The Plot Against Hip Hop Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2011 Nelson George

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-024-3

  eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-082-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011923105

  All rights reserved

  First printing

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1: Big Pimpin’

  Chapter 2: Dead Homiez

  Chapter 3: Lyrics of Fury

  Chapter 4: Never Seen a Man Cry Until I Seen a Man Die

  Chapter 5: Lookin’ for the Perfect Beat

  Chapter 6: Amerikkka’s Most Wanted

  Chapter 7: You Must Learn

  Chapter 8: The Message

  Chapter 9: Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

  Chapter 10: The Blueprint for Hip Hop

  Chapter 11: Sound of the Police

  Chapter 12: Criminal Minded

  Chapter 13: Party for the Right to Fight

  Chapter 14: Made You Look

  Chapter 15: Ante Up

  Chapter 16: Round the Way Girl

  Chapter 17: Da Art of Storytellin’ Part 1

  Chapter 18: Otha Fish

  Chapter 19: Talkin’ All That Jazz

  Chapter 20: Things Done Changed

  Chapter 21: As the Rhyme Goes On

  Chapter 22: Can’t Truss It

  Chapter 23: Crank That

  Chapter 24: What You Know

  Chapter 25: Soul Survivor

  Chapter 26: All of the Lights

  Chapter 27: The Scenario

  Chapter 28: It’s Like That

  Chapter 29: Time for Sum Aksion

  Chapter 30: Empire State of Mind

  CHAPTER 1

  BIG PIMPIN’

  Flashbulbs exploded into white light and the rapid click of cameras felt like an automatic weapon aimed at an innocent iris. D Hunter blinked and blinked again, trying not to appear as dizzy as he felt. This was no way to keep a rich MC safe.

  “Jay! Jay, look over here!”

  The camera posse shouted and the rap star, record mogul, and living breathing brand, with the hottest chick in the game wearing his ring, paused for the paparazzi, looking dap in a creamy white suit with matching powder-blue pocket square, tie, and trendy shades. He gave them his trademark sly smile and gracefully manipulated an unlit cigar like a mike. D hovered in the background, just out of camera range, his presence defining the edge of the frame.

  Used to be that rap stars wore loose jeans, sideways Yankees caps, and a snarl. Bodyguarding was more about protecting them from themselves than keeping them safe from others. Wasn’t it a decade ago that Jay was on the front page of the Daily News, accused of stabbing some kid for bootlegging his CDs? He was a public enemy spawned from the darkest reaches of the jungles of Crooklyn. Now Shawn Carter was a king of New York, and as mainstream as Sunday afternoon baseball.

  Jay escaped the flashing cameras and walked toward the Boathouse, a scenic outdoor restaurant/event space off Fifth Avenue in Central Park that was the site of a huge charity bash this balmy summer eve. A $1,000 ticket ($25,000 for a table), a nice tax deduction, a fat goody bag, and maybe a boat ride with a celebrity (who’d do the rowing) made this a well-heeled, upscale crowd.

  D didn’t know who or what they were raising money for, but he could see it must be something “in the hood” since hip hop heavies and Upper East Side swells were clinking glasses and recklessly eyeballing each other. Diddy. Andre 3000. Andre Harrell. Q-Tip. Russell Simmons was absent only because he was in St. Louis running one of his Hip-Hop Summits with Nelly. (In addition to raising awareness about the pitfalls that could affect black youths, the summit worked as soft promotion for their respective clothing lines.) Someone had resurrected Fonzworth Bentley for the affair, and he spun his umbrella and pursed his lips for the amusement of the blue-haired and pale-skinned.

  D was outfitted in black, as was his custom, from his Hush Puppies loafers to his DKNY suit and Gap T-shirt. He settled in behind a table at the rear of the Boathouse, where Jay was parlaying with two fortyish Wall Street types. They were hyping him like crazy on a new energy drink, hoping to entice him to invest in and endorse their “can’t miss” product. They wanted to call it Sparkle, suggesting a supple bling effect from the drink. “It’s an aspirational beverage,” one was saying earnestly, “like hip hop is an aspirational culture.” One in every hundred cans would contain a piece of faux bling, while every ten thousandth would have a real tiny diamond. Jay listened politely, nodded, and took the odd puff on his now lit Cuban.

