. . . and make us feel the pain . . .
I refused to let Chelsea leave that night. I fought my own ego for her. I knew she was a good woman and I was desperate to hold on, so we cried our hearts out together and wouldn't let each other go. I explained how my whole relationship with John had gone sour through life in the music industry, and she told me that she would support me in whatever I needed to do. So I decided to finish the deal and made love to Chelsea that night in tears and sweat, and without any protection. I didn't want to be protected with her anymore. I wanted to give her my all or give her nothing. Fast living creates fast decisions like that. I was driven by the passion of the moment instead of calmer logic. So on that night, or on the nights that followed, we conceived our first child, Imani. That's a Swahili name for “faith.” Because we had to have faith in each other and our future together to make it last.
I stayed up in Boston over the Christmas holiday season with Chelsea, her mother, and her little cousin Damon, instead of going back home to Charlotte. In the new year of 1997, Chelsea and I chose a large church in Boston, and I started to attend church and then school with her at Northeastern University, as what else, a business major. I was cruising in my courses, too. I was older, more mature about education, with no football dreams in my way, and I already knew enough about business not to struggle with anything. So I soon went straight to the top of my class.
Chelsea and I grew stronger together, and the church became part of our union, not because we were dragged there by our parents anymore but because we wanted to call on the strength and stability that only God could grant us. And in time, we set a date and informed everyone of our wedding. The plan was to get married in Charlotte and fly Chelsea's family in, because my family was much larger than hers. I wanted them to see and experience where I was from anyway.
I didn't talk about that singer that I used to know. He was finally receiving all kinds of awards and recognition for his second album, but he didn't win an invitation to my wedding. I didn't even take his phone calls. I just informed everyone that we had grown apart and I left it at that.
Sister Williams showed up at my wedding, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her. I guess we did have something in common, though; we were both exiles from her son's life. I realized how she felt. You had to show tough love in order to maintain what you believe in. So my priority became my new faith in God, myself, my wife, and in my future family. And I was not giving that up for anyone.
My father didn't have any more stern lectures for me as a married man. He just took me aside for a second and said, “I'm proud of you, son. And I guess you realize now how hard the decisions are that we need to make to become our own men in this world.”
I nodded my head and said, “Yeah, I sure do. I sure do.”
Chelsea and I took a honeymoon to the Bahamas after the spring semester at school, and then we got right back to work on finishing our degrees. Since I didn't have to work to make a living for a while, I planned to go to school all year round and double up on as many credits as I could to finish early.
Meanwhile, I had to ignore all of the tests and traps that were set for me from my past career and relationships. There was all kinds of speculation being written about why I left the business. And while the singer that I used to know went on a world tour to continue pushing his sophomore album, there were some shots taken at my youth and inexperience in handling a major career, and even some hints at money mismanagement, which I knew was all nonsense. I did my job well, and I was always on the up-and-up with the accounting books.
I wasn't involved in the whole day-to-day functions of music anymore, but I still knew what was going on. Plenty of reporters contacted me about our split to set the record straight, but I didn't want to come off as a scorned friend-manager, so I told them all, “No comment,” and went on about my life. I was done talking about him and having to deal with him. I had nothing to say to or about him.
As you could imagine, with no tour or hustle and bustle, 1997 was one of the longest years of my life. Then R. Kelly released his hit song I Believe I Can Fly from the Warner Bros. and Michael Jordan movie, Space Jam. That song did wonders for me, expressing exactly how I felt on August 27 when my daughter, Imani Harmon, was born. Man, I can't even explain how happy I was to hold my own little girl in my arms that day. She was beautiful ! A healthy brown baby with a head full of black hair.
“Hey, girl? Do you know who I am?” I asked her.
She moved toward my voice in my arms and had her tiny eyes opened.
Chelsea smiled from the hospital bed and said, “Yeah, she knows who you are. She just can't tell you yet.”
I said, “Yes, she can. She's telling me with her body,” and I bent over and kissed her little lips.
