Innocent young black man Ashtray (Shawn Wayans) is forced to move into a tough Los Angeles slum with his family, including his oddly streetwise, pot-smoking grandma (Helen Martin). Before long, Ashtray's nuclear-armed gangster cousin Loc Dog (Marlon Wayans) introduces him to a bizarrely comic crime underworld. Luckily, Ashtray falls for urban poet Dashiki (Tracey Cherelle Jones), and she convinces him to go straight -- but he must deal with her manic ex-boyfriend Toothpick (Darrel Heath).