Romaine

A Chicago pimp who told Soft White Underbelly he served twenty years of a California life sentence and will die in the game.

Romaine is the subject of "Pimp interview-Romaine," a Soft White Underbelly video on the channel's YouTube page. He says he grew up on the West Side of Chicago with five sisters and a mother on welfare, an absent father, left school in sixth grade and later got a GED.

He dates his entry to "about 1976, 77" at seventeen, and names Bishop Don Magic Juan, seen "cruising down the street in his green and gold Rolls Royce," as the figure who drew him in. His first woman, he says, was his girlfriend, who had a baby. His best years were "back in 89, 90."

On the women: he says he loved all five of the women he has had and that "any girl can be a ho," distinguishing women who sell sex from those who are, in his word, hoes. He describes his opening line to a woman getting in his car: "this would be the last car you ever jumped in in your life." He prefers street work to the internet: real money, he says, is "on the concrete." Asked how many women he has now, he says he cannot say "because the law might be watching."

He says a California court gave him a life sentence under the three-strikes law after "saying some things I shouldn't have said on the phone," that he served twenty years, and that on release he "went right back to Chicago." He regrets that the game made him abandon his daughters, and expects to be in it "the rest of my life."

ALSO KNOWN AS
Not established; appears only as Romaine

BORN
Says he grew up on the West Side of Chicago

STATUS
Living

ERA
Says he entered the game in 1976–77 at 17; interview undated on the channel's catalogue

ASSOCIATED WITH
West Side Chicago; California; Soft White Underbelly

STANDING
Persona