The allure of breakin the law
Is always too much for me to ever ignore
I gotta thing for them big body Benzes, it dulls my senses
In love with a V-Dub engine
Man I'm high off life, fuck it I'm wasted
Bey Venay kicks, or them Marvin Kaye wrists
My women friend get tennis bracelets
Trips to Venice, get they winters replaced with
the sun, it ain't even fun no more I'm jaded
Man, it's just a game, I just play it to play it
I put my feet in the footprints left to me
Without sayin a word, the ghetto's got a mental telepathy
Man my brother hustled so, naturally
Up next is me, but what perplexes me
Shit I know how this movie ends, still I play
the starrin role in "Hovito's Way"...
dangermouse grey album remix of jay-z's Allure
illegal art
at first i only rode shotgun in his suped-up jeep like i was his tomboy bitch. we smoked ls and drove around and around, talking and laughing. i liked how he asked me questions--and how he listened carefully to my answers, cocking his bald brown head towards me and nodding vigorously.
he especially wanted to know about people. kids at school who thought they were players. what do you think of this guy? he'd ask. and him, and her? so i told him--all the little things i'd noticed and remembered, the thinly-veiled insecurities, the lies and betrayals and false allegiances.
get this one on yr side, and this one and this one and this one will all follow.
how can you be sure, he asked.
cuz they're weak-minded, i said, surprised at how cold and matter-of-fact it sounded.
werd, werd, werd, he'd say, exhaling blunt smoke through his nose.
he dropped me off at my house in time for dinner. usually by then he was quiet and pensive and stoned, as he turned over the things i said.
u look like a nice girl but yr pretty smart, he said, sniffling through his permanently broken nose and rubbing his face and nervously flipping open his zippo, lighting the flame and then slapping it back shut, over and over.
he barely went to school anymore. he woke up at 2 for his "after school job" --driving around the 8 yr old son of a russian mobster with a loaded gun in the glove compartment. on his way back he'd come to see me, if i wasn't hanging out with my musician boyfriend.
he asked me if it was OK if he gave me things. i said yes and he hooked me up with designer clothes, cds, watches and gold rings, all bought with stolen credit cards.
fuck rich people, he said, which made me laugh cuz all he seemed to care about was becoming one.
i wanna be rich, i told him, as we drove past block after block of dilapidated row houses.
i wanna be rich so bad i can taste it.
i brought him customers and measuring pots that i ordered from the back of punk rock zines.
i met his "business associates" and had them over my house.
"don't let them out of yr sight," he whispered to me as they pushed through the front door, caps pulled low over their heavy lidded eyes.
they burnt popcorn on my stove and knocked over one of my mother's potted plants.
then they went out back and shot his gun at my neighbor's aging and arthritic Labrador for kicks.
"we need better people than this," i said. "these guys are fucking stupid dangerous losers".
"agreed," he said.
"we need to become a part of something bigger than us," i mused.
it was more than just the money, it was more than just the sweet feeling of sinking deep into a leather passenger seat with a fat system blasting and rolling up to spots with brand new chains and sneakers.
it was more than how good it made me feel to buy things for my sweet and lovely and sensitive jazz playing boyfriend. clothes, a silver ring, a new amplifier...cartons of cigs and bags of drugs.
thank-you, he'd say softly, sitting indian style on the middle of his floor surrounded by his records and his dog-eared fake books. i loved him all the more for not asking me how i got the money, because i knew he already knew.
it wasn't out of shame that i kept it a secret.
it was out of love for the game.
monday mornings i'd promise to quit but by thursday afternoon i was straining at the bit...
[Chorus]
It's just life, I solemnly swear
To change my approach, stop shavin coke
Stay away from hoes, put down the toast
Cause I be doin the most.. oh no!
But every time I felt that was that, it called me right back
It called me right back, man it called me right back - oh no!
it was the feeling. the drama. the danger. the high. the juxtapositions between fluorescent light lit AP english and project hallways crazy wet with piss.
i also didn't tell my boyfriend about the times the thug and i ended up crashing on his bed, after staying up for days straight. i wouldn't let him fuck me or kiss me, but in the middle of the night he put his arms around me and rubbed against my ass through my panties until he came with a silent shudder.
in the morning i tried on his oversized hip-hop sweatshirts and posed with his gun in the mirror while i told him all the things i wanted:
a Jacuzzi, a Benz, an ice-covered symbol to wear around my neck, a hundred disc CD player with a bass box and sub woofer and...
you got it, baby, he said, stuffing pork rinds in his mouth for breakfast while he chugged the pint-sized serving of the milky medicine that was supposed to keep his ulcers from flaring up.
i smoked a joint and stared out the window at the cheap and boring suburban rooftops that made up the view.
the sprinklers were whirling. the bugs were buzzing while pesticide fumes rose up from the unnaturally bright green lawns like steam.
he came up behind me and put his hands on my hips.
that shit out there always looks faker than fake when im high, he said.
yeah, i said.
"soon all of this will be picturesque ruins," i said. it was something i stole from a book i was reading at the time, but i knew he wouldn't know that.
I never felt more alive than ridin shotgun
In Cline's green 5 until the cops pulled guns
And I tried to smoke weed to give me the fix I need
what the game did to my pulse, with no results
And you can treat your nose and still won't come close
The game is a lightbulb with eleventy-million volts
And I'm just a mark, addicted to the floss
And doors lift from the floor and the tops come off
By any means necessary, whatever the cost
Even if it means lives is lost..
And I can't explain why, I just love to get high
Drink life, smoke the blueberry sky, blink twice
I'm in the blueberry 5, you blink three times
I may not even be alive
How mean James Dean couldn't escape the allure
Dyin young, leavin a good lookin corpse
Of course...
the detox.
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