There’s a time to go hard, and a time to chill…
The day the cops took his daddy away for murder, a new emotion gripped five-year-old Daquan Watson’s heart: Hate. It would stay with him as he came up in The Calliope, New Orleans’ most notorious, drug-infested housing projects, where every brother is a soldier goin’ to war every day. Grandma Mama does her best to raise him the right way, but those streets keeping calling. Trying to get ahead in such a harsh environment can make your heart turn cold – unless you learn how to listen to your guardian angel.
There’s a time to take one for the team…
But the violence a The Calliope is nothing compared to what Daquan experiences doing time at Scotland Correctional Center for youth, watching cats gets stabbed over card games, young boys get raped, and racism of the worst kind, even from the black guards. A voice inside tells him he’d better learn to use his anger – instead of letting it use him, ya heard?
And there’s a time to THINK FOR YOURSELF…
From the moment Daquan heard his first blast of hip hop, the music spoke to him, and for him. While his friends are getting their street hustle cracking, his way with words is leading him in another direction. With a good woman by his side, he’s owning up to his responsibilities and building a new future with New Orleans’ biggest rap label. But what about his homies in The CP3 – will they ever be free? Daquan knows his hardened heart will never allow him to become a victim. He can only pray it won’t allow him to become a predator…
Corey Miller, a.k.a. C-Murder, grew up in New Orleans’ Third Ward in the notorious Calliope Housing Projects and went on to turn his pain into music. C-Murder made his rap debut in 1995 as part of the group TRU, along with his brothers Percy and Vyshonne, a.k.a. Master P and Silkk the Shocker. The Miller brothers went on to form No Limit Records. Together they became the most powerful force to put southern hip hop on the map during the mid 1990s. TRU’s album TRU 2 Da Game was certified platinum in 1997. C-Murder has been featured on numerous No Limit albums and movie soundtracks and has released six solo albums to date, including Life or Death, certified platinum in 1999, and Bossalini certified gold the same year. He appeared in the classic straight-to-video movie I’m Bout It and the hood comedy I Got The Hook Up.
From C-Murder’s Authors Note:
"Writing Death Around The Corner from prison took me two years. I wrote everything out by hand in notebooks and then mailed them out to be typed up on a computer. It could have been done before that, but sometimes there’s so much happening on the tier and so much going on in your case and your personal life that you just have to chill. And then Katrina hit—the storm. I sent out a lot of chapters that were lost when all the mail got shut down. So once we came back from Katrina, and the mail started rolling, I called and said, Look for the mail! And the Post office said Call this number and go on this website, cause it’s all just sitting in crates out in the sun. So four months later I got all them chapters back. Then I just finished the last of the chapters right then and there. And that was it.
"I chose the title Death Around The Corner because every day I was locked up I kept hearing about people getting killed—young dudes. Three murders one day, four murders, five murders. There was just a lot of brothers getting killed. So I said it looks like everybody has to watch their back. It’s serious out there. Death is so close—right around the corner. Everybody can relate to it, from my hood to your hood. Anywhere. So that was the theme of the whole book.
"Daquan starts out how we all start out—innocent. Just a little boy happy for the little things in life: going to school, playing in the grass, having fun on the see-saws at the park. Then at five years old, he has his first sight of tragedy, and it all goes downhill from there. This is a story for all those people that society gives up on. There’s millions and millions of Daquans out there. You can just drive through the hood to see a snotty nose with a Pamper, no parents at home, no parks to play in, abandoned. There’s millions and millions of Daquans in the wiorld. Not just black, but white and everything else, South America, Asia, Africa. Once you read the book you will understand where I’m coming from. It’s just the life of a young black man growing up in the hood with the odds against him. So anybody can get it. Death is always right around the corner."
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