Backstage: Street Chronicles

by Nikki Turner

  Crook shook his head. “Man, fuck that. Radio gonna play my shit, yo.”

  “So what you gonna do, kill every DJ in America?” Ike asked only half sarcastic wondering if this crazy mu’fucka was thinking exactly that.

  Crook took a sip of Larceny’s juice, then smiled to himself. “Ay, Michelle.” he called out. Moments later, she reappeared. “Yo, ‘chelle, you ever been to California?” he asked with a mischievous smirk.

  Larry Taylor was the VP over urban programming for Clear Channel Communications, the number one radio conglomerate in America. Clear Channel Communications had stations in every urban market in the country, and they basically controlled the daily playlist at every station. Locally, radio had really no control, because in the radio business, the power is centralized. Larry Taylor represented the apex of that power. He was fortyish, an impish black man with a seriously receding hairline. He had graduated from Howard University with a major in communications. Larry had climbed the corporate ladder from DJ to program director on seven different stations in Texas, New York, and Miami, to VP at Clear Channel Communications. He was a man stuck on the cameo era, who didn’t care anything about rap or hip-hop, yet it was his word that determined it, when and how many times a record got spun. This was the man Crook sent Michelle to go see.

  She posed as a student from his alma mater, doing a paper on the music industry. Michelle said, in her initial email, that she thought his job was exciting, big-upped the influence he had and the power he possessed, and that she would like his opinion on the state of the music business.

  Flattery will get you everywhere, but what got her invited to L. A. was her picture that accompanied the email. Larry may have married a white woman, but he couldn’t help fantasizing about the young chocolate tender and how she would choose to thank him for his time.

  Michelle entered his large office with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the smog-laced panorama of Los Angeles. She was dressed business-like, but the purple silk shirt she wore hugged her curves and accentuated what it was supposed to conceal. She carried a briefcase that she set down by his chair. She shook Larry’s hand, then sat and crossed her long sexy legs all in one slow, sensual motion.

  Larry tried to hold his composure, wanting to bend her over the desk, but instead, he cleared his throat. “It’s very nice to meet you, Ms. Graham, but as you know, I’m extremely busy. So I can only spare fifteen minutes,” he stated, but his mind added, For now.

  “That’s fine,” Michelle agreed, taking out a blank notepad. “I didn’t plan on taking up too much time anyway. I’m interested in knowing how you feel about rap music and the rule Clear Channel Communications set on why and when it is played.”

  “Well,” Larry began. “We here at Clear Channel Communications have a very strict policy on the content of what we endorse. We try to give the listeners a variety yet … maintain our integrity,” he explained, sounding like a public relations memo.

  “Do you have a favorite group?” Michelle asked.

  Larry smiled. “No, I must admit, I don’t listen to much rap. I’m more of a Billy Ocean type of guy. Do you have a favorite? Maybe I can help you get an interview with them for your paper.”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. I was sent up here by my favorite group. Have you ever heard of Crook and Larceny?” Michelle quipped, her tone still pleasant and business-like.

  Larry’s brow furled in thought. “No, not right offhand. Unless you’re referring to court charges.” He laughed and Michelle joined in politely.

  “No, they’re a rap group, a very good rap group who can’t seem to get any play on any of your stations. They asked me to find out why.”

  “I don’t see what that has to—”

  Michelle cut him off. “Really, that’s what I’m here for. Crook and Larceny want their record played on your stations.” Larry chuckled lightly. Rappers were getting more creative in how they tried to get play. Sending this young hottie up here to fuck him in exchange for spins was definitely original. Pussy was one thing, but his job was another. How he did either didn’t affect the other.

  “Ms. Graham, if that is your name. Do you even attend Howard?”

  “No.” Michelle grinned.

  “I see … so this is all a play just to get me to play Larson Crook or whatever you said?”

  “Basically,” she admitted, because there was nothing to hide.

  “Well, I’m sorry. I give them an ‘E’ for effort, but, the radio business is much more complicated than that. They, like all the other million and one rap hopefuls, will have to go through the proper channels.

  “Now … we’ve wasted enough time … so …” His tone said goodbye.

  “Well,” Michelle sighed. “I guess I’ll just leave you a little something to remember us by.”