The rest of that year was all about family and school for me. I was even excited about that Stomp song that Charlotte gospel choir leader, Kirk Franklin, had put out. Some gospel traditionalists were complaining that Stomp wasn't real gospel music, but I felt that gospel had to find a way to force itself into the mainstream to relate more spiritual issues to the young music listeners out there. And my wife agreed with me on that.
I started thinking about buying a house in Boston, but Chelsea told me that she might be interested in leaving the area after we both graduated from Northeastern, so I held off from it. And I wasn't missing a thing in the music industry. Not even the money. I still had plenty of it invested and growing by the day. But I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think about how much more money I could have been making had my friend been able to allow me some peace of mind.
As fate would have it, in early 1998, I got a phone call from Tangela in New York. I had gone an entire year doing my own thing.
She said, “Darin, can I still consider you as, like, a business mentor?”
I hesitated. I hadn't talked to Tangela in a while, and I assumed that she would have figured out everything she needed to know in the music business by then.
I said, “Ah . . . you know, I can't really say anymore, because I haven't been around the business lately. What kind of help do you need?”
She said, “Well, do you know how to fill out these publishing forms? What's the legalities of all that?”
She was asking me something that she could have asked anyone about. Filing song publishing papers with BMI and ASCAP was a simple process. I could do it in my sleep.
I said, “You just get the paperwork, fill out the percentage shares, state who gets what, and send it in.”
“And how do you know when a new kind of song is a hit? You know what I mean? I just want to sit down and pick your brains for a while, because I'm learning new things every year, and so much is constantly changing in this industry.”
She said, “A hit song for last year won't even get any airplay for this year. It's just confusing to know sometimes.”
I told her, “Well, you might want to call up some of the other managers who have hit artists out right now. The older guys would know more than I would. I'm still a baby myself. It's not like I've been involved in it for ten years or anything, where I could really say what's gonna happen next. I just went by what I felt was right.”
I said, “So call up some of these new management companies.”
Tangela finally broke down and said, “Damn, Darin. Can I just sit down and talk business with you? I know you've been out of the loop for a while, but out of all of the people that I've been around, I still respect your approach the most. And I know you're young, but that's why I'd rather talk to you. You have a younger ear with different ideas about management. Some of these other managers can be too rigid with how they wanna do things.”
I wasn't falling for whatever Tangela was trying to do, so I passed on her invitation to meet and talk about the music business. I wasn't even curious about it. I just wanted to listen to great music like your average fan. I didn't want to be involved in it anymore.
Evidently, Tangela had gotten my address, because she sent me a priority-package with a demo tape in it that next week. I shook my head and put it down as soon as I opened the package. But then I thought about it. I could still listen to new music. There wasn't any harm in that. So I put the demo tape in my stereo player while I was at home alone for a minute, with my wife and daughter out and about.
I turned the stereo system up to try and listen for the quality of the production, and when I pressed play, the first thing I heard was a New Edition vocal sample from their first hit song, Candy Girl. The sample repeated itself four times: “Cannn-dee girl . . . Cannn-dee girl . . . Cannn-dee girl . . . Cannn-dee girl.”
I smiled, thinking about Tony and his love for New Edition. Then the beat kicked in, and it was Tony. I could tell. He had slowed the Candy Girl beat down to ballad speed with his own drum set:
Then a familiar voice kicked in with a guitar riff and a deep bass line:
Tony and the band members started calling out names with screams in the background:
And that singer that I used to know was crooning:
I immediately got up and stopped the tape right there. I didn't want to go near that guy again. Listening to his music was like looking for that forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden. I just had to say no to it. It's as simple as that. So I walked over and threw that demo tape in the trash.
I thought to myself, So he's back with Tangela again. That's why she wanted to talk to me so bad.
I shook my head and said, “I wish her good luck,” and that was that.
I was minding my own business while watching an ESPN football talk show that night. They were talking about the upcoming Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and the Green Bay Packers when Chelsea sat down beside me with Imani. I was so much into the football talk show at the moment that I didn't notice my wife with the demo tape in her hand.
She asked me, “Darin, did you mean to throw this in the trash?”
I looked at the tape in her hand and didn't think a thing about it.
I answered, “Yeah, I meant to throw it away,” and I went back to watching the football show.
