Children’s Story

children’s story is a song by slick rick. it tells the tragic tale of a 17 year old boy whos attempt to rob an undercover detective end in him pointing a gun at the d.t, the teenager has second thoughts about pulling the trigger and makes a run for it. he then steals a car, which he later crashs yet surviving, he then grabs a pregnant lady and points a gun at her but “deep in his heart he knew he was wrong, so he let the lady go and he starts to run on”. the song ends with the lyrics “he was only seventeen, in a madman’s dream, the cops shot the kid, i still hear him scream, this ain’t funny so don’t ya dare laugh, just another case ’bout the wrong path, straight ‘n narrow or yo’ soul gets cast? which, in a nutsh-ll, means that the 17 year old boy had been shot after he surrendered and slick rick tells the audience not to follow the wrong path.

“children’s story” appeared in the popular video game grand theft auto: san andreas, on cl-ssic hip hop radio station playback fm. the song was also featured on the rival true crime: new york city soundtrack.
in 1996 children’s story was redone by tricky on the alb-m “nearly g-d”. it was also done by everlast, released on the alb-m “eat at whitey’s”. this song has also been performed by mos def on his collaboration alb-m, “black star”, with talib kweli.

released: may 2, 1988
genre: east coast hip hop
length: 4:02 (only around half of this length has speech in it, the other half is just the beat
label: def jam/columbia
writer(s): slick rick