Da Formula (In Da Box)

 

I was born in the city of New Orleans Louisiana in the year "1976" back then things looked like this

Unfortunately physically not being able to remember those times Let's fast forward to 10 years later to "1986" things look like this....and this is where it all begins 

I was raised in tha 7th Ward 

Tha 7th Ward was home to a predominantly Afro-Creole Community in tha 19th century leading up into tha late 80th's all tha way up until Katina Hit

I stayed in that area for tha majority of my younger years. That area located in Da Box which is (St Bernard, Calibone, Elyaisn Fleids, and St Claude) came to be known as (H.H.U)

 I stood on Touro St a block between Pauger and Frenchmen. It was the only Bloca that differed from other Bloca's in tha box. Not too much when down on Touro but its surroundings were a fool. Touro was like tha center of tha storm; if you stepped out of tha center you might get hit with winds going 75 miles an hour... 

I grew up in that middle house below the Greenish one.

 

Underneath our roof, I had everything I truly needed love, stability, and a warm meal. But looking out the window, my eyes always gravitated toward the world beyond our block. The things I craved the status, the fashion, the flashy lifestyle were entirely out of reach, teased only on rare occasions and even then in strict moderation. My parents were humble, blue-collar workers who put their heads down and worked until their hands were numb. Mama cooked in a hotel kitchen, sweating over hot stoves, while Daddy worked for the State of Louisiana, spending long, scorching hours cutting grass along the levees. Through sheer grit and sacrifice, they managed to raise three sons across three volatile decades, stretching from the ’60s to the ’90s. As the youngest, I came of age right at the dawn of the late ’80s and ’90s stepping straight into the relentless storm of the "Golden Crack Era"

 

At first, keeping my distance from that lyfe was easy mostly because of how fast and heavy the neighborhood transformed right before my eyes. Overnight, the whole atmosphere shifted. People went from barely scraping by, stressing over every unpaid bill, to suddenly flashing cash and flexin' basic luxuries. It got to the point where having nice things was a dead giveaway, like a flashing neon sign telling the whole block you were selling dope."

Believe it or not, early on in this era, it wasn't all out bloody warfare just yet. It was pure tension a toxic mix of heavy threats, street beefs, fistfights, guys flashing iron, and pistol-whippings just to establish power. You could feel a dark shift in the air, even if you couldn't fully wrap your mind around it. Being the youngest of the three Freeman boys, you’d assume my older brothers would’ve been caught up in the tide of this epidemic too. Whether it touched them or not, I can't say for sure... but I know one thing: they protected me from it. They never passed that torch to me."

   

In fact, I’d go as far as to say the only thing my middle brother ever passed down to me was a love for basketball. That boy could hoop—that orange ball was his passport. As long as he was holding a basketball, he could walk into any court, anywhere, untouched. Truth is, things were just calmer back in his day. Their peers weren't on that relentless killing stuff. Don't get me wrong, violence existed, but what came later was an endless cycle of murder after murder. Fast forward eight years—I know I’ve got you doing the math here, but stick with me... you got (1994) New Orleans Murder Capital same year I graduated from high school and to top it off tha Bill Clinton 1994 Crime La   

      Surviving that carnage while still waking up in the middle of the rubble was no walk in the park. My teenage years hit right as the Crack Era exploded. That quick money and high-voltage rush took my peers by storm—so many of them lost their souls before they even lost their lives. Look, I get it. Hollywood loves to glorify that time—making it look like a golden era for the underdog, the birth of street enterprise, Hip-Hop, and the culture we live in today. But there are levels to this, and TV only shows you the polished top layer—the New Jack City, King of New York, American Gangster view. They don’t show you the ground level, down in the debris. The real Boyz n the Hood level. The level where everyday people are forced to coexist with the menaces of society just to make it to tomorrow. That was my reality: surviving day by day, constantly searching for a way out of the only place I knew as home.