Chelsea didn't comment, while she tried to keep the baby away from grabbing it.
I finally asked her, “Why did you take it out of the trash?”
I wasn't concerned about it, I was just asking her.
She said, “Well, I went to throw something away, and I saw it in there. I don't know why, but I wanted to pick it up for some reason. So I just did it. And then I went ahead and listened to it.”
I just started laughing. I said, “It's the old apple-in-the-garden trick again.” How ironic, right?
Chelsea just stared at me. I felt a need to apologize to her for my bad-seeded comment.
I put my hand on her lap and said, “Baby, I didn't mean that.”
Chelsea looked at me and said, “Darin, we need to heal from this.”
I didn't comment. I just let her explain herself.
She said, “Now, I'm not telling you to get back involved with him, or to even listen to his music if you don't want to, but I've been thinking about this now for a while. And if we're gonna consider ourselves a Christian family and everything, and he comes from a Christian family, then we need to forgive, heal, and move forward from this.”
I didn't know what to say. I just didn't want to hear it while the football show was on.
Like a typical American husband and father, I said, “All right, well, we'll talk about this later on,” just like my father used to do with my mother.
Chelsea stood up and went to turn off the TV. She faced me from in front of the television set and said, “Darin, we've put this off long enough.”
I said, “Well, why do we have to talk about it right this moment, Chelsea?”
She held up the demo tape and said, “Because obviously somebody feels that we do. Someone who is greater than you is telling you that you need to deal with this. Right now! ”
I said, “Okay, so what do you want me to do, Chelsea? You want me to call him up? So I call him up and say what?”
I really didn't want to deal with it until I had figured out how. I needed time to think about it. I had gotten used to not dealing with that boy.
Chelsea said, “Why do you have to make it so antagonistic? That's what I'm talking about. Did he send this tape to you? What did he say with it? Did a letter come with it?”
I shook my head and said, “He didn't send it to me. His old girlfriend did. I guess he got her to try and do his work for him now.”
Right after I said that I knew that I was in trouble. Chelsea was right. Hadn't I been the one to call Tangela back years ago and try to get her to forgive him? Now, Tangela was doing the same thing to me, and my reborn Christian behind was strongly rebuffing her efforts. But she hadn't come right out and said it, though. She was trying to sneak her way into it.
Chelsea said, “Well, what did she say?”
“She wanted to meet with me and talk about the music business,” I told my wife. I said, “But she didn't say it was about him, though.”
Chelsea said, “Of course she didn't. Everyone knows how you've been acting about John lately. You won't even say his name. And you told her no, right?” my wife asked me.
I just started smiling. Then I tried to get serious about it.
I said, “Chelsea, it's important for me, and for us, to try and distance ourselves from things that we don't need to be involved with anymore, that's all.”
She said, “Didn't you tell me before that John's mother uses the same approach, shutting him out, and that it didn't work? Now I'm not going to church to be that kind of a Christian, Darin. And we're not,” she said, holding our daughter Imani in her arms.
I looked at my wife and growing daughter and was speechless.
Chelsea said, “You can be real stubborn sometimes, you know that?” She tossed the demo tape back into my lap and said, “Do what you want with it.”
When they walked back out of the room together, I grinned and mumbled, “I know I can be stubborn. I'm a Taurus. ”
I sat there on the sofa and shook my head. I just could never get away from that guy, could I?
I didn't want to have Chelsea hearing me listening to the demo tape, so I got out my earphones and plugged them up. I rewound the tape back to the beginning. Chelsea had obviously listened to the whole thing. I guess she didn't hold any grudges against him. She was more forgiving than I was. Or his mother. When I thought about that, I knew that I had to see Tangela and at least talk about building some kind of a bridge. It was going to be a tough process, but a bridge was all that I wanted to have. Because if I didn't like what was going on, I was going right back home to where I belonged. I was a family man now.
I started the tape over with my earphones on: “Cannn-dee girl . . . Cannn-dee girl . . . Cannn-dee girl . . . Cannn-dee girl.”
