The Plot Against Hip Hop

by Nelson George

  “Two guys who looked like Bloods stabbed a friend of mine to death in Soho the other night.”

  “Bloods in Soho? Hmmm. That’s some new shit.”

  “Yeah, well, I need to find them. They drove off in a Range Rover.” D gave the young man the details he knew about what they looked like.

  Ray Ray said, “You know this ain’t the Mafia. It’s not like it’s one family. Niggas be freelancing all over the place.”

  “I’ll give you $200 for your time and another $800 if you find out something useful.”

  “Well,” Ray Ray responded, “I better make myself useful.”

  CHAPTER 4

  NEVER SEEN A MAN CRY UNTIL I SEEN A MAN DIE

  The cuts on Dwayne’s neck and face were sealed for the funeral and the morticians even managed to put on his trademark lopsided grin so that the writer would face eternity with that same mischievous look that those who knew him best so treasured. The local Baptist church on Orange was filled with a who’s-who of the folks Dwayne had written about so eloquently—Spike Lee, Anita Baker, Whitney Houston, Chuck D, Prince, Vernon Reid, and so many others. Many of his subjects had become friends.

  With all this black pop royalty at the funeral, there was one person conspicuous by his absence. Walter Gibbs had known Dwayne since both were young hustling dudes trying to make it in the intense, innovative New York of the early 1980s. Dwayne had chronicled his parties and profiled the acts he managed. Walter had become rich; Dwayne had become respected. A huge wreath with Gibbs’s name on it at the funeral parlor led several mourners to wonder aloud, “Where the fuck is Gibbs?” D didn’t speculate. He just filed the fact away.

  Dwayne had been one of those people who everybody knew, who connected people like spokes on a wheel. D was younger than most of the artists there and yet he’d been touched by Dwayne Robinson too. Russell Simmons, who’d known Dwayne well since they first met years back at a roller disco in Queens, gave an amusing eulogy about their adventures in rap’s formative years. Anita Baker, Dwayne’s favorite singer, performed “No One in the World,” a song not ideally suited for a funeral but one Dwayne’s wife said he would have wanted.

  The casket wasn’t too heavy. D had been the pallbearer in many previous funerals, so he’d come to appreciate a light corpse, no matter how heartless that was. Dwayne’s spirit, his essence, had been taken by a killer or killers unknown. What was inside the box that D helped carry meant nothing compared to the collective memory of what Dwayne had achieved during his unexpectedly brief life.

  At one point D sat down in the living room of the Robinson’s comfy three-story home with a plate in his lap, listening more than talking as people dined on soul food and sweet-potato pie and reminisced about Dwayne and the world that shaped him. D soon found himself, quite happily, squeezed into a corner with Grandmaster Flash and Kool Moe Dee talking about a rap tour circa 1984. He asked if Moe had any idea why Dwayne was carrying a copy of his famous battle during his last night on earth.

  “I wish I knew,” Moe said. “I wish I knew. We’d stayed in contact over the years. Any time he did a reading or had an event in Los Angeles, he’d invite me. We’d talk about the ’80s. In fact, he seemed very interested in the period around ’88, ’89. Talked about doing a book. Guess we’ll never know what he was up to.”

  Danielle Robinson, a petite woman whose graying hair contrasted with bright, youthful black eyes, came over and offered D another plate. He felt awkward about being the last person to see her husband alive; he was embarrassed in her presence. When he told her he was already full, Danielle reached out and took his large hands in her slender fingers. “My husband really liked you,” she said.

  “Oh,” he replied, fumbling for words, “he was great to me. Like a big brother who made sure you listened to all the right records and read all the right books.”

  “Thank you for trying to save him.”

  Again D struggled in response, making sounds and not syllables before falling into silence and feeling a tear drop from one eye. Suddenly the little woman had her arms around the waist of the massive man, offering comforting words as he wept. In her kindness, Danielle allowed D to go upstairs, away from the eyes of those gathered in the living room, to a guest bathroom on the second floor where he could wash his face and regain his composure. Perhaps, he thought, I’m not as used to death as I tell myself.

