Archive for June, 2009

Here is some footage of a show we did at Churchills back in December. Arqui is still in the band, but he is on vacation. I am just writing up some compositions for our next show. Stay tune.

“I ain’t got no time to be trying to worry about what to say,” says Overtown legend Crack Head Black Belt (aka “John”). He continues, “Fuck that shit. Be yourself. It takes you to be fucked up before you get to that point. It takes you through all those fake ass false situations.”

He holds his hands up and asks, “Do I pick up the left fork or the right fork? The soup spoon? The crab spoon….fuck that shit. Gimme the salad, I’ll just grab it with my fucking hands. I don’t need no utensils. Take all the silverware away. I’ll just grab it with my fingers.”
From White Room to Space, from PS 14 to Goldrush, from Vagabond and beyond, from dusk til dawn, Crack Head Black Belt makes his rounds. He is friendly, non-threatening, he helps downtown club-hoppers park their cars, and his motto seems to be, “Anything you want, Crack Head Black Belt can get ya.”
I recently watched him change a flat tire (right outside of PS 14) in about two minutes, and because of his persistence and charm, he is usually given compensation. A couple bucks here, a handful of nickels and dimes there. Usually, when I have had too many drinks at The Vagabond, I go across the street and chill with my man, CHBB.
“Didn’t your mama tell you not to go beyond the railroad tracks?” he asks on a recent Friday morning. “You can’t hide behind the alcohol. You are getting fucked up.” I shrug as the sun begins to rise, and he continues, “Cops sitting right over there watching me, but I’m so high, I don’t give a fuck.” I see the police car parked across the street. CHBB sits down on a plastic chair near the parking lot, the day’s first Metro Mover passes the 11th St. station. Crack Head Black Belt continues, “What’s done in the dark comes to the light. When you get to jail, you gotta spread eagle. They don’t know your crimes. They say ‘do you own or do you rent? What’s your assets? Where you work at?’ Then they start to juggle with your ass. If it’s a State case…they gonna keep you there for at least thirty days. You can’t afford a lawyer? You get a public defender that’s on their side. You don’t own anything, you don’t have a job? What you gonna do? So you get a year and a day. You take that. You learn shit.”
I follow him to the convenience store a few blocks down the street. “Gimme a rose,” he tells the store clerk. The woman at the counter hands him a small glass cylinder with a plastic rose inside of it. He also purchases a piece of “chore boy,” which is a generic Brillo pad. He takes the rose out of the “stem”, and cuts a piece of the chore boy. “I like the chore boy to be cut,” he says, “Stay here a minute.” He walks towards the dumpsters in the back of the parking lot. I go inside the store and purchase an orange soda and a Mr. Goodbar. This is my usual Friday morning breakfast. Crack Head Black Belt appears about five minutes later as I finish my candy bar. He is exhaling one of the largest clouds of smoke I have ever seen. “I got a buzz already,” he said, “See, we connecting.” His eyes seem bigger now, opened wide like saucers, “Like the Price is Right,” he says, “Let’s say lower or higher. We coulda won the grand prize. Thank you for letting me be myself. This is deep. You know what I’m sayin?”
We walk briskly down 11th St., but he suddenly slows down. “Wait right here,” he walks over to a couple of young men on the corner. “No, that ain’t the po-lice,” I hear him say to a man with a quarter in his ear, “Just two rocks, that’s all I want. Fuck all that shit.” He returns and we continue our late-night/early morning stroll through Overtown. “When you wash the clothes, it all comes out in the rinse. The pens, the dimes, the numbers you thought you lost. Everything comes out in the rinse.” He continues, “I don’t want to be no uppity black man. You can’t be too edumacated in this here society. Master don’t want you to know how to read.” He continues, “They say, ‘Boy you be speakin too proper, you must be a faggot! Sayin all them big words, my niggah. Whats up my niggah? What you need my niggah? Who you know round here, my niggah? Why you trying me, my niggah?’” He pauses and says, “What that mean, jit? I don’t know what that means.”
He keeps talking, as we approach my car. “You are already what you are. See, that’s the mistake. That’s what you don’t see. You are already what you are gonna be in the future. You already there! So the only thing is to remember what got you there. Keep a balance on it. You are already a celebrity; you’re just on a different level. We all are celebrities. Some people are the cameramen, the scriptwriters; you gotta have all the people to make the star. Everybody plays the part in that shit. If you aint got the right photographer to take the picture, someone to hold the microphone…” I give him some of the coins in my car’s ashtray and drive away.

I interviewed David Banner last year, right before his last album came out. It was for Prunk TV. We drove around for over an hour, and so I have been using some of the scrap footage. Recently, someone emailed me saying that I was lying about this. Someone named Karen had told him that it was her in the car with David Banner. I think its funny that someone would lie about being me, the video has no watermark at all. As you can see, others have tried to claim it as their own. I think that what David Banner says in this little snippet needs to be heard. Know what I’m saying?