The Plot Against Hip Hop Read online

  After pouring his protein shake into a tall glass, laying out his regime of antiviral meds on his countertop, and digesting it all in one long gulp, D’s mind refocused on the papers on the floor by his bed. Of the original fifty or so pages, D now had thirty-nine. He suspected that some had never been there in the first place, that whatever the late Mr. Tate had given him had been incomplete from the start. Maybe he’d been playing his own game and was holding back on D until the check was cashed. Others were undoubtedly destroyed or lost in the attack. Three of them were smeared with Truegod’s blood.

  So what D now possessed were like pieces of ancient parchment, links to some long-hidden wisdom. Or, at least, what passed for wisdom in 1989. Page 3 began:

  Hip hop is an expression of black youth that was born out of the streets of the Bronx and Harlem in the early- to mid-’70s. It embraces a variety of disciplines that have proven to be attractive to young people in the U.S. as well as in Europe and Asia. It is a cultural movement with social, commercial, and increasingly political applications. From a demographical viewpoint it is making inroads on the terrain once dominated by rock and roll and is growing as a determiner of cool with each passing year.

  Page 7 said:

  Though the DJs, breakdancers, and graffiti writers were the early heroes of the culture, the record industry’s growing acceptance, and exploitation, of rap recordings has already made rappers the culture’s commercial vanguard. Because the average rap record contains four to five times the lyrical content of an R&B song, the possibilities for sending commercial (“My Adidas”), political (“The Message”), and behavioral (“Criminal-Minded”) messages go beyond any other pop artistic form of African-American expression. While young filmmaker Spike Lee suggests new possibilities in that medium, the inexpensive nature of rap records and its grassroots distribution make it the truest voice of the young black mind.

  Nothing earth-shattering. D looked deeper into the report and on page 25 found a section titled, Recommendations. That’s where the fun began. “As the first fully formed community-inspired art movement since the cultural nationalists of the late ’60s, hip hop has great potential for directing the energy and hopes of a generation. The danger here is that the growing presence of Nation of Islam and Five Percent Nation references, plus the gang affiliations of the emerging West Coast scene, could lead the culture in general, and young black America in particular, down the same ghettocentric path that created the U.S. organization and the SLA on the West Coast and Islamic-inspired thugs like Philadelphia’s Black Mafia. Right now these tendencies are balanced by the Afrocentric philosophy of Professor Molefi Asante of Temple University, the antiapartheid movement linked to Nelson Mandela, and the proto-hippie leanings of the Native Tongues (De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest).

  It is this report’s contention that a targeted use of seed money (to buy or found labels, fund production companies), brand associations (connecting rap figures to significant brands via advertising and marketing), and strategic alliances (with filmmakers, entrepreneurs, “gangsters”) could change hip hop’s direction and, in a broader sense, that of black America. This opportunity, whether used for good or evil, is pregnant with opportunity for some entity with vision and financial resources to manifest them.

  Public Enemy’s Chuck D said famously that his group’s goal is to create several thousand black leaders. Hip hop, overall, has done that and more. The question, however, is where these leaders will take their constituents; to Dr. King’s integrated promised land, to the Nation’s angry separatism, to street hegemony, or to some destination unforeseen at this time.

  This was interesting stuff. And pretty prophetic, D thought. In a way, it had all happened. The boardrooms and ad campaigns of the early years of the twenty-first century both took hip hop as a given, its most potent figures embraced, at least in business, at the highest levels of corporate America. Fear of Islam was everywhere in white America, but Louis Farrakhan was dying as a revered figure among blacks and Muhammad was as common a name as Leroy or Washington had once been. The gangster ethos, of course, was omnipresent and had become a secular religion with rules of behavior as rigid as Vatican Bible study.

  Implicitly laid out in this memorandum was the role of capital. The ability to fund hip hop would result in the ability to guide it. Some would even say control it. If that’s what had happened we could all name the culprits—the decreasing universe of major labels, a few greedy tastemakers, and the base materialism that drove the American Dream.