  D stood back, amused by the two white pitchmen even as he wondered if he should buy some stock the next day. He enjoyed working for Jay cause the brother had cleaned up so nicely.

  But his mind wandered. There were no threats in this space, no gunmen in the trees, no niggas sweating Jay for more than a handout or a loan. The autograph seekers in this crowd were likely the offspring of the rich, which meant D let them ask away, knowing somewhere down the line their daddies might be useful to Jay. So, instead of staring down the odd teenager with a napkin and Mont Blanc pen, D stood there recalling his younger days when he’d go to the Apollo to see Doug E. Fresh or Rakim headline or to Union Square where kids slipped razor blades under their tongues, listened to Red Alert spin, and scoped for vics. He listened to the “Old School at Noon” shows on the local hip hop stations religiously, loving when a gem from the Classical Two or the Treacherous Three was dropped. PE and BDP and De La were the stuff that had animated his life when he was young. Now hip hop was big business for him, just like it was for everyone who made records.

  His company, D Security, made its monthly nut securing starlets, MCs, A-list events, and the odd after-hours party. In large part it was the remaining glamour of the rap game that kept his little business afloat, though these brothers tended to pay slower than, say, Miley Cyrus’s people. D absently touched the insignia pin on his lapel. It was the only bit of light on his body and it served as an identifier for his employees. A gold D against a royal-blue background. Against the advice of many, he’d kept the pin clear of diamonds. For D the button was a classic look, like Adidas’ white shell–toe sneaker and the Yankees’ white-on-blue NY. He wasn’t gonna change D Security’s logo like some bad athletic team switching colors to distract fans from their lousy record.

  D gazed around the Boathouse, glanced over to where DJ Beverly Bond played the latest hip hop/R&B fusion from a cute, faceless girl group, and thought of the parties in the park and underground clubs and mad passion that had made benefits like this possible, parties where very wealthy white folk conspired with merely rich black folk to turn that energy into lucrative product. It was, D decided, the American Dream manifest. In God we trust—in cash we lust.

  D glanced at his watch. In a bit Jay would bore of the business pitches and head over to the studio where his latest mentee, a kid from Baltimore who had a crunk attitude and old-school skills, was laying down some tracks. Jay would probably stay most of the night, listening to how it was going down and adding his very important two cents. It was cool to see the vet work with this kid, but D wouldn’t have to stay that long. One of his men would roll by for overnight duty and D would slide over to his office in Soho to do some paperwork. The accountant was coming tomorrow and he had to go over the books. Thank you, hip hop, he thought.
I owe you one.

  CHAPTER 2

  DEAD HOMIEZ

  D kept his office so dark some people called it his dungeon. Black walls. Burnished-ebony wood furniture. No bright colors. Nothing white save the printouts from his laptop, the envelopes containing bills that filled his inbox, and the skin of an occasional visitor. There was one gold record on his wall. It was for Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions, a gift from an old friend who had been cleaning out his house in Jersey and passed it on. The office was as big as a good-sized bathroom in a four-star hotel.

  D Security’s other room was a fairly large meeting space dominated by a long conference table. Next to it was a setup to recharge walkie batteries, a coffee machine, and a locker where employees stored snacks, clothes, and brass knuckles.

  D was writing an e-mail to Russell Simmons about handling security for his next Diamond Empowerment event when he heard a bump against the front door. He went into the little lobby—really just a waiting room with two metal chairs and a framed vintage Run-D.M.C. poster—and opened the door.

  Slumped at the foot of the door, wearing a bloody beige trench coat and a blue Yankees cap, was the music critic Dwayne Robinson. Blood oozed from wounds to his chest and arms, and there was a nasty slice to his right cheek. D reached down and placed his hand against his friend’s brown skin, hoping he could somehow slow the flow of blood from his neck. Dwayne’s eyes flickered for a moment and he mumbled, “D?”

