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Like vintage gangsta rap?
Like Halloween?
Then look no further than the Geto Boys’ 1991 classic “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”. Though primarily a song about inner-city paranoia and depression, the song’s most famous moment occurs when Bushwick Bill lays down a Halloween tale that puts most campfire urban legends to shame.
While “robbin’ little kids for bags” on his neighborhood block, Bill and the Boys get stalked by a monstrous, seven-foot cop. Soon enough, the monster cop catches up to them and a brawl ensues. They triple-team him, bringing him down to the sidewalk, with Bill continuing to bash his head into the concrete long after the squabble’s been settled.
Things aren’t entirely what they seem however, and the story’s conclusion perfectly reflects the kind of warped psychological state someone might develope from suffering through the nightmarish environment that is the ghetto. Halloween becomes a metaphor for Bushwick Bill’s everyday life, an existence filled with ghoulish realities usually reserved for only one day on the calendar.