  Really good stuff for 1989, D thought, but who would kill over this? What self-respecting street thug would risk incarceration over this? Somebody must have paid them to kill. If there was a connection between the papers in his hand and the murder of two old-school hip hop writers, the answer had to be found, as it was always and forever, in following the money.

  At some point during this period, probably after The Relentless Beat was published, Dwayne had participated in the research and writing of the Sawyer memorandum, which could be seen as a market-focused version of his book. It was easy to see why they’d approach Dwayne—he was one of hip hop’s first critic/journalists with any above-ground credibility and had proven himself capable of a book-length narrative.

  Plus he was a true believer in the culture’s ability to positively transform black America and, maybe, the world. And since cultural studies books, even classics, rarely paid serious money, he was likely eager to turn his insights into a real check.

  While Dwayne would always be one of D’s heroes, the compromise implicit in the writer’s participation in the marketing survey was plain to see. As high-minded as Dwayne’s writing about hip hop was, taking a job to help maximize its nonmusical sales potential was no different than the path so many MCs, breakdancers, and graffiti writers would take over the next decade in search of higher profits and a wider audience. No wonder Dwayne never talked about the Sawyer memorandum.

  It was a document of just the kind of commercial compromise The Relentless Beat was so judgmental about. Maybe by documenting (or creating?) a conspiracy against hip hop, Dwayne was trying to cleanse his own soul. To revisit your youth in middle age is to attempt to rewrite your history, D thought. Must have been a strange, sad journey back in time for him. Did Dwayne somehow blame himself for helping steer things in a direction that might have created a conspiracy where none existed?

  But Dwayne was dead and Truegod was too. D had been laid up in bed with multiple stab wounds. History hadn’t stabbed all three of them. Those knives had been as tangible as his tall chai latte, and way more lethal. D put the report down and was maybe a bit closer to understanding Dwayne, but still not sure why he was dead.

  CHAPTER 11

  SOUND OF THE POLICE

  The light-skinned man had freckles and a receding hairline that could have been disguised by a baldie, but Peter Nash was way too vain to cut off any of his wavy black hair. He used his plastic knife and fork to saw through his extremely long Hampton Chutney dosa with gusto. “He got done right around the corner, huh?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yeah,” D replied, then took a sip of his hot chai. D didn’t like Peter Nash very much, but the man knew a lot of things about the hip hop world and D hoped he’d pass on a useful detail or two.

  “Looks like a gang initiation,” D said, “but you don’t think so.”

  “Do you? I deal in the tangible, D,” Nash said, and took another bite. “You know that.”

  “Yeah, right,” D mumbled in reply.

  “Hey.” Nash stopped sawing the dosa and looked D in the eye. “Detective Williams has watched out for me. And he’s watched out for you, I’m told, though I have no idea why. Now, if you wanna ask me some questions, just know any answer I give is out of respect for him. And I enjoyed Mr. Robinson’s books too. But if this was just about me and you, I’d be having my dosa by myself.”

  Swallowing his pride along with his chai, D said, “I understand. No disrespect intended.” He sighed
and nodded, thinking about how hard it was to deal with the hip hop cop.

  Back in the early ’90s, an enterprising New York City detective began connecting the dots between hip hop artists, their criminal associates, and ongoing investigations involving drug possession and trafficking, carrying unlicensed guns, and various assaults. The detective wasn’t simpleminded about the rap/crime relationship. Just because they rapped about crime didn’t make them criminals. What was interesting to the detective was the fact that so many MCs, by the nature of their upbringing and celebrity, were either targets of crime or employed ex-offenders.

  Few other legal businesses in this country were as open to employing young black men with criminal records as hip hop. They worked as roadies, party promoters, bouncers, security, record producers, managers, and label heads.

