I APPRECIATED DA APPROVAL AND DA REQUEST FROM EVERY BODY AND TAKEN UR TIME ON READING DIS I MEAN IT FROM DA BOTTOM OF MY HEART..(REAL TALK).. I JUST STARTED RECORDING AND MAKEN SONGZ.. LOOK OUT FOR NEW ONE'Z SOON IF U ARE INTERESTED AND DONT MIND ME KEEPING U POSTED..ON UP KUMEN SHOWZ..NEW TRACKS... AND IM IN A GROUP CALLED CALI CURRENCY AND IM NOT ABLE TO DO THIS MUSIC THANG WITH OUT THEM.. I ALSO JUST STARTED MY OWN CLOTHING LINE...
THE REAZON Y I STARTED IT IZ B KUZZ I JUST STARTED GOIN 2 COLLEGE AND I WORK FOR A FAMILY BUSINESS FOR FREE KUZZ I GIVE ALL MY MONEY 2 MY PARENTS..THEY NEED IT MOR THEN ME..MY POPS BEEN IN AND OUT OF DA HOSPITAL AND IT SUCKS SEEING HIM THERE AND AT HOME HURTING..ALSO I HAVE MY SHIRTS CALLED SHAMEFACE-T....GOING FOR 20 DOLLORZ..AND 5 DOLLORS OUT OF DA 20... IM PLANNING TO SEND IT 2 DA POOR...HOMELESS..KIDZ IN GROUP HOME AND FOSTER HOMES..AND ALSO DA ADOPTION CENTER IN CAMBODIA...LIKE ORPHAN'S IN CAMBODIA...SIMILAR TO THIS WEB SITE.. http://www.familycare.org/network/a04.htm AND FIVE DOLLORS KAN FEED ONE FAMILY THERE..THERE ARE ALOT OF PEOPLE THAT ARE HARD 2 TRUST OUT THERE SO GIVE ME SOMETIME TIL I FIND AN ORGANIZATION OUT THERE THAT DEALZ WITH PEOPLE THAT ARE IN NEED...I THINK I HAVE A GOOD SOURCE IM GOING FOR.. THANK U FOR UR TIME AND ALL IM ASKEN IZ FOR A CHANCE.. .. .. born IN LONG BEACH MOVED TO LOWELL MASS WHEN he was 13teen,
NOW he's back in da WEST...HE is CAMBODIAN, people have a hard time believing that!!! STARTED out FREESTYLING when he was in a GROUP HOME in BOSTON with the local KID"Z.. A TEEN CENTER introduce him 2 a STUDIO ALWAYS had things 2 say and now its time for da world to HEAR what SHAMEFACE HAS 2 say.. CURRENTLY working..taking care of FAMILY ..going 2 COLLEGE and tryen 2 make a diffrent on people's live's..being around MUSIC and making his own MUSIC on his FREE time.. PLEASE REQUEST him as a FRIEND and if u already are a FRIEND thank u so MUCH.. SO much more NEW SONG'S COMING SOON..ONLY SPEAK THE TRUTH and dont half ass his WORK..DOING SHOW'S SOON so PLEASE any type of support will HELP and it do NOT hurt 2 give CHANCE'S THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME..
Through my life it has always been a struggle. My parents and siblings came to theUSA as refugees from Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge. They had nothing when they arrived here and had to work hard and work all the time to provide for a family of seven. Although I was the only one born in the states I feel that I have struggled as much as they have with all the pain and hardship, it may not have been to the same extent as my parents but it has come close to it. In Cambodian culture discipline is a lot harsher than in American culture.
Parents disciplined their children through emotional and physical punishment without any explanation. There was no communication and that is why I didn’t understand why they did what they did. Culturally it was what they were taught, it was what was shown to them, to physically discipline, because their parents did the same thing to them. Through that experience I believe caused my defiant behavior which in turn caused my pain and suffering. As a teen I got involved in gangs, I started a gang with my friends also known as my home boys. During that time they were my family and they respected me and I felt like that I was somebody. We did gang activities even before we started a gang.
As a family you did what the family tells you, we did what we had to do to survive. I was always around gangs in school, in our neighborhoods and also in my family, I had two brothers that were affiliated with gangs. At the age of thirteen I was arrested for running away, which I did not understand at that time because I was not living at home. I was with my true family, the homies in my gang. I was sent to a temporary foster home which I in turn ran away from and returned to my neighborhood.
During that time we were deep in gang banging, we were young but we were retaliating against older and “OG” rival gang members. We had homies getting stabbed, jumped and shot at; it was painful because they were my family at that time. I was running wild in an aggressive manner and my temper got the best of me which I feel I got from the abuse I received from my father. I got arrested again on run away charges and being affiliated with gang activity which was a violation of my probation. I was sent home after my probation but my dad did not want anything to do with me.
I was sent to a temporary residential program but it ended up that I stayed there for a year. I was released for good behavior and tried to go home and again was rejected by my dad. At that point I was a ward of the state and was sent to a group home in the suburbs which I stayed for another year. Ms. Carver was one of the first positive influences in my life. She was my therapist at my school but most of all she was a friend first and a very good listener.
She introduced me to the world outside of the gang life. She was there for me emotionally and the first person that I expressed my deepest feelings and struggles to, and funny thing is that I didn’t even realize that I had that many problems. She recommended to my social worker that I get transferred to a foster care within the area because I was progressing in a positive manner.
They did everything that they could do to find a foster care that would be able to accept me. They found a single foster care mother named Carrie, who took me in and I was able to maintain my good grades. After a year with Carrie, she was not able to keep me and that is when I was shuffled from friend’s homes and stayed at shelters for a period of time. I didn’t want to return to the city, I wanted to maintain the life that I had in the suburbs.