  D was standing at the top of the landing when he noticed more stairs leading to the attic where Dwayne kept his office. He’d been up there once to do an interview about the trials of bodyguarding rap stars for a script the writer had been working on. D knew it would be an intrusion, maybe a touch disrespectful, but he couldn’t help himself. He headed up the stairs.

  A large black-and-white photo of a screaming Otis Redding in a sharkskin suit was taped to the door. The singer had been a favorite of Dwayne’s mother, and D’s mother had liked him too—though she was more of the Teddy Pendergrass generation of black-love men. D would have preferred to linger on that convergence of taste, but opening the door to Dwayne’s office welcomed him to a harsh new reality.

  The room was a shambles. Manuscript pages strewn across the floor. An old mahogany desk overturned. CDs and books were sliding onto the floor from a ceiling-high bookcase. Judging by the white cords still plugged into outlets, Dwayne’s computers had been removed. Ironically, the framed pictures on the wall looked untouched: Dwayne with Anita Baker, with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, with Eazy-E, with Q-Tip. D stared at the disarray and the photos and thought he was gonna tear up again, but he pushed the feeling back down. It was enough having to tell Danielle her house had been broken into during her husband’s funeral. He wasn’t going to do it looking like a whiny bitch.

  Danielle waited until most of the guests had left before calling the police.

  “This is terrible,” she said.

  D sat silent, unsure for a moment what to say on a day that had turned from very sad to horrible. “Was he working on a book?”

  “Yes. He was calling it The Plot Against Hip Hop.”

  “Hell of a title.”

  “I thought so too. I thought it sounded melodramatic. But he kept telling me it was his best book yet. The one he’d be remembered for. And now this.”

  D held Danielle Robinson, feeling her shake as she endured another loss, another violation of her world. “It was all a dream.” That’s what D said.

  The Montclair police were remarkably nice. One of the patrolmen told D that Dwayne had gotten name recording artists to perform at charitable events in the area over the years and was extremely well liked in town. D gave the cop, a brother named Fred Harris, his card and asked him to let him know what they found. He also made sure he passed on Fly Ty’s number since this robbery made Dwayne’s murder clearly more than a gang initiation. Dwayne had died for “something.” It wasn’t random. Not at all.

  When Fred asked about getting some club security in the city for extra dollars, D knew he had a useful new friend.

  On the way back to Manhattan, D mulled over the latest turn in Dwayne Robinson’s murder and took some stock of his own life. D often felt like his existence had been just a series of unsolved mysteries. He didn’t know where his father was; he didn’t know why his brothers had been shot; he didn’t understand why God had allowed him to contract the HIV virus. But Dwayne’s death? There was an answer to that. It was something he could solve, something he could know the truth about.

  CHAPTER 5

  LOOKIN’ FOR THE PERFECT BEAT

  D hadn’t picked up Dwayne Robinson’s The Relentless Beat since he’d first met the author in the mid-’90s when Dwayne had already begun his long, slow retirement from covering music full-time for a variety of publications. Back then there were enough music magazines that, if you hustled, you could eke out a living from record and concert reviews, and celebrity profiles.

  Dwayne had got out just in time, before the Internet destroyed the print music mags and created a legion of nonpaying blogs where
anyone could spew opinions and few were paid anything approaching a living wage. At the beginning of their relationship it was Dwayne who’d treated for long lunches, where he schooled D on the differences between the soul songs of Philly, Detroit, Chicago, and Memphis. In the last few years it was D who picked up the check for dinner while he kept the middle-aged writer hip to the Lil’s and Yung’s of contemporary rap.

  Now D sat in the Starbucks nearest his Seventh Avenue apartment, leafing through The Relentless Beat to mourn his friend and search for some connection between his greatest work and his murder. The book had been published at the height of the golden age of New York hip hop, a time that now seemed utopian in its optimism. There was no doubt in Dwayne’s mind that Chuck D and KRS-One were street prophets, that Rakim and Kane were true urban poets, and that talents like LL Cool J and rival Kool Moe Dee were champs of bodacious boasting. Flow, articulation, and sticking to theme were celebrated; freestyle ciphers in narrow ghetto hallways were crucibles of fire.

