Bobby Womack’s “Across from 110th Street” and Andy Robert’s painting at the Studio Museum both portray the physical space in Harlem without sugarcoating it. In the chorus of his song, Bobby Womack describes a series of sketchy occurrences going on on the streets like a pimp trying to recruit a “weak” woman and a drug dealer trying to sell his drugs to an addict. He then says “Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town”, globalizing the environment of Harlem to other cities too. In his painting “Check II Check” (below), Andy Roberts depicts a streetscape of a deli on Malcom X, not very far from the Study Museum.  His painting 

the street is very colorful, and busy like the streets I walked through to get to the museum. Just from the pictures, you can tell the street is loud and hustling and bustling, probably full of both good things and bad things. As we were walking to the museum, Lesly, who lives in Harlem, told me stories of things that had happened to her and her family on the streets we were walking through. Some of the stories were scary, while some were comical. Lesly’s first hand accounts, the song, and the painting all come together to form a multi-faceted depiction of the streets of Harlem. They are filled with good things, bad things, random things, sketchy thing, and everything in between, giving it a distinct personality, which may be similar to other cities, but “the capital” of them.