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And the feeling was compounded by the crack era, by the war on drugs, by over-policing and mass incarceration. There's a post-traumatic stress that comes along with being black in this country: It's almost part of your inheritance. Gangsta rap may have been America's nightmare in the '80s and '90s, but it was also America's creation. Scarface was acknowledging emotions a generation of black boys had been conditioned to hide.
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This was confessional rap - street ministry. I feel like I'm the one that's doin' dopeĬan't keep a steady hand, because I'm nervousĪnd tryin' to find an exit out the businessīut yet and still, it's hard for me to feel happyĪnd then I'm worry-free, but that's bulls*** Just listen to him in the song's third verse: One moment he's in church praying for an exit out the drug game the next, he's contemplating suicide. Learning to articulate his feelings must have contributed to making him the coldest songwriter in rap, more Southern Gothic than Edgar Allan Poe. He also spent some time in a hospital psych ward, after trying to kill himself once as a teenager. But growing up in Houston's Southside introduced him to a different kind of hard rock: He went from dropout to local drug dealer coming up. He said, 'Mawmaw, what you talking about?' I said, 'Oh nothing, my mind's just playing tricks on me.' And didn't have no idea he was gonna go out and be making a song about it."Ī multi-instrumentalist from a long line of musical talent, Scarface had been a fan of metal as a kid. "I come through the room and I think I was just kinda mumbling to myself or my lips was working or something. "It was a strange way of how he came about it," she told MTV several years ago. Prince decided it was the breakout record he needed for the label's flagship group.īut it's Scarface's grandmother who deserves credit for the song's title. He wrote three of the four verses in this song, originally intended for his solo album until Rap-A-Lot Records founder J. It was hard not to stand out with a group that included Willie D, a former Golden Gloves boxer Bushwick Bill, a brash Brooklyn transplant and former breakdancer who stood less than four feet tall and Brad Jordan, a lyricist with enough street cred to wear the stage name of rap's most celebrated kingpin: Scarface. When "Mind Playing Tricks" came out, the Geto Boys were already legendary in the South. And " Mind Playing Tricks on Me," by the Houston rap trio Geto Boys, was bumping out of nearly every car with speakers in the trunk, putting a voice to the angst and paranoia that defined what it meant to be a young black man in America at the time. Rodney King's beating by LA cops was on virtual loop on the small screen. John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood was playing on the big screen. But Tony Soprano wasn't the first gangster to expose his sensitive side to the world: That distinction came nearly a decade earlier, thanks to three gangstas of a different stripe. When HBO's drama The Sopranos began airing in 1999, the idea of a mob boss seeking therapy was revolutionary. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem.Įditor's note: This story includes includes brief mentions of suicide.
#The geto boys mind playing tricks on me lyrics series
This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Left to right: Scarface, Bushwick Bill and Willie D of the Geto Boys perform in Houston in 2015.