. . . with pretty girls to serenade . . .
Being back at football practice was all about sweat, ambition, and raw energy. I loved it! I was in full competition mode, smashing everyone who got in my way.
One of the assistant coaches said, “Darin, I can tell that you're ready to play this year. Keep it up, Harmon.”
I was thinking, I've been ready to play! but I kept that thought to myself. There was no sense in stirring up bad vibes right after receiving a compliment. I was much faster too. Once I got my forty speed down to that four-four level, no receiver could run away from me.
Nevertheless, for my teammates who knew, all they wanted to talk to me about was my boy John.
“I heard Loverboy got a record deal. When is his album coming out?”
I couldn't be jealous about it anymore. I had helped him to get signed. But I wanted to be known for my football skills and speed, not for my boy's singing.
I told them, “Sometime in October.”
“Who he sign wit'?”
“An independent label out of Philly.”
They were all like, “That's cool, man. It's gonna be good to say that we knew that boy when he blows up. You gon' go on tour wit' 'em, D?”
I said, “When I can, you know. He's gonna be touring this summer. They'll be dropping a single soon. But you know, I'm trying to think about practice now.”
“But ain't you still his manager?”
I shook it off. “I mean, he still calls me up for advice and stuff, but I told him to go ahead and get a real manager now, you know, somebody who can take him further. All I really did was speak up for him when he needed me to. I didn't really hook him up with nobody. He did all the work on his own, really.”
When early summer came and John's first single, Stylin' 'n' Profilin', started hitting the radio waves, we were both home for a spell. We were hanging out late at the gas station on Statesville Avenue, just kicking it with old friends from Charlotte. It was your typical late-night scene with teenagers and your early-twenties crowd sitting outside their cars, blasting music, with girls flocking around. That's what you do when you don't feel like going to the clubs, don't want to pay, or can't get in.
Antoine, an old friend from Garinger High School who had never made it to college, was chilling with us and asking John if he was still into music.
John smiled slyly and said, “Yeah.”
Everyone in Charlotte hadn't heard who John was yet, particularly people who hadn't gone to college with us and hadn't heard him perform. John had never done anything in Charlotte as far as singing was concerned. People still didn't pay him much mind there. The girls could tell that he had matured and dressed cooler, but that was about it.
Antoine said, “You got a music scholarship to school, didn't you?”
John said, “Yeah.”
I just sat there smiling, knowing the inside joke. But John was real cool about being signed. He wasn't making a big deal about it.
Anyway, someone had their radio on when Power 98 FM started talking about the Charlotte homeboy John “Loverboy” Williams and his new song. Then they played it.
As soon as the song came on, people started turning up their car stereos and blasting it with pride. Girls were right there in the gas station parking lot, jamming! John just sat there and smiled.
All of a sudden, it just hit like a slow-motion tidal wave.
This girl walked over, staring at John, and asked him, “Ain't your name John Williams? You played in the band with my older sister at Garinger.”
John nodded his head and said, “Yeah.”
Antoine looked again and put two and two together.
He said, “Wait a minute. This is you on the radio?”
The girl started jumping up and down already.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Ay y'all, this Loverboy right here!” she started yelling. “Can I get an autograph, man? What's up? Oh my God! Wait till I tell my sister. She had a crush on you in high school.”
I was sitting there thinking, Here we go with the craziness. That girl knew who John was when we first drove up, but she didn't have anything to say to him until she heard that announcement on the radio. Some people are fake as hell! When you become famous it all comes out.
The girls started making their way over to my car after that. I was beginning to feel embarrassed that I wasn't driving anything sportier.
One of them said, “What are you trying to play, incognito over here?”
They were mostly the young and boisterous type who liked to do exactly what John was talking about in his song, style and profile.
Antoine was still shaking his head.
He said, “I don't believe this. You're Loverboy. That's your song.”
“Hey man, you signed now? When the album droppin'?” one of the guys asked him.
Right before my eyes, everyone started to pay John attention at the gas station just like they did at A&T's homecoming. I just took in the whole scene and grinned. My boy was on his way to real stardom.
“So when you gon' start getting paid like that?” someone else asked him.
“You need some beats? I got some beats for you.”
“How come you ain't got no better car than this?”
