Life in New Orleans is nothing short of that old cliché "by the age twenty-one, a black kid in America, will either be dead or in jail". At sixteen years of age, Sy' Bastian fights the temptation of becoming his father, a drug dealer, a killer, an absent father. He must grow up fast, in order to help his mom and sisters, survive the next day. He has two choices, stir away from the horrors he sees, or follow in the same footsteps that abandoned him years ago, just to live in peace.