  Dwayne’s central idea was that the radical intellectual fire, passionate one-upsmanship, and straight-up virility of hip hop’s greatest MCs had made them—and not the R&B singers of that era—the true inheritors of the masculine mantle of soul. The author was quite disdainful of the nonthreatening, jheri curl–wearing, kinda bisexual generation of singers who filled the playlist of urban contemporary radio.

  To a great degree The Relentless Beat tossed much of the black pop that was emanating from the major West Coast labels under a fastmoving tour bus. Only the work of a few producers (Quincy Jones, Leon Sylvers), record label heads (Solar’s Dick Griffey, Total Experience’s Lonnie Simmons), and a couple of power brokers (Clarence Avant, Amos Pilgrim) elicited any praise from the New York–centric journalist. Dwayne had clearly turned in his manuscript before he heard NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” and the gangs of South Central changed the West Coast game forever.

  As engaging as The Relentless Beat remained, it was a powerful document that offered no clues or secret codes to suggest who might have stabbed its author to death half a lifetime later.

  CHAPTER 6

  AMERIKKKA’S MOST WANTED

  For days after the funeral D tried to set up a meeting with Walter Gibbs. He called, e-mailed, and text messaged, but Gibbs was either traveling or in a conference, or just plain unavailable. He was never told Gibbs didn’t wanna talk to him. Nor was his outreach ever unreturned. The replies were always very polite. Never “no way” they’d meet or “Don’t call again.” More like, “Mr. Gibbs will return your call at his earliest convenience.” It was the classiest brush-off D had ever experienced.

  Despite the stonewall, D kept trying. What else was there to do? Fly Ty had nothing to report and was gruff when asked about the investigation, especially the audio tape. The gang guys had called once, spoke very perfunctorily, and hadn’t called back. Ray Ray was asking around but couldn’t be too aggressive. There were so many Bloods and so much blood. Felt like a dead end indeed.

  So when D got a call from Walter Gibbs’s office, he was as surprised as he was pleased. However, the invitation that followed was not to talk about Dwayne or death or hip hop. Gibbs had been an early hip hop manager and an indie label head during the breakthrough ’80s. In the ’90s he secured a distribution deal with a major label, then bought a fancy house in the Hollywood Hills to be closer to TV and film. He executive produced a couple of rap soundtracks for urban movies and got his feet wet as an associate producer on one of Wesley Snipes’s action flicks. Gibbs saw his future on celluloid.

  Then one day at the posh Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, Gibbs’s life changed. He was supposed to meet a white ingénue for lunch and maybe a quickie at her nearby condo. On his way over he spotted a table with Lionel Richie, two fine-ass Filipinas, and a balding Jewish man dressed in a pink and white sweater, white pants, rakish shades, and a deep Palm Springs tan. Morgie, a.k.a. Samuel Morgenstern, was in the leisurewear business. He’d met Lionel playing golf at an LA country club and they’d become fast friends, meeting occasionally for drinks and female company at this old Hollywood haunt.

  Gibbs had quickly forgotten about his date, drawn to the black popstar power, the Asian beauties, and, most fatefully, Morgie’s business acumen. Turned out Morgie was raised in the same Brooklyn ghetto that had spawned Gibbs—albeit four decades earlier. Morgie’s family had owned two retail outlets in that hood. By the time they met that afternoon at the Polo Lounge, Morgie owned three hundred clothing stores in various ghettos throughout the Northeast, but was trying to figure out the new urban buyer. Clearly Lionel Richie wasn’t the person to ask, but Morgie immediately saw Gibbs as a kindred BK salesman.

  Out of that chance meeting a partnership was born. Taking all he’d learned in the hip hop biz and applying it to Morgie’s stores, Gibbs transformed them into new jack emporiums that sold every hot item an urban consumer could want (including a couple of spots that sold some herb out the back). Gibbs was so effective that Morgie even gave the young black man a (small) piece of the business. With that as his calling card, Gibbs began a consulting firm with clients from Coke to Cadillac, all of whom wanted to tap the “urban” market (and the white kids who followed its lead).

