This past Saturday night after my friends finished closing down their club we headed a block away to their offices in downtown Seattle. There were four of us: myself, my boy Berm, my boy Chern and Berm's lovely girlfriend. Just to give some background, I went to elementary and high school with Berm and Chern and so we basically grew up together. Berm grew up two blocks away from me.
We're all sitting around their conference table smoking a little bit of that little bit and obviously we start reminiscing. I think that Chern and Berm were trying to explain their friendship with me to Berm's girlfriend and part of that was a hilarious desription of my infamous "post up" position outside of Franklin High School -- standing on top of a bench leaning against the school, arms folded, one leg against the wall, hat low, facing straight forward. Chern recalls dapping me up every day on his way out of school, which Berm quickly confirmed as I laughed at myself.
Chern then brought up something that I was completely oblivious to in high school: the Wu Tang/No Limit beef. Apparently, my friends and I represented the Wu Tang Clan and another group of best friends (who were also our friends) represented No Limit Records.
Now I can't front on this one, my friends and I did have a huge teen crush on the Wu, but I never knew that people regarded us as the Wu. And to be honest, I never knew that people regarded the other group as No Limit.
My circle consisted of myself, Big Time, E-Smith, Moochie and Lofton. The other group consisted of BBoy, Mack, and Rex. BBoy grew up two blocks from me, although we were never real close growing up. I played baseball with Mack and never met Rex until high school.
The thing about our high school was that it was (almost to the student) exactly one-third white (grunge nirvana heads, regular folks, nerds and your assorted cool cats), one-third black (athletes, some nerds, some gangsters, some wanna-be's, some players, fakers and l.a. lakers), and one-third Asians (lot of nerds, very few regulars kids, a lot of Asian gangsters and many FOBs). So in this school, which was very much racially segregated, my circle of five Wu Tang members were all mixed. Except Moochie, who was full black but looked mixed. So our guys were in and out of each side of school. I obviously locked down the Asian side and kept close ties with a lot of the Asian criminals in the school (my best friend from 8th grade, Keanen, was a notorious trouble maker) and not to mention the bboys (Massive Monkees). All of us were good on the white side because were in the "honors" classes where 99.9% of the white kids were and then we were good with the blacks because we played basketball and well obviously because we were the Franklin High School Wu Tang Clan. So we had the school figured out. Not to mention the teachers loved us because we were those class clowns that made people laugh but didn't stab anyone. We also had to spend significant time with the teachers during our study hall hours for basketball so that obviously gave us an immediate "in" with the teachers (except the time Mr. Over caught me and Hantz making copies of the final in the library...another story for another day).
No Limit, on the other hand, had a different angle. These guys really went after the chicks. And they got them. My guys and I were kind of ignorant to the whole chick thing. We got chicks but we didn't really know what to do with them. I'm pretty sure that the No Limit crew had chicks running through their after-school program on a regular basis. You had B-Boy, who is a short pudgy guy but spits relentless game at females and always has one with him. It's just one of those things. You really want to know what he says to girls because he always has one with him. He's the type of guy that everyone in the city knows. Then you have Rex, who always gets girls and had a baby at like age 15 or 16. Then Mack, who was the best graffiti artist in like...the city or something and always had chicks. The thing about these guys is that they were also very mixed. Rex was mixed, B-Boy was mixed and Mack was white but one of those white guys with 'mad flavor.' So basically we were the two mixed crews in the school.
You can see the desire we had to be in the Wu:
VS.
Anyways, according to Chern, the No Limit guys had quite a resentment for us in the Clan. When going over the reasons why we came up with this:
1. Because we all played basketball
2a. Because we got a lot of chicks without trying
2b. Because we didn't know what to do with the chicks that we did get, therefore we were wasting valuable chicks when No Limit could be taking them home for after school programming
3. Because everyone liked us (this is according to Chern) and we were the cool crew in honors classes, which is also viewed as the cool nerds by the regular classes kids
The worst part about this is that I had no idea that there was any "beef," but in retrospect, I can see it clearly.
