Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair)

by Perez, Rosie

  My mind was spinning the first time I stood on the Soul Train line. I didn’t know what to do. Don Cornelius didn’t like hip-hop or house dancing. He kept telling me to dance like the other girls, meaning like a vixen. In fact, after my first day he suggested that I dress more appropriately—you know, tight-ass minis and high heels. I was cool with the minis, but three-inch heels? Yikes! I could wear one- to two-inch heels. Three was a whole other thing.

  I couldn’t do more than stand there and gyrate. All the regulars had routines; all the girls had their signature sexy moves. I didn’t have shit. When it was my turn, I started nervously pumping my body back and forth, trying to look like the other ladies, praying I wouldn’t fall off those damn heels. While pumping, I kept thinking to myself, I look like a fucking idiot! To my surprise, everyone started cheering me on! Even Don Cornelius told me to go down a second time!

  We didn’t get paid, just a Kentucky Fried Chicken two-piece lunch box—not kidding. I didn’t complain, I was happy to be there, and my ass was always hungry anyway, living on cans of tuna fish. But I left the show after only being on it for maybe a year or a year and a half. I say “only” because most of the regulars were there five, ten years plus! All waiting for their big break into the entertainment industry, like Jodi Watley and Shalamar. (“Make that move, right now, baby”—love them!)

  Dad finally saw me on the show, freaked out, and told me it embarrassed him to see me dancing like that. I honestly didn’t realize that I was dancing that provocatively. I was brought up so Catholic, I had no clue about my sexuality. (I was a virgin until I was twenty—true.) However, my decision wasn’t solely based on that. I had gotten into a fight with Don Cornelius during a taping. He didn’t like Keith Sweat coming over during his performance and dancing with me. But that wasn’t the real reason why he went at me.

  Don was trying to form a new singing group and asked me to be a member. I was excited, even though I told him I couldn’t sing that good—“Your inability to sing is insignificant. It’s how you fill that dress and how the camera loves you.” Wow. Okay. But I declined the offer after he wouldn’t let me take the recording/management contract asking for 60 percent to a lawyer. I wasn’t anyone’s fool. Things were tense after that, but shit really hit the fan when an A&R executive from MCA Records, Louil Silas Jr.—who unfortunately passed away in 2001—had brought an act on the show and saw me rehearsing some hip-hop moves with Ricky and his older brother on the side. Louil was African American and medium height and had a potbelly, scruffy aftershave; he was well dressed, arrogant, confident, and funny as shit. He waved me over.

  “That’s hip-hop, right?”

  “Yes, sir. But Don doesn’t like the girls doing it on the show.”

  “Really? That’s weird. I want you to teach it to my new artist, Bobby Brown, from New Edition. He’s going solo. But don’t tell anyone yet.”

  My heart went up into my throat!

  “Here’s my card. Come up to the record label on Monday.”

  “But I’m not a choreographer.”

  “I’ll pay you fifteen hundred.”

  “I’ll be there Monday morning.”

  Of course news got back to Don. How dare I not sign with him and go off and make money elsewhere? That’s when he started to pick on me during the tapings.

  So Keith kept humping, Don kept yelling “Cut!” and I was getting heated. By the time I went down the Soul Train line things were going from bad to worse. Excited that Louil liked and saw the future in hip-hop, I went down the line doing the Pee-wee Herman.

  “Cut! Rosie, do it again.”

  I went down doing the Roger Rabbit.

  “Cut! Come here.”

  I walked over. He pulled me in close and whispered sternly.

  “You walk back down that line nice and sexy like you’re supposed to.”

  I walked back to the head of the line, paused, then strutted down as if I were Naomi Campbell on the runway, continued walking past Don to my seat, grabbed my things, and told him I was out. Don grabbed my arm, pulling me back.

  “You don’t quit until I tell you you can quit!”

  Wrong move. I grabbed the first thing I could get my free arm around, which happened to be one of the two-piece KFC chicken lunch boxes, and threw it at him. A chicken wing smacked him dead in his forehead. I was escorted out by security.

