High Price

brain cells—could, by itself, produce uncontrollable behavior when its levels rose and you felt good.

CHAPTER 5
    Rap and Rewards
    Social support helps to lessen the negative consequences of stress.
    — ELIZABETH GOULD
    T he cavernous indoor basketball court at Washington Park Gym was almost unrecognizable at night. The slippery concretelike floor, which I’d cursed as I’d played on it with the City Park team because it was so hard on the knees, almost seemed to thump along with the bass line. The crowd moved in pulsing rhythm, the girls all dressed in their tightest Jordache, Sassoon, or Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, with belly-skimming tops that highlighted their curves. Lights flashed across the packed-in bodies, revealing different scenes and groups as the colors changed. I’d never seen a party like it before—nor had I ever wanted more to be a part of something.
    At the center of it all were the DJs, controlling the sound from behind a wooden Formica-covered stand. One of them was dating my sister Brenda. He would eventually become her husband and they are still married to this day. Brenda met Kenneth Bowe when I was in seventh grade. It was Kenneth, his brothers, and some of my other sisters’ boyfriends who would become the closest thing I had in my life to an active father. These men got me into deejaying, at which I soon aspired to shine with the same competitive spirit I brought to athletics. During our weekly dances, they also schooled me on how to be a man.
    Brenda had Kenneth take me along to my first dance when I was eleven or twelve. As in much of my social world, the crowd was exclusively black. There were no bleachers at Washington Park Gym, just a regulation basketball court surrounded by open space that could hold several thousand people. When the party started, it seemed like the center of the universe.
    I remember the excitement, the scintillating energy, the pounding bass, the sheer joy of being in a crowd merged in music and amped up by surging teenage hormones. That first night, I was tentative because it was all so new to me. In fact, that was one of the only times I ever danced in public, trying not to look like a fool and moving with the crowd. That was before I knew that the cool people were on the DJ platform or behind the booth, just hanging.
    Dancing wasn’t cool if you had a better way to strut your stuff, like making the scene itself by playing the music or being involved with the guys who did. I felt insecure and unsure initially, but I soon sized up the situation, recognized where everyone ranked in the social hierarchy, and figured out where I wanted to be.
    Before I hit high school, I mainly just watched from behind the DJ stand. Observing Kenneth’s brother Richard, who was probably the top DJ in all of South Florida then, I learned how to mix and spin, how to work the mic, and the basic mechanics of operating all the sound equipment. We had Technics turntables and QSC amplifiers. JBL and Electro-Voice speakers provided that booming Miami bass. There were enough electronics to fill a room in Kenneth’s mother’s house, with literally thousands of records squeezed into his shelves.
    Soon I could hear what flowed, what kept the party rocking, and how to blend one beat seamlessly into another. From Richard—who went by the DJ name Silky Slim—I learned how to build the crowd up and feed into its growing energy. I could tell what beats were slamming, when to play a slow jam, and how to bring an evening to a climax, to build bumping backbeat onto bumping backbeat until it seemed like the room itself would explode.
    Early on, of course, I didn’t get much play: the older guys would let me spin a few songs and say a few words, just to see if I could do it. I was still a little kid to them. But when I showed that I was more than a cute novelty, that I was really able to move the crowd, I began to get longer sets, and by the time I was fourteen, I was part of the group itself.

    Deejaying at a dance circa 1983.
    We were called the Bionic DJs, after the Steve Austin character played by Lee Majors in the hit TV series The Six Million Dollar Man . Kenneth had come up with the name, wanting to illustrate the idea that our sound would be thunderous and powerful. Like Steve Austin, we wanted our sound to be amped up, superhuman. Our names were our alter egos, our aspirations.
    Mine was Cool Carl. Kenneth, who was about five foot eight and muscular, went by Mr. Magic. He was the