Dear Erykah:
Peace. What’s up with you? How are you? I haven’t talked to you in a while. Your birthday just passed, and you crossed my mind, so I’m sending you this message.
Truthfully, I felt I should have called, but you know I’ve kept a distance between us. I keep this distance not because I don’t like you or even hate you; I guess I just decided it was time to close that chapter of my life. There was a lot of hurt there, a lot of pain. At the same time, it was one of the biggest growth spurts of my life. I look back and think that I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t been through that love—and that breakup—with you.
What was so revealing about you and me together was that I only knew how to love freely, to love and to give my all to love in a pure way. I don’t know if it was always the right way, but it was the only way I knew. It was love. True love.
You were the first woman I had ever been in love with as an adult. I had never loved a woman like I loved you. I think we both knew it came from a deep place and maybe from a lifetime before. Wherever it came from, it was very strong. I know I gave my all, my whole being, to our relationship. I know that when I met you, there was something about you that would make me fall in love like never before. I knew when we first talked on the phone as friends that you and I had a profound connection. I knew we had a purpose in each other’s life.
When we first met, I remember being mesmerized and overtaken by your presence. We went over to your apartment in Brooklyn, and I was happily overwhelmed just being your friend. You appeared on my album, and I was geeked that you wanted to do something different, geeked to have you care enough to create in the way you did.
Do you remember that night in the studio back in early March of 1997? You came through in the late afternoon, and we chilled for a minute. The vibe was so right. Then someone came in and told us that Biggie had been shot. All of a sudden, the night turned sad and solemn. The whole mood, the energy, was low knowing that part of hip-hop had died.
I think we needed each other’s support that night. You came with Bless, and you dedicated your time and energy even when we weren’t in the best of spirits. We ended up creating something special, recording “All Night Long” for One Day It’ll All Make Sense. I still love that song. I’ve watched you create numerous times, and it’s always something to see. You are a blessing—one of the legends of our generation—and I want you to know you blessed my life.
E, I call what we had X-ray love because it showed the very shape of who we were as people. You could see I love deep and strong and dreamy. You could see my heart was free. But I know that I didn’t stand up for certain aspects of me. I didn’t set boundaries for myself, wasn’t true to the totality of my being. I don’t put that on you. Most of that was just me being in the process of learning who I was and deciding who and what I wanted to be, what I wanted for me. I was so used to pleasing others, trying not to offend. That’s no way to build a relationship.
Looking back, I think I learned as much from our breaking up as from our being together. I learned that I had been willing to play the back, willing to dim my light in the face of someone else’s shine. I know that’s something you never asked me to do. At the same time, you didn’t seem to mind that I did it, either.
Why did I hold myself back? I guess in part it was out of fear of being left alone. I feared losing our love. The funny thing is, though, that once I lost you, I gained so much of me. It wasn’t your fault. I know now as a man that I have to lead when it’s time to lead and know when it’s time to listen and follow.
I know we don’t talk as much as we used to. I know we are not as close, but you will always have my love and respect. I thank you for being the friend you have been. I thank you for your wisdom and your light. I thank you, too, for your art. You a cold girl!
Remember, if you need me for anything, I’m here.
Love,
Rashid
ERYKAH GOT MY HEART. LOVING HER WAS THE FIRST TIME I TRULY understood what it meant when people say they “fell in love.” I fell for her. I fell for her in a way that I couldn’t even explain back then. It’s only a little bit clearer now. Have you ever met somebody that you thought you knew, even before you said hello? That’s how it was between us. When we first met, it wasn’t like we were strangers. It was more like we were already lovers, and one of us had gone away on a very long trip and was just now coming back home. I guess that’s how I’ll put it: being with Erykah felt like home.
I’m sure that our two souls were supposed to meet, like ours was one of those connections that transcend a lifetime. We were both Pisces. She would get into the astrology of it: “Our emotional connection is so intense. We’re both sun signs, so when we come together it’s a super nova,” she said. I was mesmerized by her presence, her spirit, her intelligence, her confidence. She set-designed her environment and announced without shame, “Look at me. I am a queen.”
