The Plot Against Hip Hop

by Nelson George

Cash rules everything around me. Hard times are sweeping just like the flu. Broken glass everywhere. If it ain’t ruff, it ain’t right. Jesus walks. Let’s define the word called dope. Too cold, too cold. Are you the journal or the journalist? I told you I’d be true. You can’t fade me. All I need is one mike.

  The teacher filled one blackboard panel and moved over to the next.

  The overweight lover. The GZA. Hova. Uncle L. Louie Vuitton Don. The nigger you love to hate. The Ruler’s back. Esco. Weezy. Jeezy. Puffy. Puff. Puff Daddy. Diddy. Rev. Run. Cowboy, T-Roy, Jam Master. Eazy. Pac. Me.

  The teacher faced D now and it was Dwayne Robinson. He smiled, cockeyed and corny. Behind his nerdy black-rimmed glasses, his eyes shined red as candy apples. D attempted to question him but no words escaped his lips. Dwayne returned to the blackboard and wrote in a hand perfect for greeting cards.

  It was the joint until it was fresh and was stooped fresh, then stooped, then it cold got dumb, unless it was cold chillin’ in a hot spot with Big Willie’s so supa fly they used beepers to order their sky pagers and mobile phones, which they kept next to their BlackBerry when they weren’t shootin’ the gift with their Saturday night specials, Desert Eagles, and Mossberg twelve-shot guns at sucka MC bitin’ their stylee, while they hated on new swing and busted caps to the north, the south, the east, and the west.

  Dwayne faced D again, his smile as radiant as a child. To his left was LL Cool J, bare-chested, seventeen, dukey gold rope and red Kangol garbed, and to his right Notorious B.I.G., massive in a multicolored Coogi sweater and black cap, diamond pendant around his neck. Both LL and Biggie moved their lips very slowly, as if D was an idiot, and said in tandem, “I’m going back to Cali.”

  Then Dwayne’s head fell off and bounced with one big hop into D’s lap.

  CHAPTER 23

  CRANK THAT

  D couldn’t tell if he was old or just had good taste in hip hop. As he stood watching two Memphis born-and-bred rappers (“rappers” because D couldn’t bring himself to think of them as MCs) rhyme about Sprite, the black-clad bodyguard decided it was both. KAG (a.k.a. Kountry Azz Gangzterz) were good dudes. They donned diamond-studded medallions, exposed underwear, the tat “sleeves,” but the members of KAG were both publicly married, claimed all their kids were from their spouses, and were planning on buying their mothers matching homes in the Tennessee countryside.

  Still, D couldn’t overcome his prejudice. Despite the duo having sold millions of ringtones, listening to them made him yearn for real MC skillz. At his most generous, D gave them credit for making infectious dance records with sung/harmonized/rhymed hooks. But the verses were as empty of wit and art as any back-in-the-day disco record. In D’s humble opinion, the era of Tupac and Biggie had given way to lesser sing-song rap, just as great ’70s funk (Earth, Wind & Fire, the Ohio Players, Kool and the Gang) had yielded to dreck like the Salsoul Orchestra and Cerrone. D figured no one he said this to would get the references, but in his heart he knew the comparison was on point. Not that life would reward him for being a smart-ass. After all, old-school purist or not, on this day he was their employee.

  “Hey, bruth,” Sneezy, one of KAG’s two members, said between takes. “Walk my seed over to the restroom for me, okay?”

  D nodded. Sprite was paying him a ton to stand on a soundstage in Los Angeles, so why not? Normally, he would have said it wasn’t his job and advised one of KAG’s “roadies” to come out of the trailer, put down the blunt, and escort the “seed” to pee. But D felt sorry for Tobe (pronounced too-bee), a roly-poly seven-year-old who’d been stationed by the craft services table all day stuffing himself with enough sugar to fill a wedding cake. So he took the child, who had a head shaped like a football, by the hand and guided him to the restrooms at the far end of the soundstage. D worried that Tobe, who in keeping with family tradition had a huge diamond-studded necklace weighing down his head, would tip over onto his face if not steadied properly. There was no doubt in D’s mind that without his guidance those diamonds would swing into the urinal and pull Tobe with them, leading maybe just to embarrassment, but quite possibly a drowning.

