It’s competitive out there. And people do some crazy things— like bank robbing and even carjacking—to stay in the game.
John Forte, of the Fugees, seemingly had it all. And somehow that still wasn’t enough. Here was a guy from Brownsville, Brooklyn, who got a full scholarship to attend upscale, lily-white Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He went to New York University, where he studied music, before leaving for the music business. He hooked up with the Fugees and was nominated for a Grammy. He had even dropped a solo album.
But in the winter of 2002, John Forte was caught with thirty-one pounds of cocaine worth one and a half million dollars. And today is serving fourteen years for possession with intent to distribute. John Forte, aka inmate No. 88840-079, is yet another victim of the trappings of this game. The thirst seems unquenchable to many. And it’s so sad.
In 2004, star football player Jamal Lewis, of the Baltimore Ravens, was indicted and charged with conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute five kilograms of cocaine. And not only are rappers and athletes getting into the drug game to stay ahead, but the drug game has totally commandeered much of rap. How many rappers, from Jay-Z to 50 Cent, have admitted to coming from the drug game? And there are many unnamed, behind-the-scenes executives who have made quite an easy transition from the streets who are now heading up rap labels. It’s getting scary.
The problem in hip-hop is that even within the game there are the haves and the have-nots. There are really only a handful of artists who are actually making the real money. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot more millionaires in the game today than there were fifteen, twenty years ago when hip-hop was just starting. Today you might find those in hip-hop out at the Hamptons partying with Robert De Niro. Hip-hop wasn’t doing that fifteen years ago. How fabulous is that? If you have the right money, you’re now living next door to Robert De Niro in the Hamptons and that is one of your many homes. That’s fabulous too. There are more moguls and more moguls doing the right things with their money today in hip-hop than ever before. These moguls—like Russell Simmons, Puffy, Damon Dash—are sending their kids to these thirty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year private schools in Manhattan. And I think it’s great. I think it’s great that the moguls are buying coveted New York City property and we see it on MTV Cribs. They even have trust funds for their kids. There is a generation now who will be actually leaving something for the next generation.
I’ve also noticed there are still just as many men being sloppy with the penis, which has led to the downfall of some of these moguls. Having babies with different women and being sloppy with the unprotected sex can be very costly.
There are a lot of sad stories that we don’t find out about until so much later. I was really shocked when TLC talked about being broke after having had so much success. They are the consummate example of a very successful group—they sold millions upon millions of records and seemed to be living the high life—who really had nothing. Their story underscores the nastiness and some of the realities of this business.
I remember them on VH1 and the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez, telling all about how they were broke—selling ten million records and being broke. She talked about how they only got something like fifty thousand dollars apiece after Ooh . . . on the TLC Tip went multiplatinum. And that money included all of the touring they did that year. And Chili and T-Boz were sitting there cosigning everything Left Eye was saying. It was so sad to hear. And even sadder that their manager, Pebbles, was behind it all. Shut up! That rings in my head so loud, and those girls were so busy having fun and so busy trusting Pebbles that they weren’t watching their bottom line.
Sometimes we feel as though we’re protected when we’re watched over by a big sister or a mother figure or someone with the same skin tone, if you know what I mean.
You’d be surprised at how many people are out here giving you the illusion of the life who really don’t have it at all. And you’d be surprised at the number of people who have all of the cars and all of the things but don’t even have life insurance—the basic things. You’re supposed to have life insurance or money set aside for your kids that you cannot touch even if the bottom were to drop out.
It’s very important. Even in my career, I feel that this can be over any day. In entertainment, whether you’re on the radio or a platinum-selling artist, you can make—and not everyone does— a lot of money fast. And the most important thing about making fast money is acknowledging that it can be over tomorrow, just as fast. You must always have in the back of your mind a Plan B. It is very Negroidian not to have a backup plan and to only live for today.
You need a plan for either how you’re going to maintain your lavish lifestyle or how you will adjust emotionally to scaling back. It could be quite tragic for people to be living in a big house one day and then having to get a little condo, or renting a little apartment, tomorrow.
Everybody has Gucci dreams, but you have to have everything very well thought out. And it goes beyond getting a business manager—somebody telling you what to do with your money and your time and your future. When in actuality you should have a plan of your own.
I learned through trial and error how to make do with the money I’ve been making. I never had a bunch of money to blow. Even during the time I was caught up in my cocaine addiction, I didn’t have all this money I was blowing. And cocaine was so cheap that it wasn’t making me broke. Where did I learn this? Being paranoid and cheap.
Having a baby really put things in perspective. I didn’t have life insurance before I had little Kevin, because it was just me and my husband. And I believe a grown man should continue to work if, God forbid, something happened to me. I had life insurance through my job. I didn’t get the big policy where they come to your house and take blood and weigh you and all of that, I didn’t have that until I had my child. I didn’t need that before. You’re not going to kill me for the life insurance money.
