“Nah, I’m just going to see if I can come up right quick,” he said oh so innocently. With his small frame and funny voice, Jah seemed harmless enough, but he was full of shit. Rhonda knew he was about as harmless as a baby viper. Bidding the ladies good-bye, Jah bopped toward the corner.

“That nigga is always scheming.” Reese said when he was out of earshot.

“You know how he do it,” Rhonda said.

“That li’l nigga can get it,” Yoshi added. Rhonda and Reese both looked at her as if they had heard wrong. “What y’all looking at me like that for? He can get it.”

“Yoshi, you need to quit. You know that little boy ain’t even in your league,” Rhonda said.

“Yeah, I know. But I might still fuck him one day. There’s something about that little bad-ass muthafucka that turns me on.”

Yoshi’s observation of Jah was broken up by the heavy bass of a car stereo. A red Hummer coasted slowly down the block, rattling windows in its wake. The windows were tinted so heavy that you couldn’t see who was in the ride. The girls didn’t need X-ray vision to recognize one of the hood’s most infamous stars, Don B.

Don B.’s was a true rags-to-riches story. He was born and raised in the Drew Hamilton projects, on the Eighth Avenue side. As a youth, he had distributed more cocaine and slugs to niggaz on the street than the police. Over the years, he had been shot seven times, stabbed twice, and even strangled while he was locked up. Through it all he had managed to deny the grim reaper his due time and again. People would always joke that with all the shit he had lived through, God must’ve put him on earth for a purpose. The running joke had come to reality when his record label, Dawg Food Entertainment, managed to secure a multimillion-dollar distribution deal with Sony. Don B. had two singles on the Billboard charts and was fast on his way to becoming a star.

“Now, there’s a nigga who can get it.” Rhonda licked her lips. “Don B. might not be the handsomest muthafucka, but his money is way long.”

Reese sucked her teeth. “He ain’t all that.”

“Bitch, stop acting like you wouldn’t fuck him. All he’d have to do is drop a few dollars on you and say the word, and you’d probably suck his whole squad off.”