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When I was young I thought, “I am bad! When I grow up I am going to be a gangster like Al Capone or Bumpy Johnson.” I never thought when it comes to being a gentleman. I heard through the grapevine in regards to guys like Frank Miller and Herman Fontaine who controlled the numbers racket. I likewise heard tales of loan sharks who broke kneecaps or took personal property and for collateral if a borrower couldn’t afford to recompense the cash they got into debt for. My firstborn encounter with gangsters was the street gangs now referred to as gang-bangers by sociologists and tele-journalists alike. We used to fight rival members of so-called gangs which lived in one of the city’s five housing projects. The Bennett Homes rumbled versus my crew, the East Side Press. On the west end of town, the William Penn Projects fought versus The McCafferty Village Boys, normally over girls. And in middle town, the Lamokin Village or the L.V., as it was called, fought it out with the Highland Gardens or the gang from the Fairgrounds.

I recall as a young boy, gentlemen older than me who were always accompanied by the most pretty women on their arm. They drove the greatest cars and wore the finest threads that cash could buy. They were the Black Mafia and I idolized them and tried to mimic their each move.

The way they walked, talked and dressed impressed me so much that I could hardly wait to grow up to be just like them. The Black Mafia consisted of a boss, an underboss, a capo and lieutenants that governed over the ranks of soldiers who were managed by a captain or skipper. There were dissimilar factions or families and a commission or body of bosses that decisive how the whole outfit would be governed.

My next experience came when, as a teen-ager, I applied to run numbers. Of course, I didn’t know what I was carrying on the little slips of paper. All I knew was that I wanted to earn my own money. When I asked my parents for cash they closely always said, “No, we don’t have any extra cash this week, Son.” They were forced to budget their meager finances which had to cover feed and the water and electric bills, rent and other each and everyday living expenses. Our family had grown very speedily from just me as an only child to four children. Then from six we became eight kids until my prompt family reached it is peak when I was the oldest of ten children, six boys and four girls. So, when I was asked to take a lot of papers with numbers scribbled on them to Mr. Jones, by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Green would compensate me, I jumped at the probability without asking any questions.

Suspicions started out to arise when the cops would raid the houses I made my procedure visits to. Usually, even though a stack of cash had the amazing power to get cases thrown out of court or mysteriously make paperwork vanish conveniently before a racketeer’s case was tried. Those gentlemen were the role models of real-life gangsters who engaged in very civil and polite conversations with other gentlemen. They seldom lost their tempers because a gentleman is never violent but smart sufficient to hire an individual else to handle the messy work for him. Work which ofttimes included violence, extortion, and whenever necessary, the need to lay an individual down for a long night’s sleep.

It was only business. The black mob of my youth didn’t differ much from the rightful companies I came to work for later in life. If an individual belonged to the outfit they followed a hierarchy, were held accountable for their activenesses and represented the family they belonged to with dignity, commitment and a sense of pride. Everybody looked out for one another in those days. This was specially important when renegade crooks tried to muscle in on the family’s action without following the proper protocol.

Today, things have changed and what I did not recognise then I am humbled to say I have lived to discover that all that the gangster’s life style is depicted to be by the media who cash in off of “gangster-rap”, much of it full of derogatory remarks when it comes to women as well as the public’s sensing of that life style as being in some way glamorous is non comparable to living a generative citizen. To the next generations who subscribe to magazines like XXL or the Source and listen to rap music that glamorize the gangster life I see to it you it is not one thing like what genuinely happens in reality. Often times the powers that be in amusement and television depict the two in stereotyped roles. This is ofttimes hard or inconceivable to tell apart because after all this is huge business where effigy is everything. Some of the original gangsters are now doctors, lawyers, scholars and politicians through the lives of their children and descendants. Their bequest lives only in the imagination of those who characterize them today in tales of murder and mayhem or thru the songs that may be heard daily all over the airwaves of ones favored radio station.

Likewise, it is ironic that some of today’s professing gangsters came through the lineage of those reputed to be gentlemen in society. For instance, I wonder how a lot of persons recognise that Alfonse “Scar-Face” Capone was the son of hard working immigrants from the Ellis Island exodus who operated a rightful business when they basi came to this county. The syndicate and underworld of today, one would think, does not publicize or record themselves in studios to be blared throughout radios all over America. If real gangsters did this there would be no need for law enforcement to gather intelligence. Then, prosecutors would not have to earn living building cases versus alleged coordinated crime if all they had to do was buy a compact disc or read a book in which all the explicit and juicy details were laid out.

