Tonight, my brothers lost a good friend of theirs to gunfire on the streets of Oakland. For many of us that have grown up here, it’s a fact of life, that death may come too soon. In most places, murder is met with outrage, but here we cry and move on. Patch it up after we purge ourselves and get a tat to memorialize the memories. This is our way of remembering, but also our way of numbing and normalizing the pain.
It just so happened that Clif Soulo sent over this track earlier today with a feel and first verse that conjure up the death we are now dealing with. “Feel It In The Air” was a song from Beanie Sigel’s The B.Coming but Clif captured the vibe and made it his own. Unfortunately the first verse is about a sequence of events we know too well–a sequence that has struck a nerve this evening.
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DL:
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So zone out to this as you remember Jerrod Hubbard, or any of your other homies that have passed in recent memory. Extract all the best they brought to the world and live it out in yourself. And to all of you who don’t know anyone who has wrongfully fallen before a gun, don’t write off all who have as criminals who had it coming. There is no choir boy/felon dichotomy in Oakland, just a city of people trying to make a way out of no way.
And sometimes that hustle comes crashing down, but trust that their loss hurts some one. Respect and honor them and their families. And you can start doing that by stopping being such an arrogant and despicable prick in the local newspaper online forums. All this talk about how murder victims deserve their fates and the perpetrators should be locked up for life, is based on your own privileged naivete so please save your rants for other ignorant people.
When lives are lost in Oakland, I feel it. I am training myself not to be numb to it, training myself to feel it deeply, because only when we do, will we be able to begin to right this ship. So if you see Jerrod’s skin or hair or face and assume he was just another nameless thug who had it coming, go play in traffic. That is all.
Rest In Peace
Live In Peace