  And it was this business that got D invited to Gibbs’s swanky lower–Fifth Avenue office. D rolled into the large glass-enclosed conference room and shook hands with various reps from the maker of Lee jeans. They had designed a new straight-legged dungaree aimed at the black/Hispanic/Asian rebel. This particular meeting was focused on coordinating the details of a party to launch the jeans at Macy’s. Lots of hip hop celebs would be in effect, along with some basketball players, video vixens, and various scenesters. D was being brought in to handle security, which would be a well-paying gig.

  Gibbs greeted him graciously when he entered but, with seven other folks in the room, D didn’t mention Dwayne or his funeral. Near the end of the meeting a luscious Latina came into the conference room and whispered to Gibbs. He nodded, mumbled “Yeah,” and then excused himself. D wanted to say, Stop! Don’t duck me anymore, motherfucker! But he knew that wasn’t the move. When Gibbs disappeared out the door D was determined to find his personal office and, if he had to, barge in and demand an audience.

  Thankfully all that drama wasn’t necessary. As the meeting broke up that same Latina, about twenty-seven with thick black hair, a little round in the waist, but still easy on the eyes, came over to D. “Mr. Hunter, Mr. Gibbs wonders if you had a moment.”

  In contrast to the bright, sleek, modernist design of the rest of the office, Gibbs’s space was dimly lit and a little smoky. The ashtray on his desk held two dead cigars with one still smoldering. Sharing the desk with the tray were stacks of reports full of multicolored graphs and bullet points. Next to them was a D.M.C. doll, one of a Japanese line of collectibles built around famous hip hop figures. The rest of the desk was covered in various devices—BlackBerry, Sony Playstation, iPod, and a futuristic thing D couldn’t place.

  He had a couple minutes to contemplate Gibbs’s desk since the mogul wasn’t actually there yet. Well, D thought, I did make it into the dude’s office. At least I did that. To kill time between sips of the Evian that the Latina had generously handed him, D practiced a trick Dwayne had told him about back in the day. D began trying to read Gibbs’s files upside down. You couldn’t get the small print but a log line or caption here or there could yield a nugget of useful info.

  From what D could see, most of the reports were marketing surveys of “urban buying habits” tied to “embedded brand desire.” It was the gobbledygook of psychological selling, something D had often encountered in meetings with people trying to move sneakers, video games, and liquor. D didn’t understand much about it, though he knew that anyone who talked that talk could squeeze a living out of corporations from here to hell and back. Gibbs had gone from selling records out of the backs of cars to selling digital dreams to lifestyle companies and the big Walmart brand.

  D was gazi
ng at an upside-down graph of red, blue, and green lines when Gibbs walked in wearing a white shirt, jeans, and a diamond in each earlobe. “Sorry about the wait, D,” he began after a handshake and a polite hug. “I had to change for a meeting I have in fifteen minutes. But I wanted to make sure I spoke to you before I left.” In that one bit of dialogue Gibbs had put a time limit on their conversation, while also acknowledging the need to speak. D dove right in.

  “As you probably know, I was the last person Dwayne Robinson spoke to before he died.”

  “Yeah, I read that.”

  “The police have no leads and are treating this as a Bloods initiation. Simple as that.”

  “But you think his last words mean something. A clue to who did it.”

  “Maybe more like why it happened. At least I hope they do.”

  “I’ve thought a lot about it since I read that stuff in the papers. It’s funny cause I never thought Dwayne was a huge Biggie fan, so for him to reference the dude at that moment, it had to be about more than a record.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “I hate to say this, but I don’t know that I have a guess. To be honest, these last few years Dwayne and I haven’t been close. I mean, if I ran into him it was all love on my part. But we had some major differences over the direction of my life.”

  “I don’t wanna get all up in your business, but were the differences things that, you know, reflected his state of mind?”

  “Well, he was one of the few people I knew from back in the day who didn’t think I’d sold out. No. He thought we’d been sold out.”

  “We’d?”

  “Yeah, like everyone who was in the hip hop game had been talked out of being rebels and just handed the culture over to corporate America for chump change.”