What Did KRS-One Do When He Was Homeless Teenager?
He went to the library and built his mind. Plus arguing with God and dumpster diving.
It’s a well-known part of hiphop history that KRS-One was homeless before he was famous. He met his DJ, Scott La Rock, in the shelter system. Scott was his social worker. But what isn’t known is what KRS did when he was homeless. When we talk about unhoused people we generally think of people who are sleeping outdoors and begging for change. For KRS it was like that, but it was also like the Buddha going into the world with nothing in search of knowledge and eventually becoming his highest self. Plus dumpster diving. But one thing you have to keep in mind is that KRS is delusional so even when he was homeless, he saw himself as a superstar. He was certain that one day he would become an historical figure even though nothing was pointing toward that ever happening. His delusional mindset helped him get through this period in hell because he didn’t believe he was in hell. He believed he was a savior sent from God and he often talked to God as if they had a direct connection. At the same time, he sometimes got angry with God. His time as a homeless person was wild.
It all started when he was 16 years old. He was living in Brooklyn with his mother and his younger brother Kenny. At the time he was known as Larry. His given name is Lawrence. Larry got into a disagreement with his mom, the details are not important, and he decided to leave home. He became homeless by choice. He knew how to do it because he’d run away from home before. Between the ages of 13 and 16, he’d left home and stayed out for a few days or a few weeks several times. He was used to sleeping on the train. But he left with no plan. Once he went out into the street, he was without friends or family. He had no one to help. He was terrified. But he also felt like he was right where he was supposed to be. That duality crystallizes who he is.
At first, he sat on the E train for two days straight, riding from Brooklyn through Manhattan into Queens and back again. He slept, he meditated, he ate a 25 cent bag of potato chips for dinner. Yes, he was into meditation then and he taught himself how to meditate on the train during the chaos of rush hour. He could block out all the noise and all the anxiety in the air and just listen to his breath. But he couldn’t block out how hungry he was. As he finished his last potato chip, a sense of despair washed over him. He didn’t know where his next meal would come from and he had no idea how to get money for it.
But this is a guy who was then into metaphysics and he believed in his ability to change his life through affirmations. Even then, as a homeless 16 year-old, he had daily affirmations-—I am the greatest MC ever. I am the greatest poet of this century. My insight is brilliant. I am intelligent. I am strong. I am healthy. He would say these things to himself over and over and visualize himself on stage, doing rhymes, poems, and lectures that blew people away. He saw himself becoming an icon, an important societal figure with ideas and poems and rhymes and knowledge. He saw himself, decades in the future, being famous worldwide and called on to advise kings and heads of state on international matters. As a 16 year-old homeless teenager, he visualized himself going down in history as one of the great thinkers of his time. He was delusional but in a way that was meant to help him see beyond his current troubles and guide him to becoming his best self.
But as he sat on the train with his stomach so empty it was painful, he was repeating different affirmations: I’m going to run into my lunch in the next hour. I’m going to find a pair of pants today. I’m going to be safe today. He had been homeless for about three days then. He’d been wandering the streets and sleeping on the train and he was already starting to fall apart. He looked at himself in a bathroom mirror and didn’t recognize himself. His skin was dark and dry. His hair was grayish and woolly. His lips were crusty and peeling. He says he looked like little Black Sambo.
He pumped out a little soap, that pink, thick, oozing soap, and washed his hands and face and the entire sink turned black from all the dirt. He was so embarrassed. He felt like he had fallen out of society like a penny that slips out of someone’s pocket and falls down a subway grate and ends up in the mud.
He rode the train back to Brooklyn, near his mother’s apartment, and he went to a place called SuperDonut. It had a little muscle-bound donut-shaped man on top. As he’d suspected, late at night they tossed a big bag of donuts into their dumpster. He crept into the parking lot and grabbed a bag of donuts. While he was scarfing down garbage donuts for dinner, he told himself I am the number one MC, I am a world-renowned poet. While he was on a park bench, trying to fall sleep, he visualized himself rocking parties, doing lectures, and arguing with producers on the set of the movie about his life. His life was near rock bottom but, even though he had no idea how he would get there, his vision of massive future success remained sharp.
Still, sometimes his confidence plummeted. One night he was hungry and couldn’t find any foodand he grew so weak and so pained that he screamed at God. He yelled, “Why do I have to walk around with my stomach growling? What kind of God are you? Fuck you! Fuck you!” He was screaming it with conviction. A few moments later, he was trudging down the street when he found a twenty-dollar bill on the ground. Was that coincidence? He doesn’t think so. Is that his delusion talking? Maybe but maybe not.
