Off The Record: Butta Soft (Part 1)

This had to be like 06 - 07.. I was selling weed in my building. This was when Purple Haze was going for some weird shit 3 - 4 thousand a pound or like 3-4 hunnit a ounce. The prices was stupid. Coming across it in bulk was rare, so them spanish niggas was able to play with the numbers however they wanted. Them Spanish niggas had that shit sewn up. I was hearing about niggas just going uptown, to random blocks, trynna find it. Spanish nigga tell you a price, take your money, come back down, and hand you a bag with Haze on top and nothing but oregano under that. Word. Niggas was thirsty for that shit. It was that and sour just started to come on the scene. I aint really wanna fuck with sour cause the smell was crazy. It wasn't nothing like it. I already had a hard time covering up the smell of the haze in my room. I was still living with my moms b.

But anyway, I had a connect in my neighborhood. He was black but he looked Spanish or he was black but spoke Spanish... I don't know. My brother did time with the nigga and when he came home he got back on his feet. My brother seen what I was already doing in the building.. at that time I was selling chocolate. That shit was hard to come by too but only certain type of niggas fucked with it. That shit was a heavy high and mostly only older niggas fucked with it.. My brother was smoking that haze shit heavy. Non-stop. That shit used to come in a little glass jar... like smaller than a shot glass. I went to that nigga house one time and his whole nightstand was filled with empty glass jars. I'm like "my nigga how much each joint cost?" Nigga said some shit like 40 a glass. That shit blew my mind.. nigga I'm still nickle and diming it at this point and this nigga talking about 40 dollars a jar.

That night I made that nigga tell me where he was getting it from. That's when he told me the whole story about his man he did time with and came back home and all that shit... I told him I gotta meet this nigga. I'm trynna buy something. He like bet... Next day, we go to twelfth. He take me in the building we go upstairs. Homeboy stepped out into the hall and he made the introduction right there. "Yo this my brother, boom boom boom, my real brother.. this my blood" and all that shit.. Shit went smooth. I told the nigga I wanted to buy something right then. He like "bet, how much you want?" told him I want an ounce just to start, don't really know the flow of it... Of course he hit me in the head. Told me 400. I aint beef. I was a new face and I'm only taking one.. fuck it.

I hand it to my brother.. told him I was going to go pick up my scale, my little baggies and I'd meet him back at his crib. He like "bet".. I do my little running around, get back to this nigga house so I could bag up. Nigga! I bust open the bag, I take a quick wiff of that shit.. Nigga that shit smell awesome. lol. That shit was all fruity and citrusy and shit. That shit was still attached to the branch all fluffy and shit. Waaayyy different from that chocolate shit I was fucking with... Anyway, my brother smoke the shit.. I'm asking him how much the shit cost, how much go in each jar.. all that type shit. Haze back then, you could only buy it a dub or better.. Its either you was spending $20 or $40 a bag nothing else. This was before all this 8ths and shit came into play. I didn't hear about niggas smoking 8ths until I went out of town and the white boys asked "how much for a 8th?" ( lol. That shit threw me off. Lol.)...

My brother told me a dub is point 3 - point 4 and a 40 was point 8 - point 9.. and I had to make sure it looked fluffy in the bag or niggas wasn't coppin. I couldn't just smash the shit in the bag like I was doing with the other shit. "You know how they say presentation is everything" .. that shit is dead true my nigga. Even in the world of smokers. To keep it fluffy you couldn't just rip it off the branch. I had to go buy these little ass scissors and cut that shit off bud by bud, weight it and put in the bag. To get it right, that shit took me about 30 minutes b.. I was thirsty.. As soon as I finished nigga I went outside. lol. I wanted to see what that shit did. Nigga.. that shit was dead. All my regulars was nickle and dime mofuckas, old niggas wasn't jacking it. They was used to fluffy bags and shit. Didn't see the need to spend $20 on a bag half the size. Word, shit was slow. I had it for a couple days. I sold a few but it wasn't what I thought it was. I had to figure it out.

Niggas was beefing over the price and the amount that was in the bag.. Nigga I remember, I had all the baggies spread on my bed in two little piles... one, I had to sell just to make my money back and the other, was my profit pile once I got rid of the reup pile. With haze you never really doubled your money unless you was putting the bare minimum in each bag, so I was already taking somewhat of a loss, not really, but yea.. I said fuck it, I'd rather take a quick loss and a fast reup rather than a slow reup and a quick loss. Nigga, I took two $20 bags and stapled them shits together and sold it for $30. I made less money off each flip but I would be able to reup even faster.. So instead of 700 off each ounce I made like 580.. But I was rein'up every two days, so the loss wasn't really a loss if I sold it fast enough... Nigga the next day I sold out in 2 hours. Nigga a couple weeks of that, I went straight to forty-fifth and bought 2 Pelle's. Lol. The red butta soft shit and the orange. I already had the black hard leather joint that I used to wear with the black gortex Vasquez. lol. Shit was different when I got into those colors though boy. lol.

We all have a story, whether good or bad.. there's a story to tell. Off The Record is that . It's an ongoing article where I've gone to my neighborhood and interviewed all of the retired street guys, that left the game alone.. They were filled with stories. Stories that they never told or felt like they could ever tell.. These are true stories. These are the stories of the men and women from neighborhoods like mine, across the country. Enjoy.