Real gangsters, in my day would never expose themselves on recordings then remunerate a criminal defense attorney the proceeds from their illegal actions to defend them in a court of law.

And in spite of this fact, each usual rising gang-star in hip-hop music today wants to be the next “50-Cent”. The gangsters of today would do well to realize that there is no longevity in crime. The ill gotten gains accumulated through much of their own blood, sweat and tears ordinarily go to lawyers, bail bondsmen, prison commissaries, funeral parlors, hospitals and the law enforcement agencies or tax bureaus and district attorney’s offices that seize their summations through forfeiture proceedings then buy or trade them for pennies on the dollar. And yet the federal, state and local governments still consider them as drug traffickers or smugglers and pass legislation through sentencing guidelines to sentence them accordingly. The majority of so-called gangsters” of today don’t have anyplace near sufficient capital to invest in rightful business entities and get out of the drug game.

Of course, each of us is free to choose our own path in life. We have been deluded someways by a mindless media to believe that this gangster life style is someways in the pursuit of happiness, liberty and the American dream. However, if a young man or woman of African or Hispanic dissent gets arrested and has to call home gather or they hustle to turn fifteen cents into a dollar then they are probably not a gangster in the true sense of the word to begin with. Here’s a little mystery I would like to share with all aspiring and would be gangsters.

It takes the guts and the grit of a true gangster to help the seed they fetch into this world even when they refuse to trade drugs, in spite of the peer pressure or the deceitfulness of ill-gotten gain, because they realize the risks involved and that getting caught means that they will abandon their child or children not if but when they end up in prison if not another sad statistic.

It takes the courage and ability to create of a true soldier to apply the street smarts they have acquired in the drug game to get off the broadways to destruction in order to walk the straight and narrow road less traveled and return to school for their G.E.D. or to undertake earning college degree. Often I listen persons say that we as Americans will have to not be over in Iraq fighting a war that is not ours to fight but these same persons fail to discern how we are dying and committing genocide in the wars that are fought each day in urban areas of blight and poverty where drugs are purchased and sold. Children are born addicted, in poverty and to face a grim future of neglect and abuse. Of course, it is difficult having wads of cash one day and then all of a sudden applying for assistance because they have flipped the script and decisive that they will no longer be part of the problem but rather percentage of the collective solution. I have witnessed young men who were just as addicted to the lifestyle of this sub-culture as the addicts they peddled their street pharmaceuticals to.

However, if they don’t make the decision to alter their lives then society and fate will. If not now then there may never come an prospect to do so. Now, this very moment, is all we are guaranteed in life. Not to determine to take action is likewise a decision. Sometimes, we have a hard time distinguishing what’s easy from what requires strength and courage. To pull a trigger and take the life of another humane only requires the physical stamina that a boy of ten years of age may muster up. It likewise requires one to act impulsively and think later. Sadly though, when the act of murder is committed in our streets to prove that a man is a gangster there is little, if any, time to think.

A humane life is ended right there on the spot and another life ends at long last within the perimeters of a little square foot area called a prison cell. It is a sad drama that is regrettably all too intimate to us today as parents and American citizens. In a lot of cases, life after a homicide may include visits from friends and family while in jail, mail on birthdays, and even yard, or block out. However, the cold hard reality is that in the final analysis any person serving a life sentence for murder in Pennsylvania is going to spend the rest of his or her natural life locked up behind bars. People will be born and persons will die within a lifer’s family. Children will become adults and parents themselves. Divorce and remarriage is not not common at all. In other words, it may seem like the world revolved around them when they lived the gangster’ life but if they are the unfortunate soul who stands before the judge’s bench when that dreaded sentence, “Life in Prison”, is pronounced they will at last modify their view as the world proceeds to turn in spite of their absence.

But someone, undoubtedly will argue, “Man, I recognise a great deal of hustlers who got their grind on, sold drugs until they got signed to a record label or started their own independent label or launched a costume line; and now they are millionaire celebrities.” For those who fabricate such thinking and defenses or rebuttals please consider the following difficulties with such irrational thinking. For anybody presently incarcerated within America’s criminal justice system then they would recognise how much one makes as an inmate working anyplace in prison.

