A lot of Friday nights, Guru and I would go kick it with Biggie, since he was just three blocks down from us.
I was living with my mom in a tiny apartment in Chula Vista, near Third and H Street behind the 7-Eleven. It was crazy to be on the phone with Stevie Wonder. I felt like a meteor hit our apartment!
I grew up in Flatbush, Queens, Laurelton. These are places where it's mostly black and there was a lot of diversity.
You know the block was ill as a youngster Every night it was like a, cop would get killed body found in the dumpster
I'm not actually from Compton - I'm from South Central Los Angeles, and my father still lives in the same house I grew up in, so I'm there all the time.
I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.
I grew up in the Bronx, but in Riverdale - not exactly an area of New York that's known for being rough and tumble.
I had a paper route at eight years old in Harlem.
The basic story for the opener is that word came through the bar that someone got knifed and killed up on the Moon Walk. It turns out to be one of the quarter regulars that everybody knows, including Maestro and Bone.
The Compton I knew was from my mother, and it was beautiful. It was this close-knit community, and people cared about one another, and it was safe.
I live in a little suburb close to Kansas City called Prairie Village, where there's a feeling of everybody knowing everybody else. I think the same thing is true of New York City, by the way.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, north Beverly. It was cool, everybody's cool on the block.
I grew up a block away from Hell, and my pop-pop was a chef in Hell's Kitchen.
When people think of the South Side of Chicago, they don't think about where I'm from. It was sort of a pocket: this idyllic community of black people who took care of each other, knew each other, spent time with each other.