I couldn't believe my ears. John wasn't even attempting to answer them, he was just sucking it all in. The boy had this amazing calmness about everything, just like he was before he would perform.
He finally said, “It's just one song,” as if he didn't have an album coming out in the fall.
Then the DJs on Power 98 FM started talking about John and his song on the radio. They went on to announce that he would be on the air that next morning. I knew that already, but the crowd didn't know until then. That pretty much intensified their frenzy.
A girl asked him, “So how come they call you Loverboy? Is there some inside information on that?” She was definitely flirting.
John sat up there and laughed, real mellow. “Nah, that's just my singing style,” he told her.
A guy said, “Man, you 'bout to blow up crazy then. I like that song, man. Go 'head witcha bad self!”
John said, “Thanks, man,” and nodded.
Antoine was still standing there saying, “Damn! I can't believe this! How come you didn't say nothin'?”
When we finally drove away from all of that, the first girl hollered, “I'm gon' tell my sister that I saw you, John! I mean, LOVERBOY!”
We both smiled as we drove off.
I asked John, “So how is your mom taking it now?”
He shook his head. “It's devil music, man. She hasn't changed. She's just living with it.”
I frowned and said, “Aw, man, she'll come around. So what new songs have you and Tony come up with lately?”
He smiled. “We gotta few new hits. I'll let you hear 'em when we finish 'em.”
I laughed and said, “The same old John. You still holding shit back on me.”
“I'm sayin', man, they're not ready yet.”
“What does Tony think?”
“He likes 'em.”
“And you don't?”
“I mean, they're all right. But I'll just see how people respond when I perform onstage. It's all about making songs that move people. So, you know, I gotta wait until we start touring with the album.”
I said, “What about touring this summer with Blake and them?” I still figured that John and Tony would be out there doing their thing and getting people ready for the album.
John said, “Tour with Blake and sing what? I'm not trying to sing nothing before the album comes out no more, man. We gotta start pulling back all the tapes that's out there. But when we finish with everything, we gon' flip it on 'em anyway. We got a whole live-band feel now.”
I said, “Well, what did Blake say about this?” Blake was itching to make some money with them that summer.
“Old School Records worked it out with him,” John told me. “So we're gonna tour with the rappers a little bit this summer to announce my name and get me out on the market with the label and stuff, and then we're gonna set up our own tour with Blake for later on this year when the album drops.”
That sounded like a plan to me. I nodded my head and smiled.
I said, “So y'all gon' tour with some rappers?” That sounded interesting.
John said, “Yeah, because we're the first R&B act that Old School is puttin' out. They were involved with, like, rock and roll bands, and then they started doing rap music, and now they got us with the R&B.”
I grinned and said, “It sounds to me like they're moving to where the money's moving.”
John laughed and said, “Yup. That's what they're doing. That's cool with me. And they know how to create, like, an earthy feeling in the studio. I mean, we got songs that make you feel like you right in the middle of our set at a jazz club, a dance club, or at a stage performance.
“I mean, they really know what they're doing, man,” he told me. “And them two white boys, Kenny and Matt, know everybody. ”
I said, “Yeah, I bet they would, the way they talked to us. ”
John said, “They gettin' us played everywhere. And they told us that most of their rap groups are underground, so they get most of their play from the club DJs and during certain radio shows. But we got that top forty sound, so we can get played, like, twenty times a day. But we still got that old-school soul that makes us sound different from everybody else.”
He grinned and said, “They just loving us there, man! This is a good deal!”
I chuckled at the irony of John touring with rap groups to kick off his singing career. By that time, the Notorious B.I.G. was blowing up with that Juicy song from Puff Daddy's Bad Boy records. And after the Wu-Tang Clan hooked up with SWV, it seemed to me like the hybrid of rap and R&B was a sure way to going platinum.
I asked, “So are you gonna do a song singing a background chorus or something with one of these rap groups from the label?”
John just smiled and started laughing.
I said, “So, y'all must be already doing it then, since you responded that way?” I was assuming things.
“Well, they asked us to, and I just asked to hear the concept of the song first. And it was cool. They were talking about, you know, hooking up with a shorty for the weekend. And like, each rapper talked about what kind of girl he likes, and I just come in and tie it together with my singing. Tony even did the beat to it. And I added some of my keyboard playing.”
I said, “Y'all get some of the song credit for that then. That's publishing rights.”
