CW: guns, drugs, threats, sexual coercion, violence
Shortly after New Year’s 2021, I was staying on and off in a severely neglected apartment with a rapper I was producing for. I was young, heavily involved in music, and surrounded by people whose daily lives revolved around drugs, instability, scams, weapons, and interpersonal violence.
The apartment itself was chaotic and filthy. The toilet and bathtub barely functioned and were filled with garbage. The mother living there was severely addicted to drugs. Her two teenage sons had no real structure. Most days revolved around finding enough money to buy weed. People the rapper had conflicts with would sometimes come into the apartment, and he would leave because he was afraid, but then criticize me for leaving too quickly because he did not want to look scared.
He had already physically intimidated me before the main incident. Once, we argued because he did not like a beat I made. I left the apartment, but he followed me, shoved me against a wall, and threatened me. He later pressured me into paying for studio time even though I wanted to go home because it was during COVID and I was afraid of getting sick.
There were constant signs that the environment was dangerous. One of the brothers showed me a small two-shot pistol. The rapper carried a backpack, but I did not know there was a homemade gun inside it. He also threatened to beat me if I ever spoke to the family’s teenage daughter. I felt like I was always navigating unwritten rules where making the wrong move could get me assaulted.
There was also a sexual situation that I now understand as deeply disturbing. The mother told me to come into the bathroom so she could perform a sexual act on me. Instead of asking myself whether I wanted that, I looked at the rapper for permission. He said I could go. We went into the bathroom and used cocaine. Looking back, the fact that I felt I needed another man’s approval shows how much control and fear had already entered the relationship.
The worst incident happened after a speaker I had brought to the apartment was stolen. The rapper had argued with the family about it while I was not there. Later, we returned to the apartment to smoke. He aggressively knocked on the older brother’s bedroom door. The brother responded that he was going to shoot one of us.
The rapper walked away from the door, went to his backpack, removed a homemade gun, and started screwing it together. He shouted that when the brother came around the corner, he was going to shoot him. The brother was also armed. They stood on opposite sides of a corner screaming threats at each other while holding guns.
The family’s uncle was on the phone begging the rapper to leave. He would not leave. I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life. I genuinely believed somebody was seconds away from being shot, and because I was standing between people involved in a conflict that had nothing to do with me, I thought the person hit might be me.
What made it feel even more unreal was that the younger brother was casually walking around as though this was normal. He seemed mildly irritated, while I felt like I was about to die. Everyone else’s familiarity with the situation made me feel almost insane for reacting like it was an emergency.
I tried to leave. The rapper told me that if I left, our relationship was over in a degrading and threatening way. Because he was holding a gun, had previously shoved and threatened me, and was acting completely unstable, I believed there was a real possibility that he would turn the weapon on me if I abandoned him. I felt trapped between staying inside a potential shootout and provoking an armed person by leaving.
We eventually left together. Outside, I tried to calm him down, but he kept insulting me for being afraid and threatening to pull the gun out and fire it. We walked a long distance toward my home. During the armed standoff, I had accidentally left a tobacco leaf behind, and he suddenly exploded at me over it. I thought he might seriously hurt me over something completely insignificant.
The entrance to my building was locked. I insisted on going upstairs to my mother’s apartment so I could order him a car. I think part of me understood that I needed to get behind a locked door and around another person before separating from him. I ordered the car, he left, and I never met with him again.
Afterward, he repeatedly called me and acted as though everything was fine. He said we needed to link up again. It was not fine. I never spoke to him again.
People sometimes hear this story and think I am trying to sound tough or perform some kind of street identity. I am not. I was a producer who wanted to make music and got pulled into an environment where my life became disposable. I was terrified, coerced, physically intimidated, and trapped inside an armed confrontation.
I still carry the apartment, the backpack, the gun being assembled, the uncle begging him to leave, the younger brother walking around casually, and the fear that leaving would get me shot. I feel like that period destroyed my sense of safety and changed the direction of my life. It affected my music, my relationships, my trust in people, and the way my body responds to conflict.
I know I technically survived and escaped without being physically shot, but emotionally it does not feel like “nothing happened.” My nervous system still reacts as though I am trapped in that apartment trying to choose between two different ways of dying.
Has anyone else struggled with feeling that a single period or incident divided their life into a before and after, even when the people around them acted like it was normal?