  Pussy! His dick screamed, but unless she kept hers in a briefcase, that wasn’t it. She put a large dusty photo album on his desk.

  “What’s this?” he asked, recognizing it vaguely, but unable to really place it.

  “Oh, that? Well, that’s just an old photo album your mother keeps under her bed, next to her nightstand. The one she likes to show on Christmas”—and after seeng his eyes light up—”Yeah, that one. I like your uncle’s cabin in Colorado and I hear his ski shop is doing real well. Oh, and your son? He’s such a cutie. Think he’ll go to Howard, too?” Michelle’s voice never lost the sugary tone, but the meaning was unmistakable. Larry sat pale faced and shocked, wondering how they had gotten the photo album and where his mama was right at this moment.

  Michelle picked his thoughts and assured him, “Oh, her? She’s fine … for now.” She giggled. Larry’s attitude went from shocked to anger in a split second.

  “You think you can threaten me?!” He stood up, trembling with indignation. “I’m calling the police!”

  Michelle just studied her freshly done manicure as he picked up the phone to dial and said, “Why, Larry? For communication threats? We’ll make bond and then we’ll make sure that album is the only thing you’ll have left of your family.”

  “Nine-one-one, may I help you?” Michelle could hear the voice say through the receiver. Larry stood stock-still.

  “Hello?”

  Michelle placed her finger on the button and cut off the connection. Nine-one-one rung right back.

  “Larry, don’t do anything crazy, because if you answer that phone, you might as well call the funeral home next for your whole … fuckin’ … family.” The venom came out in her threat, and Larry knew she was dead-ass serious.

  He absentmindedly picked up the receiver and said, “Everything’s okay,” then hung up and sat down.

  “This is the deal.” Michelle leaned forward and folded her hands on the desk. “And please listen closely. Crook and Larceny will get heavy rotation. They will be headliners on your Summer Jam Tour and they will receive full support at every station Clear Channel Communications runs. Any questions?” Michelle closed up her briefcase then looked at Larry as she stood up.

  “Wh-what did you say the name was?” the once confident Larry said.

  “Crook and Lar-ce-ny.” She articulated every syllable clearly through her full strawberry lips. “Your stations already have the single. All they need is your word to make it happen.” She blew him a kiss. “That’s from Newark, baby, kiss your mama for me,” she stated, heading for the door, then added, “As a matter of fact, kiss her goodbye if I don’t hear my favorite song before I leave L.A.” She laughed and closed the door behind her.

  As she drove the rented drop-top Jag back to LAX, she heard the DJ on L.A.’s number one rap station announce, “New music! Hot new music by Crook and Larceny and produced by T-Beats. Check out this banger, ‘Gun Music’!”

  Michelle smiled to herself, knowing on every station across the country, niggas was hearing the same thing.

  Chapter 5

  The stores couldn’t keep the single on the shelves and the bootleggers couldn’t get enough of tracking down
the few mix tapes Crook had done back in the day and putting them in circulation. Everywhere you went, Crook and Larceny was that gangsta shit. Ike was constantly fielding phone calls from labels begging to sign Crook and major distributors putting offers on the table for the upcoming album. Money was pouring in. Some cats in the Bronx even wanted Crook to play Akbar Prey in a straight-to-video movie they were doing. Crook kept the BMW he bought Sheena, but copped her a brand-new burgundy BMW 6 Series and the house they were living in. He didn’t floss himself out in diamonds and furs and he cut back on the powder habit until it was basically nonexistent in his life. Psychologically, he didn’t need it anymore, so the need for it dwindled away. Crook stacked his cheddar, except for an indulgence here and there. But he did remember old debts.

  “T, you got a cat out here wanna see you. I think it’s that rapper Crook,” his man said, sticking his head in the door of the studio.

  T-Beats was mixing down a track for Lady Dee, the illest female rapper out, when the word came through the door.

  “Fuck he want?”

  His man shrugged his shoulders. “Say he got somethin’ for you. He’s carrying a duffel bag, too.”

  “You check the bag?” T asked, knowing Crook’s MO and not knowing what type of shit he was on.

  “He ain’t let me,” was all his man said.

