Chapter 002
Chapter 002
His real name was Lorenzo Washington.
Big Joe became the OG of this territory before he was even twenty-five.
The Crips were an organization born in South Central Los Angeles in 1969. They had spent more than half their existence amid blood and concrete, and hip-hop had grown out of that same concrete.
Music born in the hood.
The language of the hood.
The rhythm of the hood.
Gangs and hip-hop had always been inseparable.
Big Joe’s older brother, known as Lil K, had also been a rapper. A Crip who had made a name for himself in the LA underground scene, he died in a drive-by shooting at the age of twenty-two.
Before the blood on the asphalt had even dried, a tribute track had already been released, and that tribute made it onto the radio.
That was how death worked in the hood.
It was a place where one person’s career bloomed over another person’s coffin.
If my brother were still alive, he would have turned the whole industry upside down by now.
Big Joe filled the void left by his brother with force.
He was good with a gun, but he could not hold a microphone.
So instead, he chose to nurture those who could.
That was what making it out meant in the hood. If one person succeeded, the entire neighborhood ate.
Just as Neymar supported the favela and Dr. Dre represented Compton, whenever a rapper from the hood made it onto the Billboard charts, there was always money and connections from the older guys in the neighborhood behind them.
(Translator’s Note:Neymar (born 1992) - Brazilian footballer referenced as an example of one successful figure financially supporting or symbolically representing a poorer community.)
(Translator’s Note:Favela - A Brazilian urban poor community or informal settlement.)
(Translator’s Note:Billboard - Refers to the U.S. music charts used as a benchmark of mainstream commercial success.)
Big Joe took it upon himself to play that role as well.
He gathered talented people from within his territory, paid their studio expenses, provided beats, and built connections for them.
The problem was—
Shit. Every last one of them sucks these days.
Sunk deep into the sofa, Big Joe stared up at the ceiling while puffing on a cigar.
A demo track was playing through the speakers, and listening to it was torture.
Things had been different in the old days.
The Crips had produced Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and Coolio. During the golden age of West Coast hip-hop, there had been a time when Crip-affiliated rappers dominated the Billboard charts.
(Translator’s Note:Snoop Dogg (born 1971) - American rapper strongly associated with West Coast hip-hop and Long Beach/Los Angeles rap culture.)
(Translator’s Note:Warren G (born 1970) - American rapper and producer associated with West Coast hip-hop and the G-funk era.)
(Translator’s Note:Coolio (1963–2022) - American rapper associated with Los Angeles and mainstream 1990s hip-hop success.)
But these days?
Stars were emerging one after another from the Bloods’ side.
The Bloods were dominating the charts, the Bloods were going viral, and the Bloods were landing record-label contracts.
Fuck.
Falling behind in the music scene was the second most humiliating thing after getting shot in the streets.
Gang wars were not fought with guns alone.
They were fought through culture as well.
If the Crips’ presence in hip-hop declined, that also meant their status in the streets was declining.
Then, in the middle of all that—
Bang. Bang.
The iron door sounded twice.
Dustin, the huge one, and Jamal, the man with the teardrop tattoo.
Dustin stood 192 centimeters tall and weighed 120 kilograms. He had once been a high school football lineman, but after a knee injury cost him his scholarship, he ended up on the streets.
Then there was Jamal.
He weighed only 68 kilograms and was thin as a rail.
Within the Crips, he was nicknamed Mad Dog because, when he actually got angry, he drew his gun with terrifying speed.
The two of them opened the door and entered.
An Asian man was caught between them.
What’s with that nerd?
With his shirt neatly buttoned and his tidy appearance, he looked like the very definition of a straight-A student.
And then—
“Then make a beat right here. Something killer.”
The Asian man began opening the zipper of his carrier bag with trembling hands.
He took out a MIDI keyboard and placed it on the table, connected the audio interface, and pulled a laptop from his backpack.
Big Joe watched while slowly exhaling a long stream of smoke.
He had no expectations whatsoever.
If the guy was terrible, he would simply scare him a little and send him on his way.
But then...
Ta, ta-tat. Ta, ta-tat.
The hi-hat came first.
(Translator’s Note:Hi-hat — cymbal sound used rhythmically in drum programming)
A metallic sound.
The notes landed at regular intervals, but there was a strange swing to the rhythm.
It had not been programmed mechanically. There were clear traces of the timing being deliberately pushed and pulled ever so slightly.
Huh?