Just compare those who die in jail or end up doing life in prison to those who with great success got out of the drug game and lived to write a book or lyrics regarding their story. Just do the math and the answer becomes self explanatory. Of the magazines that are purchased by our young people today with the gangster turned gentleman featured on the cover and perpetuates the outstanding deception that a life of crime recompense that is sufficient to raise a red flag. Or one merely need look around their surroundings to see if there are any A&R reps, makers and publishers tearing down prison walls to find them. In the eyes of many, even their peers and significant others, they have plainly ceased to exist.

The government name ascribed to them at birth when they were assigned a social security number by the same government has been converted to a number. They are now a product, and not the gangster, more less, the person they once thought they were. It does not seem to require a great deal of intelligence for one to chose among the life of a gangster and the life of a gentleman. Yet the strange truth is that it is a decision young man and woman has to wrestle with each day on a national, possibly even a global scale as our economy and political and religious leaders fail us miserably. If one is taking into account this question from a prison cell then possibly they have got a little bit of time to think it over and possibly they are still fortunate sufficient to determine what they actually want to do with the rest of their natural lives before it is too late and they join the untold numbers who congregate in the prison yard of regret interchanging war stories of what they could have, ought to have and would have done if only they had one more chance.

Finally, we have come to the crossroad of decision to make a alter or to stay the same want-to-be-gangster headed down a one way street that leads to a dead end. One must spend time to determine the steps it will take to achieve ones goals and the initiative it will require to put ones person plan into action. Knowledge is only power if applied. Then at least one will have the psychological result of perception learning and reasoning at ones disposition to empower oneself to succeed. The power that we seek to make this imaginativeness a reality we already possess.

Oftentimes out of excitement we percentage our endeavors, ideas and good purposes with the defective people. In so doing, both well meaning and now and again folk out of jealousy will undertake to talk us out of our selfassurance because the bold presentment of courage and creative thinking it takes to transform your life frightens them. It forces them either to thoroughly examine their own lives and follow our example or in the substitute if they are comfortable in their complacency they will make each venture to hinder us.

Remember, persons may either aid us go forward or hold us back. There is no middle ground. So, you do wisely by achieving your desired level of success and then when an individual asks you how you were converted from a gangster to a gentleman, you may do like I am doing today, Sell your game plan, and not tell your game plan! Now that’s gangster!

American Gangster Explicit Pic

American Gangster Explicit Image

American Gangster Explicit Image

American Gangster Explicit Image

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27 of 29 humans found the following review helpful.
American Legend
By Josephll
Jay-Z is one of the greatest rappers of all time. Back in the 90′s he dropped classic after classic but then he decisive to retire after The Black Album though he was never in truth gone but he didn’t release a new albums til last year when he decisive to return from the hiatus with Kingdom Come. The album got lukewarm response and while the production wasn’t bad it wasn’t the right album to comeback with dealing with anything from his hollywood friends, to how 30 is the new 20 and the redundant strip club anthem with Pharell and Usher. It was apparent that Sean Carter wanted to be #1 but not for any price. The album was mercantile but not too interesting. Being the richest man in Hip Hop it looked like he had wholly forgot with regards to his origins but desperatlely wanted to hang on to his crown. One year after that the news came with regards to Jay-Z dropping another album. Being the president for Def Jam, keeping costume lines, owning the 40/40 club and co-owning the New York Nets he doesn’t need to release another album cause the majority of his income comes from elsewhere and being closer to 40 then 30 he belongs to the seniors of rappers, so why another album?. But Jay-Z is doing it for the love of the game and he’s proving it more then ever with this release.

“American Gangster” as this album is called is a conceptual album based on the Denzel Washington film with the same name. It’s regarding the drug merchandiser Frank Lucas in the early 70′s. And that itself works well cause Jay-Z was one himself and his classic debut album “Reasonable Doubt” portraited his early life before success with Hip Hop. Most of the songs here are suppost to make references to scenes from the film. So, Incase you have seen it you probably have a better understanding. The sound is very much retro soul, taken from an blaxploitation flick from incisively that time. Perhaps the sample-driven sound could pass as dated by today with all of the extra-ordinary merchandise we find but giving careful consideration to that it’s suppost to be the soundtrack to something from the early 70′s it’s understandable. The majority of the production is from Diddy’s proteges LV & Sean C (Also known As the Hitmen). But galore of the songs also comes from The Neptunes, Jermaine Dupri, Just Blaze and Dj Toomp. But most of them haveone thing in common, they’re sample driven retro soul sounding.

