16

Tracee hired a limo to take her to the Orlando International Airport for her four o’clock flight. She filled up her iPod with sermons by Pastor Edwin Lakes, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, and a bunch of gospel music.

She decided to take a sauna and then get ready for the trip. Tracee sat in her sauna and opened her Bible to the book of James. It was her favorite book, and she began her day reading the short but powerful five chapters. She was one of the few people in Florida with a sauna. Hot tubs were big. Everyone seemed to have a swimming pool. But saunas in Florida seemed almost redundant when temperatures were in the eighties in the winter and over a hundred degrees in the summer.

Tracee, who was from New Jersey, discovered the healing power of saunas and became addicted. She had a portable one in her Manhattan loft and decided to build one in her huge bathroom in her Winter Garden home. Her sauna could seat three but no one had shared that space with Tracee—not yet. She liked to sprinkle a little eucalyptus, peppermint, or grapefruit oil on the hot rocks before pouring distilled water over them, releasing a fragrant steam that seemed to pierce her bones. She couldn’t take more than twenty minutes at a time. But that’s all Tracee needed to get her head straight for the day. With each breath of steam she inhaled, she was building up her immune system and her defenses.

“This is like spiritual vitamin C,” she thought with a chuckle. “I better stay in here an extra ten minutes just to be sure.”

Tracee didn’t need a lot of time to get ready. She could pack light because she still had her Manhattan loft where she kept some clothes. Whatever she didn’t have, she would buy. She had more money than she could ever imagine spending.

She would have to buy something to go with Ritz to the Grammys. This was a big time in Ritz’s life, and Tracee wanted to be there for her. The last conversation they had, Ritz sounded funny. She needed to talk—not on the phone. The phone was phony conversation. There was a study done that showed that people could be easily deceived over the phone. Relationships between people that started on the phone rarely lasted, and if they did, they were rarely real. There’s nothing like looking into a person’s eyes and seeing where they are really coming from, what is really on their mind.

Tracee looked forward to looking into Ritz’s eyes. Over the last several months Tracee had been dropping kernels of truth on her friend. But she really wanted to get in there and talk to her about her spirit, about her life. Tracee had changed so much. And as much as Ritz had to share, Tracee had just as much to share, too. She was compelled to, before it was too late. There were things Ritz had to come to grips with, had to deal with, had to know.

For nearly five years, Tracee Remington rode the wave of success as artist after artist on her label sold millions and millions of records and won Grammys and MTV Music Awards and People’s Choice Awards. Her label became almost a conveyor belt of platinum CDs. But her artists didn’t have longevity. As soon as they hit, it seemed like they dropped off just as quickly.

Christopher “Hardcore” Harris seemed to be on a different path—one leading toward longevity. His first CD sold more than three million copies. His second one sold that many in just the first month.

Tracee liked Hardcore. She got to know him during a month-long promotional tour through the Midwest and West Coast. She discovered that his thug act was just an act. He rose to fame as so many did on a harsh street life that included being a former drug dealer—which wasn’t new. He claimed to be a protégé of Tom Mickens aka Tony Montana from the Merrick Boulevard area in Queens. That was big time. But it was a big time or image play. Unlike rappers like 50 Cent, who bragged about being shot, Hardcore talked about the “niggas he shot.” He even alluded to actually killing someone. That set him apart. He had a persona that people didn’t cross. He didn’t wear a bulletproof vest, didn’t travel with an entourage; he had a steely glare and a deep voice that he didn’t use often, and he rarely smiled. His image worked like a charm. Inside, however, he was quite the opposite.

That image was completely manufactured. He practiced the icy stare and didn’t talk much because he was constantly talking to himself inside his head trying not to be overwhelmed by everything that was happening.

Tracee got to see the vulnerable side of Hardcore, and she even let down her guard a bit—which she never did with her artists.