I was on business alert again and couldn't help myself.
John said, “I know that, man. I ain't stupid. I'm the one who's been creating my own music all this time.”
I said, “All right, as long as you know.”
He said, “Everybody knows who does what. That's just what kind of label we have. We all get our credit.”
He sounded loyal like I don't know what, and he had only been with the label for a few months.
I asked him, “So what's the title of this rap song?”
“The Weekends.”
That sounded simple enough to me.
I smiled and asked him, “How does your chorus go?”
John started snapping his fingers for a medium tempo. Then he sang his chorus:
“ 'Cause you're my weekend shorrr-tee / and ahhh know you like it naugh-tee / but you never tell your momma what we do / your sweet moans are for meee and you. And on Fridays, bay-bee / awww, girl, you reeal-lee amaze me / and I'm so glad that you made me your friend / on Saturday nights let's meeet again.
“Awwww girrrl / Awwww girrrl.”
I broke out laughing. I said, “Can these guys rap?”
John nodded his head and said, “Yeah. It's all tight. But we wanna perform it for a live audience first, so we just recorded the instrumentals on a DAT, and we're gonna perform it live a few times before we try to put it out.”
He smiled and added, “I even get to plug my name real good on the vamp.”
I said, “Do it.”
He sang: “And if your momma has to know / where you disappear / just tell her that you're in love / with the Lov-ver-boy.”
I laughed again. I could imagine what that song would do to the girls, the rough ones especially. It was freaky in a tactful way. John just knew how to flip it, even with rap music.
I dropped him off at his mother's house that night and couldn't sleep when I got home. My boy John was about to blow up for real, and I was still trying to play the other side of the fence on him and not come in as his full-fledged manager. I weighed that thing all night long. Football. Music. Football. Music. Football. Music. And the football dream was getting its ass kicked! I just kept thinking about all of them damn girls that John would attract. Was I thinking with the wrong head?
I hadn't even seen John's video yet. I was kind of jealous that I wasn't in it. Tony was in it. John told me that they were doing the final editing and that it would be out real soon. Knowing John, the video was probably already in the mail to BET, MTV, and the Box. That boy loved the game of understatement. He'd make a million dollars and tell you that he made ten just to surprise you with it later. I laughed at that even in my sleep. That was my boy, though. That was my boy.
I drove John down to the radio station at Power 98 early in the morning.
He shook his head in the passenger seat of my car and looked glum.
I asked him, “What's wrong, man?”
It was seven-thirty in the morning, and I hadn't gotten much sleep, but I was still in good spirits. Why wasn't he?
John said, “My mom was talking about she's praying for me, man.”
I chuckled. “That's good. You don't want her to?”
“Not like she's thinking about doing it. I'm thinking she might call the damn radio station and start apologizing to the church members on the air.”
I broke out laughing. I said, “Now that would be some funny shit if she did that, man. No lie.”
John said, “It ain't funny to me, man. She gon' make me block her out completely. Because I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, man. I'm not trying to be just another church boy singing in the choir. It's a million of them out there. I'm trying to be the only Loverboy.”
I grinned and repeated, “The only Loverboy? What do you mean by that? The rest of us ain't supposed to get no women?”
He said, “It ain't about getting women, man. Not necessarily. It's about creating emotions in people. And love is the most powerful emotion out there. But I plan to write songs that make you feel a lot of different things. I just don't want you to sing along with my music, I want you to fall in love with it and wrap yourself up in it like a warm blanket.”
I just stopped all of my silly thoughts for a minute and started all over.
I said, “When you used to say shit like that when we were young, I just thought your ass was crazy from being around old people too much. Like, you didn't really get a chance to be a real kid like the rest of us. But when I hear you say stuff like that now, man, I just figure that you were just meant to do what you're doing. So, you know, I just say to keep doing it.”
I joked and said, “Your mom just gon' have to call up and pray for you on the air.”
All that morning on the radio, they made pun jokes about the name Loverboy.
“Will it be safe for my daughter to listen to your music? I'm trying to keep her head in her studies. Guys like you create major distractions.”
“Yeah, I don't know if this is the right time in the country to be a Loverboy, with AIDS and whatnot going around anyway. What do you have, like, a condom in every pocket when you perform?”