After a short intro, The album starts with dramatic “Pray” where you also may listen the spoken words of Beyonce. It feautures violins and church choirs and sets the tone for what’s coming. The song is semi-autobiographical where he talks with regards to his childhood and what made him a hustler. References to Sinatra, Berry Gordy, Kennedy an be heard here. In the last verse he’ll make a reference to a Kanye West’ song by saying “Everything I’ve Seen Made Me Everything I Am”. Second song “American Dreaming” to a considerable degree samples from Marvin Gaye, even by using his voice. Lazy as that may be the lyrics are actually good where he talks in regards to how he chose fast cash over education. “Hello Brooklyn” Pt 2″ is regrettably a miss-step. The minimalistic production is inadequate and Lil Wayne singing the hook is just corny. It plainly doesn’t fit in here. “No Hook” is another autobiographical song simular to “Pray” with no hook just verses and a deep laidback sound. He said that hustling was his ticket out of the hood and even if he promised his mom to stay out of trouble he was going to die inside if he didn’t try. “Roc Boys (The Winner is)” is the nearest to hit potential here, it uses a soul horn sample and would work fine for radio. It’s a celebration to a successful lifestyle. More classic soul/funk on “Sweet”. Pharell provides the beats and backround vocals for “I Know”, but it does feel a little out of place here but the song is actually good.

With “Party Life” we have another decent midtempo backed by a soul singer while on the Beanie Sigel collaboration “Ignorant S*it” we have a song that samples The Isley Brother’s “Between the Sheets”. The Dj Toomp invented “Say Hello” follow the path of soul-funk and is pretty good aswell. Next up is something that most Hip Hop fans don’t wanna miss. “Success” is another duet amid Jay-Z and his former rival Nas, just like on “Black Republican”. It was produced by Jermaine Dupri but got to say the beats here suits the song perfectly. The same producer follows up with the jazzy “Fallin” where Bilal sings the hook. It reminds me of numerous of the songs from Common’s last album, where Bilal likewise appeared. “Blue Magic” from Pharell was the initial single and it one of the best songs with it’s minimalistic production and beats, if you liked the Clipse’s last album you’re gonna love this one. The album closes with the title track which is 70′s soul-funk aswell.

Overall, This album isn’t perfective but it’s the best Jay-Z freed in a long time and it’s evident he’s attempting to drop another album simular to Reasonable Doubt dealing with the issues he knows best. It’s a conceptual album, it got good lyrics and a production that both feels suitable as a score and as an autobiography. The production is rather simular from song to song and it doesn’t have the apparent hit single like most Jay-Z fans are applied to. But neither did “Reasonable Doubt” with few huge hits or major album sales after it’s release. This album is much diffrent then what most persons would suppose from one of the most commercially likeable Rap stars, but that also why I like it and admire him for dropping it. “American Gangster” is the best Jay-Z album in a long time and if he in the long run decides to call it quit now atleast he’ll do it by the psychological result of perception learning and reasoning on retiring on top.

14 of 17 humans found the following review helpful.
Jay-Z – Bringing Gangster Back!
By Rodnick Darden
Jay-Z must feel like the Michael Corleone of the game. Everytime he thinks he’s out, he just gets pulled back in. He retires (moreso takes time off) and couldn’t put the mic down. His fans called for him to make that return. Then, he makes a mature album as Kingdom Come was, and galore humans can’t catch on to it. Streets begin to say he has lost touch with the hood and a lot of say that he has slipped up lyrically. Well world (mostly to the haters and naysayers), you wanted him and you got him. Shawn Carter has returned in hustler-form and shows that he is as sharp lyrically as ever before. Inspired by the new flick out by the same title, Jay comes with his tenth (and rather perhaps one of his best) solo album in American Gangster.

