Before the bars.
Before Shantel.
Before Blaze and the battle lines…
There was just CJ.
And silence.
---
Three Years Ago – Umoja Estate
CJ was thirteen, knees scraped, hoodie two sizes too big, sitting outside the one-room house he shared with his mom. Inside, the radio hummed weakly—Swahili news fading in and out with static. His mother coughed, that deep chest cough she'd had since the factory job.
"You okay, Mama?" he'd asked.
She nodded, pressing a damp cloth to her chest. "I'm always okay for you, mtoto."
But CJ saw the truth in the way she walked slower every week, the way medicine bottles multiplied on the windowsill like unwelcome visitors.
That night, he heard shouting outside. Down the alley, two local crews were beefing again—bottles breaking, fists flying, a verse screamed through the chaos:
> "I ain't rich, but I'm real. I don't kneel.
Life gave me scars, I turned 'em into steel…"
That line clung to CJ's brain like glue.
---
Back to Present – Afternoon Shadows
CJ sat at the park bench under the same mango tree where he first scribbled rhymes in secret. Now, that notebook was legendary across Eastpoint.
Charles walked up with two sodas. "Yo, you alive or stuck in dream mode again?"
CJ smirked. "Both."
"Blaze's crew been quiet since that midnight beatdown," Charles said, tossing him a soda. "People are calling you Eastpoint's Echo."
CJ laughed. "I kinda like that."
"But," Charles added, lowering his voice, "he's not gone. Kevy's still watching your page. Milo posted a story of Shantel's block yesterday. They're waiting."
CJ's eyes narrowed. "Then let 'em wait."
---
That Evening – At Home
CJ sat by the window as his mom spooned thick uji into a chipped mug. She still worked long shifts, but now her cough was softer, her eyes less tired. She didn't know everything he was involved in—but she knew.
"You look like your father when you hold that pen," she said.
CJ looked up. "Did he write?"
"No," she smiled. "But he had things he couldn't say out loud. You do too. Except you found a louder way."
She stood, kissed his forehead. "Don't let pain make you hard, CJ. Let it make you heard."
---
Final Scene – Rooftop Cypher
That night, the crew gathered on a rooftop overlooking Eastpoint. Speakers bumping. Stars blinking. A new beat played—low, moody, poetic.
CJ stood at the center. No phone. No notebook. Just truth.
> "Before the mic, I was shadows and fear,
Mama cried at night so I learned not to tear.
Pain in my pocket, dreams in my chest—
Now I rap like I'm bleeding, just to give y'all my best…"
The crew clapped, whistles echoing into the Nairobi night.
CJ looked out over the lights below.
The past made him.
The streets tested him.
The mic saved him.
And now?
Now he was ready to own it all.