That venting of anger in a loud voice, alone in the room, calmed her down and brought some peace to her soul. She picked up the remote and selected Aston Martin Music in her music system. The smooth voice of Drake over the rapping of Rick Ross soothed her. She played the song over and over again until she came up with an idea that later convinced her that the blunt treatment by Byron Taylor had been a blessing in disguise, after all. Struck by the haunting chorus, of the Rick Ross song, Joelyn’s creative juices flowed. She picked up a pen and wrote a song of her own composition on a notepad. Then she began to sing, putting tunes to the words, and recorded her singing using her iPhone.
When she went to sleep very late in the night, she had written and recorded two songs that spoke of unfulfilled love and broken promises.
Chapter 8
In the morning, Byron Taylor, Hollywood hotshot and man-about-town, woke up to find himself not with the two young women he had gone to bed with the previous night. Instead, he was in the company of a slender Black girl with a very dark complexion and big natural breasts. She propped herself on one elbow and looked down at his face with her dark eyes. ‘I was just in the bathroom a moment ago. My pussy’n’ass is fresh ’n’ clean for your pleasure, honey.’ She grabbed his genitals and felt him stir to life. ‘Do you wanna feel how horny for you I am?’
She climbed onto him and took him between her buttocks. She shrieked in delight, jumping in wild frenzy on top of him. Then she slid off him and gave him a thorough and fulfilling blowjob before engulfing him in the delicious sweetness of her wet vagina. When he came inside her she cried out his name and he felt like a king of his castle.
In the afternoon, Byron Taylor dodged the paparazzi and drove his SLS Gullwing Mercedes Benz to Malibu, where he was received by Joelyn in a foul mood. ‘Who do you think you are?’ she fired angrily at him. ‘I sat up and called you all night long. Why the fuck didn’t you answer your phone?’
‘I thought you knew by now that I’m the fucking best actor the world has ever seen, and I’m God’s gift to women.’ He was joking, of course, but Joelyn totally missed the humor in it.
She jumped on him and attacked him with a barrage of quick but feeble fists, until he was forced to grab and push her violently from him. She staggered, lost her balance and fell backwards onto the floor. She leapt to her feet quickly and yelled wildly. ‘Get the hell outta my house! I hate you! I don’t ever wanna see you—.’
He pulled her to him and kissed her with a passion so furious it defeated her wild, angry demon and she melted into his body. He stripped her naked and made love to her right there on the floor. She offered no resistance, no protests, as he took her body and tortured it. She cried in ecstasy as he went deeper and harder into her, driving her out of her mind with his quick, frenzied thrusts.
When she climaxed, and held his body tightly to hers, he kissed her lips and thrust a little more into her before becoming still. He was very quick to recover from the fabulous effects of orgasm. ‘Is this what you wanted?’ he taunted with his eyes, gazing down at her. ‘Are you happy now?’
She clapped him hard across the face and pushed him off her. He rolled to his back on the floor and burst out laughing. ‘My God! Bitch, you’ve got wild fire in you!’
Joelyn, her face red with agitation, rose to her feet and spat spitefully at him. Then she went upstairs to clean herself and rid her body of his smell.
* * * * *
When Byron Taylor and Joelyn Smith stepped out of a stretch limousine and walked gracefully down the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of their film, the world was not aware of the lurking animosity between them. The smiles, the holding of hands, the affectionate laughter between them as they waved at fans, answered questions and signed autographs, was all just an elaborate show for the cameras. When it was over and the movie had been screened, Joelyn pulled Byron to one side and told him, ‘It’s over, you bastard. I don’t want anything more to do with you. Don’t call me, and don’t come to my house. I’m done with you.’
Chapter 9
While her sudden departure from the WTA professional circuit gave Jansen time to reflect on her personal life and her career options, it caused the executives handling a Vermuelen account at each of the big corporations that had supplied her with endorsement deals to develop ulcers. They were not prepared to see her slip into oblivion before they realized a return on their respective investments. They went into urgent meetings to devise strategies to keep the Jansen Vermuelen brand alive. One of the geniuses at a major sponsor for Jansen came up with a temporary but effective solution. He pointed out cleverly that music was a segment of popular culture that could prove lucrative to any brand. This point was discussed further by the executive-in-charge’s team until it was resolved that it was a “workable” option. The executive-in-charge took the eventual decision upstairs to his bosses, who commended him on his genius mind and promised him a promotion if his plan worked. They did not have to mention that he would be replaced quicker than lightning if he failed to prove his worth to the company on this rather unsettling matter. He was intelligent enough to know it.
What followed next was a series of frantic exchanges of communication between the corporation’s people and Jansen’s people. The corporation’s request upon Miss Vermuelen was plain and straightforward. The plan was that Miss Vermuelen should lend her voice to songs to be released by the nation’s current “hot” recording artists, building up to the release of her pop album in the first quarter of 2012. Miss Vermuelen, still young but wise enough to know her limitations, told them decently that she had neither the hope nor the talent to cheat people into believing she could sing. The corporation insisted. Miss Vermuelen stood her ground and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. It got to a point where she told them that if they wanted her to pay back the money they had committed to her, then she would pay them back in full and they would part ways amicably. Then politely she excused herself from the meeting. ‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I have to go house-hunting.’