  “Yeah, man. Tell me who did this.”

  “Remix. It’s all a remix.”

  “What?”

  “Biggie was right.”

  “About what?”

  “It was all a dream.”

  There was no more. No more light. No more words. No more Dwayne Robinson. His soul had departed. All that was left in D’s hands were clothes smeared with crimson spots and a body soon to grow cold.

  D had seen death up close way too often to panic in its presence. In fact, it had once been almost as constant to him as air, marking his childhood with ghoulish benchmarks. But that was back in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a lost neighborhood where the streets were saturated with generation after generation of ghetto blood. No one had deserved to die, not his friends, not his brothers. No one who grew up in the Ville was surprised by death. But Dwayne Robinson was a middle-aged black intellectual. A music critic. An author. Why would anyone slash a man like that with a box cutter in goddamn Soho?

  D lifted up Dwayne’s bloody palm and his eyes began to water. He was rising to go call the cops when he noticed a square black object clutched in Dwayne’s lifeless right hand. Haven’t seen one of those in years, he thought. It was a black plastic TDK audio cassette, like the kind he’d played a million times on his old Panasonic boom box. It looked ancient.

  D knew this was now crime scene evidence but nevertheless pried the tape from Dwayne’s stiffening fingers. Stuck to the side of it was a yellowed label scrawled with Harlem World Battle. D went back into his office and dialed 911, all the while squeezing the TDK tape in his bloody hand. Looked around his office and realized he hadn’t owned a cassette player in years. That was another era. High-top fades. Painter’s caps. Four-finger rings. Dapper Dan’s Gucci knockoffs. Dwayne Robinson’s era. Village Voice reviews. Critical commentaries. Nationalist rhetoric. All of it “out of here” like that KRS-One rhyme.

  A red-eyed D was listening to Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury” on his iPod when the two patrolmen arrived.

  CHAPTER 3

  LYRICS OF FURY

  I own The Relentless Beat myself,” Fly Ty said as he laid out the crime scene photos on his cluttered NYPD desk. “Man, this hurts me too. He was one of the few motherfuckers who cared to know the history of our music … though he did spend too much time trying to justify that rap shit to suit me.” Fly Ty, a.k.a. Detective Tyrone Williams, stood with his hands on the sides of his blue pin-striped suit. His white shirt was crisp and his blue tie was tasteful. His gray hair was cut short and his sideburns just long enough to let you know why everyone called him Fly Ty. Underneath that suit was a fit body whose age was only betrayed by a small, soft pouch of flesh just below his belly. Otherwise Fly Ty looked like he could still fit in a patrolman’s uniform and shame every rookie in his precinct.

  While D stared mournfully at the photos of the late author, the detective asked if he had moved the body.

  “Just touched his neck, trying to stop the bleeding, and took that tape out of his hand. But obviously he wasn’t attacked in my hallway.”

  “Nope,” Fly Ty agreed as he sat down behind his desk, smoothed out his tie, and looked up at D. The two men had met when D was a ten-year-old and Ty was the best-dressed flatfoot walking the mean streets of Brownsville. Now the detective picked up a file and read, “Dwayne Robinson was attacked on Crosby, near Prince, right behind the Dean & Deluca delivery door. A Mexican worker and a yoga instructor described the attackers as two young men—one definitely black, about nineteen, and the other either Latino or light-skinned black. Both slim and about six feet. Both wearing red doo rags and tracksuits. They were seen getting into—”

  “What? A red Range Rover?”

  “No. A dark-colored SUV driven by another man, but the two witnesses differ as to his racial background.”

  “At least they spared us a red car.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The motherfuckers determined to make it look like some Bloods stabbed my man in a gang initiation.”

  “Aside from the location,” Fly Ty suggested, “that’s what it looks like.”

  To which D said, “Bullshit,” loud enough that two white detectives glanced over, wondering who had the balls to curse in the direction of the formidable veteran.

  “C’mon, Fly Ty, this shit happens in the hood, not Soho. Kids like that don’t drive into white neighborhoods in Manhattan to do this.”

