Prance Lo
interview excerpt
PranceLo: My LoLife banner, I raise my L’s as proudly as I raise my last name. I hold anything close to me to my heart. You know what I mean? That’s how I moved within Hip-Hop, within the LoLife culture, and within my day to day 9-5 now as a big man. I try to move by example.
JCN: Definitely. So, placing yourself there in Flatbush. You have this Trinidadian background. How do you build community with the folks around you? I’ve heard you talk about the Church Ave boys and rocking with them. Where do you place yourself in what’s going on in the neighborhood?
PranceLo: Well, in the neighborhood now, I place myself with friends and family. You know what I mean. I know even though my friends is maybe on the wrong side of the tracks or whatever, once a year during the Labor Day time, I would have a party. The Yardy Party, the Prance-Lo Yardy Party. Which I have with some of my good friends that I grew up with, that took me off the block. You know what I mean. Cuz when I moved on the block I met some of my peoples, that’s my CAB, my Church Ave Boys. I went to school in Manhattan, they went to school in all the schools in the vicinity like Catholic and public schools. So, they knew more of the, they had more of the friends and peers around the way. So, when I came out from after school coming from the city, it’s about 5, 6 oclock. By the time I’m out, these dudes ready to go in for supper. But, I already had time hanging with my friends in the city in Washington Square Park. Down in the Greenwich village area, running havoc with my friends of my schooling, and then when I come on the weekend I can hang with my friends from the block, and hang with their friends. So, I had the best of both worlds on the bridge. You know that stigma, Manhattan dudes aint mess with Brooklyn dudes, and vice-versa. Manhattan keep on making it and Brooklyn keep on taking it? So, that phrase was a stigma in peoples mind. Like, nah nah nah I aint messing with that. Like, oh, like a girl go check a dude in Brooklyn, “like, oh you better be safe out there, you know them Brooklyn heads.” So, it was always that stigma. “Watch yourself out there with them Harlem dudes, I know it’s about money, but you know you gotta watch yourself, they don’t like Brooklyn dudes.” That type of thing. You know you my sister, it was always that thing. But I always was like, I never seen that. I always had the love of both sides.
