youth at cabrini green:
thats one example of
when cocaine or ready rock
as it's called out here on the streets
can do to you
he he an mo he
ugh
(children talking)
terisa x2
Drag Cursor/Finger to view Drag Cursor/Finger to turn Wheel/Two fingers to zoom Interact with object using Cursor/Finger
vyle. stands under the 55th Metra viaduct,
a place locked in 2007 but bending toward something else—
toward 2025, toward the future, toward something that shouldn't exist yet, but does.
The mural by Damon Lamar Reed looms in front of him,
colors still bold, still vibrant, untouched by time.
But everything else? A gentrification wonder wheel, whole neighborhoods becoming attractions, with the only giftshop memento being how they would love to "own something here".
The augmented Google Glass prototype reality glasses gifted to him at the gifting suite of a large hometown festival sit on his face—technology that shouldn't be here yet, but is.
Through them, the world fractures.
In the upper-right corner of his vision, a remote desktop cycles through files,
flipping through fragmented history—
a past inside a past inside a future.
Then—
the video.
KRAM, 20 years old, moving through subway layups and tunnels,
his body fluid, confident, as if the underground belonged to him.
The light of the camera catches his blonde hair, the loose fit of his clothes,
the way his hands move instinctively—tagging, writing.
vyle. exhales, staring into some of the only tangible records of KRAM that exists.
Because KRAM is gone—2021 took him.
And yet, here he is, frozen in motion,
forever slipping through train yards.
KRAM had always been something different—
a wise-talking, foul-mouthed blonde kid who flipped the world's expectations upside down.
Everyone in Hyde Park knew him.
A white boy who authentically talked like an old Black man from the corner store somehow,
cursing out his own grandmother—
as jarring as that sounds, his grandmother was a WWII holocaust survivor who knew that there were larger problems in the world than letting "little nick"
express himself for the adulation,
or apparent disgust of onlookers
not with malice, but with a kind of affectionate defiance,
a subversion of age roles that no one could quite put into words.
vyle. had watched over him—
looked out for him, skated through the streets with him,
took him to Dr. Wax, Time II Pound, Gramaphone, and every other spot that mattered.
They even wrote graffiti on The Real World: Chicago house as young children, and had to run from security, one day in Y2K-era Wicker Park.
KRAM's grandmother trusted vyle. with him,
letting them roam because she knew there was something solid there and that vyle. was raised well.
And in those years, in those endless days of movement, they met Eminem.
A U of C concert, some moment of fate,
and suddenly Em's phone number was in their hands.
Not because they were anybody.
Not because they had connections.
But because the world was strange and fluid—and things like that just happened back then.
And what did they do with it? They called it—
not to talk, not to say anything.
Just to listen.
Eminem's answering machine clicked on,
his voice coming through the receiver, mocking Master P's Make Em Say Uhh before the beep.
It's not like Eminem really wanted to talk, he may have wanted to sign KRAM/NUKE, but that wasn't feasible when he just released his Marshall Mathers LP and was becoming a mega-star,
he just saw that NUKE had something.
That was enough.
Now, standing under the viaduct, watching KRAM move in a past that no longer exists,
vyle. feels the weight of mileage—
the culture, the movement, the cycle of things coming back around.
He slows down.
He lets himself process.
Because memories aren't just meant to be chased—
they're meant to be held.
The video loops.
The past flickers.