Page 44 of For the Love of City

CITY

“WHY YOU HERE, bruh?”

I sat next to Travis in the office in Texas looking at the rapper from Vine that he’d finally convinced to leave Georgia and come tour our offices.

The need to get him out of his normal environment and some of the people who might try to hold him back or sell him out was another reason we wanted him to get on that plane.

“I don’t even know.” His body language was rigid the discomfort he felt at being here was clear.

I wasn’t sure if his discomfort was being around us in this setting or being in the setting at all.

I understood how coming from where we did being in a boardroom when you were used to being on the block.

It was like a nice pair of shoes that you admired, but they weren’t the old familiars that you always reached for.

Reaching for something new was hard and it wasn’t something that we were used to being encouraged to do.

Which is why his response didn’t surprise me.

Travis was leaning forward with his arms braced on the table. “You don’t know? That’s a problem for me.”

The rapper’s name was Royce Graham and he looked up as though he were offended at Travis’ annoyance.

“A problem? I ain’t even have to come.”

I chuckled at his bravado because I appreciated that the kid had heart. “You right. But you brought your big ass in here for a reason so speak up. You might as well say what it is that you need to say. Do what it is you came to do. Feel me?”

“Something is on your mind kid, you might as well get it off.” Travis realized what the problem was and he took a different approach when he spoke to the kid this time.

Royce sat back and looked between the two of us suspiciously. He had bronze colored skin and his hair was low cut. He looked unassuming, something I knew served him well on the street, but he had a demeanor about him that screamed he wasn’t somebody to fuck with.

I didn’t give him a moment to speak, just gave him the way I was feeling and would let this shit play out however it would.

“I’on’t know what you heard about me. If you heard shit about me.

The people here? We not like the other industry leeches you might have dealt with before.

We not like the people who promise you everything and don’t give you shit in return.

I don’t sign people we don’t believe in.

My boy thinks you have talent. He wouldn’t have brought you here if he didn’t.

I’ve heard some of your shit and it’s good.

But I can’t work with a nigga that don’t wanna eat.

I need people who are artists that are hungry.

Who serious about this shit. Folks looking for a handout can keep it moving. ”

“That ain’t me!”

Just like I did when I first met Lyric, I was happy to see that this nigga had an attitude. Me even attempting to say he wasn’t about earning his keep was exactly what I wanted.

I leaned back in my seat happy to have made a point to him. The only plaque we had on the walls right now was the ones that Lyric had earned for Nursery Rhymes . We wanted to fill this place up but we needed people who gave a fuck about their art to do it.

“I ain’t think so but it sure seems like it. You sitting around with a closed mouth. How you gone get fed? You sitting on your hands how you gone put in work?”

“I ain’t bring you in here to tiptoe, my nigga.

We might believe in you, but if you don’t believe in yourself we don’t have shit for you.

” I let Travis push this kid because they had a better rapport.

They’d linked up a few times to eat so that Trav could convince him to come to Texas.

He had a better idea of what he could or couldn’t say and what other buttons to push.

Royce sighed and ran his hand down the back of his head. He looked between the two of us again and exhaled like he felt an incredible weight on himself. “Can I be real with y’all?”

Travis crossed his arms like he was irritated to even have to go this hard to sign Royce. We were ready to talk about the offer we wanted to make him, but we were stuck doing this song and dance.

“We hope that’s the only way you’d ever be because anything else might get you in a box you feel me?”

“You ever want some shit so bad that you almost afraid to want it cause you don’t know if you deserve it?

So you don’t reach out for it. You don’t put faith behind it.

You just exist and tell yourself that shit ain’t for you.

It’s not your path. Your destiny is just being a regular nigga?

” He was looking around the room with his leg bouncing.

I knew his pride was taking a hit by confessing this shit to us so I couldn’t fault him for not making eye contact.

This was some heavy shit to confess to two men you ain’t really know.

“Yeah. It keeps you from being disappointed.”

The tone of Travis’ voice had Royce looking up. He could hear how Trav understood from personal experience exactly where he was coming from.

“That’s where I’m at right now. I got people on different sides pulling me in different directions.

I don’t even know what I need to be doing with myself.

Putting my all into this and failing…then what?

” He exhaled like confessing shifted that weight he carried.

Not completely off of him, but enough so that he could breathe slightly easier than before.

Travis’ face looked irritated as he glared at Royce from across the table. “Then what? You try again or you pivot. The fuck?”

Royce waved off Travis’ irritation like he didn’t know what he was talking about. “Ain’t nobody gone be looking to hang out with a forty or fifty-year-old rapper.”

“Nigga, have you heard of Jay-Z? He pushing sixty.”

“And he’s been popular since he was in his twenties. Ain’t no time limit on success.” Travis and I hit him with the back-to-back facts so we kept pushing.

“And he maintained that shit for decades. His senior citizen ass just had Paris and Atlanta jumping like a muthafucka. He still got that star power and I can see the same shit in you. You just got to see it for yourself.”

Travis was preaching, and Royce was finally acting as though he was taking our words to heart.

“Failure in a part of the game. You think we ain’t failed? I mean Trav ass hasn’t. Not at work shit. Nigga is fucking charmed. The love shit two piecing his ass right now.”

The seriousness was broken for a moment as Travis turned to me and kicked at my chair. “Nigga, fuck you.”

“Me, my ass been behind them bars. Jail and prison. For years on some shit I didn’t do.

But good people around me ensured that when I got free that I was free and they couldn’t pull me back in.

Your cage is your mind. Your mindset is that you can’t do this.

Either because you’re afraid or because somebody put that doubt in there.

If you love music, then love music. It might not go the way you want to or look the way you want.

But this right here was Finesse’s brain child.

But running shit? The ability to find talent and organize, those are skills that we applied in a previous life and were able to translate it to this shit.

Same goes for you. If music is all that you’ve allowed yourself to even dream about, you don’t really know how you want that shit to look for real.

And ain’t shit wrong with that. You young as hell and you still got time to figure out where your lane is.

But if you don’t trust your talent, how can we? ”

I’d leaned up, and had my hands clasped in front of me as I tried to ensure that he was going to be solid enough to navigate all that would be coming at him.

“I ain’t really got no people in my corner talking to me on some motivational shit, bruh.”

“Well gotdamn, City, we invisible in this bitch?” Travis was back to laughing even though there wasn’t shit funny. We were still trying to get this nigga to trust us and it felt like there was still a wall between us and him.

I gave a half smile my eyes still on the kid to see how he was responding to our saying we had him. “I guess so. Nigga said he ain’t got nobody in his corner. Like we not sitting here ready to cut his ass a check.”

He looked nervous like he had fucked up his chance at this deal. “Y’all know what I mean.”

I didn’t want us to drag this out because I wanted him to know we weren’t the type to be vindictive enough to play with his lifeline like that.

“You mean from your old life?” He threw up his chin quickly and I could see he was almost too proud to even admit that out loud.

“I’mma tell you something we had to tell ‘Ness. People in your old life ain’t gone always cheer for you.

They not gone understand how you have to move now that you’ve elevated your position in this world.

You got a lot more to lose than before. This shit blows up and then you not a regular nigga no more.

You gotta move smarter and protect yourself.

That ain’t you switching up, that’s you being smart. ”