Next came the kick.
Boom. Boom-boom.
An 808 kick.
(Translator’s Note:808 — originally from the Roland TR-808; now shorthand for the deep kick and bass sounds common in hip-hop and trap)
The speakers were too small to deliver the full force of the vibration, but there was groove in it.
The kind of groove that made your body move on its own.
Just as Dustin unconsciously began nodding his head to the rhythm—
“!”
The snare came in.
(Translator’s Note:Snare — backbeat drum element)
Clack!
A dry rimshot sound.
(Translator’s Note:Rimshot — percussive hit with a sharper, drier attack)
It landed precisely on the second and fourth beats while ghost notes slipped through the spaces between them.
(Translator’s Note:Ghost note — softer, lightly played rhythmic note)
That was not a pattern a beginner could ever create.
...Well, look at this.
The bassline entered.
The 808 bass growled as it crawled along the floor.
Glide had been applied, causing the notes to flow as though sliding into one another.
(Translator’s Note:Glide — pitch sliding between notes, common in 808 bass programming)
Then the hi-hat shifted into double time, and the beat suddenly gained a tremendous sense of speed.
“Oh... shit.”
Jamal uncrossed his arms.
The gang members playing pool in the corner lowered their cues.
Even the ones sitting on the sofas turned their heads.
The Asian man’s fingers began moving across the keyboard.
The melody came next.
A piano tone settled over the beat.
The progression started in a minor key and descended by semitones.
It was dark and damp, a blurred melody like streetlights on a road at night.
Then reverb spread through it, causing the sound to diffuse like fog.
Dustin’s head was now clearly bobbing up and down.
Even his knees were moving to the rhythm.
“...yo, yo, yo.”
Big Joe made the sound unconsciously.
He did not even realize he had spoken.
The words had simply escaped his throat.
The Asian man adjusted something on the mixer channel and raised the bass frequencies a little more.
The entire room began to vibrate.
It felt as though the low frequencies were crawling across their skin.
“Bruh, he cookin’.”
Jamal, who had been toying with his gun moments earlier, was now cutting through the air with his palm to the rhythm.
Soon, he began muttering.
At first, it was nothing more than an incomprehensible hum, but it gradually became clearer.
“My dawg took three to the chest on Hoover. Sixteen years old.”
It was a freestyle.
Improvised rhymes delivered over the beat.
The Asian man continued staring only at the screen.
He was so immersed that it was impossible to tell whether he was even aware of the reactions around him.
His fingers never stopped moving over the keys.
The moment he completed one loop, he immediately began layering another sound over it.
“......”
Big Joe’s back had completely left the sofa.
His upper body leaned forward.
Then, at that moment, the beat changed.
The Asian man inserted a break.
Every instrument stopped for a single beat before they all crashed back in together with one kick.
It was the drop.
“SHEEEESH!”
“Nah, nah, nah, this go crazy! THIS GO CRAZY!”
“On God, this shit different!”
Big Joe swallowed.
...He’s real.
The Asian man played the final note.
The lingering resonance flowed from the speakers before gradually fading away.
“AYYYYYYY!”
“Dat boy SNAPPIN’! On my mama, dat boy SNAPPIN’!”
It felt like my heart was about to explode.
For the record, that was not a metaphor.
...What the hell did I just do?
I could barely process what was happening around me.
My vision was blurry, and the sounds around me reached my ears in a muffled haze, as though I were underwater.
“This shit hard!”
“Cuz, where you been hiding?!”
People were shouting all kinds of things.
The huge guy smacked me on the shoulder, and the force nearly knocked me over.
Then the skinny guy began fiddling with something on my laptop.
The beat I had just made started playing through the speakers again.
The volume was even louder than before.
“Yo, yo...”
The skinny guy started freestyling again.
Another gang member beside him began beatboxing along with the rhythm, while another pulled out his phone and started recording.
This was my chance...
Run.
Thinking quickly, I pretended to answer a phone call.
“Yes, Mom.”
In an instant, the noise around me dropped by an entire level.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m running a little late... Yeah, I’ll be home soon. Yeah.”
In Black culture, mothers held an absolute position.
There was a reason people said things like On my mama.
When swearing on their lives, they said, I swear on my mother.
That was how sacred and untouchable mothers were.
I gestured that I needed to step outside for a moment to take the call.
As expected, they let me go without resistance.
...Forget the equipment.
Compared to my life, it was worth nothing.
