“Gonna get your ass, nigga,” he’d sneer.
I wouldn’t say nothing back. Wouldn’t even look at the motherfucker. Naturally that made him angrier. He wanted some kind of reaction. I just turned my back. When he was gone, I went about doing my business.
It was like that for a while.
Then one morning he came by all worked up.
“This is it,” he said. “Your time’s up.”
I just smiled, shrugged, and walked on.
Half hour later the dickhead’s back. He runs his car up on the curb and pins me against the building, charges out, and cuffs me. Meanwhile, his partner comes out the alley with ten pills of ready-rock.
“These yours?” asks Dickhead.
“Hell, no,” I say.
“I’m sayin’ they are.”
“I’m sayin’ you’re full of shit. You just puttin’ this shit on me.”
He smiled and said, “I told you I’d get you.”
We go downtown. I know this is a setup. I know I’m getting out of this.
I’m feeling okay until the judge looks at my record, sighs, then closes his eyes, and then slaps on a seventy-five-thousand-dollar bail.
That means to stay free I gotta cough up three stacks (three thousand dollars) for the bail.
Here comes the lawyer talkin’ ’bout another two and a half stacks.
Here comes all that pretrial stuff.
Here comes all the accusations, all the phony charges.
Here comes the pressure.
Here comes the knowledge that if this shit goes against me, my ass is back in the Cut for fifteen years.
Here comes the report saying I had drugs stashed in the alley.
But here comes my lawyer showing that if I was selling drugs I wouldn’t stash them that far away. That’s not how we do. He makes this logical and beautiful argument about how the case makes no sense. He chews up their shit and spits it back in their face.
Case dismissed.
I’m off. I’m out.
But, in addition to the five and a half stacks I had to pay for bail and lawyers, I’m out another fifteen stacks because my stash got hit while all this legal crap was coming down.
Dickhead costs me over twenty stacks.
But I’m cool.
Or am I?
“I’LL BUST YOU
WITH THIS BRICK!”
That’s what I’m screaming at the bitch. And I mean it.
I’m ready to go upside her head.
She’s a relative of Mama’s. I call her Aunt, but right now I’m calling her evil ’cause she’s calling me a “little dyke-ass bitch.” She’s saying, “Mama ain’t even your real mama. You don’t deserve no real mama. You born in garbage and you is garbage.”
I’m walking down the street, on my way pick up Chinese food for Mama, while she’s slinging these insults at me. She’s screaming ’cause I put her out of Mama’s house. I put her out the house ’cause she’s high all the time. High as a motherfucker and making Mama crazy. I put her out the house to protect Mama.
Now she’s coming after me. And she done brought the police with her. She lied and told the police that Mama’s house is her house. Well, it ain’t. She don’t got no house, which is why she’s living off Mama.
She keeps yelling at me. I’m trying to walk away but the words keep flying and the cop wants to talk to me.
She prods the cops. She tells them, “Ask this dyke bull how many other dyke bulls she fucked down in prison. They let her out by mistake. She should be back there with all them other bull dykes.”
The cop starts asking me questions, but this evil bitch keeps on screaming until I pick up the cinder block and say, “I’m gonna kill this bitch! Gonna kill her right now.”
“You ain’t killing no one,” says the cop.
That’s when they straight lock me up and hustle me downtown.
Just what I need.
Another charge against me. Another night in jail. Another reason for the judge to send me back to the Cut.
Another long hard night. Another jail cell with another window with another full moon reminding me of all the moons I saw from the little window at Grandma’s House.
In the morning I’m scheduled to go before the judge where charges will be pressed.
I got a lot on my mind.
Takes a long time to fall asleep.
When I do, I dream of my dead mother. She’s alive in the dream and we’re back together. We’re walking down the street, about to go in a pawn shop where she’s going to buy me a nine-millimeter to protect myself, when someone comes up from behind her and shoots her dead in the head. I wake up and remember I’m back in jail.
God knows what’ll happen to me.
Does God even care?
Do I even care?
It’ll be what it’ll be.
But true to form, this bitch is too high to show up in court. There’s no one to press charges.
I’m free.
Another chance.
I dodge another bullet.
I could see this is as an opportunity to mend my ways and go straight. But I’ve been through that straight shit before.
It don’t work.
Besides, my business is going good. My shops are thriving.
My corner is hot.
COP SAYS, “CRACK
YOUR ASS CHEEKS
SO I CAN LOOK UP IN THERE.”
That’s what the cops say when they suspect you holding.
Things are changing. Getting tighter, stricter, meaner. Lean times means you gotta get smarter. Ain’t like back in the day when the shit was loose. Game’s getting rougher.
But I’m playing. I’m schooling my boys. I’m telling them, “Be cool. Be smart. Not only will these motherfuckers crack your ass and look up your hole, they’ll look up under your balls to see if you hiding rock there. So learn the hood, know who lives here and who don’t, study every goddamn car cruising through, pay attention, niggas, and don’t make no stupid mistakes.”