Let's run through some key moments in history:
1. First day of school, freshman year: I get to my math class late and there is one desk left. As soon as I see it, the cutest girl I've seen all day walks into my class. I give her the last desk, we become friends and she ends up having a huge crush on me. We end up "going together" for like a week and it turns out that she is Rex's ex-girlfriend from middle school. When I was young I didn't think these things matter but apparently they did. Plus, she was like best friends with B-Boy as well.
She's still cute:
2. Freshman year study hall: Jason Terry loved making fun of B-Boy in a friendly way but it was probably pretty fucked up because Jason Terry was the star senior basketball player so everyone laughed at his jokes no matter what he said. This gave him a ridiculously unfair advantage over B-Boy, who was just a freshman. Anyways, at the end of one of these study halls, B-Boy pulls me aside and says: "Martin Harris told me he is going to whoop your ass because you were talking shit about him and Nina." What? This is not good news. Martin Harris was (is) a friend of mine from baseball that started dated my ex-girlfriend from middle school (Nina) and he just happened to be the most gangster 15-year-old in South Seattle. As a 27-year-old it seems pretty ridiculous to call a 15-year-old gangster but when you're 14, a 15-year-old thug is the equivalent of Scarface. I had no idea why my supposed friend Martin would want to whoop my ass even though he is now "going out" with my middle school ex. Well, according to B-Boy, I was talking shit about Martin and he caught wind of this. Sure enough, I saw Martin at the Haunted House and he told me he was going to beat my ass. I somehow bitched my way out of it and avoided the ass whooping. I never found out why he thought I was talking shit about him but I felt that my life was put in jeopardy.
3. Junior year dating the twins: There were these two cute identical twins at our school: Rochelle and Gabrielle. Gabrielle was one of B-Boy's chicks so he was often with her and I think they were BF/GF off and on. When I was a junior, I made a play at Rochelle and we started hanging out pretty tough. At the same time, Gabrielle and B-Boy fell off and I never knew why but this could possibly have something to do with the unknown beef.
Fast forward to two years ago:
4. Corner Sleeper, his boy and I are going out in Seattle while we're back for Christmas. I hit Berm up to tell him that we're coming through their club, which B-Boy also promotes for. We get there and I tell B-Boy that Berm said we're good to just walk in without paying. B-Boy refuses to let us in without paying and we end up paying him $10 each.
Fast forward to last weekend:
5. Berm and I are walking to the club (Berm owns the company, B-Boy is an instrumental part of getting the parties cracking, guestlists, etc.) and Berm tells me I'm good to wear the hat in the club as long as he takes it in. We go in the club, Berm gives me the hat, I put it on and B-Boy immediately points at me and says "Take that shit off." Besides the fact that I consider B-Boy one of my guys, he was obviously giving me an order, which is tough for any man to take from another man when you're not at work. I was pretty hot but I know how B-Boy is about his clubs. He could tell I was hot about it and explained to me that "Don't listen to Berm. If we let you wear the hat, all the thugs are gonna want to wear their hats and then you know how it is." Fair enough.
Now the funniest part about this is that B-Boy and I are good friends and have known each other for all of our lives now. He works with Chern and Berm and he was working with them at the club that night. After Berm, Chern and I finished discussing this whole "beef" that I never knew about, Berm's girl (who I had never met before last weekend) pipes in and says, "Yeah, B-Boy did mention to me that he had beef with you in high school!"
All I have to say is:
3 comments:
We had like no Asian people in our school. It was 50 percent black and 50 percent white. White kids didn't like me cuz I was "black," and black kids didn't like cuz I was white - no quotation marks.
High school was very traumatic for me.
That sh*t is hella funny. I thought you and BBoy were friends. You have to admit, that was the friendliest beef ever though.
I went to an all white high school, yet all my friends loved the wu. To this day it's still about 25% of the music I listen to when I play. Something about Winter Warz while 9 tabling makes me almost manic.
You write really well.
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