. . . he needed all the love . . .
My guess was right! Through the winter, May I climbed to number two on the R&B charts and number five on pop, making Loverboy popular enough for the momentum to push our spring release of Special to number one on both charts! We had done a video in black-and-white where John sang from a Philadelphia street corner, old-school style, wearing old-fashioned gear. We were getting so much radio airplay for Special from both the urban adult contemporary and the hip-hop and R&B stations that I was getting tired of hearing it. We gained plenty of crossover appeal with the MTV crowd from our up-tempo songs, and some of the pop radio stations were playing us. We even had the hard-core hip-hop crowd behind us from the release of Weekend Shorty with the Executioners, which was in heavy rotation with underground rap lovers. And on the club scene, Stylin' 'n' Profilin' and What We Gonna Do? kept rocking the dance floors. Before we knew it, Loverboy: The Album was close to going platinum. Old School Records had a new star!
M.D. was parading around at the offices talking about, “Pop the champagne, baby! Pop the champagne!”
Double K was there too, but he was more reserved with a smile.
He said, “This has all gone much better than we had planned. You haven't even started the summer tours yet. Are you going back out with Blake?”
I was happy to tell him no.
Double K nodded and said, “Good. It's time to go with a larger scale of performers. You need to get out there and really kick ass now. This album could go double platinum over the summer.” He looked at John and said, “Your versatility has really paid off. We weren't expecting that.”
John was up for the challenge. He looked at me and smiled. “New artist of the year, man,” he told me. He seemed energized by a new goal.
I said, “Definitely.” And it was my job as the manager to get him on that larger tour, even if we had to take less money. It was all about stealing more fans. Because the money would roll in from the album sales anyway. John had produced about seventy percent of the album. And Tony Richmond was sitting pretty from the production help that he had provided by creating most of the beats.
I got real busy and started trying to contact the tour managers for Boyz II Men. I figured that getting Loverboy on tour with them would be the perfect match for us to steal more fans. I didn't want him in the Jodeci camp, because with John and I being from Charlotte, that seemed too close to home. Jodeci didn't have the crossover appeal with their raunchy lyrics that Boyz II Men had. I also didn't need their bad influences on John. I don't think his mother would have liked that match either. Every once in a while I thought first about Sister Williams before I made a move with John's image or career.
It took a while for me to get in touch with the tour managers. They were busy, you know. That's how it went when you were successful. I was rather busy myself with John. So in the meantime, I asked the art director, Jamie Bilford, about some ideas to make John sexier with his image and tour performances.
Jamie smiled real wide and said, “I'm flattered. How did you know I was into fashion?”
I didn't, but I just figured that art directors would have ideas.
I said, “I just guessed, man.” I made sure I called Jamie “man” every chance I got to make sure that he didn't toy with me the way he liked to toy with John. But business was business, and Jamie had some bright ideas.
He said, “Well, the whole bare chest thing with these tattoos all over the place is just getting out of hand. Especially when you don't have the body for it. And poor John doesn't have that kind of a body.”
I chuckled and said, “Hey, man, we don't need it. As long as he can sing. So, what are some other ways to make him stand out?”
Jamie thought again and said, “Well, those matching prep boy outfits that Boyz II Men wear are no turn-on either. It makes it seem like they don't know what the hell they're doin' when it counts.”
I started laughing again. Jamie was using it as an opportunity to cut everyone else down.
I said, “Look, man, stop worrying about everyone else for a minute and give me some ideas on how to make Loverboy drive more women crazy.”
Jamie looked at me and said, “Well, why does it have to be just women ?” I was losing my patience with him.
I said, “All right, well, never mind, man.”
He said, “Hold on, hold on,” and stopped me. “You're just like a young man. All impatient. Probably ain't even legal to drink yet.”
I just shook my head and waited for his ideas. He was right about that. I wasn't legal. But it was April 1995, and I would be legal to drink later on that month when my birthday came around. John had been legal since February.
Jamie said, “Well, actually, I don't see anything wrong with John's image. That video for Special was special. I mean, with the black-and-white and everything, his eyes and lips just jumped off of the screen at you. Mmmph! ”
I said, “Yeah. All right, man. But what about his dress style?”
Jamie said, “I've always liked old clothes. They're more stylish.”
I looked at his contemporary style of dress and said, “Well, how come you don't dress in old clothes then?”
He grinned and said, “I'm not rich enough yet. But John is. And if I had the money that that boy's about to make, I'd hire myself a personal tailor.”