  I was fuming, sitting in my broken-down Datsun B-210 that I had bought from a base head at college—ha! I was hurt too. This was Soul Train! Don was an idol to me, and this was how it went down? I wanted to go back inside to make amends—I did hit the man with a greasy chicken wing. And he was Don Cornelius! He was still a legend to be respected. Unfortunately, I was too angry, too filled with pride, and too embarrassed to go back.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE BIGNESS of it all started to kick in when I pulled into the MCA Records parking lot. I was on time, but had to wait over half an hour for Louil, which made me even more nervous. I kept looking down at my outfit, wondering if I had made the right choice, constantly checking my hair. Louil finally came out of his office. He played “Don’t Be Cruel” and “My Prerogative.” As we listened I got excited. I instantly knew these were going to be hits!

  “That’s dope! Especially ‘My Prerogative’!”

  “Really? Well, we’re going with ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ first. It’s gonna be a bigger hit.”

  “Nah, I think the other is gonna hit bigger.”

  “Look at you,” he chuckled. “Lemme see what you got.”

  “What?”

  “Your ideas for the routines.”

  “Um. Okay.”

  I didn’t have anything. How was I to know? I made it up on the spot—fake it until you make it! Thank goodness I already knew how to formulate routines from upstate and hanging in clubs. Upstate I was the manager of the cheerleading squad, so I understood form. And, let’s not forget the nuns! They did teach me tap and how to perform on a stage. Down in the city, I was a club head, especially a hip-hop head. I would go to jams, sneak into hip-hop clubs—the Roxy, the World, Latin Quarters—and go to Afrika Bambaataa shows, watching break-dancers like Crazy Legs, Fable, and Mr. Wiggles of Rock Steady Crew in awe. I loved to see dancers Cliff Love and Doctor Ice—who later became a member of the hip-hop group UTFO (“Roxanne, Roxanne! I wanna be your man!”)—tear it up behind Whodini or Scoob and Scrap behind Big Daddy Kane, all doing James Brown, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and the fabulous Nicholas Brothers moves, making them their own while coming up with original steps that are still used today.

  Hip-hop moved me in a way like never before. I never was a “street” kid, but I was part of the post-Vietnam generation who grew up with the residue of inflation, parents’ broken dreams, poverty, and heroin-cluttered streets; who watched Reaganomics and crack tear at souls; who had something new and more innovative to offer than the prejudiced world around us predicted for us. Hip-hop was so incredible—mostly poor, West Indian, African American, and Puerto Rican kids from the Bronx created it, but white people and other various racial, social, and economic backgrounds throughout the city also contributed. (It always bothers me when people in the industry state that it was solely a black thing.) With other types of fun either unavailable or unaffordable to them, they all craved something new and found it in creating hip-hop.

  The routine wasn’t great but Louil liked it, and liked the style because it was New York. He made some tweaks, told me that Bobby wasn’t up on hip-hop but was a quick study. He also wanted sexiness in the routine. “We’ve got Soul Train and a music video. I need two routines. On each, I want him to fuck the air, like this.” Louil pumped his pelvis back and forth. I died laughing. “Fuck you, Perez,” he said playfully. “I want him to pump his shit hard. I want him to be sex, want every girl to think he wants to fuck her. And I want him to have background dancers like the rap groups. I want Bobby to be the first R&B guy to do that shit.” “Okay! Got it. And please don’t pump your stuff like that again. You look hilarious
.” “Fuck you, Perez!” We clicked instantly.

  He also told me that before they made their final decision to hire me, Bobby would come over to my place to check out the routine and the dancers. My place?

  “Uh, I live in the Jungle. It’s not really safe for Bobby Brown to come there.”

  “You live in the damn Jungle?” He laughed.

  “Yes! What’s so damn funny?” I asked defensively.

  “Calm down. Damn. Look at you, all ghetto.”

  Ghetto? You can live in a ghetto, but that didn’t mean you were ghetto. Back home, “ghetto” didn’t mean that you were poor or used a certain vernacular or even had a temper. “Ghetto” meant possessing a certain ignorant mentality—it meant thinking that type of ignorance was cute: lacking empathy and doing stupid, malicious things because you just didn’t care about the human cost. No, I was not ghetto. I wanted to correct his error in judgment, but didn’t. I thought of Sister Renata’s warning about my temper and didn’t want to blow this. Can you believe that? I took a deep breath and calmed down. “Whatever,” I simply replied.