It was more than bodies we shared with each other
We laid under the cover of friends
A place where many lovers begin
—“BETWEEN ME, YOU AND LIBERATION”
We were friends only, for a long time. I was with Kim, and Erykah was with Andre 3000. In fact, Erykah and Kim were pregnant at the same time. They even had the same due dates. All of that created the space for our friendship to grow without being overwhelmed by passion. We built one of the strongest friendships I have ever experienced. We supported each other. We shared things with each other: music and books and spirituality. My heart felt good when we were together. But from the look of things, we were headed to becoming one of those love affairs that never happened. We looked destined to walk parallel paths.
When she was going through her breakup with Dre, I was there for her. Maybe part of me imagined the two of us together, but I honestly wanted to be there to help her through the tough times. “When your man messes up and leaves you, I’m going to be the one to take care of you.” That’s what I thought. In some ways, it was similar to what I felt as a child toward my mother. “Mom, I’m going to take care of you.” Even as a child, I wanted to help fill the void that my father left. Talking with Erykah is when I started working up the mentality that I’m going to do the right thing and be a man because these women have been getting hurt. I knew I had a lot of love in me and that I could be a loving person to her.
I knew it wasn’t the right moment for either of us to start a new relationship. But I still wanted to be there. I think both of us were learning a lot from our conversations because our lives were mirroring each other’s. We both had children. We were both in the process of difficult breakups. I would tell her how a man feels and give her insight into some of the things that he might be going through, and she would do the same for me as a woman.
Then something changed. I was at the House of Blues in Chicago doing a concert for Like Water for Chocolate. I was in my hometown, so this was a special show. I got dressed to the nines. My stylist, Ashaka Givens, had put together an outfit that was cool and cutting-edge. I was wearing a blue-brimmed hat and a tailored vest. I guess you could say that I was sharp. Before the show, Erykah found me backstage. It was one of those moments that you see in movies, where things just slow down and the two lovers catch each other’s eyes from across the room. She walked straight over to me and kissed me. The kiss was somehow hard but soft, deep but still teasing. Then she turned around and walked away. I didn’t see her again for several weeks, but when I did, let’s just say that all the promise of that first kiss was fulfilled beyond expectation.
We didn’t start dating then and there, though. We continued as friends. She was doing her thing. I was doing mine. In fact, I didn’t know that Erykah and I were dating until she told me we were. At the time, I was talking with the actress Cree Summer. I was in Hawaii, and Erykah came over to visit me. We were driving around the island one day, and I happened to mention something about Cree. Erykah looked me dead in the eye and said, “You’re my nigga.” I liked that. Maybe I should have been telling her, “You’re my lady.” Maybe that was a sign of the relationship to follow. She had a need to be needed. But she also had a need to possess.
We loved hard and fast. We weren’t together but maybe four months before I proposed and she accepted on New Year’s Day 2001. I did it spontaneously; I didn’t have a ring yet, but it felt right. We didn’t go public with the news at first. We just told our families and closest friends. I thought about what it meant to be with her—not just the intoxicating love of it but also the sobering realities. Here we were both trying to build our careers. Here I was with a daughter; here she was with a son. What would it mean for me to help raise another man’s child?
Sometimes I would look around the house, and all I would see were pictures of Dre. Dre. Dre. Dre. Everywhere. I’d turn on the radio, and what would I hear? “Ms. Jackson”! The brother was everywhere. I couldn’t escape him. But I knew how important it was for Erykah to have those pictures around; Seven had to know who his daddy was. And I loved that little boy, too. Imagining being a stepfather to him made me reflect upon what Ralph must have felt when he married my mother. I wanted to do what he did well, but I also wanted to do more. I didn’t want to be just a disciplinarian. I was ready for the challenge.
Erykah was my first grown-up love. Loving her was the first time I had been so caught up in a relationship that everything else seemed muffled and dimmed. “I don’t care what anybody says. This feels so good to my heart and my spirit that nothing can take it away.” We loved like hippies, walking around her house with Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye playing on the stereo. We lived to love.
I had never loved anybody as much as I loved her. The way I love is so deep and so uninhibited that I have a tendency to lose perspective. I was living in Dallas with Erykah, eating the same food, even dressing alike. My boys back in Chicago would see pictures of me in magazines and call me up to clown.
“Yo, nigga, why you wearing a muumuu? Nigga got on a dress and shit.”