I told myself, I guess Tony talked that boy into doing a New Edition dedication song after all. The next thing I knew, my head was bobbing and grooving just like old times. That boy was obviously still the king, and he was out to maintain his throne on urban soul music.
In the first verse he sang:
It was another number one hit! No doubt about it. That groove was so tight that you would need a jar of Vaseline to pull away from it. I don't even know if that would have worked. That boy sang just enough words in his verses not to disturb the groove. Because the groove was extra strong on that song. That boy sang it like it was icing on a pound cake. For You would have plenty of urban American girls dying to have their names called out by that guy named . . . Loverboy. I hated to say it, but I had to admit it. When it came to the music, he was just . . . the man!
I listened to the second song, called Hard Rocks. That one was all about the message of a young woman's choice of a man, with a thought-provoking bass line that I translated: “Why don't you thin-n-nk about this . . . Why don't you thin-n-nk about that . . . Why don't you thin-n-nk about this . . . 'Cause how he liv-v-ves is wack.”
Tony was right on it with the beat:
The keyboard strings were playing a cool, bouncy melody with the guitar: “The girls, they like those hard rocks . . . Girls, they like those hard rocks . . . The girls, they like those hard rocks . . . They can't get enough of guys.”
Then that singer came in with his lyrics:
Then the groove changed up with the beat, and that boy sang his chorus like he meant it:
Then they went right back to the groove:
WHOA! I thought to myself. That boy made me get excited enough to say his name again. “John is a GENIUS !” I sat there and told myself with the earphones on.
Hard Rocks sounded like another New Edition–type song. It had that swing to it, yet John was saying something. A lot of singers couldn't get away with something like that in the nineties. They were mostly singing that sex-you-up raunchy stuff that took you nowhere but to the bedroom. John could still outclass those guys, out-sing them, and with Tony around on the drums, their music was still better.
They had a song called Good News Ain't No News, where John sang:
What in the world did Tangela need to talk to me about? All they needed to do is put the stuff out! What did she need from me? John sounded like he was still intelligent, culturally aware, and was doing just fine. He even had a duet with Aaliyah, who was really popular after her second album, One In A Million, did nice figures. They did a song called Double Fantasy, with Tony working them high hats to death on a slow seductive beat:
The bass line and strings whined, “Ca-a-a-a-an I-I-I-I ha-a-a-ave my-y-y . . .”
Then the guitar kicked in with, “Fan-ta-seee . . .”
I mean, it sounded like one of those old-school sound-track beats from Superfly, that made you feel like you were right there in the room with them while they did whatever.
John sang:
And Aaliyah sang it back to him:
I broke up laughing. John still had a way of keeping things creatively tasteful in his lyrics. That made them more powerful than that raunchy stuff. I mean, what guy in his life hadn't stopped short of telling a girl all that he wanted, and ended up saying, “You know what I mean, right?” Even mack daddies and players would use that line to get a woman's full understanding. You wanted her to commit to you and put it all on the line. Then when Aaliyah gave it back to him, what girl hadn't ever asked a guy, “Did you hear me?” whenever they were trying to get a point across? Most of the time, guys only heard what they wanted to hear. So girls were always trying to make sure. As a guy you ended up saying, “Yeah, I heard you,” to whatever she was talking about. Women wanted guys to put it all on the line, too. Those simple lines in John's song were subtle and more powerful than less-talented writers could ever understand.
The last song on the demo tape was a cut called Street Life that had a jazz-blues feel to it, with blaring horns and an upright bass.
The horns squealed, “STRE-E-ET LIFE! . . . THAT STRE-E-ET LIFE! . . . THAT STRE-E-ET LIFE! . . . THAT STRE-E-ET LIFE!”
The upright bass played in unison with the horns, “Think you know that . . . You don't know that . . . You don't know that . . . Think you know that.”
Tony hit the drums with a simple beat just to keep your feet tapping:
Then John did his part:
Musically, Street Life reminded me of At Midnight, on John's first album, but it was funkier and more up-tempo. However, the real lyrical beef of the song came from the Philadelphia poet Wadud. John just got out of the way and let him have the majority of the track. So Wadud jumped on the back end of the groove with this:
Wadud went on and on as if the track was made in heaven just for him. I mean, it was beautiful, man. BEAUTIFUL! It took you places in your mind. That's what music was supposed to do. So I listened to Wadud's poetry on Street Life about three more times before I finally retired and joined my wife in bed. That football talk was long gone. I had forgotten all about it.
