Children grow up disillusioned and poor snitches slip, flip, and die and the hustle goes on and on. "Safe", which kicks off the album, is a bluesy and brutal ride through the man's hood. The best songs on The Fix resonate with that classic 'Face blend of swagger and sadness. Although these events may be unfortunate on a personal level, the struggle keeps 'Face hungry, and, as he recently told BET, "spoke through my pen to ease my pain." Geffen almost refused to release the Geto Boys' debut 'Face suffered from multiple and prolonged bouts with depression and the FBI and DEA reportedly keep tabs on him. In his own words, he has "turned a dream into reality with a fuck-you mentality." And, in addition to his artistic and commercial accomplishments, Scarface has also reigns as president of Def Jam South, one of the best-known hip-hop labels, producing the always-amusing Ludacris.īut even as the platinum records pile up, strife is never far off. His straight-forward recitation of the roughneck life was gangsta before we even knew what gangsta was. His booming baritone sounded alternately boastful and besieged, paranoid and supremely confident.
But rather than buckle under the pressure and become another statistic running through ballistics, 'Face managed to cipher that pain and struggle into his rhymes. Growing up in Houston's 5th Ward, ex-Geto Boy Scarface waded through a constant litany of violence, drugs, and gangs.