By: Mason Stoutamire
Photo from hiphop-n-more.com.
Sanyika Shakur, Kody Scott, and Monster were aliases of the same light. A quick Google search leads you to his transition from street life to his career as an writer/activist. His names mark important transitions in his life in Los Angeles. Kody Scott was born in 1963 to Houston-natives Ernest and Birdie. He was 11 when he was initiated in the Eight Tray Gangster Crips. “Monster” was a title given to him after reportedly beating a man so badly that his only recollection of the event was being beaten by something inhuman. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Monster Kody would convert to Islam and change his name to Sanyika Shakur in pursuit of a different life – a life giving back what he took from the street life with the persistent pressure from the law. What would soon inspire his career as a writer, Sanyika’s life became a legend of South Central Los Angeles.
Sanyika’s story filled my search history after I watched Vince’s music video for “Rose Street.” Vince’s self-titled album, released before last year’s holidays, intentionally demonstrates his love for storytelling. Not only does he tastefully execute each story to an audience of strangers, but his selection of stories reveals a multitude of inner-city struggles. He’s told the same flavor of deadpan life-and-death tales across his entire career but ‘RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART’ is his best telling to date. In telling his own story, Vince was also able to shed light on Monster Kody’s. His understanding of Kody’s story welcomes a proper education of who Monster Kody really was.
Sanyika’s story hasn’t been mentioned on social media since his death date but its appearance in the single’s intro questions why that is — it sounds like something out of a novel to the new ear. Moreover, the video for “Rose Street” was one of the earliest pieces of film directed by Vince himself. Sanyika’s story is juxtaposed by a serene pan of the coastline, suggesting a tragic benevolence to the way things are. The rest of the video focuses on this coastline while Vince’s raps surround your ears, cars whizzing by the busy highway. Vince’s video picks up where Sanyika’s story ended on June 6th, 2021.
Vince Staples always has confidence about his ability to do anything he wants. He doesn’t wish to rap but he’s one of the best rappers (ever). He doesn’t like performing but he’s touring on arguably the biggest stage of 2022: Tyler, the Creator’s CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST tour. His directing “Rose Street” informs an argument for Vince being a triple threat; another LL, Ice Cube, or Snoop. What can’t he do? If you haven’t been watching closely, it looks like Vince is another media-trained artist that knows exactly where to be at the right time. But it’s taken a while to become the talent he is today. This next album proves that for those in the back.
Rolling out his self-titled album, Vince revealed that, “music is the most popular experience that’s free.” Creating with the obstacles of corporate interests and street politics as a celebrity, he’s adjusting his public persona with each release. With ‘Vince Staples,’ we saw Vince at an impressive transparency likened to a real friend from around the way. With ‘RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART,’ Vince shows the value of those relationships with tonal hydraulics — he shows the security and love in the relationships cultivated in and out of your area code despite appearances. If the last album was an introduction to the real Vince, this album lets you into his emotionally calloused center on a daily basis. He’s 27 now. He’s past chasing a bag, he’s trying to bring the experiences from a love-ridden life to our ears.
Vince grew up twenty minutes away from Florence and Normandie St., the rallying point for the Rodney King riots and the main crossroads of Sanyika Shakur’s set. They both felt the gravitational pull of gang life growing up and chose to observe from a cautious distance. In a sense, they were in love with their neighborhoods before they knew how much they’d end up losing. There’s even a possibility (and evidence, in some cases) for them to have engaged in the activities at some point. But before they lost everything, Shakur took to writing and Vince took to the mic.
These days, Vince’s Long Beach bounce is elastic as ever. He’s dancing on bass lines like Quik on “DJ Quik,” balancing loss with anger on “When Sparks Fly,” and imbuing tracks like “Bang That” with an aquatic Mustard beat. Departing from metallic snares and super barred-up verses, Vince carries a grieving delivery on 'RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART'. Vocally, he’s reaching for the same Cherry-ave enunciation and Twitter wit that brought people into ‘Vince Staples.’ Thematically, he’s juxtaposing jovial stories of brotherhood with the likelihood of death on a sunny day in Long Beach.
Loss isn’t new to him; every verse of near-death, west coast testimony is coupled with a somber memory. He remembers entrusting the blower to a little one, distilling life to bitter sweet lemonade, and shooting the function up at 14 across 42 minutes. Heartache from the girl down the street, losing a friend to violence, fluctuating prices of local food spots, Ramona Park's seen it all. Instead of explaining why he chooses to close off so much of his story — and why he’ll never give his money to a bad b*tch — Vince opens up about Poppy Street's affect on his heart every day.