I didn't like the idea of John wearing too many old-fashioned clothes. It worked for the video, but I didn't want him walking around looking like he's permanently from the 1940s. We still had a young, hip audience to attract. I didn't want to go overboard. But I did think about the tailored clothes idea. I just questioned how expensive it could be.
I got back to the apartment to go over some ideas with John, and he was checking out his new fan mail with a big grin on his face.
He got my attention and said, “Hey, D, look at this, man.”
He must have had about fifteen pleasing pictures of young women, and some of them were naked pictures.
I looked and nodded. I said, “That's all you got?”
John said, “Nah, these are just the ones that I like.”
I looked again, and he had picked some real standouts, all different shades of brown.
He said, “Tony told me that people who send fan mail are the crazy ones.”
I said, “Why, because they took the initiative to get in contact with you? It ain't no different from the girls who break their necks to get up to your room. Tony don't call them crazy.”
John laughed and said, “I know.”
I asked him, “Hey, man, what do you think about having a tailor do your tour clothes? I mean, you are a singer. We need to think about that. People look for that kind of stuff.”
He asked me, “Who would we get to do it?”
I frowned and said, “Do I look like I got a phone book of tailors to you?”
“Well, you brought it up. Get on the case then,” he told me with a smile.
John may have been smiling at me, but I thought, Shit. I had just created more work to do. That managing shit was an all-day-long job!
John went right back to looking at his fan mail pictures. He said, “I think I like this one right here the best, man.”
I looked at the dime piece of a sister out at the beach in a green-and-white striped bathing suit. She had the exact same penny brown tone as John, with long, shiny black hair and dark eyes.
I nodded and smiled. She was a sure beauty.
John said, “Her name is Tangela Austin, from California. She wants to be a model and an actress. She tried out for Jet magazine.”
I said, “ Angela with a T ?”
He grinned and said, “Yeah. I think I might even write her back, man.” He looked at her photo again and said, “Damn!”
It wasn't a big deal anymore to me. John had plenty of pretty girls. I even found my way into bed with some of them. But I was so busy trying to get John ready for the next stage of his career that I just stopped thinking about love altogether. That's how it happens. Too much shit goes on for you to think about real love in the music business. Especially when you're first getting in it.
We had gotten a call from the new Quincy Jones Vibe magazine for an interview on the same day that I finally talked to the tour managers about us touring with Boyz II Men that summer. I was all excited and respectful, talking as if I had to beg for it. To my surprise, they were real cool and down-to-earth about it.
“I've been listening to him. I like his music. We'll see what we can do,” I was told.
I snuck an extra push in there by saying that Vibe had just called us for an interview.
I said, “Do you mind if John says that we're trying to get on tour with Boyz this summer?”
There was some hesitation about it. I was putting them on the spot. My heart started beating fast as if I wasn't supposed to ask that. I was even ready to say never mind and that I was joking. I didn't want to sound too much like an opportunist. We hadn't even met in person yet.
I was given a diplomatic response. “Well, it's always good to talk about your future goals. But it can be embarrassing sometimes if you don't actually reach them.”
That was a good enough answer for me. I decided that John shouldn't say a word about touring with Boyz II Men until it was actually going to happen.
Before doing the Vibe interview, I contacted several tailors in the Philadelphia area to see about developing a stylish image for John to tour with that summer. I ended up going with a young black guy named Charles Nickels, who worked at a tuxedo rental place downtown. He had been trying to break into the fashion industry, and I liked his ideas for John. So we visited his apartment and started making plans to show something off in Vibe magazine. We took Tony with us to make sure he added a different view to the mix. Sometimes a little dissent was necessary to make a solid decision.
Charles had a loft apartment with not much furniture in it, but he had pieces of cloth and fresh designs all over the place. He looked like a mad scientist with fabric.
Tony smiled and said, “Well, I can see that you live by the fashion, man,” and started laughing. We all laughed.
Charles pulled out a new book of illustrations and said, “Here's my idea. Since John is tall and rangy, I would go with designs that accentuate his height while adding highlights to the body's natural curves at the shoulders, chest, and hips.”
Tony laughed and said, “John ain't got no damn chest. He needs to do some push-ups or some shit. I keep telling him that.”
John said, “What do you think I'm doing when I got girls under me?”
“You ain't doing nothing but breathing hard,” Tony responded.
Charles said, “But that's okay. Silk looks better on slender men anyway.” He looked at Tony's bald head and said, “Bald-headed men look good in silk, too. It's all in the curves.”