Around the fourth stop on their West Coast tour, Tracee and Hardcore had a heart-to-heart while on an hour-and-half drive to an appearance at a radio station in Las Vegas.

“Tracee, I’m glad you’re on the road with me,” Hardcore said.

Tracee wished that she could say the same. She couldn’t. It wasn’t him. She just hated being on the road. But she didn’t want to insult him. He was making an attempt to be deep. Hardcore was thirty-two, playing tough and pretending to be in his twenties.

“I’m tired, Core,” she said. “I hate being on the road. But I must say, the company isn’t half bad.”

Hardcore smiled. He had beautiful teeth that few rarely got to see. “I hear you. I never expected there to be this much attention on me. I mean, I wanted to be a big hit, but this is ridiculous.”

“It’s only the beginning, so you better get used to it,” Tracee said.

Hardcore stared out of the window and didn’t respond.

They arrived at the radio station, a rundown studio in the middle of the desert. Hardcore gave his interview, which amounted to four or five words. He dropped a promo that the station would be using ad nauseum, then he and Tracee hit the road back to Los Angeles.

“What comes next?”

“Well, we have five more radio stations to hit and then you have a couple of club dates, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, and then back home to cut your next CD.”

“No, I mean what happens next—after the fame and money?”

It was a question Tracee had never been asked, and she had no answers.

“I’ve been reading a lot of financial books—David Bach, Suze Orman, even Napoleon Hill—and they talk about exit strategies and plans,” Hardcore said. “I don’t have an exit strategy or a plan. After I sell all of these CDs and collect all these checks, then what?”

“I don’t know, Core. That’s a damn good question.”

“Could I just walk away?”

“Why would you want to? I mean, the sky’s the limit for you. You can be the biggest rapper ever—the biggest performer ever. You can break records.”

“And then what? I already don’t have privacy. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without being mobbed. People spying on me, even wanting to kill me.”

Tracee spent so much time crafting and maintaining images and playing traffic cop for artists that she never stopped to consider the consequences of their success or the images she helped to foster. There was a reason why so many artists from Billie Holiday to Elvis, Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, got strung out on drugs and ended up basically killing themselves. Tupac’s and Biggie’s murders didn’t happen in a vacuum, nor were they coincidences. Groundwork was laid that led up to them. Was Hardcore on the same path?

As they pulled in front of the Doubletree Hotel in Los Angeles, Core got out and extended his hand like a perfect gentleman and led Tracee out of the limo. Tracee smiled and walked toward the entrance of the hotel where a beautiful waterfall splashed into an exotic koi pond.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Hardcore said, looking at the pond. “I want to have shit like this in my home.”

“In another two weeks you will be getting your first real royalty check and you can buy all the fish you want!”

In the music world, the illusion of money supersedes the reality. Most artists get little more than a per diem—enough for daily meals, car service—and an advance that many blow in the first few days on perishables like cars and jewelry. The real money doesn’t come until after the first hit CD.

“Yo, I’m real excited about that,” he said. “I’ll be able to buy my first home. And you don’t have to worry about seeing my ass on Cribs, either. Hell no! I don’t want no niggas knowing how I’m really living.”

“Core, I have got to say, you have come a long way! I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Tracee, for just being real with me all the time.”

“No problem!” Tracee said. “You know how I do.” They both laughed, and Hardcore gave Tracee a big hug and thanked her again.

Tracee and Hardcore walked to the elevator laughing at the condition of the radio station they just left. As the elevator door opened, Hardcore grabbed Tracee’s hand.

“Not so fast,” he said. “I have a gift for you.”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a box. Tracee was a little surprised. Most of these artists spent their money on dumb stuff like weed or liquor or on impressing their entourage. And when it came to women, if they weren’t stripping or giving head, they wouldn’t be getting a dime. But here he was giving her a box.