When I climbed into bed, I thought that Chelsea was asleep, but she wasn't.
She smiled at me in the dark and said, “It sounded like you might have heard something that you liked out there.”
I just started laughing. She had me. And John still had the gift of music.
I told her, “I just want to make a bridge to him, that's all. I'm just gonna make a bridge.”
That's all that was said that night. But I tell you one thing, I was inspired. John had done it to me again. I began to think of finding myself a way to be a part of making great music. Maybe not as a manager anymore, but as a producer or something. After being around John “Loverboy” Williams for hit after hit after hit, I figured that I had to have a good ear by then. I had to! So I began to look forward to finding that out.
I went ahead and flew down to New York to meet with Tangela at Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs's restaurant, called Justin's, named after his first son. It was a decent place and roomy, but nothing special.
Tangela still looked good, she was just older. You could tell that the business was wearing on her. The first thing she did after we hugged was apologize to me for setting me up like she did.
“Actually, it didn't really work,” I told her. “My wife got involved and told me that I needed to stop being stubborn about it and heal from this whole thing. And then I went ahead and listened to the demo tape after that.”
Tangela said, “How you like it?”
I nodded to her. I said, “It's good. Is the album titled Street Life ?”
She answered, “Yeah. That's what John wants. But Old School Records wants us to call it For You. You know, they want to keep going with the whole Loverboy image, but John is trying to get away from that.”
I raised my brow at that. I asked her, “Is he?”
Tangela looked at me and smirked. “At least in his music, but he's still carrying on out in the streets with that. I mean, this album is like, autobiographical. He's been out there with it.”
I told her, “All of his albums are. That's how he writes. You've been around him enough to know that.”
I stopped and asked her, “So he's been out in the streets a lot more then, hunh?”
We gave our orders before Tangela responded to me. But we weren't really there to eat anyway. We had a lot of catching up to do.
Tangela said, “Yeah. Once he got back from that world tour, he didn't want that experience to change his music, so he started hanging in the roughest places you could imagine. Houston; Chicago; Gary, Indiana; Paterson, New Jersey. Just rough places, so he could write from that.”
She shook her head and said, “Him and that doggone Big Joe. What's wrong with that guy? He acts like an overgrown kid sometimes. And to be so big with that.”
She just grimaced and shook her head again.
I smiled. I said, “Big Joe's all right. He just loves John to death, you know. He was actually the one who gave John that name Loverboy back at North Carolina A&T, when he first started singing.”
“I know,” she told me. “That boy lets everybody know that. ‘I named this nigga!’ she mocked him. ‘We folks !’”
I started laughing. I said, “So, how are you able to hold up with John? You just let him do what he wants now? You didn't used to be like that.”
Tangela looked at me and frowned. She said, “I'm not with John like that. I'm just managing him. He can do what he wants on his free time.”
I said, “What? Managing?”
Tangela said, “Yeah. I got my own man and my own life now. John just asked me to manage him, I guess, because he wanted to be around someone who knew him well, and who wouldn't get in his way. That's why I called you up about it.”
I said, “Well, what happened to Top Notch from D.C.?”
She answered, “John fired them as soon as their one-year contract was up. And he refused to record anything new while he was with them, because he didn't even want them involved in that. So they were trying to maintain the contract to get a piece of the action for when John started working on this third album. But since they didn't have a clause in the contract where it called for them to get their artists recording deals, it was nothing that they could do about it. You know, because John was already under contract.”
She said, “But they took a lot of money from John through this non-profit foundation that they set up called John's Love Foundation. It was supposed to be for community purposes. It was set up kind of like Sean Combs's Daddy's House. But since John wasn't trying to record anything, Top Notch started using that Love Foundation as an extra way of getting paid.”
