Ice Cold Lemonade
A Listener’s Companion to Vince Staples’ RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART
1.
It doesn’t usually rain in Long Beach, California, but Vin could hear drops beginning to speckle the windows lining the front of the diner. Outside, the clouds covering the midnight sky were lit from below by LA’s endless sprawl. A neon Tecate sign in the diner window made its humble contribution to the city’s glow. The rain got heavier.
Vin sat opposite the bar, in the middle of seven booths, facing the window. He always faced the window, because he had enemies.
The waitress brought his order, a large lemonade and a basket of fries.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“This is great, for now. Thank you.” Vin replied.
His phone buzzed. Two short bursts, which meant a new text. He hesitated to even look at his phone. For the past two days, everything on it was about Keef, his longtime friend who was murdered in a gang assault only two days ago. Looking at his phone tended to suck him back into a scroll of RIP posts on Instagram and emotional group text threads in which half baked revenge plots were shouted down by righteous calls for peace.
He looked at his phone anyway. It was a text from Monica.
How you gonna leave without saying a damn thing this morning?
Vin took a bite out of four ketchup-dipped fries and exited the thread to his All Messages screen. Five conversations below Monica was Ramona. No new messages since Tuesday, still.
The bells attached to the front door jingled and three girls holding jean jackets over their heads scurried inside. Through the door drifted the sound of animated banter — two old heads sitting outside the neighboring corner store were debating would-be NBA careers and calculating release dates of incarcerated friends. The bells jingled again as the door shut.
The girls shook the rainwater from their jackets and slid into the window booth. Vin momentarily caught eyes with one of them and exchanged a subtle smirk. Judging by her red and white Jordan 1’s and her matching belt, though, she associated with the wrong people.
He knew who killed Keef. It was no surprise, in hindsight. But seeing the bigger picture, and having it make sense, did nothing to ease the knot in his chest. He took a sip of lemonade. It felt cool as it slid down his esophagus to his stomach, but the knot remained.
With one hand arranging french fries, Vin’s eyes floated toward the ceiling, taking in nothing in his immediate vicinity, instead visualizing potential future realities. What did Keef deserve? What did the homies deserve? What did his mom deserve? What did the moral code — the one that had guided him through a decade-long labyrinth of constant violence — demand of the situation?
Two more short buzzes from his phone.
Heard back from Paco. Just say the word
It still astounded Vin that $2,500 is all it takes to have a man killed.
Vin had made enough money in the past few years to carve out a nice situation for himself. He helped his mom move to a new house. He’d moved, too. But his day-to-day found him back in the hood more often than not. Something about it made his senses a little sharper. It gave him a buoyant feeling of mild nirvana. Plus, most of his friends still hung out in the same places.
A blur of red and blue lights streaked past the front windows. The blare of sirens followed milliseconds behind, like a royal trumpeter stumbling to keep up so he can announce the arrival of the Queen’s carriage. Vin’s attention reflexively shifted to the revolver tucked in the small of his back, but his facial expression remained unchanged.
Vin and Keef had gone to school together from seventh grade through high school. When a punk senior stole Vin’s Dodgers fitted in ninth grade, Keef stole it back by picking the lock on the senior’s locker. By tenth grade their crew had snowballed into an amoeba of seven to ten homies. Every few weeks someone would move to an uncles house in Inglewood, or catch a juvy charge, or have to play caretaker for their baby sister at home. Usually they’d be back a couple weeks later.
But Vin and Keef were constants. They attended school functions, park parties, and underground concerts together knowing they had eyes on each other’s six at all times. They got jumped into the gang on the same day. Gang affiliation was a form of self preservation for Vin and Keef, but despite their moral misgivings, they honored their roles in the organization. By twelfth grade they’d accepted, if not embraced, the gritty reality of gang life despite compromising their own morals to a point that Vin figured was beyond salvation. They stuck together. And they survived. Thanks in large part to their shared loyalty.
Vin washed down his last fry with another sip of lemonade. It was starting to water down, mixed with the ice at the bottom of the cup.
He looked back at his phone and typed a simple, three word response to the text about Paco.
let it fly
His thumb hovered over the Send button as thoughts slideshow-ed through his consciousness at high speed: a high school beach bonfire, his mother’s smile, being handed his most recent paycheck, Ramona’s perfume, his stolen Dodger’s fitted, the sound of air purging from slashed tires, freestyle circles in the school parking lot, the ca-chunk-a-chunk of skateboard wheels on a sidewalk, the rattle of a spray can, distant gunshots, Keef and his secret handshake.
“How’s the lemonade?” the waitress asked, arriving to grab his empty basket of fries.
2. (Author’s Notes)
Murder, fraternal codes, crips, bloods, institutionalized over-incarceration of minorities, guns, money, women, and impermanence are all themes in Vince Staples album, RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART. It’s a sonically cohesive, 16-track, 41-minute, hood-noir tour of Long Beach, California guided by someone who “made it” yet seemingly kept ten toes down in his homeland.
Via a sort of gonzo-journalism, Staples translates stories from his life with a raw honesty that feels like an ethical obligation. When he raps about money — “I can make it rain blue hundreds, can you catch it?” (MAGIC) — it feels obligatory, too, obligatory braggadocio to indulge the pop music-streaming masses. But even the bouncy and approachable MAGIC is laced with honesty that’ll make you pause — “Crip and Blood shit. That’s the only thing I ever been in love with.” It’s delivered in a startlingly matter of fact temper, and the reporting-live-from-hood-America overtones feel necessary in a way so much modern music doesn’t. With RAMONA PARK, Vince Staples sits us down for a frank discussion, somehow giving us what we want to hear and telling us what we need to know at the same time.