  T-Beats got up and stormed into the front office to face the nigga just in case. When he walked in, Crook was all smiles, sitting in one of the leather lounge chairs. T-Beats looked him up and down when Crook stood up.

  “Ay, yo, dog, it’s good to finally meet you,” Crook greeted.

  “Yeah, what you want? I’m busy,” T snapped.

  Crook understood the hostility, so he got right to the point. “Ay, yo, I know you probably feel like I came at you sideways, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I just came to give you this, to let you know I wasn’t tryin’ to play you.” With that, Crook unzipped the duffel and handed it to T-Beats. He looked in the bag and found himself face-to-face with two hundred thousand dollars.

  “I heard you charge fifty thou a track, so the rest is for waitin’ so long.” Crook smiled.

  T-Beats looked up at Crook, and he couldn’t front, the gesture was genuine and he felt it, but he said, “It should be half a mil in this bag the way you blowin’ off my shit!” Crook laughed and T-Beats did, too. “But, yo, on the real, son, you nice. Your flow fit the track lovely.”

  Crook shrugged. “That’s all I wanted niggas to understand. Good work.” Crook turned for the door, but T-Beats stopped him by saying, “What up wit that album? I hope you ain’t fuckin’ wit no lame niggas to track you.”

  Crook turned back. “I’m sayin’, holla at your man if you know somebody wit that hot shit.”

  T-Beats opened the door to his studio. “Duke, stop playin’. Who’s fuckin’ wit T-Beats?”

  “Who’s fuckin’ with this nigga Crook?”

  “Then let’s go cause problems.”

  ———

  Larceny was enjoying his newfound wealth as well, and like Crook, he had a debt to repay.

  He hadn’t been home in months, staying with Ike and riding with Crook. So coming though the door of his mother’s apartment felt awkward. As soon as he closed the door, he saw a gigantic roach run up the wall to welcome him back. Nothing had changed. The place still smelled of dirty clothes and fatback. He could hear the TV on Jerry Springer, so he knew where to find his mother.

  Larceny walked in the adjoining living room to see his overweight mother in her soiled blue housedress smoking a Kool 100. She hardly glanced up at him, but snidely remarked, “I see that bitch finally threw your ass out, huh? Go to the store, get me some cigarettes. I ain’t got but three left.”

  Larceny looked at the woman who gave birth to him, and for the first time wondered what a mother was supposed to be. He never remembered her hugging him or celebrating his accomplishments. All he remembered was hating her.

  “Naw, yo, I ain’t stayin’, and once I leave, I ain’t comin’ back. I just came to give you this.” She looked up at him when he said he had something for her. Larceny pulled out a large envelope and tossed it in her lap. A few bills spilled out, all big-faced hundreds. Her eyes never portrayed the inner greed that leaped into her heart.

  “What bank you done robbed? ‘Cause when they lock yo ass up, don’t think I’ma get you out!”

  “That’s yours, ‘cause I don’t need you to do shit for me. That’s for your fuckin’ insurance policy you tried to get me killed over. All twenty-five thousand,” Larceny growled. “Now I really am dead to you.” He dropped his keys on the table and headed for the door.

  She yelled after him. “Nigga, you been dead to me! You shoulda never been born!” All she heard in response was the sound of the closing door. The tears started slow, for what reason she didn’t know, but they got heavier and heavier, realizing everything she ever had in the whole fucked up world she made for herself had just walked out of her life forever.

  Larceny felt freer than he ever felt. He and Crook were getting paper and loving every minute of it. Larceny performed at the shows as Crook’s hype man, but he didn’t live for it like Crook. All he wanted to do was party and bullshit. Unlike Crook, Larceny didn’t save anything, every dime he got, he spent. He stepped up his wardrobe, platinum jewelry, a brand-new red Viper that he had the doors altered to flip up to open. Larceny tricked on broads he couldn’t get before, showing no mercy, even getting one to drink his piss out of a champagne glass. All these chicks were the ones who had dissed him, or he felt would’ve dissed, had they known him before. Now, he was enjoying every minute of defiling them and went as far as to turn several of them out on crack. He spent thousands getting high until their habit was as big as his, then he cut them off and sent them back, broke and feenin.