My niggas had to be steely, steady, and ready to step. They had to have their heads on straight. If they were too nervous, they’d scatter when they didn’t need to. If they were too spacey, they’d stay when it was time to scatter.
I trained ’em. I said, “Watch my eyes. Watch my eyes watching the street. I don’t give out no expressions. My eyes ain’t saying that I’m happy or sad or tired or wired. My eyes are dead set on the street. I can tell you exactly how many people passed by in the last thirty minutes, and I can tell you the color of their clothes. Damn near tell you the color of their eyes. You gotta be a hawk, niggas. You gotta be a goddamn hawk to get through this mess out here.”
I was flying high. I was flying low. I was flying the right speed and the right distance. I was flying under the radar. Once in a while they might nab me for loitering, but I was in and out in a hot minute. Nothing was sticking on me. Nothing holding me back.
Broke up with that old girlfriend and found me another. Thought it might be serious but it turned out she was cheating. Girl she was cheating with was a bitch who looked like the Predator. I ain’t kidding. But it was no big deal. What I thought was real romance wasn’t real at all.
Cool.
I could find a girlfriend when I wanted one.
Besides, what I really wanted was to keep my shops poppin’.
I wanted to get bigger at the game.
That was my fate, my life, my only way of surviving.
I’d been in and I’d been out. Up and down. And even sideways. I knew which way was right for me.
Don’t argue with me.
Don’t tell me any different.
Don’t give me no attitude.
If you wanna work for me, study the streets.
Maybe I’ll give you a corner. Maybe I’ll keep you around, look around to see how you do under fire.
You get one chance, but not two. If you fuck up the first time, that second chance could land me back at Grandma’s House.
Ain’t
going back.
Going forward.
Don’t get in my way.
“NO, NIGGA. I HIT
THE BLOCK.”
It was a Sunday night. Not much happening. Just hanging with a friend.
We were at a bar called Club One. Straight bar. Everything was cool.
I noticed this guy mad-dogging at me. He looked like a crime-type dude, so I looked the other way. But he kept staring.
“Who is that motherfucker?” I asked my friend.
“Michael K. Williams. He plays the gay gangsta on The Wire.
“What’s The Wire?” I wanted to know.
My friend told me it was a TV show about Baltimore.
A little later Michael came over asked me, “You act or rap?”
“No, nigga,” I said. “I hit the block.”
“Well, come down to the set of The Wire. There some folks you should meet.”
Next day I asked people I knew who watched the show what it was all about.
“People like you,” they said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Real people.”
I wasn’t thinking all that much about it, but figured I didn’t have anything to lose.
So I went down to the show. When I got there, with all the trailers and shit, it didn’t look like much to me.
“Please wait,” they said.
“Wait for what?” I asked.
“Your screen test.”
Well, I didn’t know nothing about no screen test.
“What is a screen test?” I asked.
“We’ll show you in a minute.”
It was more than a minute. It was a long goddamn time. I was sitting in there, doing nothing but making calls to make sure my shops were running smooth.
Two hours later, I’d had it. I was about to get up and leave—fuck this shit—when they said they was ready.
Took me in a room, sat me down, and said, “You don’t need to speak. Just look in the camera.”
I looked in the camera for a couple of minutes.
I got paid $150.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” they said.
“What’s next?”
“We’ll call you.”
They did. They actually called the next day wanting another screen test. They said they’d pay another $150.
But I was thinking that’s bullshit.
While I was getting $150 for a screen test I could be making many stacks on the block. In my business, time is money.
But on second thought, everyone thinks about being on TV, and I was no different. I started watching the show. The Wire had street characters running around every episode. I related. I liked the show. It was real.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take another test.”
Second test happened. And a third.
Then someone came up and said, “You’re a natural. We want you on the show.”
I was a little shocked.
I didn’t really believe it.
“No acting lessons?” I asked.
“No acting lessons,” they said. “The directors will help you out.”
I was feeling weird. I was feeling happy but I was also feeling like I was dreaming. They actually wanted to put me on TV.
“How ’bout my look?” I asked.
“We like your look,” they said.
“I don’t need to change it?”
“We don’t want you to change it.”
“How ’bout the way I talk?” I talk with this heavy Baltimore accent.
“We like the way you talk.”
“It’s all good?” I asked.
“All good,” they said.
It’s too good, I thought to myself. My life don’t work this way. It’s too fuckin’ good.
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
I knew The Wire was an HBO show for American TV, but I didn’t know it was poppin’ all over the world.
I didn’t know, at the end of the third season of the series, when I started appearing, that I’d be so relaxed around the camera.
I had no idea that I’d take to it the way I did.
Strange, but I didn’t look at it like acting.