  “Yeah, okay, miss thang. Bobby will come by in three days,” Louil continued.

  “Okay. And thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate it. I won’t let you down.”

  “You better not. Don’t make me hire someone else, Little Miss Attitude.”

  Three days! Holy crapola! I hired this dance group that I loved watching in the local nightclubs called Heart and Soul—Arthur, Willie, Derrick, Bruce, and Kaylan were five guys from Watts. They were original and tight in their routines and looked clean as hell. Kaylan couldn’t make it. I offered the rest of them $200 each out of my fee of $1,500—MCA was not going to give me a separate fee for the dancers. I told them that, to save time, we would combine some of their existing routines and some of my stuff and tailor the choreography to Bobby.

  We practiced and rehearsed hard as hell. It was kind of easy for me to edit both of our styles. I could see the entire dance number in my head. It unfortunately wasn’t easy for Heart and Soul to accept their routines being cut up, and it took them a minute to get the New York style down. There was a lot of arguing, to the point where it began to get ugly, on both sides. I finally told them that if they couldn’t see the bigger picture and compromise, I would have to hire another group instead. I had little time for bickering and no room to lose this job. Arthur, who spoke with a slow southern Los Angeles drawl, stepped in and set things straight.

  “Hey look, man. I didn’t bring my ass all the way down from Watts to blow this shit. She gonna get the Soul Brothers [another local dance crew], and our asses will be assed out back on the bus to damn Watts! So let’s do this shit or take our asses the fuck on home.”

  From then on, Arthur and I were a team—although he didn’t know it yet.

  I went to work hard. I knew this was going to be big. Hip-hop artists didn’t get prime-time camera action back then. Break-dancing and popping were featured here and there, but hip-hop, no. I knew that with Bobby it was going to blow up! And the boys hated my ass over those three days, but I was on a mission. They weren’t used to structure. I made them do the routines over and over again until everything was perfect. I broke down the routine by each eight-count. If an arm or foot wasn’t where it was supposed to be, I’d stop everything and make them do it again. I was a taskmaster, as strict as Sister Renata and the nuns. I was surprised by how embedded it was to be that way, and how easily it came out—scary, right?

  We were all nervous as hell. Bobby came in with only his brother Tommy, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt. We were expecting bodyguards, limos, designer clothes, and whatnot. We didn’t know at the time how little money he made with New Edition. Bobby shook everyone’s hand, was very sweet, and spoke low and soft. Tommy was gangster and kept it real. We did the routine, me acting as Bobby. We could all see from Bobby’s reaction as he sat on my piece-of-shit couch that he was hyped! This was so different from New Edition, and Bobby knew what I already knew—this was going to take him to another level. He hired us on the spot! The fellas and I started screaming, jumping up and down and hugging each other! Then the bad news came.

  Tommy asked to speak with me alone. I sent the boys outside. He told me they only needed two dancers, like the rappers. He picked Derrick because he thought he was the best-looking and Willie because he liked his charm. Great. They already thought I was a bitch, and now they were really gonna think so. Bobby and Tommy left. Heart and Soul came back into my apartment. I put my game face on. “Derrick, Willie, you two are gonna dance behind Bobby, okay. The rest of you, I would love it if you stayed for support. I’ll still pay you what I promised. Cool?” No one moved. The silence was killing me. Then Arthur stepped up again.

  “Fuck it, man. At least two of my homies will be representing Heart and Soul. Come on, let’s do this shit.”

  • • •

  Bobby casually strutted into rehearsals with a facade of calm and confidence. Derrick and Willie may have been puffing up, but they were scared as hell. I wasn’t nervous at all. I was excited, happy, and focused. So focused that I understood how they were feeling, saw right through them and knew how to handle them, especially Bobby. Bobby was acting similarly to the way I had with some of the kids in “outside” school, acting as if being in the Home had no effect on me, creating an aloof facade to hide my true feelings behind. The only difference was that I never strutted. I didn’t have that skill set or the nerve.

  It surprised me that choreographing was so easy and so much fun, that it felt so right to me—not just coming up with routines, but guiding artists to become their best. My empathy allowed me to connect with Bobby, to make him feel good about himself as an artist by reaffirming his talent, and to provide a safe environment for mistakes without embarrassment, ensuring nothing would go down at his emotional expense. I would take Bobby aside to whisper minor corrections, never making his errors a big deal; I’d praise his improvement without false adoration and champion him when he organically did something that was on some superstar shit. It was the same feeling Tia provided me. The same feeling Miss Connie, Beth, Nigel, and especially Grace offered me.