  So to preserve the boy’s dignity and maybe his life, D walked Tobe away from the buzz of the set, past the wardrobe trailer and various pieces of metal equipment. The men’s room had an aroma of light mildew and bleach, an unpleasant mix that was nonetheless superior to that of so many public toilets.

  “It stinks,” Tobe observed.

  “Don’t breathe then,” D said. “Now, you know what to do, right?

  Tobe nodded, then walked up to the urinal and unzipped his Rocawear jeans. The kid was just tall enough that he could piss over the lip of the urinal. He was also just awkward enough to almost hit the back side of the medallion around his neck. D walked over to pull the medallion around to Tobe’s back when the bathroom door opened.

  “You do it all, huh, D Hunter?” The voice was dry, amused, sarcastic, and decidedly white.

  D turned to see a thick-necked, square-jawed man with the bleached-white spiky blond hair of a surfer and the Oakley shades of a jock. He had a strong athletic body squeezed into a fairly expensive dark-blue business suit.

  “Excuse me,” D said as he moved between Tobe and the imposing, self-satisfied man in the doorway.

  “I just meant it was cool to see someone dedicated to all aspects of his job. You don’t see that much these days. It’s a new century, yet professional standards are slipping all over the place. No wonder the Chinese are gonna kick our ass.”

  “You finished, Tobe?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” the boy replied.

  “Okay. Wash your hands.”

  As Tobe walked to the sinks, D shifted over with him, never turning his back toward the stranger. He reached down and scooped Tobe up with his left arm so the boy could get soap and turn on the faucet, while still leaving his right hand free.

  “Got your hands full, don’t you, D?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No. I know you.” The stranger didn’t move, just stood there a step inside the doorway. His hands were folded at his waist in front of him. D decided the man had a military background. Marine. Navy Seal. Something that made him confident and strategic. He moved in to talk only when Tobe was splitting D’s concentration. He’d probably been watching D for a while and picked his moment wisely.

  D set Tobe back on his two feet and gave him some paper towels to wipe his little hands.

  “So,” D asked, “are you gonna move out of the way?”

  The stranger ignored the question. “It’s good, you keeping that little ghetto boy clean.”

  Tobe piped up and said, “I ain’t no little ghetto boy! I’m a balla.”

  The stranger continued without acknowledging the kid: “Wouldn’t want him to catch a deadly virus or any kind of disease. Bet his father and all your other very enlightened clients wouldn’t feel safe having an HIV carrier watching their backs.”

  “HIV?” It was Tobe. “You talking about ‘the package’?”

  “Yeah, ghetto boy,” the stranger continued, “the package. D, you gonna tell him it means you shouldn’t have unprotected sex with widows?”

  It wasn’t what he said, but the tone of his voice that shook Tobe. His petulance faded. Something was wrong. The little boy could feel that D was shook. “I wanna go see my daddy,” he said.

  D didn’t say a thing. He needed to get his bearings. Finally he spoke: “Okay. You tell me who killed Dwayne Robinson and I’ll go away.”

  The stranger grinned. He held up his wrist and looked at his watch. “You better call your office, D. Bad things happen to a man who doesn’t mind his business.”

  Tobe headed toward the door, toward the stranger. D grabbed him by his narrow shoulders.

  “You better make that call,” the stranger said, then turned and walked away.

  D placed Tobe behind him and walked to the door, looking both ways before exiting back out onto the soundstage. And then his phone rang. Fly Ty
’s voice flowed into his ear.

  “D? Brother, you got robbed. Both your office and your house. Both tore up and cleaned out. You need to come back to New York and let us know what was taken.”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll take the red-eye.”

  D saw the stranger about to head out the door of the soundstage into the LA sunshine. He could run and try to grab him. But he still had Tobe next to him and maybe there were other folks around with bad intentions. Get the boy to the KAG posse. Then sort out his life.

  D took Tobe’s little left hand and led him back toward the lights, camera, and action. With his other hand he speed dialed Amina on his BlackBerry.

