Bay Area rapper Too $hort is getting a portion of Foothill Boulevard in Oakland named after him as we speak (Saturday). The three-block stretch of Foothill Boulevard, between High Street and forty seventh Avenue, can be renamed “Too $hort Way” in honor of the rapper, who moved to Oakland from Los Angeles within the early Eighties together with his household and launched his 1983 debut LP Don’t Stop Rappin’ on the Oakland label 75 Girls Records And Tapes.
“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 $hort instructed SFGATE. “There’s 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,” he added. “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.”
Too $hort additionally stated about his legacy within the Oakland rap scene: “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.”