Singing the praises of a vanishing hood
As South Berkeley changes, a native son preserves its history
When Koran Streets was 12, his face was scarred in a freak accident: His dreadlocks caught fire as his mother used a home remedy — gasoline — to kill lice.
“It seemed like when a drop hit me, my whole head caught on fire, ignited like the Ghost Rider,” Streets, now 26, said referring to the comic book character who rides a motorcycle with a flaming skull.
The then-South Berkeley resident was in a coma for six months. He had 20 skin-graft surgeries. Six fingers were amputated.
The accident didn’t extinguish his charisma, though.
Streets, whose real name is Koran Jenkins, is an actor and rapper — his debut album, “You.Know.I.Got.It (The Album)” has earned rave reviews. Rolling Stone named it one of the best rap albums of 2016, noting the “sincere desperation throughout that gives it both a human spark and a targeted, specific realism.”
Streets, who now lives in West Oakland, has a deep connection to marginalized East Bay communities. His mother, Ayodele Nzinga, is the founder of Lower Bottom Playaz, a theater company that produces performances about social issues.
Streets grew up performing on his mother’s stage. He’s also been in two independent films — “Licks” and “Kicks” — that have depicted the hard-knock obstacles black and brown youth face in Oakland’s and Richmond’s toughest neighborhoods, respectively.
Streets has lived the lyrics he writes and the lines he recites. He’s been homeless. In 2013, he was sleeping in a Crown Victoria and showing up to red-carpet premieres for “Licks.” He’s also served time in jail for selling drugs in South Berkeley.
“I always acted, because that was my mother’s thing,” he said. “But my thing was music. I wanted to be a rapper. I hung on to them both, and acting flourished before the music.”
The South Berkeley neighborhood where he grew up was the heart of Berkeley’s black community. It’s also an area that has historically been rough and poor. On Sacramento Street, the west end of South Berkeley, there are three liquor stores in the 10 blocks between Dwight Way and Ashby Avenue. I didn’t
notice any restaurants on the stretch.
I walked with Streets to Bob’s Liquors & Deli at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon streets. It’s one of the spots where he used to sell drugs, and it’s where his brother, Stanley Hunt, was shot three times during an attempted robbery.
I didn’t see any people hanging on the corner. Maybe it’s because the neighborhood has changed — it’s now popular with UC Berkeley students and young professionals looking for affordable rent.
These streets were the center of his childhood and life — and the lives of many poor black people living in the shadows of the country’s No. 1 public university.
Even as the old South Berkeley slowly vanishes — another victim of the housing crisis that has forced people to move into neighborhoods they never would have considered before — Streets will keep it alive in his music.
“Up there is where the money is at,” said Streets, referring to North Berkeley. “That’s where the white folk at. We down here. We all trapped in down here. We trying to survive down here.”
He knows he soon might not even recognize South Berkeley.
“This is the area when gentrification really, really hits, this is going to get hit first,” he said.
We met earlier this week in front of the duplex on the block — the 2800 block of Sacramento Street — where he was raised. The numbers are tattooed on his left bicep.
We decided to take a drive in his Audi through Berkeley. He pointed out the corner of Parker and Sacramento streets. That’s where he was arrested for cocaine and gun possession. After the arrest, he said his mother told him he was wasting his talent and life — and ruining her reputation.
“I heard her,” he told me as we waited in traffic. “I don’t like talking about it now, because I’m so reformed.”
As we were driving on Shattuck Avenue toward campus, which seems much, much farther than just 2 miles away, we passed the Dwight, a new apartment complex on the corner of Dwight Way and Shattuck. Studio apartments start at $2,825 per month.
“How do you feel?” Streets asked as people swept through a crosswalk on their way to lunch. Hungry, I told him. “It’s vibrant up here. It’s energetic up here. You feel like it’s alive,” he said. “You don’t really feel like that down there.”