photo: Bigg Slice on the streets of Los Angeles, photo by L. Cantelon; click to view enlarged image



He appears from the other side of the open hood of a '66 Cadillac, the "Snoop de Ville," one of Snoop Dogg's cars, something he had customized, hung chandeliers in, had pinstriped in platinum. The car gave off a crazy glow in the fading light of the city street, caught the headlights of passing cars, sparkled like the entrance to a hotel in Monte Carlo. "What it do?" Slice says, and tosses off a fast pattern of hand shakes, the morse code greeting that is as important and identifying as dialect. We've only just met, and I'm being drawn into the magnetic force field that Slice emits. He's already lived more life on these streets than I could accumulate in several reincarnations. He should be dead, several times. He should be burned beyond recognition. But all of the drug-dealing, gunfire, and chemical explosions only propelled him out of the misery of the hard streets into the open arms of grace. He found a resting place, discovered that the ghetto could not hold him within its grim borders, and found out what it meant to give back, and lift up, and guide young lives away from the hell he knew too young. A few months later, Slice is one of the most active forces behind "Wordz from the Street." We truly wouldn't be at this point without him. Neither of us knew it at the time, but it was all about timing. We had both traveled to that meeting point, and what would happened next would be by "divine plan." Slice would laugh, a huge, grab-everyone's-attention laugh. His story will fill more pages on this site, for sure.

- Lee Cantelon

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