Cross the Tracks: A Memoir

PROLOGUE

Me and my mom at Angola Prison in Louisiana.

Welcome to death row, 2010. Clang!

The sound of iron bars closing me in.

News reporters and the local Baton Rouge newspaper, the Advocate, were getting ratings and sales like they’d never seen before. The system had me. They wanted me to spend the rest of my life in jail. They alleged that I’d hired a hit man to commit murder. The same night they accused me of this crime, I was in my studio putting together some tracks to be released. Body Bag and 187 were being cut. Soon the lyrics to my songs would be on trial, as well as my body and soul.

No witnesses, a forced confession, and no DNA or physical evidence that would warrant a conviction, but there I sat at a table with my defense attorney pleading not guilty. Then they used against me the thing I loved most—my own music.

Yo Marlo / He got a Monte Carlo / That bitch Trey / I want that bitch dead / Here go the key…

I had spit that lyric metaphorically, as storytelling. It did not mean I paid someone money to do a crime. Marlo was a friend of mine. During an interrogation, he was told by police that I had even issued a hit on his life for twenty-five grand. Several corrupt law officials were set on making a case for murder. They interrogated this young man for hours, fabricating lies, then only recording what they wanted the courts to hear. In an even deeper speculation, they interpreted a tattoo on his arm to mean he was my hit man for hire, waiting on me to issue orders for him to carry out.

I was being charged with the murder of Terry Boyd. He was the uncle of my child that I’d fathered with his sister. The district attorney’s case suddenly tanked when Marlo finally got on the stand and told under oath how the police had obtained his confession. Right after that, the police took the stand and denied what Marlo had said.

I knew all this was in retaliation for a track I’d released called Fuck the Police. In it I mentioned almost every branch of law enforcement I could possibly think of—including the FBI and the district attorney. I had made them look bad, so they wanted revenge. That would have been their justice, to see me facing lethal injection.

Got old it got worser, my hustle got deadly / Runnin’ and duckin’ from dat dirty bitch Don Kelly…

That was a lyric in the first verse of Fuck the Police. Don Kelly went on to become Captain Donald Kelly, giving the city thirty-two years of service. My verses told the tale of how they would pull me over and try to extort me for money. I went on to let them know how I felt with the chorus line:

Cities, FUCK ’EM!

Narcotics, FUCK ’EM!

FEDS, FUCK ’EM!

DAs, FUCK ’EM!

We don’t need you bitches on our street say with me

FUCK DA POLICE! (fuck ’em!) FUCK DA POLICE! (fuck ’em!)

Witout dat badge you a bitch and a half niggah

I believe this song and the two songs I created the night Terry Boyd was gunned down were the seeds of a hate relationship between me and the Baton Rouge Police Department. Not because they had evidence linking me to a murder, not because they had their bogus statement, but because I had exercised my freedom of speech. Because a Black man had spoken truth to power in the American Deep South.

Chapter 1

BADAZZ BOOSIE, SOUTH BATON ROUGE—THE BEGINNING

Cross the Tracks thuggin’.

Cross the Tracks is what we call my hood. Being raised there gave me the morals I live by, my values on family and life, and most of all, my codes for hustling. As far back as eight years old, I was hustling. It’s just what people from my neighborhood did.

My partners and I started knocking off the Circle K gas stations. We would stop there daily before hitting the schoolhouse. We would clean their candy aisles out, planning to sell what we stole. More than books, product lined our backpacks: Snickers bars, Reese’s Cups, and all the flavors of Now and Laters. It became an easy thirty- to forty-dollar-a-day hustle for us. As an eight-year-old have-not, that was a lot of paper to be in your pocket. We were getting it.

After school, we would hurry to the crib to jump on our bikes. Riding our bikes all over town was our shit. I considered myself fortunate to even have a bike, especially since my father, Raymond Hatch, was a user. He played with the monkey, but I guess the monkey wasn’t on his back like for most people who used. Raymond always made sure home was straight, to the best of his abilities. Me and my dudes all had reflector fetishes. It was a big thing back in those days to be riding your pedal cruiser with the sun beaming the brightest off your front wheel. Of course whoever got the most reflectors was deemed the man by the neighborhood girls. I stole so many damn reflectors… you get the point.

