Soundtrack — A Black Music Month tribute to the songs that shaped my memories — “Gin and Juice”

“Gin and Juice” is a song by American rapper Snoop Dogg. It was released on January 15, 1994, as the second single from his debut album, Doggystyle. Fun Fact: The hook was written and sung by David Ruffin, Jr., along with Snoop and Daz Dillinger.

In the early to mid 1990s you could get 12 compact discs for one penny. My mom took advantage of this offer using every name in the family until she filled a 50-disc rack with classic soul, jazz, and whatever rap and R&B albums her three children suggested. I don’t know who asked her to get Doggystyle, but she was very excited to give Snoop Doggy Dogg a solid listen.

It was nearly spring, and the southern New Jersey air had finally settled to a comforting breeze with the sun playing peek-a-boo through scattered clouds. People from the north take great joy in these kinds of days. After suffering through such monstrous winters, this kind of day is considered block party weather.

“Put my speakers in the window,” my mom demanded.

Knowing she was one of the first people in the hood to have the Doggystyle album she thought she’d share it with the entire block.

“That album is so nasty,” I said.

It’s important to note that at almost 11-years-old, there isn’t a word on that album that I didn’t hear at home, but I was just starting to learn context. So, it was really hard to just sit in the G-Funk groove without trying to decipher the content.

“Just play “Gin and Juice,” Mommie decided.

White chips of old paint cut at my fingers as I struggled to lift the window over her small stereo speakers. Other kids approached the window to see what I was doing.

“My mom wants to play some music,” I said. “Tell everybody to come to our yard.”

Our yard was a half patch of grass split between us and the duplex next door, but it was just enough space for more than a dozen skinny, ghetto children in tattered play clothes. Scooters and stolen bikes lined the crooked sidewalk as more bored children stopped by for the ‘block party.’

“Turn it on,” Mommie said.

CDs were still a very new thing to households like mine and my mom’s 6-disc changer, courtesy of her finding my dad’s credit card number, was really hard to work. After several attempts, I pressed ‘shuffle’ to drop the proverbial needle on the wrong track, again and again.

“It ain’t no fuuunnnnn if the homies can’t haaaveee none… For all my niggaz and my bitches and my bitches and my niggaz… Ooooohhhh, it’s a doggy dogg world… What’s my motherfuckin’ name?!?”

Just then the yard turned up as if it was the hottest club in the east. Dirty-mouth pre-teens and pre-pubescent kids were screaming out the lyrics.

“Just let it play,” Mommie decided. “Turn it off after Gin and Juice.”

Finally, “Gin and Juice” came on and I was instructed to turn up the volume as loud as I could.

We all rapped along.

May I kick a little something for the Gs

And make a few ends as I breeze through?

Two in the mornin’ and the party’s still jumpin’

’Cause my momma AT home

It’s important to note that I didn’t have a young mother. She was just about 31-years-old when I was born. A Harlem born and bred Puerto Rican who grew up on the streets, Mommie prided herself in keeping it real, even it meant exposing children to things other parents might find taboo. This isn’t to say the other parents didn’t censor their children, but where I come from bad language is a drop in a bucket compared to the Atlantic Ocean of trauma surrounding us. If the kids were having fun it really didn’t matter to any of the adults that the entertainment came by way of a gangsta from the West Coast.

When the song ended, the children screamed in a chorus of sadness. I pulled the speakers from the window.

“I gotta get more CDs,” Mommie said. “We’ll do this again.”

Later that month Columbia House sent several invoices that went unpaid. And we didn’t get another CD until I got old enough to start taking the bus to Sam Goody. By that time, I was Bad Boy fanned out giving no energy to any music outside of my region. But there has always been a special place for Doggystyle; a bevy of Remember whens and your moms was so wild, as us neighborhood children grew into adults.

I even thought about the song during my one and only trip to Los Angeles and knocked back a shot of Tanqueray from my room’s mini bar that that made me choke — even without the chronic, Tanq ain’t no joke.

I never drank gin again. Hell, I damn near stopped drinking juice.

A few days ago, I bought Doggystyle on vinyl. I laughed as the record spun, my mind replaying the scene where the whole block danced in our little yard yelling out lyrics we should have been too young to understand. And I understood a little better what music does for ghetto children, uplifting or not, we went to California that day, thanks to a little speaker and a unrefined woman from Harlem who believed in sharing her last penny.