  There was no question that hip hop was a vehicle for so many young black folks to move away from a criminal lifestyle. But not all these men and women were able to cut their old ties so easily. In fact, some used hip hop not for transformation, but camouflage. The mobility of MCs and their entourages, especially on tour buses, allowed for the interstate transport of all kinds of lucrative merchandise (marijuana, cigarettes, automatic weapons), while others used this burgeoning business as a way to launder money. The question of how much the MCs knew about these activities, and whether they profited from them, varied from performer to performer. Obviously, the bigger the star, the more likely they jettisoned their hoodiest friends and separated themselves from any possible criminality. But if you were a youngster on the way up or a vet on the decline, well, you might get down.

  But the truth was that creating rap records didn’t automatically make you a tough guy. Many MCs were moving targets, prey for stick-up kids and extortionists. It wasn’t unusual for an MC to be robbed of jewelry and cash at a nightclub, or to have their home burglarized when they were on tour.

  The complex web of affiliations and transactions was catnip to a smart cop. Knowing this world could lead to high-profile collars and promotions. So the NYPD detective developed a dossier on New York’s most important hip hop figures, complete with arrest records, various places of business and residence, car registrations and license plate numbers, known associates with criminal records and label affiliations.

  This dossier was one-stop shopping for NYPD whenever an MC had a run-in with the law (which happened often). By the time that original detective retired, the dossier had taken on a life of its own. It was passed along and other detectives took on the mantle of hip hop cop. Back when Jay-Z was still Bed-Stuy do-or-die rugged, and was accused in December 1999 of stabbing a dude for bootlegging his records, there was a hip hop cop on the scene. When Sean Combs, Jennifer Lopez, and Shyne were implicated in a nightclub shooting in that same fateful month, a hip hop cop interrogated the suspects (and helped build the case against Shyne). When Jam Master Jay was murdered in 2002, there was a hip hop cop outside the funeral taking down license plate numbers.

  Police departments in Miami and Atlanta, cities that both attracted New York MCs and had their own dynamic local scenes, consulted with the Big Apple’s hip hop cops and developed their databases. And databases is what they were. From binders and paper, the NYPD dossier evolved into an ever-growing digital guide to the places where street culture and street crime shook hands. For many, the existence of such intelligence gathering was the plot against hip hop. It was racial profiling at its most blatant and generated many an outraged article in the hip hop press.

  Fly Ty suggested that D reach out to the latest incarnation of NYPD’s hip hop cop, and D did it reluctantly. Nash was based out of a Midtown Manhattan precinct and had inherited the job of updating the database, so he kept himself abreast of any and all hip hop–related developments—from who hung out at Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club to who visited Lil Wayne during his stay at Rikers Island on a gun possession charge.

  Back around 2000 Nash had been doing a lot of work as a bouncer and approached D about work, but had gotten the brush-off because D had never quite trusted the guy. Because of the murder of his brothers and the resulting relationship with Fly Ty, D had spent a lot of time around cops and had developed his “Letter C” theory of policemen. Some were like calluses in that they’d built numbing scabs on their souls to protect them from feeling too much; some had become cynics, men and women who saw the dark side of every human interaction; some were just so cautious that they moved through the city desperate not to do anything dramatic as they glided quietly toward their pension; the crazy ones reveled in sticking their noses in every dirty gutter of the city; the courageous ones were a strong minority who managed to stay straight and righteous, no matter how deeply the job made them bend.

  A great policeman, like his main man Fly Ty, managed to balance all these C words, manifesting the best aspects of each of the qualities as he moved through the city’s many worlds. Too much of any single C word and a policeman got as warped as the values of the criminals pursued. In D’s opinion, Nash was as curved as the edges of a college sophomore’s Frisbee. Way too calloused, cynical, and corrupt to be protecting anything but his own self-interest.

  D couldn’t deny that Nash was a survivor. He was in his early forties, on the force nearly twenty years, and headed toward some lucrative gig doing corporate security if he kept his nose clean for another year or so.

