Growing Up Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Their ‘thuggish ruggish’ doo-wop and rapid raps spoke to the turbulence of inner cities during the ’90s
Recalling and recording the internal machinations you had when you were younger can make for beautiful essays. But other than a few key details, I don’t remember much about the first time I witnessed a drive-by.
I couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. My father walked my older brother and I from his car to my Grandma Idelle’s house, just a couple of homes away from the corner. She lived in the Ashburn-Gresham neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.
As we walked along the one-way street, an old-looking car came driving in the opposite direction. I looked into the open passenger side window of the approaching car; I saw a light-skinned dude who looked a lot like Layzie Bone from the rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
This is a drive-by, a voice in my head said.
The young men in the car shot up someone hanging around the house across the street from us. The shock I felt was less about the violence; I’m not sure I was old enough to fully comprehend the imminent danger. We were walking, and all of a sudden, my father had pushed John and me to the hard pavement and jumped on top of us.
Your brain can edit youthful memories retroactively, especially if they are traumatic. I can recall some details, but I don’t remember others, like what the murdered man looked like. Was the voice I heard that day my imagination, or is it now a false recollection? Maybe it was God whispering in my ear. I was so young; how could I have known the term “drive-by?”
As a kid taught to see in spiritual terms, not just flesh and bone, I thought the group’s music had an intrinsic resonance. You can’t listen to Bone and not hear the battle between God and the devil, good and evil, heaven and hell.
This is probably a weird way to talk about how much I love Bone and my memories of listening to their music growing up. But for me, I will always connect the group to some of my deeper feelings.