We’d ride until our stomachs growled with hunger, and there was only one place in town we would stop—Mrs. Mula’s place. If you had six dollars, you didn’t need McDonald’s or Burger King. Mrs. Mula was so good at cooking that she should have had her own golden arches and her own slogan—Over a billion ghetto plates served. Her fried turkey wings and deep-fried pig tails could have put any casual dining chain out of business.

Her dilapidated home was like a real restaurant, and she made sure she had something for everyone’s taste and budget. Flavored Dixie Cups for the shawties, an assortment of different candy; she even had pickles for the girls who liked to put peppermints down inside them and suck the juice. Hell, Mrs. Mula even sold pig lips, if that was what you liked. She was one hell of a cook and definitely a boss hustler.

So much came with the good, and so much more came with the bad. Crime, guns, and homicides plagued my environment like they were a natural part of life. Guns were easy to come by—entirely too easy. When I was just nine years old, my cousin shot my other cousin with a handgun. I had always thought all that blood you see in the movies was just some fugazi red coloring to make the scene more intense, to sell more tickets. How could a person bleed out so much and survive? But that day, I saw that shit was for real. My cousin didn’t die, which was a good thing, but he sure spent four months in the hospital. That was the first really violent thing I saw in my early years.

Every kid had someone they looked up to. With drug dealer role models like Calvin Ricks and Kenny Wayne, there was always something to see. These big ballers were the men who had it going on, and they controlled the streets. They were like the Black Pablo Escobar and El Chapo.

At eleven, what most would consider to still be a tender age, I witnessed my first murder.

My friends and I were parked across the tracks like we normally would be after doing our bullshit—things like riding our bikes up to Louisiana State University or hanging out at the game room. Sometimes we’d just cruise to the levee to throw rocks at cars passing by; that was when we were on some really dumb shit. There were times when we felt like young playas and would hit the Roosevelt Projects to either chase a young cutie-pie to see how far we could get, or just mess around and play some basketball.

On this particular day, we were just chilling on our bikes. We watched the local kingpins making their money. The air smelled like rain even though the sun was shining bright. In the Dirty South, you never know what Mother Nature is up to. Like any other woman, she always has her own agenda. Rain one day, sunny the next, or sending hurricanes like Katrina through to show who is the real boss. Baton Rouge was known to go from sunshine to a flood in a heartbeat.

While chilling on the railings, we peeped a dude rolling up slow and smooth on his bike. He was calm and cool. The dude he was approaching was also chilling and none the wiser, until the rider called his name like he was his friend. The target turned around and all you heard was pop-pop-pop-pop. The orange blaze blossomed out the barrel of the pistol as the first four shots entered the target’s chest, then sent the helpless man tumbling over. Just to be certain, the shooter let loose two more rounds up close. The deal was sealed and the victim was a dead man.

What’s crazy is it wasn’t out of the ordinary for things like that to happen. In my hood that was normal, everyday life. Cross the Tracks had seen endless mayhem and murder. It felt like the thing to do when my friends and I went over to the corpse and emptied the dead man’s pockets.

Chapter 2

GROWING UP IN THE BLOODY RED STICKS

Hustling was a way of life for real. There was always gambling and drug selling, which were a given, but one legitimate hustle in my hood was food. I’ve already spoken on Mrs. Mula, who had the everyday food business on lock in the community, but people also did what we called suppers.

These were gatherings where someone would throw down on the grill or prepare dishes to be sold at a backyard get-together. Music would be blaring out of speakers like a concert was going on, and you could see some of the finest girls from the neighborhood there. Most of the time, they would come from all over because they knew the men with the deep pockets and fly whips would be hanging around. These chicks would be dressed to impress, wearing their tight-fitting booty shorts, designer minidresses, and the latest fresh Nikes. The chicks spared no expense, from their wardrobes to their hairdos.