Life insurance is particularly important in terms of making sure that your children are okay. That was a conscious effort for me. Now that we have little Kevin, we have life insurance, a college fund. And I even have a fuck-you fund for me. This is separate from my son’s money. I promised myself that we would never go into his college fund for anything. If things got tough and we couldn’t pay the mortgage, that’s our fault. I would never jeopardize our son’s future. I don’t want to ruin it for him. He didn’t ask to be born to these two idiot parents who tricked up all of the money.
I wish more people would take care of their money and take care of their future. Just as easy as it came, it can go. If you’re riding high today, you can be rock bottom tomorrow. So prepare, prepare, prepare, for the worst. And stop chasing after things that really are not important in the long run.
I wonder how far things are going to go in hip-hop. There is a movement afoot to bring it back to the original flavor. There are some new artists who seem to want to bring the fun back. With the emergence of groups like OutKast, who are moving hip-hop into a whole other realm, there is hope. I pump my fists for OutKast. And Missy Elliott is always coming with something original and fun. And there is Kanye West as well. But the industry seems to reward those with gangsta. Artists like 50 Cent and his bulletproof vests seem to get the attention of the labels. Hopefully this will change.
Ultimately, it is up to the people to change by sending a message with their purchasing habits. The people will have the last word on where hip-hop ends up.
CHAPTER
4
The Elvis Factor
The first multiplatinum rap album? The Beastie Boys’ License to Ill. It was the top-selling rap album of the 1980s.Vanilla Ice debuted his album To the Extreme in 1991, and it became the top-selling album of all time. It sold seven million copies in its first year in the United States alone. And it held the title of top-selling rap album until Eminem knocked it out of the box a decade later.
Eminem is now the top rapper in the game, with Grammys, movies, and
even an Academy Award for best song.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Well, if you are a rapper in the game who has been struggling to just get your songs heard, a lot is wrong. If you are a pioneer who helped shape and mold what rap and hip-hop are today, there is plenty wrong with this picture. If you are a young person growing up in an urban neighborhood for which rap and hip-hop are the means through which your voice is heard, this picture is completely wrong.
Seeing the emergence of white rappers is bittersweet. The success of the Beastie Boys, Vanilla Ice—whose To the Extreme was the first rap album to sell more than seven million copies—and now Eminem has brought a level of legitimacy to rap and hip-hop. It has brought financial success and has broadened the appeal and the marketplace for many rappers. It has made rap and hip-hop cross over in a way that could be very positive for this country. It is a rallying point for many of the young and bridges many social, racial, and economic gaps. That’s all good.
But at the same time, all of this progress has happened at the expense of the very people who created the music in the first place.
Eminem is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the fastest-selling rap artist in history, for his Marshall Mathers LP. That the names of these people can be in record books and that they can go down in history as being the most successful rappers of all time can possibly undermine all of the work that was done by the true pioneers. Years from now, when all of us are gone and all that is left are record books, future generations may actually believe that the Beastie Boys and Eminem propelled rap and hip-hop to another height. They could be viewed as the pioneers of the game.
The truth is that in this game, white sells. We saw it with Elvis back in the day and we see it with Eminem today. If a white person can emulate a black person and white people get to enjoy the music without looking at the black face associated with it, then they can be a huge success—even more successful than the blacks they emulate. The Beatles—biggest group of the millennium—admittedly borrowed from the sounds of people like Little Richard. Most of Elvis’s hits were written by black men, and his sound was definitely “soulful.”
In music today you have Justin Timberlake, who is the most soulful white boy alive. They even had him hosting the 45th Anniversary of Motown.
This makes many people furious. Few rappers, for fear of industry backlash, will talk about this openly or loudly. Ray Benzino, a rapper and co-owner of the Source magazine, has been on a crusade. He has been accused of hating and he is hating—hating how the game is going. He and Eminem had a well-documented battle in 2003. Benzino’s Source magazine exposed some racist lyrics Eminem spit on a song before he blew up about a black girl he used to date. And the two men exchanged harsh lyrics in songs.
Benzino, in my opinion, really cares about the state and future of hip-hop. He is someone who has taken it upon himself to speak out about things no one else seems willing or able to speak out about. He has put a bull’s-eye around Eminem as the poster boy for what ails hip-hop. And whether he is right or not, his discussion is at least something hip-hop needs to hear. He’s not talking about taking out Glocks and blowing people away, he’s talking about taking back hip-hop and not selling out to the “machine.”
Ray Benzino (RB): I got nothing against white rappers. Anybody should be able to rap. Black, white, purple, blue. You just gotta be true to yourself and recognize the hood and you a’ight with me.
Wendy Williams (WW ): Okay.
RB: You know again, it really isn’t . . . Eminem just brings it out more, I think.
WW: Right.
RB: I think this is an issue that is bigger than Eminem. You know, my whole situation with Eminem was really brought up just to bring light that the hood ain’t selling units no more and that there’s a problem with big corporations andthe other culture trying to take our culture and just run with it, man, and just, you know, today it seems like I’m the only one who’s spoke up for that. As far as, you know, artists are concerned. But you can best believe all the artists are gonna reap, you know what I’m saying?