  Larceny’s money grew, too. He spent days butt naked and high in his plush apartment on Chancelor Avenue. Crook came to his crib, banging on the door.

  “Yo, Larceny! Bitch, open the door! Open the fuckin’ door!”

  Larceny was spread eagle with a chick asleep with her head on his thigh, dick in her face and another chick next to him. All of them were butt naked. Crook was so mad he kicked the door in like SWAT, making everyone jump off the floor. “Get out! Get yo ass out!” he barked on the chicks, grabbing handfuls of hair and flinging them to the door. They were so scared, they ran out without their clothes in hand. Larceny knew he was next, and he tried to get up, but Crook lunged at him and caught him with a solid left hook. “You wanna be a fuckin’ crackhead, huh?! I’ll kill yo ass first!” Larceny rolled off the blow, quickly jumping to his feet. Before Crook knew it, he had caught Crook with a two-piece that staggered him.

  “Fuck you, nigga, fuck you think it’s sweet?!” Larceny exploded back. Hand for hand, Crook couldn’t beat Larceny, but over the years he had won his fair share by grippin’ and grabbin’. He took another one of Larceny’s blows and absorbed it, just so he could scoop him off his feet, and then slammed him hard on his back. It knocked the wind out of Larceny, then Crook pinned him and rocked his ass silly.

  “Why you so fuckin’ stupid?! This what you want?! Is it?!” He dragged Larceny to the bathroom, picked him up, and dumped him in the tub.

  “Damn!” Larceny winced, hitting his head on the side of the tub.” “You coulda broke my neck!”

  “Fuck yo neck, you don’t give a fuck about your life!” Crook screamed at him, pacing the floor. “Fuck is you doin’, man? We go through all this so you can just throw it all away? Huh?! Niggas bled, died, and we steady throwin’ bricks at the pen, and this is what you do wit it?!”

  Larceny dropped his head in his hands. “Man … man, I’m sick, yo, I’m sick and I’m fucked up, I—”

  Crook shook him by the shoulders then smacked fire out his ass. “I don’t wanna hear that Pookie TV shit! You a soldier, nigga, a live-ass nigga and one of the realest ever born! Fuck yo sorry ass mama, fuck the world, it’s always been me a
nd you and we always came through!” He hugged Larceny to his chest and let his man cry on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, man, Crook, I’m sorry.”

  “Never say you sorry. Apologize, but never say you sorry.”

  “I’ma get it together, dog, I swear I am, yo,” Larceny mumbled between sobs. Crook sat him back in the tub and turned the shower on in his face.

  “Clean up, dog, we celebratin’ tonight.”

  While Crook and Larceny were dealing with all the paper and fame, Ike stayed in the shadows, handling the business side, negotiating deals. They wanted no part of any of the numerous labels that had been pursuing them. They were strictly for self, the only question was the sweetest distribution deal they could find.

  But one offer was different. It came from Cali, from a real gangsta of the industry, Big Mike Buddha. Big Mike Buddha was a three-hundred-pound Jabba the Hutt–looking dude with ice in his veins to match the ice he sported like baby glaciers. The deals he made were written in blood, in more ways than one. He was an OG Blood, respected in the streets and feared in the music business. So when he sent word for Ike to fly to L.A., there was no way Ike could refuse. Ike didn’t tell Crook or Larceny, instead he took the red-eye to L.A. three days before the platinum party, while Crook was in Raleigh, North Carolina, doing a show with M.O. P.

  He arrived at LAX and was immediately scooped up in a black Cadillac limousine. Inside were two identical twin chicks. Their light complexions were peppered with reddish freckles and their thick curvaceous bodies were clad in tight red dresses. Their black locs shades hid the murder in their eyes. But tonight, they had been sent as the welcoming committee and they welcomed Ike to L.A. with a twin blowjob that curled the nigga’s toes and had him cumming and farting at the same time. His knees were weak by the time he stepped out of the limo at Buddha’s Beverly Hills mansion.

  He entered the gigantic mansion and was greeted by two white broads in bikinis that led him out to the pool. There were so many topless women of all flavors, Ike thought he was at the Playboy mansion. He found Buddha’s big ass in a deck chair sipping on tequila, watching the sunrise.