned money.  

I glanced his way, but he was already headed for the gate.  

“Hol’ up a sec, yo,” I said to Math and Just. Cincere and I caught up with Free, who was making a beeline for the Dread.  

When business was slow, the Dread hung out on the stoop, usually kicking it with some other dreadlocked cats. There was only one other guy with him, and he tensed on our approach. 

Must’ve been new. When the Dread recognized us, he waved us over. 

“Greetings, Star. Wah gwan? Everyting haffi govern?” 

“Everyting criss,” Freedom said, again catching me off guard. “Beg yuh tree nickel bag, zeen?” 

The Dread nodded at the youth, who sped off to the stash. The Dread took the money from Free in a smooth “palming” handshake. 

“A weh yuh larn fi chat so?” the Dread asked, impressed. “Yuh sound like yuh just step offa de plane from Palisadoes.” 

“Mi nuh know, man. Mi pick up some a it from di reggae chune dem, and some from di Jamaican people dem back a yaad inna Panama.” 

I was stunned, but I think I hid it. I’d never heard Free converse with the Dread before.  

The Dread nodded, a slow smile spreading. “Panama? Respect. Di Spanish connection. If yuh love di music, yuh fi pree Lone Ranger and Yellowman. Dem deejay deh a murder di dancehall right now, yuh see?” 

“A who dem? Mi never hear ’bout dem yet!” 

“Yuh serious? A dem a rule di Biltmore!” The Dread reached through the open parlor window and grabbed a Maxell XL-II cassette with “STURGAV LIVE – Biltmore ’81” scrawled in black marker. He handed it to Freedom like it was a holy relic. 

“Take dis live set. It haf Eek-A-Mouse, Josey Wales, and Charlie Chaplin a lick four-fives on di mic. Listen how di M-16 riddim a bubble. Borrow di cassette fi a livity, but nuh mek it pop. Forward it back when yuh done, ’cause I-man haf nuff more chune fi di soul.” 

“Give thanks, mi bredren. Mi a go check it out now.” 

Freedom turned to walk away, and Cincere and I followed. Before we’d gotten up the block, the Dread’s runner brushed past us, dropping the product into Free’s palm. 

“Hol’ dat,” the youth muttered. 

“Respect, mi youth!” Freedom said over his shoulder. 

“Bless up,” the youth answered back, already disappearing back toward the stoop. 

“You’re pretty nifty with that patois, man,” I said. “What y’all was talking about?”  

“Music mostly,” Freedom said, offhandedly. “He lent me a tape of a live show some Jamaican cats did. You know the Biltmore Ballroom, right?” 

“In Flatbush? Over by Church Ave? Yeah, I heard of it,” I said. “It’s a tape of a reggae concert? Like Sunsplash?”  

“Nah,” Freedom said. “Not reggae. He called it dancehall. And he named a bunch of people…” 

“Like who? Bob Marley?” I asked. He’d died earlier that year. I used to love his music, but beyond him, I hadn’t listened to any other Jamaican music.  

“Nah, some other dudes, Lone Ranger, Josey Wales, Yellow—” he said. 

“Josey Wales? That was a Clint Eastwood movie,” I said. “You sure you heard him right?” 

“I thought I heard Charlie Chaplin?” Cincere said, puzzled. “And something about a mouse?” 

Freedom shrugged.  

“Hope there’s some Marley on that tape, too,” I said, and started singing. “Chase those crazy baldheads out of town! That was my song!”  

I could hear it playing in my head. That was Changa’s favorite, too. He was the one who turned me on to it. 

“Don’t know that one. Now, Could You Be Loved,” Cincere sang. “That was my shit!” 

“Marley was a beautiful brother. Fucking cancer!” Freedom said, venomously. “May he rest in peace!”  

We three were harmonizing — “Don’t let ’em fool ya, or even try to school ya” — when we re-joined Math and Just.  

We went to the bodega at the corner to cop some brews and munchies. Since Freedom had splurged on the weed, I used my funds to buy a quart of Ballantine Ale.  

Freedom turned to the shopkeeper.  

“As salamu alaikum,” he said to Muhammad, placing his fist over his heart.  

“Wa alaikum assalam,” Muhammad replied with a smile.  

I wondered if that was the extent of Freedom’s Arabic. Nothing would have surprised me. 

Then Cincere chimed in. “Peace, Muhammad. Let me get three El Productos, my brother!”  

Muhammad reached into an open, half-emptied box of El Producto cigars behind the counter and grabbed three… 

El Productos? What the…Oh Snap! I got it. Els!  

Fully equipped, we headed to the Circle Park next to the Botanic Gardens. We called it the 

Circle Park cuz it was circular, and fuck-all. We were clever that way. I bet it had a name, though. Probably posted on a big ass graffiti’d-over sign right at the entrance. Never read it, though.  

It was our park. Period.  