I was doing well and did not want to return to the life I was living before. Unfortunately I had to return to the city and live in another foster home. I tried to maintain the life I had in the suburbs but was not able to because my gang affiliations and rival gang members were around. I did my best to keep a positive attitude, but I got caught up and went back to the streets. I could not comprehend why I had to leave the good life in the suburbs and return to the old life I had in the city.
I was mad at the world, I was doing good and was pushed back, pushed back to my old life, the life that I didn’t want to go back to. But they say that you can leave the hood but the hood would never leave you.
I will always have it within me. I then put my anger to my rival gang members, I was mad that I had my biological family but at the same time I didn’t have a family. But the closest family that I had at that time was my brother in law Ralphy. He taught me that selling drugs and being affiliated with the streets would get me nowhere. He compared drug money to real hard earning money. Drug money you can get in large amounts but it comes with consequences. That getting a check every week is better because it will benefits my future in a positive way and it would teach me that legit money is the better way, it would be the right way.
He was influential in reconnecting me and my sister’s and our relationship. My sister didn’t realize how much her little brother was in pain and in need of guidance. Even though I was still banging hard, in the back of my head I still thought about the advice that my brother in law had engrained in my mind. At this point my affiliation with the gang was deep and I was considered an “OG” gang member and had made a name for myself.
We had recruited a lot of member and was still grinding hard and strong. A lot of my homies had a lot of respect for me, I was influential to them street wise and that we were going to make it one way or another. There was an incident afterschool, rival gang members came through and jumped one of my homies as he was walking home. I went ballistic and gathered all my homies to catch one of them for the harm of my home boy. I was running wild and there was these street workers and one of their named was Sako and his boss named Greg tried to stop the feud between rival gangs.
Unfortunately no one was listening to them except for me. Sako came by my foster home the next day and asked me what the situations was and what part did I have with the whole beef. I told him that one of my homies got jumped and hurt and I asked him wouldn’t you go back to do the same thing to them. Sako told me that yeah I did the same thing when my home boy got jumped and I got four years in prison for it.
Sako knew that there was something in me and decided to stick with me. I turned eighteen and was not eligible for foster care, so I ended up living with my sister. Sako always came by to visit and came by the neighborhood to check up on me and my boys. Beside that being his job, he wanted us to stop the gang violence because he knew that it would not benefit us at all. I dropped out of high school, because at this point school did not mean much to me.
Still slanging drugs to provide for my family, my sister, my niece and my nephew. They never knew where the money was coming from, I was working but the drug money was what paid the bills. One night we had a gang meeting for all the gang members that were not around, they either had to get jumped out or do something to prove that they were still down for the family. This night we didn’t bring out the guns, just in case there was a snitch.
We ended up going to the enemy’s territory, a couple enemies were caught slipping and we ended up using crowbars and bats. We chased this one car and the car stopped at the enemies house, by the time we got there the little homies had already beat up the enemies and bashed the house.
The person that lived at that house gave a description of the car that we were in and the police stopped us. We were arrested, even though we weren’t even the ones that had committed the house bashing. The enemies had snitched on us. The next day I told Sako the situation and asked him to bring me to court.
That was when it really hit me that gang banging was nonsense. When I was in the jail cell, I realized what my brother in law Ralphy, Ms. Carver and Sako told me. So I tried to stay away and go back to my biological family. I tried to maintain the family life with them. A few months later, when everything was good, one day I was taking out the trash when my sister was not home; my niece was inside watching TV, and my nephew’s was playing video games, the rival members did a drive by at my house. I dropped to the floor, not worried about myself, but if my niece was hit or if she was okay.
I got up off the ground and took my beanie off my head and untied my bandana off my neck. And when I was looking up at the skies and wondering if I should retaliate, I chose not to retaliate because it would jeopardize my family.
After that incident I decide to go back to school and I got my high school diploma. I stuck by my influences words and when I graduated I received a phone call from my oldest brother Larry who was barely in my life. He congratulated me on my accomplishments and asked if I wanted to move back to California. My reaction to his question was wow this is my way out to have a better life and get way from my past.
He then moved my whole family back to California to have better opportunities and have a better life. When I got back to California he picked me up in a Range Rover and moved into a million dollar home. Then one night he picked me up in his Mercedes and took me out to dinner and this is when I realized that I had a second chance in life. I would use this opportunity to better myself; to better my opportunities; and to open up doors that I wouldn’t have had if I had maintained that gang life. I can set goals for myself; I can actually make my dreams come true.
My own businesses, my own clothing line, finishing college and best of all a rap album.
Through the trials and tribulations that one goes through, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Perseverance is the key; Pain, Sweat and Tears leads to Accomplishments and that does define Success. No matter what struggles, pain and difficulties that I have endured there is a way out, that there is a better life out there for me and for others. You can get out of the place where you came from, not that you would forget where you came but that the experiences would make you a better and stronger person.
I APPRECIATED DA APPROVAL AND DA REQUEST FROM EVERY BODY AND TAKEN UR TIME ON READING DIS I MEAN IT FROM DA BOTTOM OF MY HEART..(REAL TALK).. I JUST STARTED RECORDING AND MAKEN SONGZ.. LOOK OUT FOR NEW ONE'Z SOON IF U ARE INTERESTED AND DONT MIND ME KEEPING U POSTED..ON UP KUMEN SHOWZ..NEW TRACKS... AND IM IN A GROUP CALLED CALI CURRENCY AND IM NOT ABLE TO DO THIS MUSIC THANG WITH OUT THEM.. I ALSO JUST STARTED MY OWN CLOTHING LINE...
