Da Introduction

 Growing up in New Orleans

 (7th Ward)

Before crime became the city’s second language, the 7th Ward moved to a rhythm all its own. It was a neighborhood painted in high-gloss porches, the comforting scent of Sunday mornings, and the crisp, starch-white precision of shirts headed off to Mass.

Then, by the mid-1980s, that rhythm violently skipped a beat.

People watch movies today and see a distorted, romanticized "glamor" in the fast money and street legends. But the reality was far more agonizing: it was a slow-motion fracturing of everything we held dear, everything we called home. As the crack epidemic swept through the 1980s and 1990s, our community was thrust into an unforgiving crucible of addiction, sudden violence, and suffocating poverty. This is the raw truth of what we lived through: the heartbreaking decay behind the myths, and the sheer will it took just to survive.

This isn't just a look back at history; this is my life laid bare. It’s the raw story of family bonds holding firm while the world outside unraveled, of navigating a brutal street culture before I even fully understood what was at stake, and of the terrifying, close-call encounters with crime that could have easily taken everything. This is about the relentless, everyday fight to survive the social decay of a city that raised us, stripped away our innocence, and left a scar on anyone who made it out alive.