It said something about Miss Vermuelen’s character, and was one of the most fascinating facts of her life, that while she called New York home, she did not, however, have a permanent place of residence there. It was even more revealing about the kind of lifestyle she was used to that over the course of eight months while in the Big Apple, she had moved from the Four Seasons to the Peninsula Hotel to the Ritz-Carlton to the Mandarin Oriental, and was currently residing in a spacious suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Now that her hectic lifestyle had been brought to an abrupt halt by her misfortunes at the Wimbledon, she craved for the comfort and privacy of her own home. Thus she was currently being shown around possible apartments to make her home by a real estate agent. Eventually, she chose a luxury condominium apartment for rent at $40,000 per month at the Trump Hotel International and Towers. Although it was a beautiful show of opulence in the state she found it in, Jansen hired an interior decorator to redefine the apartment in a style and colors that suited her fantasies.
As mentioned earlier, famous individuals are often surrounded by people who have ambitions and agendas of their own that exclude the considerations of the famous individual. It so happened that someone had the audacity to leak onto the internet news that tennis star Jansen Vermuelen was currently in the studio recording her debut album. This put her management team and her sponsors in an embarrassing situation, especially now that Jansen had expressed no desire to make a foray into the recording industry, and both camps distanced themselves from this blatant fallacy.
Her second biggest sponsor was part of a conglomerate that also owned one of the major TV networks in America. This sponsor suggested the continuation of the Jansen Vermuelen brand by creating a role for her in the TV network’s hit comedy series that was in its fourth season and going strong. Discussions ensured between the sponsor’s executives, the network’s executives, and Miss Vermuelen and her people, culminating in the creation of a role for her in the comedy show that was based in New Yo
rk. The writers were brave enough to introduce her character in the storyline as “Jansen Vermuelen”, the young tennis star who was recuperating from a wrist injury and was currently dating one of the characters in the show, a thirty-something who had been unlucky in love but was baffling his friends and earning their envy by being loved by a young, beautiful millionaires. The network put Jansen through coaching classes to prepare her for her debut acting role, such that when she first appeared in front of the cameras she handled herself with a confidence worthy of praise. Because she was acting in a cameo role, she was using her natural, South African accent, which the audience found to be both funny and sexy. Her addition to the show also gave the writers more leverage to come up with new material. On the first night that she joined the cast of the network’s premier comedy show, the ratings shot up. In the six weeks that followed before the end of the show’s fourth season, it was the most watched comedy series in all of the major networks in America.
And Brand Vermuelen grew.
Chapter 10
The Chris Woodyard film did for Joelyn Smith more than she had anticipated. It gained her recognition by the Hollywood elite; it earned her the respect of honest-to-God operators in the film industry; and it courted for her the envy and jealousy of some sections of general society. To reinforce her standing as a force to reckon with in showbiz, she decided to exploit her new-found fame to the fullest and record songs to be released as soon as possible. She made contacts and, enabled by her inexhaustible financial resources, managed to book recording sessions with the best Hip Hop and pop producers in the game. She worked with some at studios in Burbank, California. She went to Atlanta to record a song with an RnB/Hip Hop producer of note based there. She flew to New York to work on the rest of the album, and over time met some of the most talented minds in the music industry.
While working on her music project, Joelyn went to Hawaii for two days at the request of GQ magazine for a photo shoot. She also appeared on the cover of Vogue, shot in New York. In an interview with the widely distributed publication, Joelyn confirmed the rumors that she was working on a music album and that it was being prepared for a December or January release. When asked if the rumors that she had split from Byron Taylor were true she replied in the affirmative. It was a small coup for the magazine, because it was the first publication to get confirmation on the subject of the Byron-Joelyn split from the horse’s mouth.
Besides being ostensibly in New York for the Vogue shoot, she was mainly there to meet one of the most-sought-after music talents of all time, Raizer T.
* * * * *
Anthony Ryzor was a music phenomenon – some preferred to call him a music genius – and a businessman. His Wikipedia profile stated correctly that he was a rapper, a record producer, a record company owner, an actor, a businessman and a philanthropist. Without forgetting to note that the term “businessman” was used to denote the twelve business units he had under his ownership, a man with such a long and varied list of job descriptions was very hard to pin down. Known affectionately to close friends and family as Tony, and to fans worldwide as Raizer T, Anthony Ryzor was a notoriously difficult man to get an appointment with. Time was so valuable a commodity to him that he paid people to manage his time. Those people did, however, make concessions for the boss’ sexual needs, because they all knew that Raizer T produced his best work when sexually fulfilled. Like most successful superstars in showbiz, Raizer T was at any given time always surrounded by people, including bodyguards, business advisers, legal advisers, managers, publicists, personal assistants, masseuses, friends, and many other people whose benefit to him was questionable.
