I didn't even know Chip’s name was Randel until he died in December of 1999. I first met Chip in 1995 at a corner store in Chicago, in my family’s new neighborhood. My daddy sent me to the store to buy a newspaper and Chip, only 11 years old, had to buy one as well for his auntie. I forgot what politics we chopped it up about back then but I will always remember the impression Chip left on me all those years ago.
I walked Chip to his apartment on Ingleside and he invited me in to play a video game. I had to get my daddy his paper first so I ran all the way home. By the time I made it back to Chip’s block, a small group of neighborhood children congregated around the front door to his apartment. Those children were all members of the local gang. I had a few encounters with them already but I didn't know Chip was in it too.
Chip finally came outside and we went to the basketball court on 48th and Drexel. Chip was very mature for his age. He also was more in tune with street life than I was and I was 3 years older than him. At Chip’s house, over bowls of Cap'n Crunch, he began indoctrinating me into his gang ideology. Chip started giving me pamphlets and other literature to read and he'd give me a few days to study before he quizzed me on what I’d read. The "Humanity" Pamphlet is an old publication of the Moorish Science Temple of America, with speeches by Noble Drew Ali in it. In the pamphlet "Moorish Literature" it is a lesson titled "What is Islam, *Caveat Emptor, and the Divine Warning" all these lessons Chip had me read and memorize. Plus, the Acts and Additional acts. The acts are 7 rules members have to follow and the additional are 7 more. Then, we had the 101 questions and answers.
Chip had two cousins, J-Rab and Tyrone. All three of them took me in as a family member. So, my first encounter with gang life was sheltered around a lot of reading and answering questions. If I wasn't playing basketball, video games or reading gang literature with Chip, Rab and Tyrone, we'd attend parties. And it was at one of these parties that I was introduced to the violent side of gang life.
Some kid, who wasn't from our neighborhood, was attempting to make fun of me because of the brand of my shoes. Everybody had on the new Nikes and I didn't because I was the only one not selling drugs at the time. Chip was not amused at all. He was the smallest of us but he had the heart of King Kong. Before I could say anything, Chip popped the kid right in the mouth and it went down from there.
Ever since that day and even still, I feel in my heart that Chip and everybody connected to him is my family. In 1998 when Chip’s family moved to Rockford, of course I came. I lived in the Orton Keys where Chips sister lived. I met a girl named Big Twin (because she was older than her twin sister Lil Twin) and I lived with her.
Well, I met Chip in 1995, I followed after Chip into drug sells gang bangin,’ shooting guns, all that stuff. Three years later, in 1998, I moved to Rockford to be with Chip. We were supposed to go to school and work on our raps, be it that it was the summertime, we quickly fell back into the old habits we indulged in in Chicago.
That summer, we sold drugs, partied, drank liquor and gang banged. I didn't stay free long enough to see the Fall because I caught a 6-month county bid for cocaine possession. I got out when I was 18 years old, and Chip was 15.
Upon my release, Chip and remained good friends, however, prison did something to me and I didn't want to be small time any more. I decided to hustle my drugs in Champaign Illinois, Chip wanted to stay in Rockford, so I split.
I stayed in Champaign for 6 months. When I came back to Rockford my focus was on my child’s mother who was 6 months pregnant and homeless with two other children so I couldn't party and bullshit all day.
In October of 1999, I caught another charge. I was in jail for two months when I found out Chip was murdered.
I still have the scars on my wrist from squeezing out of handcuffs and fighting every Latin King I came across in the county. I stayed in Rockford after Chip’s death because a part of him is still in that city.
Chip was more than just a gang banger or whatever title people that do not understand inner city youth try to label us. Chip is a brother, an uncle, a son, my best friend Chip IS wonderful.
* Caveat Emptor
Moors are men, upright, independent and fearless who care for their loved ones and follow the Prophet to a destination which is not uncertain or unknown. They are fortified by the impregnable doctrine built upon Love, truth, peace, freedom and justice. It is therefore folly at its greatest heights for smelly culprits with their insidious plans to invade such a realm.
They try and try but their own bad planning brings down wrath upon their heads like the sword old Damocles. Fellows fixated on intrigue and scurrilous cunning find a difficult path to travel within the ranks of the Moors. This is so because the Moorish Movement has been well planned by Prophet Noble Drew-Ali, whose latent powers are abundant, unknown and may be called into action as a matter of defence, at any moment.
Prophet Noble Drew-Ali knows the people within his ranks who are interested. They are vanguard of the Movement as the Moorish hordes increase here in America. All of the Moors are active not passive. A member’s interest can only be in one direction and having travelled over the roads years before the Prophet knows where every member is along the road.
A few feet below is another road where schemers work where traitors grin and culprits bask in the sun. They think they are on the same road with true Moors, but the Moors are high above on a pinnacle where they might view the destructionists as they fall for the last time and their bones bleach in the sultry mid-day sun.
Hungry scavengers flying high, catch scent, devour and leave crying out, ‘Caveat Emptor--cast out the dead carcass!’ The Moors high above see these plotters, purveyors, the worst that exist, hurl themselves downward by their own works as the hawk waits.
When I was little, when I first got this, it meant the same as it does to me today, and Chip helped me realize what this meant; It means to be certain of what you are signing up for and to be true. Do not be a traitor, do not be jealous, to love your family to be loyal to your family. It took me a long time to realize that there is no true love in gang life, if there was, all the members would still be alive and free.
MY2CENTZ
Good read husband