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1966
- Todd Shaw,
the
son of two college graduates (bothe of them became
certified practicing accountants), Dorothy Shaw
and Anderson S. Shaw, was born on the twenty-nineth
of april 1966 in Los Angeles, California.
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KIDS LISTENING TO HIS MUSIC: From day one, I've
dealt with a tiny amount of guilt when it comes
to the kids, because they try to mimic what
they hear on tape. I know when I was coming
up I listened to all my mom and dad's Richard
Pryor records and I knew every curse word there
was. I'd get outside with my friends, and I
must have only been five years old, but I'd
be cursing like a grown-up. |
1979
-
Todd, who was living with his father, to avoid the
encroaching gang lifestyle in LA, moved to the comparable
safety of East Oakland where his mother
and younger brother were already living. "I
probably wouldn't have started rapping if I was
in L.A. 'cause I wasn't really living a street life
down there. I was still a little kid when I was
down there. I was out there, but I wasn't really
thinking about hanging in the streets and being
wild. All my shit came from Oakland".
East Oakland may have been free of gangs but it
did have it's own distractions, the neighbourhood
was awash with prostitution.
He was living off of 73rd and East 14th in Oakland,
a city so small with a black community, that is
so real. "After the ninth
grade I had moved to Oakland. I show up in Oakland,
my older brother, he was already there like a year
before me so I step into a situation...he already
got homeboys. I was three years younger than my
brother so I found myself hangin' with all these
older cats. I mean it was really like that...pimps
went to our school. I'm in 10th grade. We had pimps
in our high school. Motherfuckers were really dressed
all flamboyant like some old ass movie with gold
pieces on his collar and prostitutes pickin' him
up after school. To see the shit up close, not in
a movie, kinda made my whole little indulgence that
much greater because ever since I was little, I
would have my mother dress me like a pimp. I wouldn't
say dress me like a pimp, but I would say 'let me
get that hat'. It's some old slick hat like in the
movies. I got plenty of pictures of just posin'.
I thought I was a little cool motherfucker even
though I was a bookworm. I was a straight "A" student.
But I thought I was cool so when I got to Oakland
... I don't think I ever made a move to be a pimp
like to say 'Bitch, gimme your money' but I adopted
the ways. And I really learned the shit and I really
consider myself to be of pimp knowledge. And that
was a regular thing in Oakland for a motherfucka."
It
was at the end of this year that he first decided
that he wanted to be a rapper.
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