Tony said, “Aw, naw, we not here to dress me up. We're here to dress Loverboy's skinny ass.”
John said, “As long as the girls still like it. And I'm not that damn skinny, man. So stop talking shit and respect this man's time.”
Tony grinned and said, “Okay, you paying my bills. You da boss. Let me shut the fuck up then.”
It was a pleasant surprise to see John assert himself like that. He was learning to use his weight.
I cut in and said, “So, you were saying, Charles?” We were getting away from the business at hand.
Charles went ahead and showed us his idea on paper.
“Well, what you do is simply round the shoulders and then taper the ribs and under the arms, which gives you a sculptured look of subtle sex appeal.” He said, “It's just enough to make the women think without having to take your shirt off.”
He said, “Then you want to wear straight pants that are not as baggy as before, but still loose enough to hang. Because it's still elegant and actually more manly to let a woman imagine than to show her too much. That's one thing that I like about the baggy look of hip-hop.”
He said, “But what I would add to the pants is a tapered fit at the top.” He showed us the top of the pants with two tapered lines at the hips.
He said, “That's one of the trends that I don't particularly like about hiphop. I think it's totally uncalled for with these loose-fitting pants to show your underwear at any time. In fact, I think it's sexier not to wear any underwear at all if you can get away with it.”
Before I started thinking funny about him, he said, “Just think about how great we feel as guys when we have a woman out on a date who happens to like us, and we know for a fact that she's not wearing any underwear.”
We all broke up laughing again.
John commented first. He said, “Yeah, that's the shit right there, man. I get a lot of that now.”
I said, “You won't get no disagreements from me on that.”
Tony smiled and nodded. “Mmm hmm,” he grunted.
That only made us laugh harder.
Charles went back to explaining things to us.
He said, “Then you have the jacket.” He showed us the next design. There was a plain sports jacket with no pockets and four buttons for a high collar.
He said, “You only wear the jacket to walk onto the stage with. Then you take it off whenever you get ready. You might even want to give it away to someone special in the audience.”
I chuckled and said, “How much are these jackets gonna cost?”
Charles nodded to me and grinned. He said, “Yeah, maybe you wouldn't want to give them away.”
John smiled and added his opinion. He said, “Maybe we can pick out a girl to throw it to beforehand, and tell her that she has to give it back to us after the show.”
I thought that was an ingenious idea, but Tony spoke up and said, “She better be able to fight, or have two bodyguards right next to her ass. And what if she can't even catch?”
John said, “Well, maybe we can have, like, five girls all in the same area, and they all know what's up.”
Tony said, “Yeah, aw'ight, you keep thinking you gon' stage some shit. You gon' end up causing a riot, and your jacket'll be in ten pieces when you get it back.”
I compromised the idea and said, “Well, how about we make cheap jackets for the last song, where John throws it out there to be ripped apart on purpose? That would be like a dramatic ending for us.”
Charles nodded and said, “That's a good idea. We could make cheap replicas of the originals. But then again, I think Tony has a point. You're gonna cause a lot of fights out there.”
I didn't really see that as a bad thing. It would get us some publicity for the tour, for sure. Especially on a major tour. I could see the headlines already:LOVERBOY CAUSES A RIOT AT THE SPECTRUM. But I kept that to myself.
We got an estimated price from Charles for the first suit and told him that we needed it before the Vibe interview in a week. We agreed to pay him $500, up front, to rush a quality job, even if he had to stay home from work to do it. The suit would cost us a grand.
He also told us that he wanted to stay within the earth tones, with offwhites, beiges, browns, yellow, and soft colors like baby blues and mint greens. He said that hard reds, dark blues, and purples could look too inyour-face or metallic. He explained that the colors of love should be fully inviting. I didn't know all that much about fashion and colors, but it sounded about right to me. Earth tone colors looked good on John's penny brown skin.
Somehow Blake found out about our plans to tour with Boyz II Men and called us up about it.
He said, “You know our contract isn't up until October, don't you?”
I said, “We signed that contract last spring.” We definitely were not planning to sign on his option. And Blake knew that already.
“Yeah, but we delayed the summer tour last year to help out on this album. So, we want our summer tour back.”
“Ask him how much money he wants to get out of it,” John told me in the background at the apartment.
I looked at him as if he was crazy and tossed a finger to my lips for him to let me handle it.
Blake said, “I'm not lettin' you guys break out of this contract with me. I might as well let you know that right now.”