The feel of this album is like a mix of Jay’s two biggest albums to date, Reasonable Doubt and the Blueprint. His lyrics are moreso in the mold of his debut album in which discusses the life he lived as a dealer and all the angles you have to deal with when it comes to that, similar what the film showed with Frank Lucas. You may get the most eminent of highs with all the material items you may acquire, access to places you couldn’t have dreamed of, and the cash that may roll in. But he discloses you likewise to the negative side that comes with it to give you the whole picture in that life. People that you get hooked, people that hate on your ascension in the life you invent for yourself, along with the cops/feds and humans attempting to pull you down. There were times in which Jay kind of talked when it comes to it in double ways with his life back then and now in his music career, which was brilliant because no matter what way you go in life, you come all over those emotions (at least with the hating on success and persons attempting to fetch you down). The production and beats took from the soul sampling roots as of the Blueprint which made that album redefining and so cold. Diddy (a.k.a. Puffy/P.Diddy/so on) was the source of when it comes to half of the CD’s production, and have to say that not genuinely being a Diddy fan, I was more than satisfied with what he contributed to the album. The rest of the album got influences from Just Blaze, the Neptunes, No ID, and Jermaine Dupri and in my view every one kept there own. Lots of horns and trumpets to go with those samples which gave the album that overall old-school gangster feel. And the intention of the album wasn’t to give you hits but a full-out album that you may see what was going on inside Jay’s mind.

The film American Gangster help Jay to give rise to songs that could give persons a visual and an inside look into that type of life. It inspired him to make songs such as Pray, a track speaking to God in Him continuing to keep watch over him as he was doing what he was. The Marvin Gaye-infused American Dreamin’, a song devoted to the high life we all would love capture from our dreams into reality and far a lot of will go to get it. I perfectly am sentiment this track! Songs like Roc Boys and Party Life point out the glamour and how you get that high off the success you start out to feel. But you likewise get the downside to it all with I Know based on fighting addiction and a track that brings together again two of the finest rappers ever in Success, featuring Nas in how success may fetch you oppositions from all corners and backgrounds like it did Frank in the film. Guess we all may relate when we get galore spotlight in something we do at a great deal of point in life, and rather of getting embraced, you catch a lot of negativity coming your way. I’m not the biggest Lil’ Wayne fan in the world, but give him credit for his verse in helping Hova shout out the borough that raised him in that life with Hello Brooklyn 2.0. The rest of the CD is very nicely done with No Hook, Say Hello and Blue Magic. But that track that rolls that life all in a few verses is track 13 and what makes it dissimilar from Reasonable Doubt, an substitute ending perchance that connects with the movie. Fallin’ shows how dealers get caught in the end when they get seduced by the figures they pull and the glamourous life they lead and not knowing when to cash in the chips to go legit. Then in the end, all you have done catches up to you and you get locked up while you lose all you have. All being humans you were involved, cash and everything around you except for memories of what you once had. A great song that must have in all probability finished off the album to me for showing how ought to drug kingpin stories end. Not too a heap of fairytale endings when you take that path if you stay on it too long, a point that will have to grab hold of those dealing presently or thinking of doing it. Jay was one of the few that may say he took the route he had to and got out. Because of all these points, this track takes the cake as my bestloved song of the album.

For those who say Jay-Z doesn’t have it anymore, you might want to peep this and get a listen for yourself. He is in regards to on top of his game as any individual around. I thought he made a masterwork of an album with Kingdom Come, but he was aiming for Reasonable Doubt/Blueprint levels this go round. He darn near reached it if he didn’t hit the mark. Comin’ with lyrics like It’s all celestial/it’s all in the stars/It’s like Tony LaRussa/On how you play your cards (American Dreamin’), I’m in a whole other league/ N****s never catch me/Sport so much fly s**t/I will have to win an Espy (Party Life), But your use-tos, has-beens/Ragging bout all the new dudes/Talking tough on the YouTube/Bout what you used to do/But that’s old school to the new crew/They doin numbers like sudoku (Fallin’ – Whew!), it is safe to say that Shawn Carter is on point as if this was the late 90s. And that is just a taste of what he gave on this one. I was vibing with this album out of the gate as soon as I opened up the package and could perchance put this as high as number 3 on Jay’s best albums. I may only point out so much. It’s something that you have to experience on your own. American Gangster, a street conception album in which Hova gives you the feel in a place that he actually didn’t have to go but proves again where he has been, what is still in him and what he has made away from. A standout piece of work from a talent of an artist! (And a reminder if you are looking for a hit album, you may want to rely on Jay’s earlier work cause you won’t find that here.)

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