I asked, “He didn't pay them their regular managing percentage?” Tangela said, “Yeah, but that was mostly tour money, and not album sells, because most of the albums had already been sold. So they wanted to get involved with John's publishing. That's where the big money is. But he wouldn't record any new songs, and Top Notch weren't tied to any of the old ones that he recorded while he was still with you.”
She said, “That's why I called and asked you about the publishing thing, because I haven't really dealt with that. I was more or less buying songs for my artists, where the producers and writers took care of their own publishing, or the record company did it.”
I nodded. When it was all said and done, Honesty had sold more than 10 million worldwide!
I said, “Yeah. Now you're finding out just how valuable John is. He knows how much power he has with his publishing. He could be like the next Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds if he kept his conscience clear of the nonsense that he gets involved in. That's why Prince is so mad at Warner Bros. over his bad deal. That publishing is a lot more important than people think.”
I asked her, “But how did Old School Records respond to you taking over as John's new manager?” No one had called me up about that. Or maybe everyone had been told that I didn't want to be involved, and Tangela was the only one who was still willing to try me.
She said, “You know what, at first they didn't want to deal with me that way, but then they realized that this is the last album on John's contract, so they just said, ‘Whatever.’ Whatever makes John happy. And John just told them to talk to me.”
I said, “So you're in the hot seat now. You're actually managing John. Small world.”
“Ain't it?” she smiled and told me.
We started digging into our food.
Tangela said, “But I'm concerned about this street stuff that he's involved in, because he's starting to deal with girls who are not all crazy about him like that. I mean, don't get me wrong, they'll all try to fuck him, but John is starting to deal with the kind of street girls now who are thinking of ways to get paid off of him. And I must admit, John has been very fortunate up to this point.”
I nodded and let Tangela continue. I could tell that she had a lot to tell me. She wanted my ear more than anyone else because I was an insider with John.
She said, “He's been pulled over a few times for having marijuana in his car. He's been taking guys' girlfriends or whatever, and getting Big Joe to back him up on it. That's where that Hard Rocks song came from. John actually gets his kicks off of going after attached women. I mean, he's just been doing some foul shit lately, and I'm afraid for him. These roughneck guys aren't trying to go for that shit.”
She said, “But the thing I can't figure out is how he can do all of that craziness, right, and then get in the studio and write, sing, and produce like he does. That is just amazing to me. You would think that his crazy living would take a toll on everything that he does, but it doesn't.”
I nodded and told her, “He thinks he's living a song. He really believes that. So his attitude is that he's gonna do whatever he's driven to do, and just write about it. It's as if his whole life is meant to be an album or something. Like he was born to suffer and to tell the world about it.”
Tangela said, “Do you know that he was sued for five hundred thousand dollars for this car accident in Baltimore? He had a brand new Porsche that he crashed up down there.”
I just smiled. John had been fortunate over the years indeed, and his luck was finally running out on him.
Tangela said, “This guy started wearing a neck brace talking about his spine was injured and all this other kind of ridiculous stuff, just to get paid. Because he wasn't all injured like that before he found out who John was.”
She frowned and said, “And what's up with John's mother ? I mean, does she love him, or what ? That woman treated me like I was the Anti christ when I called her. And I was just trying to connect with her. I told her that I was no longer involved with John, and that I'm just a business associate now, and she wasn't trying to hear it. She started talking about, ‘Well, you need to tell him to handle his business with the Lord,’ and all of this kind of stuff.”
I grinned and shook my head, feeling guilty.
I said, “I know how she feels now. And it has to be even harder for her because John is her only son. She just doesn't seem to understand that she can't control him. Nobody can. We just have to find a way to reach him, and I don't know if that's possible anymore.”
Tangela said, “You know he listens to mostly rap music now. He says that they're starting to take over. He said the art of singing is dying out unless you have a rapper on your album.”
I nodded, trying to think that over. I said, “After the Fugees blew up like they did, and all of them are now doing their own projects, I think John may not be far off on that. But that's why he wants this next album to sound a little harder. John knows what he's doing.”
