Texts from Bennett

Hardworking Kansas City rapper Mac Lethal has a problem, and its name is Bennett. His wannabe gangsta cousin is seventeen, uses drugs and foul language, claims to be 13 percent black, and swears he speaks "da female language." (Strangely that last one sort of seems true.)

But as different as they are, when Bennett and his mom lose their home, Mac's got their backs. They're family after all. Sure, it takes patience to live with the eternally smoked-out Bennett and the pill-popped Aunt Lily, but he can handle it.

You know who can't? Mac's very pretty, very WASPy, very uptight girlfriend. So as his once-peaceful household gets completely crazy, Mac learns that wanna-be-Crips are thicker than water, that his little cousin - flawed, irreverent, and basically a Saturday morning cartoon gone horribly wrong - has become his mentor, and that he really has no idea what's up with girls.