Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm tpb

Posted by Graig on October 22, 2008

(Vertigo)

Loving rap music was far from the norm in middle-class Northern Ontario, where I was born and raised in a city of predominantly northern European-derived ethnicities (Finnish, Italian, Scandanavian, Polish, etc) during the 80’s and 90’s. There, I was raised amongst peers who enjoyed “banger” music and top-40 hits, my father enjoying Randy Travis/Garth Brooks-style “new country” and my mother a big ABBA and Neil Diamond fan. I grew up feeling an outcast, for no other reason than my own insecurities, and I found hip-hop to be suitably outsider-ish. What started with a fondness for commercial hip-hop (DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Run DMC, Young MC and the like) made an entryway for “consciousness hip-hop”, from De La Soul to BDP to Public Enemy to Das EFX. From the late-1980’s to the mid-1990’s that was my only music, and virtually nobody else I knew shared my passion for it. To be clear, I was never one of these white kids pretending he was black (which was a big issue back then)… I never wore the baggy clothes or the African colors. I never wanted to rap. I just found the music, the rhythms, the messages stimulating. It wasn’t that I could always relate (rarely I could) but I’m not without empathy, and I’m not without the capacity for trying to understand. Afterall, that’s what’s storytelling is about, experiencing things through the observations and insights of others. Just like the funny-hat-wearing outsiders of the alternative comics crowd like R. Crumb embraced jazz, I too embraced the black experience through hip-hop.

I did, however, always draw a line at gangsta. Back in the day Ice-T, Ice Cube, NWA, Dr. Dre… they weren’t a part of my play list. I didn’t like the aggressiveness of the music, I didn’t like the anger, and I didn’t like the message. What I wasn’t willing to listen to was, essentially, their truth (albeit filtered through media image marketing). Where KRS-One or Chuck D would speak of their experiences as young black men, identifying systemic oppression and urging brothers and sisters to rise above it, embrace their roots and be proud, Cube and Dre would speak of their altogether different experiences, living in a society where the only law is the code of the streets, telling tales of succumbing to every temptation, and embracing what the streets have to offer, with only occasional regret. In the years since, gangsta has been marketed as “black culture”, glorified and spread well beyond the streets of L.A., into the homes of Germans, Japanese, Brits and beyond. The thing is, the message of getting paid, pimping, doing drugs, gunfights and partying is embraced, fad-like, by the suburban community kids longing for something other than a boring existence. But for many inner city kids of all different races and religions, it’s a half-truth: all-glory, no warning.

For all my knowledge of rap music (which arguably isn’t as strong as it once was), MF Grimm never entered my radar until now*. Originally published in hardcover last year, the award-winning Sentences is the abridged life story of MF Grimm, aka Percey Carey, which details the the key events in his life, starting with his time as, literally, a kid growing up on Sesame Street (for four years he performed alongside Big Bird, Oscar and company). Though he speaks of his tough, strong-willed mother, a caring stepfather, a loving grandmother, and two doting sisters, his family are nominal players in this tale. Carey speaks much more of the people who became his street family, partners in music and partners in crime. Though not proclaiming he was in a gang, he does mention the territorial divides in New York City and its boroughs, and how he found a taste for violence.

Though a horrible student, getting kicked out of schools due to his tendency to not put up with anything and getting into fights, Carey was also a voracious reader, something he notes was rare amongst his peers. His love of words segued into a love of wordplay, leading him to the most verbal of music mediums. He breaks down the rap game that he got into during it’s boom years, noting where stars could be made and where swollen egos constantly get in the way. Yet to establish himself firmly, Carey made many friends in the business, taking him on tour and eventually winding up in LA where he witnessed the tension of real gangland, Crips and Bloods, for the first time. In LA, Carey landed numerous ghost writing gigs for major talent, making some respectable money, but it wasn’t enough. As he did in New York, he got into the drug scene (more as a player than a user), and wound up getting run out of town.

For all the friends he made, he made enemies as well. He explains the code of the streets - revolving around respect, ego, and money - which he wound up adopting. Making money through drugs was easy, he claims, all too easy, a nasty temptation that continually drew him in. In the drug business and in the rap game, people are trying to make a name for themselves, trying to be somebody, one way or another. As Carey found out, a name just makes you a target. On an early winter’s day, in a car with his stepbrother, Carey wound up getting shot seven times, his stepbrother killed. After a grueling recovery period, crippled and confined to a wheelchair, with revenge on his mind but still a target, Carey booked it out of town into suburbia where he once again succumbed to temptation, eventually getting arrested and incarcerated before turning his life around… really turning his life around.

Sentences isn’t so much a comic book as an illustrated narrative, a story that is told from the first person perspective with imagery providing the visual impact of the events described. Carey’s story is about himself, about a likable person who made bad decisions that cost him his legs, years of his life, and the lives of some of his friends. Carey writes with a casual pen, his narration conversational and confessional, filled with the language he learned on the street rather than the prose out of a book, but almost always remaining accessible (only a shorthand referring to the rap scene of the time may throw some for a loop).

The black and white art from Ronald Wimberly is exceptional, visually stimulating and often awe inspiring. There’s a rough-hewn edge to his work that feels partially inspired by graphitti, much like Jim Mafood, but his shadows and inking the overall feel more noir-ish, Frank Miller meets 100 Bullets’ Eduardo Rizzo. Just as the structure of the story is a jump-point narrative, his visuals are free from the typical sequential panel confinements, flowing with the narrative, leaving a sense of openness in each scene rather than trying to nail it all in one boxed-in image.

While Carey doesn’t go the route of glorifying the trouble he got into, he also doesn’t serve strongly enough his story as a warning. He tags on at the end how he hopes his story can keep at least one kid from following that path, and I suppose without getting preachy or hammy “Scared Straight” about it still achieves that aim. The story itself is one of an intense, harrowing journey, full of loss and lack of self-control, which itself does have a powerful impact on me, if only because it’s so alien to my reality. Percey’s various “sentences”, from his money-making rhymes to his wheelchair confinement and time in prison, show such a difficult and unlikely route to gaining success that it’s hard to believe people would want to follow in that path, and yet there are so many that try. If anything is missing from this story, it’s Carey’s insight. He expresses regret often, which is insight in its own right, but as an obviously intelligent man I was expecting a little more commentary on the nature of the communities he was brought up in, what leads kids to trouble with drugs, the law and each other, and maybe even thoughts of what could have helped keep him out of . Since his days as a youth in New York, things have only gotten worse with gangs, drugs, and the sense that the only option for these kids is music or sports, and the only way to get out is to be on top. Checking out some tunes of Grimm’s on youtube it’s obvious that he has that message within him, so it’s just a little perplexing why it’s not included in here. It’s a remarkable read that could have been even more profound with just a little bit more of what’s on Carey’s mind.

4 and a half out of 5 Vikings

* actually, looking at some MF Doom records on my shelf, I see that I’ve encountered Grimm before, just never actually maintained awareness of him.

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Filed Under: Trade Winds

Tags: (auto)Biography, 4.5/5, hip-hop, music comics, vertigo

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Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm tpb

Comments: Read the First Comment

Filed Under: Trade Winds

Tags: (auto)Biography, 4.5/5, hip-hop, music comics, vertigo

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