Raizer T was born and raised in Philadelphia, but had moved to New York City at the age of 16. He had become friends with another youngster who was well-known for his rapping skills in the New York underground Hip Hop movement. When that youngster had signed a record deal with a major record label and had gone on to achieve commercial success with his first album, four songs on that album having been produced by Anthony Ryzor, Tony had never looked back. He had gone on to produce over the next four years dozens of songs with other artists, until he established himself as one of the go-to-men in Hip Hop. By the age of twenty-three Anthony Ryzor was a multi-millionaire and living comfortably.
At age twenty-four he released his debut album and Vibe magazine called it a classic. Using a fusion of electronic beats, drum sounds, stringed instruments and African percussion instruments, the 14-track album had featured only two guest artists. Its main themes were romantic disaster stories, Black consciousness and machismo nonsense, delivered in a distinct voice that set Raizer T apart from other rappers, over addictive choruses that were sung mostly by the rapper himself. Critics said that the reason why Raizer T was so major was because he could rap and he could actually sing. When asked by The Source magazine in a featured article, with his face on the magazine’s cover, about his style of music in the album he said that it was nothing new; he was simply following an increasingly popular trend in that era of Hip Hop, when RnB and Hip Hop were evolving in such a way that singers were rapping and rappers were singing. It was an exciting era for RnB/Hip Hop, and he was happy to be a part of it. He singled out R Kelly as one of the pioneers of this trend, pointing out that as far back as the year 2000, when Kelly had released his hugely successful album, TP-2.com, a classic, he had rapped better than some established rappers on some of the songs in that album. Raizer T also paid tribute to fellow rap artists, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Jay Z for helping to transform the face of rap and making it an indelible part of pop culture.
Following the huge success of his first album, Tha Ryzor, Anthony Ryzor would spend the next two years expanding his business interests, writing music for other artists, producing songs and albums for other artists, and being featured in other artists’ music, and overall growing the brand that was Raizer T. Between 2008 and 2009, The Source magazine counted that Raizer T had featured and appeared in a combined total of 167 songs and music videos by other artists in virtually every mainstream genre of music. Forbes magazine estimated that he was one of the top five earners in Hip Hop in both 2008 and 2009, even though he head not released an album in those two years. In 2010, amid intense hype, Raizer T released his hugely anticipated second album, Tha Ryzor II, in February. It defied declining record sales in the music industry and sold more than 700,000 copies in its first week. It went on to sell a total of more than 3,000,000 copies for the year. The only other album to match those figures in 2010 was Eminem’s Recovery.
Recently, Reebok, the sportswear giant, had collaborated with him to make pairs of sneakers they called Raizer T’s. Those shoes were sold out within two weeks of going on sale in stores across America. Evidently, Raizer T, also known as Anthony “Tony” Ryzor, was a music genius, if not an intelligent businessman, even though he did not have a college degree to prove it. He knew that there were a lot of people who had spent years studying at college who would never in their lifetime make the money he made in a matter of six months. He was also aware that there were people who were intensely jealous of him, resenting the fact that he had made “serious” amounts of money from music and that he had 25,000,000 followers on Twitter. It was because of this jealousy that he kept himself protected by a team of bodyguards and caused a scene wherever he went.
Chapter 11
Raizer T had a multi-million dollar mansion in The Hamptons, with a state-of-the-art recording studio, where he liked to work during his occasional meditative moods, but he preferred living in his SoHo condo in the heart of Manhattan. Ryze Entertainment, his recording label with dozens of artists under its management, was located on two floors in a tall building in the Financial District. On a typical day, Anthony Ryzor spent the day honoring the schedule compiled by his PA, in consultation with the rest of the people whose concern it was to manage Anthony Ryzor’s life. On a typical night, Raizer T would spend the large part of the night in the recording studios at Ryze Entertainment, working on a m
usic project of his choice, before calling it a night around 2am or 3am. When he arrived home, he would take a sleeping pill and sleep for exactly eight hours, regardless of what time he went to sleep. The hours were counted by his phone, which would break into a shrill sound when the eight hours were enough for Mr. Ryzor to start the day.
One night in September 2011 Raizer T worked late into the night at the Ryze studios in the Financial District of New York City. At exactly 1.11am he got into the backseat of a Cadillac Escalade and sat beside one of his armed bodyguards. The other was sitting on the passenger seat next to the driver. The driver took them to the apartment block in SoHo, where Raizer T had a snack prepared for him by someone at the apartment. Then he went to bed at exactly 2.15am with a black-haired Mexican woman who had wide hips and big breasts. Raizer T, a self-confessed porn addict, had people working for him who exercised due caution and diligence in finding him women to fulfill his sexual fantasies.
The Brand Page 6