WW: Do you find that behind closed doors many artists agree with what you’re saying? It’s just that they may not have the backbone to come out and speak about it?
RB: That’s crazy to me. Because if you can find time to beef with each other, you definitely should find time to talk about a situation that’s really bad for the whole culture. And a lot of times, you know, like we’re blinded. It’s that whole divide-and-conquer theory, you know what I’m saying? As long as we’re going at each other, then you really don’t focus on the real problem. But you know, I’ve seen it coming.
WW: Right.
RB: I had the blessings basically to see hip-hop from the inside and outside.
WW: Uh-huh.
RB: And, you know, I’ve basically come from the streets of Roxbury, Dorchester, Massachusetts. I came up in a time, very violent time—gang, drugs, guns—and, you know, survived that. Very proud that I survived that. And helped a lot of my guys survive it and, you know, I just, it’s just . . . you know, I go all across the country and I’m in the neighborhoods and it’s just sad to see a lot of these kids, basically, really putting they everything into this rhyming and it’s just like they’re not getting a chance to be heard or, you know what I’m saying, it’s just not right. Right now, the game’s nasty.
WW: But you know a lot of people, um, Benzino, are saying that the reason you’re upset is because you’re not selling—
RB: Uh-huh.
WW: —the same units as an Eminem or somebody of that nature.
RB: There’s no way that anybody is gonna be able to sell the units that Eminem [sells]. . . . I’ve accepted that.
WW: Right.
RB: I’ve been into this game for the love. “Rock the Party” is the biggest song of my career and, you know, it was a situation I was in Miami then the 8 Mile [Eminem] thing came out. It just was just too much for me to take. And I felt like hip-hop is, you should be able to use it as a tool to bring social consciousness, and I felt that this was a topic that created social consciousness. You know, I didn’t get into it to wage any type of war, you know, a race war, because it’s not racial. One thing about hip-hop is that it’s bridged those racial gaps, man, you know what I’m saying? Hip-hop is a great thing. I think the people that was against hip-hop from the start didn’t like the way it bridged the racial gaps—
WW: Right.
RB: —and I think this is the way that they can basically push the streets and separate hip-hop. You know, I been doing interviews and, man, you have white radio personalities all across the country who do morning shows who just started playing hip-hop and getting into hip-hop.
WW: Right.
RB: These are the same people who never wanted to be involved with hip-hop.
WW: Right.
RB: But now just because Eminem is, you know, perceived to be number one . . .
WW: Right.
RB: They’re embracing him and it’s like they’re going against me just because.
WW: Right.
RB: It hasn’t, like, they had no real point.
WW: Right.
RB: You understand what I’m saying? They don’t see what’s going on and they really don’t care. And I be getting a lot of that till, really, you know, you, a lot of people are being exposed as far as, if their, to me their true colors show when they start talking about hip-hop and, you know, and how Eminem is the king of hip-hop and, you know, basically I can be the whipping boy. It’s no problem. I’m built for this, Wendy. You know what I’m saying?
I do. When Benzino compares Eminem to what is going on today, a lot of people look at him as raging and bitter because he doesn’t have his own platinum line on his walls and Eminem does. But I understand where he is coming from. Rock and roll was started by blacks. But when you look at rock and roll today, it is a white thing and it appears to have always been a white thing.
The most successful hip-hop radio
stations in the country are owned by whites. My station, WBLS—one of the last of a dying breed of black-owned radio stations—isn’t exactly ringing the loudest bells (outside of the Experience, of course). We are the station at the end of the dial, the little station that could. And I am proud to say that I am working for a black-owned radio station. It is the second time in my career that I am getting my money from a black situation, and I’ve never had any checks bounce. Kathy Hughes’s Radio One was the other black-owned entity that I worked for. And Radio One, the largest black-owned radio conglomerate in the country, doesn’t even own the most urban stations in this country—white-run Clear Channel does.
I see that if things continue where there was one white rapper after the other, rap music and its artists would evolve into something that would have white rappers as the greatest rappers of all times. And they would all follow in the steps of Eminem with platinum hits, crossover success, great endorsement deals, movies, etc.
Of course, the black rappers want all of these things too. They all want a successful television sitcom, an Oscar nomination, Grammys lined up.
I know where Benzino is coming from. And when we talked in 2003 he said nothing that surprised me. He’s down with hip-hop. He feels it’s empty, it’s void. But that happens when things go corporate and that happens when things have to be managed.
WW: Do you think that Eminem is a culture stealer?
RB: I believe the people . . . I think he’s the puppet. For sure. I believe that he might’ve started into this just, you know, like everybody else. He loves hip-hop, wants to be involved with it, but then once the puppet masters start pulling the strings—
The Wendy Williams Experience Page 6