Wired

A couple of years ago at All Star Weekend, I ran into my next door neighbour from college for the first time in more than a decade. Baseball prospect Darryl Handy had returned to his home city of Baltimore in Maryland after poor luck with injurïes had ruïned his pro prospects. I took the opportunity to do some research on one of my favourite programmes on television, HBO's The Wire. I posed "Handyman" the qüestion, "“Is B-More really like it is on The Wire?”

In an instant he described (C)harm City. A place of 600,000 plus people with a defeated, ailing police force mired in scandal, an ever-growing gang presence, a grossly underfunded public school system, scores of murders, a massive crack and heroin market/problem and good old-fashioned gentrification worsening disparities in an already balkanized metropolis (read:
Guilford, the city’s priciest housing market, adjacent to Greenmount Ave., B-More drug and homicide hotspot).

Yes, it can be like that -and it is.

This week to help kick off the final act of The Wire saga, New York City will host the official CD release party for the The Wire: And All The Pieces Matter, and The Wire: Beyond Hamsterdam, the double-disc soundtrack commemorating the show’s five years on HBO.

Both albums drop on January 8th and feature tracks from artists such as Solomon Burke, Steve Earle, Masta Ace and Paul Weller, as well as B-More hip-hop and Club titans Bossman, Ogun, Rod Lee and Mullyman, to name a few.

The Wire website.

The Wire article in The Telegraph.