Both sides of the street

The generation gap between the people running America and those making it run can be measured in a person’s reaction to hip-hop. The in-charge half thinks of it as black music or urban music -- or incomprehensible noise that sells records. The other half knows it as an important and vital American thing, a bit of history that’s both good and now.

“Sentences,” the comic-book memoir of a hip-hop artist who almost made it big, is for the second group. It’s an urban folk tale, like Claude Brown’s “Manchild in the Promised Land,” with hints of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” But instead of pursuing enlightenment across a white landscape, Carey seeks fame, acknowledgment and something intangible -- call it mastery of life -- across a black urban one.

Percy Carey, aka MF Grimm, grew up on the “street,” in this case, both “Sesame Street,” on which he was a young actor, and Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The young Carey learned that “Big Bird’s just some man . . . an’ Snufulupagus, he ain’t real neither.” Soon he was hanging out at the real-feeling street gatherings that were hip-hop’s genesis.

His hip-hop life started with “big neighborhood parties. . . . You didn’t need a permit, you just plugged a sound system into a street lamp.” Most people who love hip-hop get off on its origins; it is often depicted as an art of rage. Maybe. But Carey lets the reader see its innocent, mischievous beauty, how it sprouted from groups of kids, much loved by their neighborhood, one-upping one another and having something like fun, only deeper.

A problem with society’s images of black men is not that nonblack readers don’t see them as men, but that they never see black men as that thing we Americans love so much in our culture: the wise, rebellious child. The young Carey woos the reader. He has that “whatever” attitude some children have that forces adults to see their adult hypocrisy. We watch Carey grow, bolstered by the community of hip-hop partyers, and suddenly there he is, a young man in all his splendid, world-challenging glory, declaring, “I’m gonna be an emcee.”

Carey strikes a balance between writing his rhymes and hanging out with his “fam” of friends, including his beloved half-brother, Jay. One reason to pick up “Sentences” is to read about all of Carey’s former acquaintances who went on to great things: King Sun, Lady of Rage, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur. Another is Ronald Wimberly’s art, which pulls the reader inside the scene. No matter what color you are, you know these people, the bad boys with souls who won’t settle for less. If you’re a woman, you’ve probably had a crush on one. If you’re a man, you’ve probably wanted to be one. If you were one of them, and you’re reading this, you either found redemption or made it big. And a lot of your friends are dead.

A 1993 shooting left Carey paralyzed. Jay was killed. The two had just been offered a contract with Atlantic Records, but after the attack, the record company backed off. In his wheelchair, Carey returned to the same “good/bad” life he had as a child. He sold drugs and produced music. The glimpse he gives of drug dealing rings truer than any I’ve read. “[A] lot of movies. . . make it sound really dangerous, exciting and glamorous . . . but for the most part, it’s just another job. . . . [A]nd it can get crazy boring.” Images show his alarm clock at 5:46 a.m., then Carey packaging the drugs.

“Sentences” is a cautionary tale. However, aside from Carey’s lyrical honesty (which is miles above most confessional literature), what makes the book stand out is that it’s about playing both sides of the track, which Carey did and which is a far more common, far more human way to go. He fully understood both choices and shows us the reality of both. Carey wanted to be the bad boy and the great artist. The two worlds imploded, but the man survived.