14 May 15 , 2022
place to stay, Floyd would invite him to his
home to use the shower. He let him sleep
in his garage and told him how much he
loved him.
When they hung out, they talked about
mutual friends while listening to music.
What Hall loved most about Floyd was
that he kept his ear to the ground, always
trying to predict the next big thing — the
next great basketball player or the latest
sound in hip-hop that would soon take
the country by storm — something that
was happening a little under the radar.
“We just lost track of time every time we’d
be together,” Hall recalled. “Like when we
was together in Minnesota, it felt like we
was in the streets of Houston.”
And then, perhaps, it began to feel a
little too much like Houston. Few around
Third Ward knew it in the ’90s, but they
were coming of age in the epicenter of an
emerging drug crisis that researchers are
still trying to grasp. As prescription pills
flooded suburban communities, the us-
age of codeine was skyrocketing in cities,
largely unregulated. In Houston, where
the phenomenon started, residents mixed
the drug with Sprite or Kool-Aid and
other beverages to create concoctions
commonly referred to as drank, lean,
sizzurp, or syrup. Its ability to depress the
nervous system, which allowed for a
sleepy, trancelike high, was a welcome
distraction from the stresses of living in a
poor Black neighborhood. What started
as a trend among the associates of local
artist DJ Screw and was then popularized
by artists from Lil Wayne to Justin
Bieber, became a drug of national con-
cern.
One night in Minneapolis around
2018, Hall brought out a cup of green
drank that harked back to their days
using down south. Floyd, who had been
trying to keep clean, sneaked a taste. And
then another. Before they knew it, getting
high became a part of their hangout
plans. But living in the Midwest, where
syrup was hard to come by, Hall said the
two found themselves following a com-
mon path to chasing a similar high, one
that led to synthetic opioids like fentanyl,
which was disproportionately taking root
in Minnesota’s Black community.
“We used to once drink syrup,” Hall
said. “So once you used to drink syrup and
you’re not getting syrup, you take a pill ...
and now — bam — you’re struggling with
your addiction again. You do as the
Romans do, so they do pills up here. They
do a bunch of opiates and fentanyl and
heroin.”l At about 10 a.m., Floyd
called his friend Maurice
Hall to hang out.l They met at a LensCrafters
in nearby Roseville.l A little before noon, they
stopped by Wendy’s.l Hall ordered a
burger topped with
onion rings; Floyd
got a Dave’s Double.