THE EL

The five of us trekked all the way to the back of the park in the dark, jamming Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s Freedom. Free got a big kick out of that song for obvious reasons. He told me once he’d quit the band that made the original uptown “Get Up and Dance,” but they kept his name. I told him, man, that song is from the ’70s. Why didn’t they name the band Julio?  

That was the first time he called me a Mental Titan. I was sure he meant it ironically, but it was so funny I laughed for a month straight. It was the perfect jab. He’d even worked it into his freestyle just now, I noticed, and laughed again. 

“Yo, check this out,” Cincere said, and we leaned in. He scanned the ground around the bench. spotted a ring-pull tab from a beer can and used its sharp edge to slice the El Producto cigar down the middle. Then he dumped out the cigar behind the bench. I peeked back there, and his wasn’t the first cigar innards that had been deposited there. The area was carpeted with discarded tobacco.  

Like I said, our park.  

Then he started slobbing this motherfucker down, moistening the leaf. 

“Ewwwww, we supposed to smoke that?” I cried out. And everybody laughed. It was a joke, kinda. I mean, you can’t roll anything really without spit, so if you don’t roll it yourself, you’re smoking your boy’s saliva one way or another. Not to mention the cipher, passing that shit around. You’re practically tonguing down these mofos whose tongues have been heaven knows where.  

“Where’s the weed?” he asked Free.  

Free handed him a nic, looking on, fascinated by the entire process. So was I. But now that I was watching it, it seemed like the most obvious thing to do, the logical next step from a spliff. That is, if you wanted to avoid looking ludicrous like Cheech and Chong with baseball bat-sized spliffs. Cincere opened the little yellow envelope Serious Gold packed their nics in, their name logo branded on the side of the package, and began pouring it into the now empty cigar leaf. He stopped halfway and looked at Free. Free nodded.  

“Go ahead, God, hook it up!”  

So he did. The whole nic in one blunt.  

By the time Cincere was done showing off his skills, the blunt looked like an organic torpedo. I wanted to applaud but restrained myself. Freedom didn’t.  

“Yo!!! That’s the bomb. Spark that shit!” he screamed.  

THE TAPE

The best thing about Circle park at night was that we could get as loud as we wanted.  

To the left of the park was the library at Grand Army Plaza. Empty. To the right was the Botanic Gardens and the Brooklyn Museum. Empty. To the rear was a long, desolate stretch of Flatbush Avenue, and beyond that, Prospect Park. Just cars and a forest overrun by the freaks that come out at night. Before us was the entire Circle Park, an acre or so of grass, trees, a running path and a playground. Beyond that was the broad expanse of the highly trafficked Eastern Parkway, across which rested the closest residences, apartment buildings well out of earshot…unless someone was shooting off fireworks or busting caps, of course. The Beast would occasionally stroll through Circle Park, on their beats, but by the time they could make their way to where we sat, we’d have spotted them and had time to dispose of or conceal anything incriminating.  

That’s why we called this place a sanctuary, the one of choice on summer nights.  

“Yo, Mathematics,” Freedom said. “Can I put this tape in?”  

Math looked at Free like he’d asked to finger his girlfriend.  

“What tape?”  

“The dread hit me off,” Free said, holding up the tape, and handed it to Math. Math examined it like it was an explosive, then glanced over at me like I had to vouch for Free. For the second time that day, I had to guarantee Free was on the level.  

Some people act funny with their boxes. Math was one of them. Boxes were personal. If it was your box, you were the DJ, no questions asked. And the tape deck? That was sacred. Cheap tapes could ruin it, and then all you would have was the radio til you got it fixed or bought a new one.  

“What the fuck, yo? It’s a Maxell,” I said, thinking Math’s concern wasn’t that it would fuck up his cassette player, but that Freedom, looking as wack as he did, in his dress shirt and gabardines, might put some wack-ass tunes in his box. Gospel music, maybe, or worse. Not that Math would have a problem ejecting that shit immediately and tossing it back at him, but still, nobody wanted to bring that kind of vibe into the cipher. “Supposed to be dope!”  And dope it was.  

The tape was of a live performance by some Jamaican artists that reminded me immediately of a hip-hop battle tape. It had a very similar quality of rawness to a tape Sekou had of Kool Moe Dee Vs. Busy Bee, or the one Math had last time I saw him, of the Cold Crush Brothers battling The Fantastic Five. There was a lot of feedback, poor modulation, and even crowd participation. 

They kept yelling, “forward” or “murderer”.  

My brain just shut out everything else and tuned completely in. 

It was that bass that snagged me. It was like, I knew for the first time, intimately, what Roberta Flack meant when she sang, strumming my pain with his fingers. But it wasn’t my pain being strummed. It was more like my brain was being plucked and slapped like a bass. The music was stripped, damn near nude, down to its bra and panties and garters. The only adornment came from the voices that accompanied it…and that bass, man. That fucking bass! Math’s JVC tweaked it til it was merciless.  