It was being.
I just had to be.
On the show I had to be me: someone who hits the block.
They wanted me to keep my walk and my talk and even my name. They wanted me to be Snoop.
The other thing was this: Whenever and wherever we shot, I found myself in the middle of a family that loved me. All the actors, writers, and producers treated me like a long-lost daughter or sister or friend.
So there I was, doing what I’d always done: being a thug, only being a thug in front of the cameras.
What kind of crazy shit is that?
Suddenly I’m being recognized in restaurants. I’m being asked to act in other movies.
Real is pretend, and pretend is real.
Snoop is real-life me and Snoop is a pretend-life character on TV.
The script is flipped.
I wake up in the morning, get dressed, leave my work on the block to walk into a world about make-believe work on the block.
But because I ain’t that sure the make-believe work is real, I keep my real-life work. My shops stay open.
“How long can you do that, Snoop?” asks my godmother, Denise. “How long can you keep selling dope?”
So Denise starts convicting me, and my conscience starts convicting me. My brain’s spinning around and I’m getting confused all over again, just like when I was down in the Cut and learned that Uncle had been killed.
Back then I’d decided to go straight.
I’d seen the light.
But then when I got out and kept getting canned from straight jobs, the light went out.
I was drawn back into the darkness because the darkness was where I belonged. I was sure that the light was for others, not for me. I’d live and die in darkness. I’d even get rich in darkness. Darkness was all I knew. Darkness was my reality.
Now here comes all this Wire business.
TV cats talking about, “We want real people on this show. We want to show your reality.”
But by showing my reality, these motherfuckers are changing my reality.
The shit’s confusing.
By showing who I really am, they’re changing who I really am.
I’m seeing that light again.
I’m feeling that love.
I’m thinking about closing down my shops. I’m thinking about not hitting the block anymore.
If I keep hitting the block, I’ll fuck up this acting business. I’ll fuck up everything. Getting other niggas killed or locked up. I’ll get sent back to jail or I’ll be killed.
Ain’t no way around it.
The only way to leave my fucked-up reality is to throw myself into the pretend version of my fucked-up reality.
If I move toward the light—the light of the cameras, the light of the beautiful people who are running The Wire and acting on The Wire—then I escape the darkness.
The Wire is throwing light on that darkness.
That’s what the show’s about.
That’s what I’m about.
My new life.
My new direction.
New light.
New hope.
New everything.
NEW SNOOP
New Snoop—the Snoop that’s finally closed down her shops—is trying to make sense of this scene about a nail gun.
But the scene don’t make sense and New Snoop’s feeling stupid.
That’s how it went in the beginning. I’d get some scripts that didn’t make sense to me. I had trouble with the script supervisor, the gal who helps you with your lines. She was getting on my nerves and it took me a while to get used to her. Fact is, I never forgot my lines. I memorized them cold and never missed a beat.
I was still a little uneasy, though. Other than down at the courthouse, I’d never been around so many white peop
le. It was a new experience. I didn’t know what half of them did. I didn’t understand how film works. I was nervous.
The thing about me, though—the thing I learned from the streets—is not to show it. Keep my cool. Make it seem like I got my shit together.
That’s what Snoop the Character is all about. And that’s what Snoop the Actor has to be about too.
So I followed the directions I was given. I bonded with a couple of the actors. Michael K. Williams plays Omar. He’s the one who got me through the door. Jamie Hector plays Marlo, the gangsta who hires me to kill niggas. Sometimes Omar, Hector, and I would hang out after the show. Sometimes they’d give me little pieces of advice about how to read and interpret a script.
The directors were cool. If I thought a line didn’t flow right or read real, they let me change it up. If I said, “This ain’t something Snoop would say,” they’d say, “Well, how would she say it?” I’d say it my way, and my way almost always won out.
There’s a character on The Wire called Proposition Joe. His real-life name is Robert Chew, and he’s also a drama teacher. During the shoots, the producer suggested that some of the younger actors, including me, go to Robert for a few tips. He’s a beautiful man who talks about emotions and instincts and relaxing in front of the camera until you’re in the moment of the action. He talks about acting with your heart. My heart was open to Robert because I wanted to learn.
My heart was beating fast that day I read the nail gun scene. I didn’t get it. I called in Ed Burns, one of the writers, and told him plain, “I got no fuckin’ clue what’s happening here.”
He explained that Snoop had been sent on a job to find the best nail gun out there. “You ever been in a hardware store?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I said. “When Pop was alive, I went all the time. Him and me lived in hardware stores.”
“Well, that’s all it is. You’re walking through the door, inspecting all the merchandise. You come up to the clerk and ask his advice. He sells you on the biggest nail gun in the store. You’re happy. You buy it for cash and tip him extravagantly. You’ve scored.”
“So it’s kinda like I’m going on an errand for Pop,” I said.
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