  “Hey, D,” she said, “so good to hear from you. You coming home soon?”

  “I’ll take a red-eye tonight.”

  “So when will you come back over to Jersey? We miss you over here.”

  “I have some weird news.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think your home is bugged. Maybe even a camera.”

  “Why would anyone do a thing like that?”

  “I think you probably know.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said, and hung up.

  Back at the set, all was right with the world. Rappers rapped for their pay. Beermakers hawked their brew. Directors went over storyboards and met with advertising agency reps. Everyone got paid. D took it all in, his body back on the job and his troubled spirit far away.

  D returned to the Standard on Sunset about one a.m., after dropping the KAG crew off at the W in Hollywood and handing them over to a local man, who’d accompany them on a club crawl into the netherworld of after-hours joints and Hollywood Hills parties. D didn’t realize that anything was wrong in his room until he’d shed his clothes, taken a shower, and was brushing his teeth.

  Usually the Standard’s cleaning staff placed his pill bottles right next to his deodorant and aftershave. Not tonight. A hasty inspection of his bags and pockets revealed his HIV medications were not in his room. Not good, but hardly fatal. They could have easily mixed some poison in with his meds and deaded him. This seemed like just another warning. He could go a day without his meds. They had to have known that.

  D laid back on the long bed, looked up at the ceiling, and fell asleep, but only after jamming a chair under the doorknob.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHAT YOU KNOW

  Jersey was beginning to appeal to D. Between his trips to Dwayne’s house and out here to Amina’s, the Garden State was growing on him. He’d been in his Manhattan cave for so many years that he’d forgotten (actually never known) how it felt to experience a life not dominated by noise, hustle, and concrete. He was even falling in love with Newark Airport, which felt more user friendly than JFK. He had to admit that driving, something he’d only done sparingly in his life, was okay (though he was sure he didn’t have the patience to regularly survive rush hour).

  Now, as he drove his rental Lexus close to Amina’s house, he contemplated buying a car. D was surprised that even after that threat in Los Angeles, he felt so positive. Amina made all the bad stuff out West seem like background noise. It was his mother’s words, often spoken and seldom paid attention to, that came to him: “There’s nothing better for a silly man than to have a good woman to come home to.”

  The only dark cloud in his sunny thoughts was that Amina hadn’t answered her phone since he landed. It was 8:42 a.m., so she should have been up already and anxious to see him too.

  As soon as he turned onto Amina’s block, he saw the ambulance and police car in front of her house. The ambulance had run over a few of her flowers. Instead of rushing into the house, D sat behind the wheel, somehow already knowing he was too late. An officer came out, walked over, and asked his name. It didn’t go well after that.

  Fly Ty didn’t know anyone in that neck of the Jersey woods, so D had to sit alone through the long hours of questioning and the looks and the dark sense of guilt and dread that filled his mind. This was so much bigger than hip hop.

  “So,” said one of the detectives, “that’s what you believe?”

  “You asked me what I thought,” D said emphatically.

  The detective, white, thirties, sandy-haired, and portly, looked over his shoulder at his older partner, short, black, forties, who leaned against the wall before turning back toward D. “You have AIDS for seven years. You know unprotected sex would put her at risk. You don’t tell her you’re positive. She gets infected. She gets depressed. She kills herself.”

  “Well,” D replied, glancing back forth between the two men, “that didn’t happen. I didn’t infect her. I didn’t lie to her. I would never do that. Plus, I don’t believe that’s why she killed herself—if she killed herself.”

  “So someone else, not you, gave her the virus?”

  “That’s all I can imagine.”

  “Homicide by AIDS is not unheard of, and you can be charged for it.”

  “I would never do a thing to hurt her. Have you checked her body for it yet?”

  “We will,” the older black cop said, “but this whole conspiracy-against-hip-hop thing doesn’t help your credibility.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. I know it sounds crazy. But while I’ve been investigating my friend’s murder, people have been dying around me.”

  “All right,” the older detective replied, “okay.”