I was laughing, but I don't think that was the kind of radio talk that Sister Williams wanted to hear. So every time they went to a caller, I got nervous thinking that it was her. However, most of the people calling in were proud that another Charlotte native was about to make the scene after Jodeci had done it.
John handled himself well on the show. Maybe too well. People tend to like drama, but John didn't give them any.
He said, “I look at the whole Loverboy name as me trying to make people fall in love with the music and the message. I mean, I have a lot of different thoughts that I want to write about that may not always be about love, but I still want you to feel like you're in love when you hear it.”
That toned the jokes down immediately and gave John that same mushy, nice-guy appeal that he had growing up. He turned the Loverboy tag into what he wanted it to be. And the good-boy role didn't stop the attention that he received during the rest of his stay in Charlotte. I guess that folks in our Bible Belt hometown were really feeling his sincerity. I thought that his mother should have been proud. I know that I was. My whole family was.
After John had gone back on the summer promotions trail, my family members were all proud of what he was about to do.
My mom nodded her head at home and said, “Well, you told me he was going to do it, Darin. And he did it.” We were in the kitchen as she began to prepare a big meal for four.
I said, “Yeah, but you need to talk to his mom and make her understand that.”
My mom said the same thing that I had been saying.
“She'll come around.”
My father walked into the kitchen overhearing us and said, “No she won't. She won't come around. She'll just have to live with it.” He sounded like John.
My mother said, “What makes you so sure of that?”
My father looked at me with a man's insider grin and said, “I just know it.”
He thought that Sister Williams expected to have her way with John, and she couldn't get it anymore. So instead of facing the facts, she would find a way to pout for the rest of her life. But that was my father's theory, not mine. I still had hope.
My mother changed the subject and said, “So, Darryl is going to help him with his accounting.” She was referring to help from my older brother.
I said, “No, but he contacted an accountant who he said was good. Darryl told me he didn't want to get too involved with John that way.”
My father nodded and grunted, “Mmm hmm. And what about you? Weren't you in bed with this whole thing when it first started?”
I said, “I wasn't all the way in bed with it.” I smiled and added, “I was like, halfway in and halfway out.”
I knew that he and my mother had talked about it several times. But my father usually only got involved when things were getting out of hand. Since I wasn't making any drastic decisions about my own schooling or career, he figured that John's problems were extra and not immediately his concern. Don't get me wrong, my father loved John like the rest of us, he just never accepted the lack of family structure in the Williams household. He also didn't want to stick his nose too far in what he figured was another father's abandoned business. I knew my father well. He wasn't perfect, but he had been a good example for all of us.
My little sister, a high school senior to be, walked in the kitchen with us, saw me, and started singing John's first two lines: “Hay baby / in the blue jeeeeans.”
She didn't sound like John, but she was trying. She started laughing and said, “That song is a hit.”
I said, “I know. I heard it a while ago. I knew it was good the first time I heard it.”
My mother asked me, “So, John invited you to a performance coming up in Cleveland?”
“Yeah. It'll be the only one I can make it to this summer before football season starts up at A&T,” I told her. “And this gotta be my year this year. I can't wait until I'm a senior to shine. I gotta do it now! John taught me that,” I added with a grin.
“Hmmph,” my father grunted.
My sister asked me, “So if I come to the homecoming this year, you'll be in the whole game?”
I expected to be a star on the team my junior year. I said, “You can count on that.”
My mother said, “Well, we'll all be going.”
My father looked at me and said, “When does John's album come out?”
“Sometime in October,” I told him.
Something was on my father's mind, I just didn't feel like trying to read it at the time.
We all sat down, said grace, ate dinner, and then we talked about a few other subjects. When we were done and ready to go our separate ways, my father was ready to tell me what was on his mind.
He said, “Darin . . .”
“Yes.”
He shook his head and changed his mind. “Ah, never mind.”
I shrugged my shoulders and left it at that.
I arrived out in Cleveland, Ohio, a week later to see John and Tony perform with their label mates at this jam-packed club. The place wasn't all that big, and the hip-hop audiences were usually a little rowdier, with more males than the singing crowds John had performed for. They could wear anything they wanted to at hip-hop clubs as opposed to your dress code places. That crowd in Cleveland, although it was not the hardest that I had seen, was definitely not John's usual cup of tea. He was rarely around the rowdy types in high school or in college.
