It wasn’t until I started opening up more and sharing my stories with Street Sense and Second Story Cards about my tough struggles that I was convinced I was a storyteller. I had to admit to myself that I did have plenty of stories to tell, but the ball didn’t really start to roll until others started trying to dog out my name and notoriety. I became a tight-lipped sealed type of guy. I’ve always held my innermost sanctum to myself because I realized the repercussions of being loose-lipped. There’s a line in one of my poems about loose lips sinking ships. I had to keep things organized in my mind or at least try to, especially with guys like Biggie, Jay, and Lil Wayne memorizing their rap catalogs and laying lyrics in one take. The game of life had been getting more difficult because of folks running games and causing confusion, so you had to be pretty sharp to have things go in your favor. Just how many folks were granting favors? Most of the time I had so much stuff on my mind that I wouldn’t focus on the immediate. I fumbled a lot, searching. So when it came down to my details I had to be calculating.
I got the ball rolling for the documentary creation. By the time I got housed in September 2019 and dropped my poetry books as I had promised myself and worked so hard, I came to the point that I wanted to build and expand on the nest of stories I had incubated and created into the book Federal City Hustlerz. The book cultivated itself practically as I sat back and tried my best to enjoy my new space. I struggled some to maintain my focus in my new space so I paced myself. The cherry on top was when I started to enjoy the documentaries channel on my TV. I got to see a whole lot of nurturing stuff there. I saw stories of homeless folks underground in New York surviving, a plethora of good stuff including the exceptional tale of Nicky Barnes.
I was strictly dropping poem bombs in Street Sense because I had a lot to express about being dogged out. We started creating videos of my work but then he convinced me to expand my creative expression and it worked! It clicked because most of my poems were based on one life experience or another.