  “So,” Nash said with a smile, “a conspiracy? You talking about the Illuminati. That’s everybody’s favorite hip hop conspiracy theory.”

  “You don’t think there’s anything to it, do you?”

  “Ignorant folks love the idea that an all-seeing, all-knowing cabal of motherfuckers gathered for annual meetings to move them around like chess pieces. They love it. Gives them a good damn excuse for the shit storm that’s their life. Besides, how’s a bunch of seventeenth-century motherfuckers gonna organize a bunch of twenty-first century niggas to do anything? Can you see a man in a white wig convincing Jay-Z to dump Dame Dash?”

  They both shared a laugh at that.

  “You can only prove and disprove theories until you get ahold of those two kids who stabbed your friend. That’s hard enough—red bandannas, white T-shirts, baggy jeans, colorful sneakers. That’ll get you a nice long list of suspects.”

  “I hear you. But will you at least keep your eye out for connections? Dwayne’s book was definitely about hip hop. It definitely had something to do with revealing old secrets. Maybe secrets someone in hip hop might not want out. It’s right up your alley.”

  “D, I do a lot of things. I don’t have much time for pro-bono side projects.”

  “Listen, all I want you to do is to ask some people questions about what Dwayne might have talked to them about. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll think about it. Thanks for the dosa.”

  After Nash left, D wondered if the meeting had been a good idea. Maybe the hip hop cop was Illuminati himself.

  CHAPTER 12

  CRIMINAL MINDED

  D rarely ventured to the Boogie Down these days. He’d catch a Yankee game once or twice a year, but that was basically it. The Bronx, ground zero for one of the biggest global cultural movements of the late twentieth century, was essentially a nonfactor in the making and selling of hip hop in the twenty-first century. There were no major venues there; none of its natives, except Fat Joe, had any serious place on the charts.

  Nowadays the Bronx was an old-school preserve where the hip hop past was honored, celebrated, and, to some degree, embalmed, its mummified remains a symbol of another city, revered and vilified and now long dead. Under Mayor Bloomberg there had been much-needed economic development and a huge upswing in affordable housing. The big empty, abandoned blocks of the ’70s that were once a symbol of the city’s defeat had been filled in by dedicated residents and smart city planners. The South Bronx was no longer Fort Apache and the Bronx was no longer burning, but the spirit of street-corner innovation that was the borough’s legacy was no longer its heartbeat.


  D was mulling this over as he sat in the lobby of the Bronx Saint’s Nursing Home, a well-maintained institution in the borough’s upscale Riverdale neighborhood. He was gazing up at a wall of framed pictures of BX landmarks—the Grand Concourse, the county courthouse, the original Yankee Stadium—as he waited to speak with a record business legend. A middle-aged Latino nurse, round and dressed in a nondescript cream-colored uniform, came out and led him down a long hallway and then out into a large, lovely garden overlooking the Hudson River. Sunning himself there in a wheelchair was a man in his late seventies who D had known for a couple of decades, and who’d also been a fixture in the R&B world decades before D was born.

  Edgecombe Lenox sat with the sun shining on his full head of gray hair, Ray-Ban shades protecting his light brown eyes, a North Carolina powder-blue and white knit sweater, and matching slacks and leather slippers, with thin light blue socks. There was a diamond in one earlobe and a glittering blue-face Rolex on his right wrist. Though his tall, lanky frame was stuck in a wheelchair following two strokes, Edge (as he preferred to be called) still had plenty of style.

  “Youngblood,” he said as D approached, “how’s it hangin’?”

  “Low,” D replied, and then added, “but not as low as yours.”

  “Never that,” Edge said with a laugh, and leaned up to receive D’s hug.

  D had met Edge through Dwayne Robinson years ago, when he was first setting up D Security and looking for contacts. Edge, who back then was a vice president for urban promotion at Universal Records, had hooked him up with a security gig for a record release party and they’d soon established a solid business relationship/friendship.