Children's Story

Richard "Slick Rick" Walters is a London-born rapper who got his start in Doug E. Fresh's Get Fresh Crew in the mid-'80s, most notably on the 1985 single "The Show" (backed with "La-Di-Da-Di"). The following year, Rick signed with Def Jam Records and began work on his solo debut, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. His ability to weave a compelling narrative into a rap song, a talent that earned him the reputation as the genre's greatest storyteller, is apparent on the album's second single, "Children's Story." The hip-hop nursery rhyme tells the tale of a young boy who is drawn into a life of crime and is ultimately gunned down by the police. The song peaked at #5 on the R&B chart and #2 on the Rap chart.

When asked by Rolling Stone if the song – which features the teen getting shot after dropping his weapon – is a statement on police brutality, Rick replied: "Nah, not really, it was just making it a story like that. I wasn't concentrating on police brutality. That wasn't the direction I was going in. The basis of the story was just to be entertaining, gritty ... It's like we trying to intrigue your peers with a story that should draw them in."

This borrows the bassline from Bob James "Nautilus." Rather than sample the 1974 recording, Rick re-created it on the keyboard. The rapper explained why he was attracted to the song: "When you're going up in the hip-hop environment you know what songs have that oomph, that connection to the hood, the connection to the environment, the soul and stuff. ['Nautilus'] was big in urban communities before rap records, right? When they used to have street concerts, picnics, barbecues, whatever when they play outside and stuff like that - like the Cold Crush Brothers, like Grandmaster Flash and them before they made records. I just reconstructed the same melody 'cause it has like a gritty city edge to it."