“Open it!” he said like an excited kid. “It’s not much. I just want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

Tracee opened the card first. It simply read: “Thank you! Christopher Harris.” Then Tracee opened the box to find a state-of-the-art Nike heart monitor and MP3 player all in one. It was something she would have never thought to get herself, and she was impressed at how well Christopher had listened to her. She couldn’t remember them ever really talking about her love of working out but she must have.

“Thank you, Core,” Tracee said. “Thank you so much! I really do need this.”

“Cool!” he said. “Glad you like it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Have a great night’s sleep.”

“You, too!” Tracee said as she got into the elevator.

“He’s a good guy,” Tracee thought. “Finally, one of these artists might actually make it. I think Hardcore’s going places.”

But thanks to Ritz Harper, the only place Hardcore was going was down in flames.

A rapper can be a criminal, a crackhead, a drug dealer, even a murderer, but the one thing that can absolutely kill a rap career is being outed as gay. That was hard to overcome.

ON THE AIR

“From what I hear . . . Hardcore likes it hard in the core,” Ritz said during the final hour of the show. She sometimes saved some of her juiciest tidbits until the end, forcing her audience through the entire five hours to get to the real dirt.

“Okay? To put it more plainly—the only thing hard about Hardcore is the men he enjoys. Shut up!”

Aaron played the sound effect of a gay man howling “Ooooooh, how you doin’?!” on cue, and everyone in the studio let out a collective Ooooooh!

“No, Ritz, nooooooo!” Tracee screamed her head off in her office, where she was listening to the interview. “Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Shit! Shit!”

This was rap. Much of Hardcore’s success came because he had, until this point, lived up to his name. He was tough. And he carried himself that way. He dared someone to test him and no one did. No one except Ritz Harper.

“Word on the street has it that Hardcore only gets really hardcore when around some buff beefcake in a special club,” Ritz continued like a pit bull clamped down on a piece of meat. “And word has it he’s not the pitcher, but the catcher . . . if you know what I mean.”

Tracee had never once asked Ritz not to go there with one of her artists. She would never get in the way of her girl doing her thing. Ritz never even connected the dots she was drawing back to her friend—never put two and two together that ruining Hardcore might somehow affect Tracee, too. Ritz was in a trance when she was on the air. She was another person in another place. Tracee didn’t like the on-air Ritz very much. But she understood her and even respected her gangster—her desire to expose the liars, the cheats, the crooks, the bullshitters.

Tracee loved her off-air friend to pieces. But as she sat in her big chair, behind her big desk in her big corner office, she began to contemplate her career. Her role in the music business was solely to cover up and appease. She was not just babysitting, she was enabling, and she wasn’t making a difference. At least Ritz thought she was providing a public service. And in many ways she was—uncovering the truth (albeit in a sordid way).

Following Ritz’s bomb drop, Hardcore’s third CD barely reached gold, and he was officially done. So was Tracee, but it took a few more incidents to seal it for her.

One evening she was at an appearance with one of her female rap artists at Club New York on the West Side. Tracee didn’t remember how or why, but there was something about a shoe being stepped on and some finger-pointing that led to some weave-pulling. Before she knew it, she was in the middle of a melee, looking for an exit, while pulling her artist by the arm. The cops came and Tracee found herself with a split lip; her artist had a black eye. And Tracee had had enough.

“I can’t do this shit anymore!” Tracee said to no one in particular.

The cops asked her if she wanted to press charges. But Tracee made a decision right then that all she wanted was out. She wouldn’t press charges, she would press on. She had had enough. Enough of the weed-filled limo rides to appearances and award shows. Enough watching the overindulgence in the E-pills, the coke and the gratuitous sex. Enough of the groupies and the fear of rape charges. Enough of getting grown people to be responsible enough to show up for booked dates like for the Regis & Kelly show (which on more than one occasion one of her artists completely blew off). Enough watching these same grown people blow fortunes on jewelry and drugs, cars and toys—things that they couldn’t even sell if they got in a bind and needed money. Tracee was dead tired of the Mr.-Bojangles-Nigga-Samboing-Stepin-Fetchit-pimps-and-hos cartoon that rap music—hell, all music—had become and how more and more young girls preferred to be video hos than video producers, writers, and teachers.