The brother was really being a pain in the ass, and he knew good and well that he didn't have the connections to handle John's growing popularity. It wasn't a black or white thing, it was a success thing. Everyone else had been great to us.
I didn't want to say too much to Blake without having all of the facts, so I told him that I'd call him back.
When I hung up the phone with him, John said, “Look, man, we just pay his ass off, and get him up out of our face. Let me talk to him next time. I did his whole basement bargain tour with no complaints, and now he's gon' act like this. Man, fuck Blake! He ain't trying to play fair. He just wants to get paid.”
John was acting real sour about it, and he sounded more authoritative by the day. Once he had gone platinum, that cool blue demeanor of his had turned into a red heat.
I said, “I got it, man. I got you into this with Blake, and it's my job to get you out.”
I called up Matt and Kenny at Old School Records to find out exactly how the tour situation with Blake had been worked out.
Matt said, “Wait a minute, we didn't extend the contract in any way. We just told him that it would be worth more to him to delay his tour plans with John until the album came out in October. In the meantime, John would go on tour with our guys as prepromotion for the album. And Blake agreed to all of it. That gave him time to set up a tour with Loverboy as his marquee. It all worked toward his benefit.”
I said, “Well, now that he found out that we're trying to hook up with a stronger tour, he's talking about he has John under contract until October of this year.”
Matt said, “Hold on, Kenny wants to talk to you.”
Kenny came on the line and asked me, “Does John have the original contract?”
He was all calm and cool about it as usual.
I told him to hold on and looked back to John. “Where did you put the original contract?”
John just stared at me. He said, “It got lost when we moved from Tony's apartment.”
I said, “Are you sure?”
“You want to look for it yourself?” he asked me.
I took a deep breath. I was really running out of energy with all of the extras of managing. I said, “So, that's why you want to pay him off. You lost the damn contract.”
John said, “That's what he wants, man. Money.”
I got back on the line and told Kenny and Matt that we needed to locate the contract.
Kenny said, “Well, unless he doctored the original deal, a contract is a contract, and we signed nothing that extended it.”
I hung up the phone and looked back at John.
I said, “So, hypothetically speaking, man, how much would you be willing to pay him?”
John came up with, “Twenty thousand dollars.”
His royalties on a platinum album were nearly a million dollars after Old School Records recouped their production costs. That was not including the money John was making from the hot-selling singles. And once the radio publishing rights began to kick in, John had nothing to worry about with the money game. All he had to do was wait for it. I just didn't like the principle of paying someone who was obviously trying to get over on us.
I said, “And what if he says no and tries to take us to court?”
John said, “Let him prove it in court then.”
I said, “But by us paying him it makes it seem as if he's right.”
“Man, what difference does it make?” John asked me. “As long as we can get the hell out of the contract with him, I don't care. I just don't feel like going through this back-and-forth shit.”
I didn't want to give in so fast. I told John, “I'm gonna look for that contract first.”
John said, “All right, you do whatever.” He was in that impatient mood of his again and snapping at me. I figured he was stressed about the movingup process that we had to go through to climb to the top of the charts and stay there. But fuck, I was stressed about the increased workload too, and I wasn't acting up!
Anyway, Tony had moved from his old apartment near downtown into a much bigger place in West Philly, so I didn't even know where to start looking for the contract. All I was doing was wasting time and energy. I couldn't find anything. Then we finally received word that we could tour that summer with Boyz II Men.
John said, “You should have offered that twenty thousand when Blake called last time. Now he's gonna want more. God dammit! ”
John was real pressed about it, but I ignored his ass. I had my job to do. So I took another deep breath and called Blake back.
When I got him on the line, I lied and said, “We have the contract sitting right here in front of us, and John signed nothing that says that you could extend it without us agreeing to an option.”
I kept talking and said, “I also talked to Matt and Kenny at Old School Records, and they told me that you agreed to do the tour after John's album release in October to use as your marquee performer for a winter tour, and everyone has fulfilled their word.
“Now I understand that you may have some hard feelings about us going on a larger tour this summer, but we're moving up, Blake, and I think it's better to stay friends with us than to put us in a situation where we become enemies.
“I mean, I didn't want to do it because it doesn't seem fair to me, but John even wanted to pay you ten thousand dollars to ease this thing out. But if we have to go to court over it, then I'm prepared to do that.”
I was talking a mile a minute and trying to run the game on him. I had to learn how to do that in order to stay on the job for John. Otherwise, we would be taken for plenty of rides in the music business.