But I needed to take the laptop.
My assignment files were on it.
Wait, though. Wouldn’t it look suspicious if I suddenly grabbed only the laptop before leaving?
Forget it. Leave everything.
I could rewrite my assignments.
A law school report was not more important than my life.
Ah, but my constitutional law summary notes from last semester...
Your life comes first, Park Geon.
Right.
I had reached an agreement with myself.
I was abandoning everything I owned.
I carefully pushed open the iron door.
Outside air rushed toward me.
At that moment—
Fuck!
I ran.
I just fucking ran.
I had never run that hard in my entire life.
I had not even run like this during physical fitness tests in high school gym class.
I could taste blood in my mouth, my thighs were burning, and every time my feet slammed against the concrete, it felt as though my brain was shaking inside my skull.
I escaped the alley, passed one block, then another.
As I rushed through groups of people wearing blue, I heard someone call, “Yo,” but I did not stop.
There!
At last, I saw my car.
The car I had parked beside the laundromat.
I searched my pocket and pulled out my key.
Vroooom—
I stepped on the accelerator.
The tires shrieked against the asphalt.
I checked the rearview mirror.
No one was following me.
Only after leaving Crenshaw Boulevard and entering the freeway on-ramp did the trembling in my hands finally begin to stop.
I survived...
“What happened with the used equipment? Did you sell it?”
“Ah, well... the buyer didn’t show up, so I couldn’t sell it.”
That was a lie.
Instead of meeting the buyer, I had met the boss of a Crips gang.
If I told my mother that, she would probably faint, so I decided to keep quiet.
“Huh? Then where’s the equipment?”
“I left it—”
“You left it behind?!”
“No, I mean... I left it in the car!”
Park Yul sent me a suspicious look from behind the counter.
A younger sister’s intuition was terrifying.
“But Oppa, what’s wrong with your face?”
“...Ah, don’t ask.”
If she asked any more questions, I would be in trouble, so I grabbed my apron and hurried onto the dining floor.
For the rest of the day, I decided to do nothing but carry plates without thinking.
That night, I lay spread-eagled across my bed and stared at the ceiling.
Never again.
Absolutely never.
I would never go anywhere near South LA again.
Three days passed like that.
I told my parents that the equipment had broken, and I bought another used laptop.
Losing everything still hurt, but if I considered it the price of my life...
Stop. Thinking about it will just make me depressed again.
My normal routine quickly returned.
I studied law books and helped at my parents’ restaurant whenever I had free time.
Then, during a quiet period at the restaurant, I went out for a walk around the neighborhood.
An afternoon street in LA Koreatown.
Just walking along streets crowded with Hangul signs made me feel at ease.
This place was safe.
There were no blue clothes, no red clothes, and nothing but the peaceful smell of Korean restaurants drifting through the air—
“?”
I froze.
Then I rubbed my eyes.
A massive man was standing in front of a convenience store.
The same huge guy who had kidnapped me and dragged me to a gang boss three days earlier.
Why, why, why, why is he here?
This was Koreatown.
It was not Crips territory.
Why was he here?
Had he come looking for me?
Had they discovered that I had run away?
The huge man came out of the convenience store and turned his head.
I reflexively hid behind the nearby street tree.
Please don’t let him see me, please don’t let him see me, please...
“YO! Ma boy!”
Yeah.
It was over.
With a resigned expression, I stepped out from behind the tree.
I tried to smile as naturally as possible.
I could not check without a mirror, but it was probably closer to a facial spasm.
“...Ah, long time no see.”
“Why’d you leave that day without saying anything?”
“......”
“You know how much Big Joe’s been lookin’ for you?”
Big Joe.
That was probably the gang boss’s name.
...But he was looking for me? Why?
Was he trying to catch me and kill me?
Was that why this huge guy had been searching for me?
The big man continued staring at me as though waiting for an answer.
Maybe this was my final chance to survive.
W-what am I supposed to say?
I could not say I had urgently needed the bathroom because three whole days had passed.
He would obviously ask why I had never come back.
I desperately searched for an excuse, but nothing useful came to mind, and the silence continued to stretch.
Growing desperate, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“I suddenly... got struck by inspiration.”
“......”
“So I had to go work on music.”
Silence.
The huge man’s expression stiffened.
Was that excuse too ridiculous after all?
Then, at that moment, the huge man covered his mouth with one dark hand and roared like a gorilla.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiit, brrrrroooooo!”