  Heart and Soul and the routine didn’t make the “Don’t Be Cruel” video. The dancers and I were disappointed. We had busted our asses in preparation and were not told until after the video was shot. Louil thought Bobby and the dancers weren’t ready. But we were ready enough to perform on Soul Train a couple of weeks later! Showing up on Soul Train not as a dancer but as a choreographer, for none other than Bobby Brown, was something else. Half of the Soul Train dancers were happy for me, and the rest were jealous as hell. And the few dance crews that were on the show were jealous of Heart and Soul. I understood. I didn’t take it personally.

  Don, though, forget about it. He was so angry. “What is she doing here?!” Louil smoothed things over with him. I had told him what went down, and he instructed me not to utter a word, just to act professional, and he would take care of the rest. I desperately wanted to apologize to Don, but didn’t push it. I had bigger fish to fry.

  Bobby took the stage and killed it! Not the entire routine, but it didn’t matter. He was so dynamic, he had the crowd in the palm of his hands. Even though Derrick and Willie showed their nervousness, they stayed in the pocket and the crowd loved them too. It sounds corny, but when Big Lou, one of the most popular Soul Train dancers to date, enthusiastically high-fived Bobby during the number, I jumped for joy. It meant a lot, seriously.

  Even before the episode was aired, Louil Silas Jr. made sure everyone in the music business knew that I had choreographed Bobby. By the time Derrick, Willie, and Bobby performed on The Arsenio Hall Show, I was a name in the record and music video industry. Motown asked me to choreograph “Dial My Heart,” a new single by its boys group, called the Boys, produced by L. A. Reid and Babyface for their Soul Train appearance and later multiple videos. I also staged and went on the Boys’ first major tour.

  I brought the rest of Heart
and Soul along. I hired Arthur as my assistant choreographer on every job. Derrick, Willie, Kaylan, and Bruce tagged along to help out for some spot dates too. We were having a blast, hanging out, making up routines, rehearsing, telling stupid jokes. It was fun. My life was fun, and I was making some money—God bless America three times!

  One of those dates was where I met Mike Tyson. Actually, I had met him before in Brooklyn, but he didn’t remember. In Brooklyn he was the champ even before he was the Champ. I’d run into him all the time in the clubs. When the Boys tour pulled into Chicago, Mike Tyson was there to meet them. Mike was a big fan of the Boys and met up with everyone backstage, hanging with us for a couple of tour dates. I loved him. He was a dented can too: smart, damaged, silly, and still on the make. As the Boys were about to go on, we went over the numbers, and Mike was on the side watching. I was wearing spandex and a tank top. I went to sit next to Mike, and he whispered, “Damn, Wosie. You got a biscuit booty. Love to pour gravy all over that shit.”

  “Mike, shut up.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  We both laughed. He never hit on me again.

  • • •

  A little under a year had passed. All was good, and then sadly, Derrick and Willie fell out with me. They had decided to do Bobby’s new video, “Every Little Step I Take,” without us and didn’t tell us we were axed out. We had already spent hours choreographing most of the song—teaching it to Derrick and Willie! They finished the routine on their own, filling in the empty spaces with some really fly steps, I must admit. I was upset, not that they moved on, but that they pulled a fast one. They told Arthur they felt justified because they had thought I gypped them on the initial fee from our first job together.

  From what I had heard, Bobby and his “people” told Willie and Derrick that they should have gotten more money because the routine was theirs—not true. It was a sleazy tactic to sidestep me since I had asked for more money for the video. I had done my homework—other choreographers, like Paula Abdul (who I loved), were making close to $10,000 a video. And they were trying to pay my ass only $1,500, on a hit artist that we helped become a hit, with a huge video budget to boot? Fuck that. I had never gypped anyone. We shared steps, but “shared” is the operative word. Plus, the concept and the structure were all mine. And had I fed them out of my fee every day—four guys—and paid for gas to and from the rehearsal studio and jobs, dropping them off in Watts.