There’s little to report about Shakur’s cause of death in 2021 upon being discovered in a homeless shelter without a pulse. However, his spirited resistance against law enforcement and political awareness suggests his death being an ulterior consequence of living as a New Afrikan. Shakur was trying to make sense of 1986 America with his education of Malcolm, Huey, and Robert readings on the black struggle. The temporal disconnect birthed a nuanced group like the Republic of New Afrika that recognized citizens “of a nation unto itself in the belly of the beast,” in a similar way that Jim Crow directly affected black populations in the early 20th century. They were trying to take control of the forces that built their limited identity.
When William Broyles Jr. needed an authentic gang member’s account for a TV show script in 1991, he reached out to Léon Bing, a fashion journalist that was knowledgeable about South Central’s — Sanyika Shakur’s — connections. Broyles lit the figurative fire in Shakur to begin writing his stories as lived experiences. Shakur’s writings went from hand to hand until they fell into Terry McDonnell’s (then editor of Esquire Magazine), who passed it to Morgan Entrekin for publishing. With the first printing at 65,000 copies, Shakur’s stories left his heart and traveled to the hands of literary critics and others living similar stories. The Times likened his “journalistic eye for observation” and “ear for street language” to two of the most distinguished voices in literary journalism, Tom Wolfe and Richard Price. That’s magic. The interlude, “The Spirit of Monster Kody” highlights their relationship as joint-storytellers. “Did you really write this book?” mirrors the criticism that follows rappers that really live what they rap: certain people can’t believe it. As marketable as Vince Staples may appear, he’s also aware of the boxes people want to put him in, their limitations included. But he’s only gotten this far with the spirit mentioned by Monster Kody: the spirit of a thug.
Monster Kody wrote the bestseller, Monster, while incarcerated in 1993; he continued writing as a distinct act of rebellion against the systemic forces surrounding him. He then reached out to other revolutionaries across the planet and built a rapport. With an increasing media presence as a writer, Sanyika sought to, “bear down and use what I learned to aid someone else from falling into the traps that I had fallen into, getting out of that trap… and correcting the person that made the trap.” Sharing this struggle became his coping mechanism.
“I’m never lonely, even my daydreams is haunted / I keep buying smaller houses, but I won’t have peace until the Lord allows it,” leaves you sympathetically stuck on “The Blues.” Beneath the reflective verse, there’s a similar dimension of trauma that riddles both Vince and Shakur. Vince makes the same decision as Shakur when he releases these stories that plague his heart. There’s no hope in healthy coping mechanisms when the ghosts of your area code haunt you every day.
Life-threatening fun aside, Vince never loses sight of the consequences for rolling like he does. Tyson Smith, the voice you hear on the self-titled album’s, “Lakewood Mall,” remembers Vince as a kid, “You always knew when to go home and you always knew when it wasn’t worth it.” This instinct carries into his release economy — he doesn’t have a stale album guilty of riding an expired wave. He’s constantly repackaging the defining sounds of his life.
‘Summertime ‘06’ (2015) was released during a time when painting the horrors of your hometown with a hazy, grainy undertone was hot, “Norf Norf” has nearly 165 trillion streams. ‘Big Fish Theory’ (2017) encouraged the growing bond between rap music and European electronic music, “Big Fish” and “745” are two of his most show-ready songs to this day; you won’t hear Kendrick Lamar and SOPHIE on anybody’s album but Vince’s. Not only has Vince stayed musically relevant, but each release marks a sincere point in his artistic progression.
With ‘RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART,’ there’s a new level of intention that doesn’t look for soundtrack placements or radio hits. You’re hearing a marriage of Vince’s beloved sarcasm and intellect through the polished craft of a mama’s boy that’s seen too much. He’s mentioned how capable he is of wearing different hats; this time, he’s wearing them all with pride. “We got these daytime shows that’s booking us when we could be that show. If we took artists off of magazine covers, how long do these things last?” underlines his attitude moving forward.
He’s becoming more than what we draw him out to be, by his own volition. Signed merch drops, a comic book issue, and a Vince Staples-directed music video that reminds you of The Vince Staples Show’s off kilter camera work. He’s taking control of everything an artist like him would pay someone else to control. He’s replying to your NBA playoff tweets after promoting his music video. He’s asking El Pollo Loco for an artist-meal-deal via nighttime tweet. With Vince, the musical experience gives you way more than just a new batch of songs; it's context to the thug sh*t you can't take off.
Mason Stoutamire can be reached at mstoutamire6@gmail.com
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