RaindropHustla

Seriously dope interview with Khingz over on 12ft Dwende.

There’s this gang out here - 23rd [Deuce Trey] Diablos, they’re like this Filipino Crip gang - and one of the older dudes from there…one summer he started talking to me about him reading about the Black Panthers making him want to know about his history.  And he was like, “Dude you need to learn your history, that’s why you’re out here running really crazy.” And him talking to me, like, I listened to him and I started peeping shit out and I went through a lot of changes.  A lot of changes.  There’s this thing out here called Isang Mahal, and the women from that organization (its a community/arts collective) and they would just say some wild shit that would just bug me out on a daily basis and have me running home thinking about some shit.  And that just kinda sparked my difference, and I started looking at my neighborhood in a different way.  My point has always been to represent my neighborhood, but now its to do it in a way that allows the little kids who are going through the same shit that I went through to get older.

Like, I grew up by accident, you know what I’m saying?  I got shot a couple times, stabbed a grip of times and the fact I’m still alive is kinda an accident.  And so I wanted to do something toward that so its not an accident for the kids who are coming up now.  Because the shit is getting bad.  Like, it got better for a little bit and now its getting bad again like it was like in the late 80’s, early 90’s.  So its like, what can i do to, if nothing else, have most of the kids that I work with still be alive when school rolls back around.