All Blake had to do was ask me to read one line from the contract that I claimed was right there in front of me, and I would have been stuck. But instead of doing that, he started laughing out loud over the phone.
He said, “You a slick motherfucker, Darin. But I like that in a young brother. So I'll tell you what I'll do. You double that to twenty thousand, and I'll go ahead and wish you and John the best of luck for this summer. Unless you still want to take it to court. Because I got the real paperwork.”
I said, “We'll put that in the mail for you then.”
I got off that phone as fast as I could.
John sat there and broke up laughing at me. He asked me, “What did he say?”
“He'll take the money,” I told him.
“Ten thousand dollars like you said?”
“Nah. He wants the twenty thousand that you said. And from now on, you know I'm keeping all of the paperwork, right?”
John smiled at me and said, “Aw'ight, Mr. Manager. Boyz II Men, here we come!” And everything seemed healed and forgiven.
The Vibe article with John's tailored gear was a hit! They shot him sitting in a brown leather lounge chair with his jacket laying over the arm. It was only a page long, but John got to talk about how competitive he wanted to be to keep climbing up the charts and showing that he was a real crooner. It was all good and everything, but by the time that summer tour was ready to kick off, I knew exactly what John felt like when he said that he wanted to get high. I mean, you just had to have something to balance out the stress.
Nineteen ninety-five was such a hot year for young black musicians with plenty of great music coming out that I was worn into the dirt from playing the manager game and trying to stay on top of it all. Maybe managers needed to be older than I was to handle the wear and tear. That's how I got started smoking weed with John as a stress relief. We were close to double platinum by then.
We were one week away from touring, and I had stopped sweating John about the weed smoking as long as he agreed to do it on his downtime and not when we were doing anything that needed a clear head. So during a moment of low energy on my part, I asked him again at the apartment to explain what the big deal was about getting high.
John smiled at me. He said, “I got some weed in the room.”
We were just relaxing on the sofa in the living room. We were sitting behind the long wooden coffee table, watching more music videos on BET.
John was tempting me, and I was too drained to respond to him, so he went ahead and got some get-high. He brought it back out in a plastic Ziploc bag and quickly rolled the dried brown and green leaves into a fresh sheet of top paper.
I remember the last words John said to me before I tried it.
He said, “Weed ain't gon' kill you, man. It's natural. Straight from the earth.”
He lit the joint with a lighter, raised it to his lips, and sucked on it hard.
I remember the crackling sound it made as it turned from red flames to bright yellow ones. Then John passed it on to me.
I took it in my fingers and raised it to my lips to suck in the smoke before I could change my mind about it. I wanted to get high. I wanted to see what it felt like. So I sucked in the smoke and started choking immediately. Was smoke really meant to be inhaled into the human throat?
John said, “Fight the cough, man, and just relax. When you feel that tickle in your throat, just fight it back and hold down the smoke.”
I tried it again and it worked for a few seconds. Then I heard the same crackling of the flames up in my brain as I held down the smoke. When I broke up and coughed even harder, the marijuana smoke was all up in my system for the first time in my life. I had never even smoked a cigarette before. It just never appealed to me. I was an athlete, and I needed my clear lungs.
All of a sudden, with fresh weed smoke in my system, my body felt like a floating feather. The sofa felt extra plush as I leaned back into it. I was sinking deeper and deeper into the sofa. It was swallowing me.
John started laughing and finished the rest of the joint by himself. He was the pro and I was the amateur. He was the bad boy and I was the good boy being turned out. Funny how things change.
I couldn't even touch the weed anymore. I was done. I was a roasted beef patty on a hamburger bun. Someone was putting ketchup and mustard on me as I sat back on the sofa. And then came the pickles. Plop! Plop! Right on my forehead. I could feel my body rocking backward as they hit me.
John asked me, “How you feel, man?”
I heard him loud and clear. I opened my mouth real slow and said, “What?”
I could hear my own heart beating. Thoomp, thoomp, thoomp, thoomp, thoomp, thoomp, thoomp, thoomp . . .
John asked me, “How you feelin', D?”
I could hear him loud and clear. I opened my mouth real slow and said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
I nodded my head forward as if it weighed a ton on my neck. I finally knew what John was talking about. I could hear him loud and clear. I opened my mouth real slow and said, “Yeah, man, I see what you mean.”
“You see what I mean about what?”
