Opens with Bleek as a child learning to play the trumpet, his friends want him to come out and play but mother insists he finish his lessons. Bleek grows into adulthood and forms his own band – The Bleek Gilliam Quartet. The story of Bleek’s and Shadow’s friendly rivalry on stage which spills into their professional relationship and threatens to tear apart the quartet.

Young Kid has been invited to a party at his friend Play’s house. But after a fight at school, Kid’s father grounds him. None the less, Kid sneaks out when his father falls asleep. But Kid doesn’t know that three of the thugs at school has decided to give him a lesson in behaviour

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.