His clothes were a mess—he said they become like a prisoner chained to you. They got destroyed by being worn day after night after day after night and never being washed. All the smells and sweat and nastiness of the body got trapped in the fabric and stayed on him. He had left his mother’s home with a pair of combat boots, but they were worn out and all ten of his toes and the balls of his feet touched the ground as he walked. He had to walk with his feet clenched in a certain way and his eyes constantly on the pavement to avoid glass and sticks and mud. But he still got stuff all stuck in his feet.
He went to a sneaker store dumpster to find some shoes. They’d just thrown away a ton of shoes so he sat there for hours wading through a mountain of sneakers, finding nothing close to a size 15. He was surrounded by brand new shoes that were way too small. Tears quivered in his eyes as he was sifted through all these clean kicks he couldn’t wear. His feet were weary and bleeding and dirt-caked but he couldn’t find anything to help. “God!” he yelled. “You’re playin tricks on me!” He thought, is He laughing at me? Does He hate me? Finally, his eyes landed on an Adidas shoe that was bigger than all the others around it. It was a black on black Adidas shelltoe size... 13. He dug around and eventually found its brother. He pulled open the shoes and crammed his feet in. It was a tight squeeze and his toes burned but he suddenly had new shoes. The same ones Run-DMC wore! He tossed aside the tatters of leather that were his old shoes and strutted down the block at three in the morning, in his sparkling new Adidas.
But these shoes were too small so he walked with his toes all twisted up on top of each other. A few days later his feet were bruised and burning from squishing into shoes that were two sizes too small. It was so painful that he left the shelltoes on a bench and walked off. An hour later it was raining. By the end of that day the dirt from the street had glued to his feet and formed a paste that hardened into a new sole. He was in hell.
To get off of the streets he started going to the Brooklyn Public library. You could sleep there some of the time but to stay there for hours you had to read so he picked up some magazines. First, he was into National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, and Science Times. Soon that led to books. He read electronics books, mechanical books, and books about science—physics, quantum physics, and atomic structures. He felt like he needed to understand something of everything so he read widely. He read the dictionary, the encyclopedia, a thesaurus, and some law books. He read the King James bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Bhagavad-Gita, and a book about Buddha. He was pulling from everywhere. He got into philosophy and ran through Aristotle, Descartes, Socrates, Bacon, Kethume, Hawkins, Newton, Kant, and Marx. He read Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Marcus Garvey, Frederick Douglass, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Dr. King. He read mythology, poetry, sociology—he pulled from every section in the library. He kept thinking, I’m gonna have to answer these questions one day so let me study now. This was the fuel he needed for his life as a superstar intellectual. So he read, then he meditated on what he’d read, then he wrote out his own philosophies. He wasn’t merely absorbing, he was consciously creating himself. His time in the gym of the mind made him intellectually strong.
Meanwhile, his body was crumbling. His weight was plummeting. His teeth were yellowing. But he didn’t care because he felt liberated. He felt an ease he had never before known. He felt free. He felt like being homeless was like revoking his membership in society and giving him room to look at life more objectively. He started to really believe that he was a philosopher and a prophet who the world should be listening to. In his mind, he was no different than Moses as a righteous messenger of God. He truly felt like he was a son of God. He looked crazy, but he was as peace with himself and felt an overwhelming sense of self-confidence. Most of the time. But as his time in the streets went on, things got harder.
After six months on the streets he was really struggling. One late night, when the wind was blowing and it was really cold and his stomach was howling because he couldn’t find food, he turned to God, frustrated with Him. He thought,I’m gonna die tonight. I know it. I’m gonna starve in the streets. I’ll be gone before dawn. He said to God, “Why am I withering away like this?!” He was screaming at the sky, at God. “Why am I out in the street, my feet in the glass and mud? Why are you betraying me? If you were here I WOULD PUNCH YOU RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!”
To calm himself, he sunk into meditation. A vision came to him. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was a scene he could see and hear and smell. There was a bridge. He saw himself walking across it. In the scene he was healthy, strong, and clean. There was a bright aura all around him.
When his eyes opened he was filled with energy. He felt like he had to walk to the edge of Brooklyn and find a bridge. Which bridge? Any would do. He walked down Bedford Avenue to the Williamsburg Bridge. He had no idea where he was going, or what would come next, but he bounded onto the bridge and began to cross.
Crossing that bridge he felt invincible. He was growing with each step, becoming a man, unafraid of the future. As soon as he stepped off the bridge he thanked God for leading him that far and pledged to follow wherever He pointed. He took the traffic lights as his beacon. Every time he came to a green light he would go straight. When he came to a red light he would turn right. He moved through the streets until he stumbled onto a huge line of men—hundreds gloomy men in ratty threadbare clothes in a big, snaking, unruly line. That was the day he found his way into the shelter system and started the next chapter of his life, one step closer to becoming an icon.