And the drums and the horns, and the piano… 

Smoking my first El and getting my first taste of dancehall made for the most memorable classic of my life til that point. I looked at Free and yelled, “Murderer!” and I wasn’t even sure why.  

Free laughed as I passed him the El.  

“The Dread was right, God,” Freedom said, inhaling the smoke deeply and letting it flow out of his nose. “He said we were gonna dig it.”  

“The weed?”  

“Nah, the tunes.”  

Free’s next puff had him coughing so violently that he teared up, and then he laughed some more…giddy as I’d ever seen him. It was his ingenuity that made this mish a success, I thought. I felt such delight watching Free bask in the fruit of his labor. We bobbed to the music together and just let the rhythm flow through us.  

EEK-A MOUSE  

Judging from the bobbing of Cincere, Math, and Just’s heads, they were vibing to it, too. We passed the El around ‘til it was done. Then, Cincere rolled another, and we did it again. The mic was passed from one incredible artist to another and then another, and each had a distinctive style and voice, and a fanbase.  

Then came a voice that, at least to me, was clearly the goddamn closer. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. 

It was like reading “Roots” for the first time, experiencing viscerally what Alex Haley felt when that griot reciting the entire history of the Mandinka tribe says the name of his ancestor, Kunta Kinte, and Haley knows, finally, that he has returned to his ancestral home in The Gambia. The voice coming from Math’s speakers I likened to that griot, that living library, that mind that held centuries of stories, and could only recite them in order and in the way it was told to him. But this artist chose to task himself with reciting these tales in as entertaining a method as musically possible. Entranced, that’s what I felt like I was experiencing…for just a moment.  

“This is Eek-A-Mouse?” I asked Free.  

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Listen to his voice. Like a mouse, maybe?” 

I heard no mouse. I heard a musician. 

It was kind of nasal, though. He had this sing-song-y kind of intonation, not quite singing, not quite talking. A little cartoonish, even, like he was showing off his virtuosity and distinctiveness, but not hamming it up too much. It felt meaningful. He had this story to tell, and he had to get you to stay put, by any means necessary. So he almost comically stretched and bent every vowel to within inches of its limits. He bounced relentlessly on and around the bass like a human percussive instrument with squeaks and squawks and syllables I could barely make sense of but felt acutely in my chest. And combined with the Serious Gold, it felt almost alchemical. This was absolute genius shit.  

Each of the artists had their own signature style, but Eek-A-Mouse eclipsed them all, and he knew it. When he began chanting a song called Wa Do Dem…oh my fucking god, it was so DEF, so inventive and original, I couldn’t sit still. I sprang up from that bench and let my body do what the music insisted it do. I just…skanked. I felt like Shaggy on Scooby Doo, and just let my body go limp and glided my arms and feet forward and back, but stayed in place, pumping and slumping and sliding, and it felt perfectly natural. Like I was lounging on a sofa upright and in motion, if that makes sense.  

Freedom rose beside me and started trying to mimic my moves, and I tried to guide him, but they weren’t really anything I’d choreographed. I was just free flexing without any earthly concern for direction or purpose or meaning. A freestyle of the body, much the way Free had freestyled lyrically earlier. And Free got that. It glistened in his eyes in the spark of the El. Cincere, Math, and Just watched us and laughed, but not at us, with us. They got it, too. They understood completely. They knew intuitively that dances, all dances, sprang from moments like this.  

And the lyrics. It was like hip-hop. No, it was hip-hop. The same exact spirit and energy that went into hip-hop went into this music. Utterly indistinguishable. To love hip-hop was to love dancehall. The only difference is I couldn’t understand the words…at first. But we kept rewinding the tape, and the more I listened to the patois, the more I could make out what they were saying.  

“It’s English!” I screamed at Free, the revelation overwhelming, and he laughed. “It’s like broken English, right?? Like the English we were forced to speak, mixed with our own natural, original voices from Africa. That’s why you could understand the Dread, right? It was instinctual, almost subliminal, right?”  

I jabbed my finger at my head as I said this.  

“I wouldn’t go that far, God,” Free said, trying not to laugh, probably realizing his favorite mental titan was having a moment and had locked onto something intriguing. “We have a Patois in Panama, too. It’s from Jamaica, I think, so it was easy to catch Jamaican patois. Every country in the Caribbean has one, though.”  

This was what weed always did to me. Made everything feel like an epiphany of cosmic proportions or supernatural significance. By the next day, though, it would often be revealed to be the most obvious shit ever. Or judging by the way Math and Just were rolling around in the tobacco-strewn grass, laughing uncontrollably, maybe even sooner. 