Tracee was tired of the industry and her “bosses.” They had put her in charge of the “black music” division, but these days no one could define what black music was.

“What in the hell is ‘black’ music?” she asked her boss one day. “I mean, really, Jim. What is black music?!”

“You know, Tracee, urban music—R&B, rap, hip-hop. Black music.”

Tracee didn’t want to go down that road with him. What was the purpose? He wouldn’t understand. Or perhaps he understood completely, which was an even scarier thought for Tracee. At least if he was ignorant she could feel somewhat okay about working there.

The notion that there needed to be a black music division was one of the most racist things Tracee could imagine. Overwhelmingly more whites bought hip-hop and rap. In fact, about seventy percent of rap music was bought by whites.

“How is that black music?” Tracee thought. “If they depended on blacks to buy rap, there wouldn’t be any sales— with all of the bootlegging going on. Blacks will bootleg a CD in a minute. They must be kidding.”

What Tracee found out was that having a black music division gave the record companies an excuse to spend less money on promotions, contracts, and other perks than on rock and country. It was a way to keep “those niggas” in their place. While R&B and rap artists like Usher and Nelly outsold both rock and country, both got the tail end of the resources. Hip-hop was influencing an entire culture and an entire generation, but it was getting the short end of the stick in terms of expanding the playing field and developing new artists.

Black music?

It wasn’t black music when the Beatles stole their style from Little Richard. It wasn’t black music when Tina Turner taught Mick Jagger how to dance and flow. It wasn’t black music when Elvis borrowed Chuck Berry’s entire act. It was innovative. It was historic. It was music. Janet Jackson, black music. Britney Spears, who does a poor imitation of Janet Jackson, pop star.

Tracee’s soul was tired. Soul? She hadn’t contemplated that in quite some time. But it was her soul that ached every time it had to witness something crazy, and everything seemed to be getting crazier. Her soul. She needed to find it. And when she did, it needed to be replenished.

She decided for the first time since she was a little girl when her grandmother used to make her say her prayers on the side of the bed every night that she would pray about the situation. It was all uncharted territory but she had nothing to lose. She rediscovered church and joined Harlem’s Faith Baptist and started finding some real answers. Tracee even dragged Ritz there one Sunday, and she seemed to enjoy it. That was a breakthrough.

Tracee kept praying and finally an answer came. A decision came down that an executive under her needed to be fired. Tracee wondered why it had to be someone from the black music department. She received a memo stating that her department was over budget and someone had to go and that they would be well taken care of. She learned that as an executive with more than five years in the company, that person would receive what was called a golden parachute. She decided that that someone should be her. She walked away from her quarter-of-a-million-dollar-a-year job and floated away in her platinum parachute that netted her three and a half million, before taxes.

“If I can’t live off of that and make it work for me, I’m a damn fool,” she said to herself.

Tracee was always good with her money. She was smart enough to buy a loft in the SoHo area in the 1980s when she first got her gig at Uni-Global. The real estate market was down then, and she got an apartment for wonderful price. As she started making more money, she was able to pay it off. Living in the city, she didn’t waste money on fancy cars. (She did break down and buy that Lexus right before she left for Florida.) She was well invested in money markets, mutual funds, she had a stock account with Merrill Lynch filled with stocks like Exxon, GE, a concrete stock, and Martha Stewart. (This one turned out to be a real winner. She only bought it because she admired the way Martha did business.) With the platinum parachute, Tracee was set for life.

She picked up and moved to a small town outside of Orlando, Florida, where she had hoped to find some peace and serenity—much needed after the years spent in the music business. She would go back to New York every now and then to check out her friends and get a little dose of the fast lane—Broadway plays, all-night restaurants, and movie premieres.