Yays or Your Life

Google these 3 keywords: "Cartier, Detroit, Murder" and you will get approx. 90,000 results on related articles.

In Detroit, MI, the city and state in which our youth embrace descriptions such as "the murder capitol" and "tha murda mitten", one of the easiest ways to be poor, but not look it, is to sport a pair of Cartier frames. How you purchase these thousand dollar designer frames is of no importance to those who see you. Rather you stole them, borrowed them from your cousin,

have a pair of fakes, and just knocked off a D.O.C., you will undoubtedly get more attention when you are wearing them.

Fakes. Well just go to Ebay and type in "Cartier, wood" and you'll see what the counterfeit black market has to offer. In a land of "show me what you got", fakes have taken over. They give a since of high-class fashion to broke ass people. Ass backwards? Tell me about it. Feel free to enter one of Detroit's mini-malls, where Family Dollar's, Chinese Food restaurant, and the Beauty Supply stores flourish....and you'll bound to hear one of the 3 marketing strategies:

1. "cd's and movies. I got that new American Gangster"
2. "a yo cuz, you smoke? I got that ooooh weeee"
3. "I them yays man, $50, brand new".

Oh wait, throw in someone selling knockoff Air Force 1's and Jordans and now you know you're REALLY in the hood. I'm getting WAY off topic here......


A 17-yr old IDIOT, recently won a pair of Cartier frames on ebay. Congrats. He was setup by a group of young black men from the Detroit area. The winning bidder brought $1,100 in cash to purchase the glasses from men who were anything but professional. Long story short, he was robbed, beat up, and left with this brilliant piece of advice "and don’t meet people you don’t know over the Internet." Oh yea, that's really his problem. This fool could have met a guy on 7 Mile and did the same thing. Don't go blaming "www" for your stupidity. Forget all that, with $1,100, you can go buy a pair of Cartier glasses from a legit retailer. What the heck are you doing shopping on ebay for Yays in YAY CITY? There's a Cartier store in Summerset mall, there are 500 jewelry stores that have them, not to mention good ol' D.O.C. I do not excuse the actions of these thieves, but at some point, I have to question the intelligence of the buyer in this situation. This is not "happyville", where you can just go around smiling without a care in the world.


I too once suffered from "gotta-have-some-yays-itus" in 2003. One year, fresh out of highschool, finishing up my first year @ WSU, I'm fresh to death....with some brand new Cartier Wood frames on my face. One month later, while at a major venue in Downtown Detroit, I was jacked by the infamous "Yay snatchers". I was not armed, but had I been, who can shoot at someone in a crowd of 100,000 people. $800 (through a discount), was down the drain.

My story fails in comparison to Lenell Caffey, who was killed outside of a Southfield party store in 2002 for not handing over his Cartier glasses. In September of 2007, two men were approached by 5 dudes in Hamtramck for their Cartier glasses. One of the 2 victims was armed and returned fire at the suspects. They lived....and kept their glasses, but one of the two was shot in his thigh. Even a mailman and an undercover police officer where the victims or potential robberies for their Cartier glasses, in braud daylight.

At some point, people have to ask themselves what do they value more, their lives or these glasses? I value my life, but I will never allow thieves to dictate what I'm willing to wear. I work hard, I play hard, and I pray harder....so if you want to risk your life to steal from me, so be it. If I die in a gun battle over my belongings, so be it. My only concern at that point is rather I'm in Heaven or not, not what I died for, or how I died.

"all through the hood I'm hearing people say, that I'ma get robbed tonight/
if they make me shit give my shit up, I'ma have to get hit up ok....cause I'm down to die for mine" - Stack Bundles