Suppers were a way for people to do a little better than just make ends meet. There would be gambling going down at these suppers—rolling dice, different card games, and dominoes. Everything had a wager on it. The person throwing the supper was considered the house, like at a casino, and they took a rake too. In the hood we called it the cut money.

A typical supper consisted of a simple menu: fried catfish, potato salad, and bread. Some people whipped out the grills, getting fancy with burgers and slow-cooked ribs. It was an amazing thing, though, to see people in the hood coming and supporting each other. Some came just to gamble and some just to check out the eye candy, but it didn’t matter who you were. When there was a supper, you were invited. It was all about the Benjamins, and save the drama for another day. Suppers were a tradition going back to at least the early sixties. Food and gambling were the bedrock foundation of Cross the Tracks.

It seemed to me that if you grew up in South Baton Rouge, either one or both of your parents were substance abusers. Drugs were second nature in the hood and a primary coping mechanism. That monkey was on the back of almost every adult in the community at one time or another. Shooting cocaine was as commonplace as sipping water. It seemed normal, but if you indulged in that lifestyle, you had to maintain it—and that meant selling dope.

It seemed like all the women were attracted to the men who pushed coke. The cream of the crop weren’t fucking around with a broke man when they could have a dope man, one who was sending them to the mall to shop or to the beauty salon to get themselves together—hair, nails, whatever they wanted. If you were into the high-class—or should we say so-called high-class, ghetto-fabulous-type chicks—you needed money in my city. It was Cross the Tracks business as usual.

Sundays had a different atmosphere in the hood. The park would be full of people playing softball or basketball, having a good time. No doubt, food would be everywhere and available—I’m surprised there weren’t more obese people, as much as everyone ate. This was a day the young could hustle as well. We would scout the cars, basically looking for the drug dealers who had even the smallest specks of dirt on their rides. These cats took pride in their whips, especially when they were on the prowl. It was easy for us to hustle up on some soap and water and wash their cars, Johnny-on-the-spot.

It wasn’t always all good in the hood, though. We had sad times, like when somebody lost their life and had to be buried. Funerals in my hood were like those in a lot of other Southern towns. Everyone would come out to pay their respects to the deceased. Family, no matter what, was strong. We respected that by showing up. There were a lot of murders and deaths. You had to be hard to the core, because surely there wasn’t an in-between for you. If you were hard, you earned your respect. If you were soft, let’s just say problems were going to find you. People knew who—and who not—to fool with.

I learned a lot from my father, Raymond, even though he used drugs. Before he’d go off on any binge, he made sure that family was handled. He took care of home first and partied second. I had to respect him for that. My mother, Connie, also held down a job, as a schoolteacher. I guess you can say, despite the problems we had, I still came from a loving set of parents. We didn’t have much as far as material things, but what we did have, we learned to be grateful for. Because there was a multitude of young ones who didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to toss it out of.

Raymond had bought my bike, which was my pride and joy. Every time I rode, I felt like I had a Mercedes-Benz. All the reflectors we stole for our bikes were like when the ballers had fancy cars to attract the women. The more reflectors you had beaming from your spokes, the more side-glances from the girls.

The LSU campus was always the perfect spot to come up on a female or a hustle. The college kids would park and chain their bikes up to one of those metal racks. We would wait until the coast was clear, then we would snatch all the reflectors off their spokes in seconds. When we rode at night, the streetlights would shine down, making it look like Christmas trees were rolling down the block. We would ride all over the city, including out to a place called Catfish Town. Those times made it seem not so bad to be an adolescent from Cross the Tracks.

Life was crazy coming up. When you’re trying to come up and win, everybody acts like that is what they want for you. But once you climb that ladder, put in that work, and become that man, the same people turn on you. They be the same ones hating that you made it—dudes ten years your senior on about some old beef that didn’t make sense. Most of the time, it would be some made-up shit, just to get something started. One thing I was true to was being a soldier, and I didn’t care what it was about. I wasn’t a punk