When Bodega Bamz was in his early teens, he hit a blunt laced with angel dust. He got scared, and rushed to the most welcoming place he could think of at the time. “I ran into church, singing my coritos,” he says, referencing Spanish hymns. First, though, he made a stop at Hajji Deli Grocery, the bodega on the corner of 110th Street and 1st Avenue infamous for its mural of fallen hero Derek “Bloodshed” Armstead, a cousin of Cam’ron and once promising rapper who died in a car accident in 1997. Bamz was lucid enough to procure a bottle of water from Hajji’s, pouring it all over himself in an attempt to extinguish his trauma. “It was a bad trip,” he says. “[I would] fuck around and be the first nigga to die off weed. You know how fucked up that would be? If you died off smoking weed?”