  D wasn’t sure what that meant. Okay, I believe you. Okay, I believe you believe that crap. Okay, I’m hungry and it’s time for dinner. Whatever the black detective thought, he tapped the white one on the shoulder and they left the room. About two hours later they released D into a bright Jersey afternoon and to his thoughts.

  There was an empty bottle of sleeping pills and a scrawled note by the bed when the Jamaican cleaning woman found the body. Was Eric Mayer behind this? He’d gotten that warning in LA, but why Amina? They’d had great sex but he never penetrated her. He’d been more like a very muscular lesbian lover. Maybe Mayer was an insane man on a rampage, but it felt like there was another player in this game. And if so, Amina’s death was it for him. He was through with it. He just wanted to get back to his dungeon.

  CHAPTER 25

  SOUL SURVIVOR

  There was a damn conspiracy. They took it from us, kid. It used to be about skillz. A nigga like me on the mike droppin’ knowledge and shit. Now they got these mush-mouthed bamas all over the videos saying nursery rhymes. If I did ‘Humpty Dumpty’ over a beat I’d be displaying more lyrical content than these country motherfuckas! Sheet!”

  D was in the wings at the BET Awards taping at Shrine Auditorium, standing in front of an old-school icon from the Boogie Down as he yelled at Ludacris on stage. What had set this brother off was Luda at the center of a tribute to old-school hip hop, intoning Kurtis Blow’s classic “The Breaks” before an adoring crowd of black celebs.

  The man wasn’t just ranting because of the diamond-studded MC’s presence (though he was definitely offended by the Southern MC performing an old-school rap). The other half was that D was unsympathetic and was threatening to have him thrown out of the building.

  “Brother, if you do not shut up and leave this area I will have you removed,” D told him.

  The old-school MC continued on, undeterred. Despite the gray in his locks, the bags under his eyes, and the paunch that was his belly, the man still had some fire left. “How you gonna talk that way to me! How you gonna talk that way to me! I was there before this shit even had a name. But can I get on stage? These motherfuckers wouldn’t know real hip hop if it hit them in the mouth!”

  And then, of course, he took a swing at D, which the security guard deftly avoided before grabbing the MC and wrapping him in a bear hug, as other members of his team rushed over.

  “You all right, D?”

  “I’m good. I’m good. Just make sure you don’t hurt him.”

  “Fuck you, D! Fuck you!” the MC screamed as he was led away.

  D wat
ched this ugly scene with his hands at his sides. He could smell the bad cologne and the sweat of his attacker on his clothes. Years ago, when D had been a bouncer and the MC was a legend in New York, they’d see each other all the time. Back then the MC had a hi-top fade, dukey gold, and always a fly girl or two by his side. Now he was an angry, not-quite-middle-aged man who’d somehow found himself backstage at an event he probably should have been honored at (at least he thought so).

  D felt his pain, but there was nothing he could do. BET was paying him to keep the peace and that’s what he was gonna do, as sad as it made him.

  On stage, Wale and Kid Kudi had joined Luda in performing a series of old-school hits in a bout of hip hop nostalgia. Nicki Minaj was in the wings, a few feet from D, getting ready to perform Roxanne Shanté’s “Roxanne’s Revenge.”

  It was a month after Amina’s death. D hadn’t been indicted. The death had been deemed a suicide. He hadn’t been invited to the funeral, though. It had all been a disaster. A woman he cared about was gone and no one out in Jersey gave a damn about his theories other than to eye him suspiciously and tell him to stay the hell out of their town.

  Now he was back in Cali, working at the BET Awards, getting a nice check, and trying to figure out what to do with his life. The old-school MC’s rant brought back a lot bad feelings about all he’d heard and learned and what little he could prove. He’d been in Los Angeles for several weeks. Part of it was getting away from New York and thoughts of Amina. Part of it was heading back to the place where he might be able to provoke whoever came to the set of the KAG video shoot, stole his meds, and somehow drove Amina to kill herself.

  But nothing had happened. Not a weird look or an off-color remark or anyone trying to intimidate him via words or deeds. Except for the angry MC, the evening had been uneventful. He was just a hired gun at the BET Awards and not a supervisor, so once the last award had been given out and the last limousine had pulled away, D was out the door.