From the tiny backstage area, I asked John, “Have you seen that crowd out there?”
He nodded. “Yeah, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony lovers.”
I had forgotten all about that group.
I said, “You've been listening to them?” I was surprised.
John said, “Not really, but everybody was talking about them when we came out here.”
“Yeah, I bet they were. Those guys are like royalty out here.”
John smiled and said, “Not when I get up on the mike.”
We both started laughing.
Tony and the other performers were all up in the mix of the club. They were loving it! With hard-core acts, mixing in with the crowd is where they wanted to be.
I smiled and asked, “John, are you gonna walk through the crowd when you get up there?”
He paused and said, “Nah. I want to be untouchable.”
I said, “Yeah, they'll probably want you more after that, hunh?”
“Yup. That's what I'm counting on,” he told me. “That's why I'm sitting back here now. I don't want nobody to know me until after I perform.”
I laughed, but it seemed to me that John was elevating the game. He was thinking things through.
I said, “Did somebody tell you to do that?” just to make sure.
He smiled again. He looked at me and said, “I can't make up my own plans, D? I've been in the marching band for years. Remember? I know how to build anticipation.”
And he did. Definitely. So I decided to just shut my mouth and wait for him to do his thing.
When they finally got ready to call John up, he asked them to bring him a cordless microphone backstage.
“You're not coming out onstage with us?” they asked him.
John said, “Yeah, I'm coming out . . . when it's my part.” And he stood his ground on that.
Tony just looked at him and chuckled, as if he knew what John was planning already.
Tony said, “Ain't no sense in me going out there at all. We ain't using no live drums. We using DATs.”
John said, “Well, don't go out there then. I'll hold it down for both of us.”
Sure enough, when the instrumental track started for The Weekends, the whole mood of the club changed. You could hear John and Tony's soulful sound immediately through the beat and the bass line:
It was hard for any rapper to sound bad on this track. So these guys began to rip it up with smooth raps and had the crowd's undivided attention. The whole club immediately fell into sync, and started bobbing their heads up and down as if they were all riding the waves of a river. It was like a spiritual awakening of groove. No wonder music was king!
And when Loverboy finally got up to add his chorus, that was it. He took control of that place wearing his casual cool clothing, with his tall lean body gliding across the stage on beat, singing like a prince:
You could clearly see all of the girls in there beginning to jockey for position to see him up close. Tony and I just started breaking up laughing. John didn't even stop when the next verse came in. He underscored the rap with Marvin Gaye–like hums:
As I continued to watch with a big old smile on my face, I noticed that the rappers were a little too hyper. They were dancing and bopping faster than the music. John was the only one on beat, and his slow sway began to dominate the whole performance. You didn't even want to watch those rapper guys anymore. Their clothing was too dark and drab anyway. John's cream outfit stood out in the spotlights. It was suddenly Loverboy's stage!
Tony leaned over to me and whispered, “John about to take all the girls. He gon' need four limos all by himself. They are feelin' him up in here! And watch this,” Tony hinted.
John got to the end of the song and did his vamp:
The music changed up to a thumping beat, and John took center stage and ran to the edge, where girls could reach up and grab him. He leaned with the microphone as if he was about to fall forward, and just did his thing:
Tony started jumping up and down like a lunatic. He screamed, “They gon' rape that boy up in here, D ! They gon' rape 'im!”
Boy, when you talk about some fine black women of all shades, heaven came down to us that night! John barely had to say a word after the show. I mean, imagine being able to get girls without even talking. He had done all of the talking that he needed to do while up on the stage. It was like a carnival of women all around us inside the hotel lobby.
They were screaming, “Oh my God! When is your album coming out?”
“Can I be in your video?”
One girl said, “Can I be your wife? Your girl on the side? Your anything? ”
I looked her right in her face, and her mug didn't match the words. You would think that this girl was ugly and desperate saying something like that, right? Wrong! She was so beautiful that I would drink castor oil from her toes.
John didn't even pay this girl any mind. He seemed like he was floating on air, above it all.
One of the rapper guys smiled at me and said, “This shit is ridiculous, man. I mean, we always get groupies, but God damn! He ain't even got no album out yet. I wish I could sing.”
I was standing there thinking, Me too, man. Me too.