  “Relax,” Fly Ty said. “These kinds of stabbings do happen on the Upper West Side near MLK High and in Union Square near Washington Irving High.”

  “But there’s no high school in Soho—unless they’re now holding remedial reading classes in the back of D&D.”

  The two men fell silent for a moment. D picked up one of the photos and looked at Dwayne’s neck and saw how deep the wound was. “It’s too easy, Fly Ty. If it’s Bloods, it’s a random attack. Easy to explain. Easy to file away.”

  “You should teach Police Academy courses since you seem to know so damn much,” Fly Ty replied, then gathered another file from his desk. “Got most of this off Google. Dwayne Robinson. Fifty. Music critic/historian. Resides in Montclair, New Jersey. Wife: Danielle. Published a number of books. Taught journalism at Columbia J School. Through the years he wrote some nasty reviews of some famous folks. Pissed off quite a few people. But bad reviews are rarely motives for murder. No gambling debts. No drug use. No serious affairs, though there were rumors he might have strayed with a coed or two.” He set the file down. “Let’s say it was a hit, D. Why would someone pay two knuckleheads to wet up the good professor?”

  D’s answer was, “Let’s listen to the tape.”

  The interrogation room smelled of body odor and stale cologne, and had that gray-green institutional color scheme. It was a strange place to listen to the rhymes of Moe Dee and Busy Bee blasting out of an ancient boom box that someone had found in the evidence room.

  To Fly Ty this was typical “young nigga gibberish.”

  To D it was a great freestyle battle. “Really legendary. They did this at the Harlem World Disco on the corner of Lenox and 116th Street, across from Malcolm’s mosque.”

  “Nice black history moment, D. What’s it got to do with Robinson’s death?”

  D frowned, not sure what to say.

  Fly Ty opened another file and quickly scanned it. “His wife said he came into the city to have drinks with his editor, which has been confirmed. He told Ms. Wolfe that he was working on a memoir/revisionist hip hop history. That meeting ended about eight p.m. He ended up at your door
around ten-thirty. Two and a half hours. That’s plenty of time for a man to get in trouble in New York City.”

  D stopped the tape, fast-forwarded to the end, flipped it over, and pressed play. No more MC battle. A hip hop beat filled the room and two voices could barely be heard underneath. “That’s Dwayne right there,” D said. “I don’t recognize the other one. You gonna send this to CSI?”

  Fly Ty sighed at the now all-too-common question. “When I get it back from the sound lab, maybe we’ll be able to identify the other voice.”

  “So,” D wondered, “how much time you gonna put into this?”

  “We’ll see. The antigang task force will be brought in. They’ll probably wanna talk to you.”

  “But what about you? You’re a top detective. If you make it a priority, it’ll be one.”

  “Look,” Fly Ty answered, “despite what you might have heard about crime dropping in New York, we get dead bodies every day. I got three other cases in my lap. He’s your friend. That means something to me. But I ain’t dropping everything for this. At least not without more to go on.”

  After his unsatisfying afternoon with Fly Ty, D walked down Crosby, from Howard to the back of Dean & Deluca on Prince, where he turned west to Broadway, striding through the crowds exiting the R station and the Armani Exchange. He passed through shoppers and yogis and delivery boys into his building, and then went up the elevator to his office on the tenth floor of 580 Broadway. He stood in front of the door with keys in hand, staring down for a moment at where the janitor had mopped up the blood, before entering.

  The stench of disinfectant filled the office as D pulled out his hardcover edition of The Relentless Beat. In the hierarchy of music literature it wasn’t quite Blues People, Mystery Train, or The Death of Rhythm & Blues. But Dwayne Robinson’s book was still taught at a lot of colleges and he had continued to lecture from it every Black History Month. He had inscribed this copy to the bodyguard: My man D. Keep on dreamin’.

  D closed the book and slid out his BlackBerry. A few years back he’d stopped three teenagers from lighting a homeless man on fire at the Canal Street A station. He’d later befriended one of the kids and used him for odd jobs from time to time. Now he called Ray Ray.