I said, “I understand, man. You just want to lay back and relax a minute.” John leaned over, looked into my eyes, and started laughing.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”
I started laughing too. “Ha, ha . . . Ha, ha . . . Ha, ha, ha.” My laughs were all short eruptions, as if someone was pressing my stomach like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
“Ha, ha . . . Ha, ha, ha . . . Ha, ha, ha.”
I couldn't seem to stop it. It was making my ribs hurt.
I said, “Stop making me laugh, man. Stop making me laugh. Please! My ribs are hurting!”
John only laughed harder at me. He said, “Yo, D. I think you fucked-up real good, man. My bad. You want me to get you some milk?”
“Milk? What the fuck I need milk for? Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
All of a sudden, my body started leaning and falling over. “WHOOAA! HELP ME UP, MAN! HELP ME UP!”
John barely touched me when he reached out to put his hand on my shoulder. He said, “There you go.”
I started leaning to the other side.
I opened my mouth real slow and said, “It's a good thing I'm still sitting down.” Then those damn painful laughs started up again. “Ha, ha, ha, ha . . .”
John said, “I'm going all out on this tour, man.”
I nodded to him. “Yeah . . . you do that.”
He said, “This music game is competitive as hell. I was number one for about two weeks . Boyz II Men were number one for months, man! I want to break chart records like them.”
I smiled. I said, “You got your own style, Loverboy. And it's four of them. It's only one of you, man. Only one Loverboy. They gotta share all of their women.”
John laughed again. He said, “I'm gon' try to blow them away on this tour, D. None of them can out-sing me alone. They gotta gang up on me.”
I started laughing. He made it sound like a street fight.
I said, “It's all love, man. We gotta thank them for letting us on.” John stood up and walked over to the stereo system. It seemed like it took him forever to get there. He started searching for something.
I said, “Whatchu doin', man?”
He said, “You ever heard of D'Angelo?”
I shook my head from side to side real slow and said, “Nah. Who's that?”
“This guy's just coming out, man. Me and Tony been checking this out,” he told me.
He turned the television down and put the CD single in for me to listen to, nice and loud. And boy, did it hit the spot! This guy D'Angelo had an easy, foot-tapping beat with a thick bass line and organs. He was singing about the love he had for a sister and her good stuff.
My body starting rowing back and forth in the sofa as if someone was pushing me in a rocking chair.
I said, “Yeeaaahh. I'm feelin' this, man! I'm feelin' this!”
John said, “He's from the church down south like us, man. I knew it from the first moment I heard it.”
I said, “The organs, right?”
John said, “Plain as day, man. And the South got, like, a slower feel than the North. Tony pointed that out to me. It's lots of new music coming out. You heard Zhane, right?”
I nodded and said, “Yeah.” Zhane were two harmonizing sisters right out of Philly.
John said, “Butterscotch is about to come out with their album. They're signed to Columbia now. They want me and Tony to produce a few songs for them.”
I said, “Yeah, man, I know. That'll be a good move to keep pushing your sound.”
John said, “This game ain't no different from football, D. You gots to be on top, man, or you'll get pushed out the game. It ain't all love. This is war. ”
I kept nodding my head to D'Angelo's music and began to sing along with the chorus:
John smiled and said, “I wonder what his mom thinks.”
I said, “What? Ain't nothing wrong with this song. He singing about a girl, man. And he ain't being vulgar or nothin'.”
John looked at me and grinned. He said, “He ain't singin' 'bout no damn girl. He singin' 'bout smokin' weed.”
I looked up at John and said, “Get outta here.”
He said, “Look at that weed on the table. What it look like?”
I looked at the clear bag and smiled. I said, “It's brown and green.”
“You better recognize, ” John told me. “ Girls don't make your eyes turn blood burgundy. He's talking about smoking a whole lot of weed.”
I started laughing again. I said, “Well, damn, that's kind of clever then.”
John said, “That's what I'm saying, man. The competition is steep. He got a song on here talking about, Shit, Damn, Motherfucker. ”
I said, “Get the hell out of here.”
John went ahead and played it for me. I heard the words and went into eruptions of laughter again. I had to grab my ribs.
John said, “See what I mean, man? You can't take no prisoners out here. You gotta just do what you feel, and go for it. Ain't no holding back.”
I said, “What? You wanted to write a song like this?”
“Nah. But if I ever do . . . I'm just gon' do it. You gotta be brave when you write music. Otherwise, you really don't need to be out there. So when we start putting together this next album . . . I'm gon' shock 'em all.”
I started nodding and getting hyped like a trainer before a big boxing match.
I said, “Yeah, man. I hear you. Let's go get 'em!”