I told her, “You need to be firm and just tell Old School Records to go with it. Street Life, the third album by John ‘Loverboy’ Williams.” I said, “And that Wadud poem is hot, man! HOT! ”
Tangela got excited. She said, “Ain't it, though? That's gonna put him on the map. Spoken word poetry is coming back strong now. Have you heard of Jessica Care Moore?”
I said, “Yeah. She was on the Apollo, right?”
Tangela nodded. She said, “I thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me about John like this. You just don't know how much has been lifted off my heart by being able to talk to you about it.”
She said, “Okay, well now that we got all of that out of the way”—she stopped and took a deep breath before she continued—“can I please ask you to do me one more favor?”
I smiled. I said, “It depends on what it is.”
Tangela dug into her black leather pocketbook and pulled out her cell phone. She said, “Now Darin, remember, you did this to me, several times. And I always respected you and gave it a shot.”
I started laughing. She wanted me to make up with John. I said, “I'll talk to him, but I can't promise you much more than that.”
“Okay. I understand. So I'm gonna call him right now. Okay?”
She called John, caught him at home alone, and asked him how he was doing. I started thinking that it was a setup. It just seemed too easy for some reason. But what the heck, we needed to get it over with.
Tangela said, “John, somebody real special wants to talk to you. I'm gonna put them on the phone, okay?” She looked at me and was as happy as a kid when she passed her cell phone across the table.
I took a deep breath and spoke into the phone. “What's going on, man?”
John heard my voice and started laughing. He said, “Yo, first of all, I'm sorry, man. We family. I should have never did that to you. But it all worked out for you. You were tempted, and you survived it. There's a lesson in everything, man.”
I didn't even want to get into that. I said, “Yeah, but how are you doing? Tangela says that you're in the streets a lot now.”
Tangela looked at me in shock and slapped my arm for bringing up bad news and telling on her. I was just being real about the conversation. I didn't have anything to hide. Tangela didn't know it, or maybe she did. But she was only being used as a pawn for John to get back to me. We had, like, a funny triangle going on between us.
John said, “Actually, I've been in the studio a lot lately, trying to finish up this third album, man. She knows that.”
I joked and said, “Yeah, she loves you.”
Tangela looked at me again and shook her head with a big grin on her face. I was giving it to her bad.
John asked me, “What about you, man? You still love me, D?”
He had me on the spot. I couldn't tell him that I didn't. I couldn't go down that same road that Sister Williams had traveled with him. I just had to forgive him and love him anyway, like God did with all of us.
I said, “Yeah, John. I still love you, man. I'll always love you. You just make it hard on people sometimes, man. You make it real hard.”
He said, “I know, man. But I'm gon' make it up to you. You gon' be real proud of me one day.”
I said, “ One day? I've always been proud of you, man. What are you talking about?”
He said, “I got some plans, man. That boah Tupac was deeper than people think. I'm telling you. Sometimes you gotta die before people take you seriously.”
I asked myself, What?! John was still on his own thing, talking crazy. That was enough for me. I was ready to end the conversation.
I said, “John, you know what? I think that you're deeper than most people think.”
“Nah, man, I'm just a singer right now. But I'm gon' be more,” he told me. “You watch.”
I said, “All right, well, I'm about to get back on my way home to Boston, man. And that new album, you know it's hot. Just make sure they call it Street Life like you want them to.”
He said, “You know it, man. Because this their last album.”
I said, “All right then, John. Love you, man.”
He paused. I knew what he was thinking. He wanted to talk to me more and I was cutting him short. But he had to understand that we had to build our friendship back up. We couldn't do it over one long-distance phone conversation from a cell phone in a restaurant.
I said, “John, we got more time together, man. I'm back in your corner. I'm just not in the ring with you. And you just have to remember to remain healthy enough to keep fighting the good fight.”
John started laughing again. He said, “Aw'ight, man. Enjoy your wife and your new family. I'm proud of you, D. I'm proud of you.”
When I handed Tangela back the phone, she chatted with John for a few more minutes about their business, and that was that.
She asked me, “Well, what did you think?”
I said, “It sounds like the same old John to me. He still sounds out of it. And I don't know where he's trying to go, but he needs to realize that he's there already, and just learn to enjoy it.”