We basically stayed this way til most of the weed was done, all the brew was drunk, and all the munchies were eaten. It was late, about midnight, and I had to bounce, or my mom would start trippin’. I might have been 15, but my mom would tell me quickly that I was not grown. And Freedom’s grandmother didn’t even allow Freedom to have keys. He was totally at her mercy.  

Freedom pocketed the cassette and thanked Math for playing the tunes. Math nodded, saying the tape was fresh as fuck and asking for a copy. Cincere was rolling another El for them, nodding in agreement with this silly grin on his face. Probably because he wasn’t so adept at rolling anymore, high as he was. I could see the El tattering as he tried to repair it.  

Freedom bowed formally, overdoing it as usual. We shouted “Peace to the Gods,” and then we broke north, leaving the three of them in the park.  

On the way back to our block, Free and I hugged one another about the shoulders again and, side by side, made our way down The Parkway, careful not to drift too close to the street. Instead of singing our Two-Man Crew Snoopy song, though, we sang Eek-A-Mouse as we staggered, more out of exhaustion than intoxication. It had been a long day.  

Mi say mi love a fi mi virgin girl, Mi say mi love a fi mi virgin girl,  

Dat hoe, mi really love her so, dat hoe, mi really love her so…  

I thought Eek was singing “That hoeeeee, me really love her so!” until Free corrected me, saying it was “Jah Know,” not “That Hoe!” 

We were still singing and laughing when we got to Lincoln Place, having decided to return the tape that night and not risk misplacing it or something stupid. Didn’t want to mess up relations with the backyard weed gate. The Dread heard us singing as we approached, and started laughing, recognizing the tune even in our — well, my— horrible patois.  

HOL’ DAT

“So di I love di Eek-A-Mouse chune?” he said to Freedom. “Wah di I think a Michigan and Smiley?”  

“Dem wicked, man!” Freedom said, handing the cassette to the dread. “Di whole crew did did rate it. Give thanks fi lend we di tape. We apprecilove it, star. Especially mi bredda here. Him near ’bout create him own dance inna di park. Di music did move him deep, deep, especially Eek-A-Mouse.”  

“Yuh know wah, hol’ dat,” he said, pushing the cassette back at Free. “Mi a go mek anadda tape. 

Mi happy yuh enjoy di music. Likkle more!”  

I saw all of this gesture-wise, and knowing I’d be able to get a copy from Free at some point, I said to the Dread, “That’s most righteous, my man!!”  

He pumped his fist against his heart as we walked away.  

When we reached the Parkway a minute later, we stopped right in front of my building.  

“Peace to the God,” I said. “You gonna be around tomorrow?”  

“Maybe. You never know,” he said, grinning mischievously. “Might end up on punishment again.” 

“Don’t forget to hookup Johnny’s cable, man,” I said, pointedly. “If you need a hand, let me know.” 

“I’ll do it after church,” Free said, smirking. “Don’t worry, I got it! It’ll only take a minute.” 

 Then he handed me the tape.  

“Yuh know wah, hol’ dat,” he said. 

I looked down at the tape in my hand. It felt more important than it was. I mean, tapes exchanged hands all the time. I recorded Mr. Magic and The World’s Famous Supreme Team radio shows on WHBI every week, and lent the tapes to people…sometimes. I mean, occasionally. OK, rarely. I was actually the worst when it came to parting with my shit. I knew, or at least I believed, if it left my possession, I was never gonna see it again. (And that just happened to be the case more often than not, so it wasn’t strictly paranoia.) So I only let go of objects I no longer felt a need to possess.  

Freedom handing me this tape felt like he was handing me a treasure. And he knew it because he knew this mental titan sometimes better than I knew myself.  

Freedom, on the other hand, was casually generous. You know? He didn’t fixate on keepsakes. He lived in the now, each moment a souvenir. I used to think that made him a little off—in the best way, but a danger to himself, too. I mean, shit, wasn’t the possession of things what made the world go around? Things got you props. Things got you high. Hell, things got you laid. 

People will do anything for things! I was afraid his generous heart would mark him as easy prey in a world where most people give only when they expect something in return. They see open hands and think “resource,” or “victim,” and not “friend.” 

But that was my fear. A fear that kept me selfish, fixated on losing the little bit I had. And it took someone free, like Freedom, to shed light on how ridiculous a hang-up that is.  

Free was wise. He knew things, I realized that day. He had a knowledge of self far beyond mine. 

Whatever happened to him on the road from Colón to Brooklyn had given him a glimpse of something I might never see from Kings County. We might sing about being a two-man crew, but Freedom was a one-man show, peerless—a true titan in a world of tiny minds.  

I was merely an admirer in his audience.  

“Peace to the God,” he said, and I returned the farewell, holding up the tape between us, pumping my fist against my heart.  

***

Baye McNeil is an author, columnist and activist from Brooklyn NY, living in Japan since 2004. His work can be found on bayemcneil.com