Neighbors Remember Champ Ali in Rhymes, Good Times | Voice of America - English
"Step up, folks, and hear the message! Somebody said God had to shut his mouth, so we could hear his heart! Hallelujah!" calls the man selling tickets to Muhammad Ali’s childhood home, which opened as a museum at the end of May. Freshly repainted and remodeled for the public, the pink two-bedroom house on Grand Avenue here in this city's tumbledown West End has been something of a gathering place since Ali’s death Friday from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Rapper and ordained minister Chris Forehand came on his day off to pay tribute to the champ.
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY - Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can             to view it offline. Ali's positive attitude was part of what led Forehand to think positively about himself. "If you want kids to stop gang violence, you got to teach them where they come from," Forehand says. His prescription: old-school rap and preaching gospel. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can             to view it offline. As if to demonstrate, Big Poppa sings: "He tells all the other guys, 'I’m Ali. Catch me if you can. A boom bee doom. A boom bee boom boom boom.’"