"Mugged - The Remix (with Keith Snyder)" genre: Contemporary Urban
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	Something lost, something gained. An urban New York encounter.
	Credits: Story: Joseph Wallace; Music: Keith Snyder; Vocal samples: SJ Rozan, used with permission; Guitar: Berndt Schoenhart from SAMPLEHEADS'
	Lyrics I was born and raised in New York City. Lived there the first thirty-one years of my life, and in all that time I was never mugged. Never robbed. Never accosted. As I stepped out of my car just before dawn on East 86th Street, the empty rain-slicked asphalt gleaming in the streetlights, I saw the two men coming at me too fast. Before I could do more than take a step away they were too close. And then, as they slammed me back against my car, I realized that all those years of good luck and street smarts hadn't granted me a lifetime pass from getting into deep trouble. As they stood there, waiting a moment to see what I'd do next, I also knew that if any suburban rube deserved to get mugged, it was me. I'd driven here from my safe little town, parked on a deserted streetcorner, and gotten out of my car without even looking around. I might as well have been wearing a sign that said, "Doesn't know squat about city life." Next thing I knew, if I survived this, I'd find myself handing my money to the three-card-monte players and trying to figure out which shell the little red ball was under and why I never seemed to win. One of the men was standing closer to me. He was pale, slender, and as soon as he knew I wasn't going to fight, he started to talk, a stream of words that I could barely follow. "You got a wallet?" he said. "Sure you do. You got a wallet. Wonder if there's anything in it. Sure there is. Nice guy like you, you got a wallet with something in it. Wonder what? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred. I'll bet it's a hundred. Sure, a hundred, easy. Wonder if I could get a look and see...." The second man, standing a step further away, was bigger. His fleshy face was mottled from drink, but he kept his eyes steadily on me as his friend talked. His right hand was clenched at his side. His left grasped the top of an enormous, industrial-strength garbage bag, a bag that held something so large and heavy I couldn't even imagine what it might be. "Yeah," the first man was saying. "A hundred, easy. You want to show us what you got in that fat wallet of yours?" "No, I don't think so," I said. I raised my gaze for a moment, saw a man standing just outside the door of an all-night newsstand, just fifteen feet away. But as my eyes met his, he shook his head slightly, then stepped back inside. No help there. Further down the street, I could see the glimmery headlights of cars stopped at a light over on Madison...but they might as well have been on another planet for all the help they'd give me. The talkative one frowned. "No? You're not going to show us? Well, you got twenty in there, right? Sure you do. Big guy like you, you got twenty. You gonna give us twenty?" As I hesitated, he seemed struck with an idea. Gesturing back toward the dead weight of the garbage bag, he said, "Tell you what. You give us twenty, and you can have that bag. Whattya think? We get the money, you get what's in there. Good idea? Sure, good idea." I looked down at the bag, wondering if this was some kind of morbid joke. They get my money, I get the body they were dragging along in that bag. On the other hand, if I said no, they'd probably be dragging two bags along when they mugged the next guy. "Okay," I said. I reached down into my pocket, quickly pulled a bill from my wallet, and handed it over. The talkative one made the twenty disappear, and the other took a step forward, pulling the bag with great effort, then let go of it. "Hey," the talkative one said, "see you around." And then they were gone, out of the pool of streetlight and around the dark corner onto Second Avenue. I stood still for a moment, gazing at the bag at my feet. Then I reached down and tried to lift it. It was as heavy as it looked, and something inside seemed to shift and roll with a metallic clinking sound. Struggling with the knotted rope that tied it shut, I finally got it open and looked inside.... ....and saw that it contained cans of Pepsi. Dozens of cans of Pepsi. More Pepsi than I could drink in a year. I counted the cans as I tossed them into my trunk. The guys had sold me seventy-three cans of Pepsi for my twenty dollars. That came out to less than thirty cents a can. I think it was a better deal than I ever got at my local ShopRite.

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