Recently, Too Short, a rapper from the Bay Area, was honored by having a section of Foothill Boulevard in Oakland named in his honor. Sway Calloway, Mistah F.A.B., and Ice Cube were all present.
The three-block section of Foothill Boulevard between High Street and 47th Avenue, which is right outside Fremont High School, will be renamed “Too Short Way.” Too Short attended Fremont High School after relocating to East Oakland from Los Angeles in the 1980s.
“I have felt like I owe a debt to Oakland, and that nothing I do will ever repay it because of the life that I was given through Oakland,” Too Short told SFGate. “There are a few things that happened in my life that, if they didn’t happen, Too Short wouldn’t happen, and going to Fremont High is one of those things. It was like our home base; we’d meet up at school and then we’d go to the house and make tapes, then we’d go out into the neighborhoods and sell the tapes.”
Regarding his legacy in the Bay Area hip-hop scene, Too Short said: “I was standing up on a foundation that was already solid, it was already built. So I really had to uphold the legacy of Oakland and the bay. It wasn’t like it was me who was starting this for the first time — big things had happened in the bay, it had a rich history. I’m not taking it lightly.”
Oakland has experienced gentrification, so Too Short thinks the street may serve as a bridge to the city’s center.
“Gentrification came in and it out-priced a lot of people who are already there,” he said. “Communities get displaced, lifelong friends lose each other, and people’s comfortable way of life becomes very uncomfortable. And you move into a city, into your newly renovated address, and you don’t even realize what all took place for you to get that.”