“Whatever, man.”
“Nah, for real. If I didn’t know you, nigga, I’d knock you the fuck out if I saw you on the streets.”
Erykah and I were free spirits. I dressed the way I wanted to dress with her. That’s why I wrote those lines on the “Come Close” remix:
I don’t stress it, baby
They say you got me dressin’ crazy
Eatin’ veggies, wearin’ shirts extra medium
And if we break up, I’ma eat meat again?
I feel complete with you
Shit, I held up signs in the streets for you
In the streets people ask about me and you
I tell them “We go through what most people do.”
Let’s let go of fear, love
We can grow as long as my beard does
You push me in the way you supposed to
Queen, you’re the one I come close to
Erykah and I were a power couple. And I don’t mean that as far as what kind of pull we had in the industry. I mean that, at our best, we were stronger together than we could ever be apart. The kind of energy that we generated together drew other energies to us. We found ourselves in some amazing situations.
Perhaps most amazing of all was our trip to visit Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Erykah and I went over to perform, but that was just an excuse, as far as I was concerned. I really just wanted to meet President Mandela and shake his hand. His great-grandson knew who I was, though I’m sure Nelson Mandela didn’t. We didn’t talk for long, but it was an honor just to be in his presence.
Another person we got to know together was Prince, who invited us to perform at his birthday party. Erykah, the Time, and a young girl I had never heard of at the time—by the name of Alicia Keys—all performed. Prince had invited us all a day before the show to come chill out at Paisley Park. I remember that afternoon that Erykah and I were in the back talking to Prince about the Bible. It was getting pretty heated, and I think I might have said the word damn. Prince pointed toward a bucket. That was where you had to put your money if you cursed. I read the Bible but also the Koran. I listened a lot, but I still had some things that I had to say.
We were chilling in one of his rooms, like a den area. We had walked through the whole mansion, and they had all these Prince outfits from different years hanging on the walls. They could shoot videos, even movies, there. We talked all night. The next morning I awoke to the sound of cooing doves. You could hear them in the hallway. Now I understood what made him write that song.
Prince showed so much love that he invited me back to his studio to record. Ahmir, James Poyser, and Pino all came along. Prince wasn’t there, but when we walked in, Prince’s father was playing on this big white piano. A couple months later, his father died.
Prince was part of another major moment in Erykah’s and my relationship. For Erykah’s thirtieth birthday in 2001, I planned a surprise party like no other. I flew in her favorite musicians—all of these people she had known at various stages of her life—and put on an all-star concert. I rented out a performance space right next to her grandmother’s house. The night of her birthday, I had a car pick us up and drive us to the venue. She knew we were going to a party, but she had no idea what to expect. The first thing she saw when she walked in was a crowd of faces: people from high school and college, from the music industry, from every walk of life.
Then the music started. It was our favorite singer, the British artist Omar, singing his song “Golden Brown” with ?uestlove on the drums, Pino on the bass, and James Poyser on the keys. Then Roy Ayers took the stage. Then Chaka Khan. Finally, I took the stage with Prince and performed “The Light.” Later that night, exhausted from all the celebration, she said that when she walked in, it was almost like she had died and was watching her life flash before her eyes. Like, “This is your life.”
For all that was good about our relationship, there was much that was difficult. Maybe I should have seen the signs. I loved Erykah so hard that I didn’t have any love left for myself. Erykah is a strong woman who is set in her ways. I felt immense pressure to do right by her and by the relationship. I started feeling that sacrifice was what I needed to do to be a good man. So when I needed to go to the studio to write rhymes and she wanted me to do something around the house, I’d stay at the house. Both of these things were important, but there’s got to be a balance. The emotional pull she had on me was so intense.
It all came to an end with a single phone call. It was April 3, 2003, and I was back at the House of Blues Hotel in Chicago. Electric Circus was out, and I was in the middle of my first headlining tour with Gang Starr, Kanye, and Talib Kweli. I remember picking up the hotel phone, knowing somehow that she was calling.
“I don’t want to be with you anymore. I like somebody else.”
She articulated each word with precision. As she spoke, I heard another man’s voice in the background.
I should have seen the signs earlier on. I should have listened to my closest friends and family, who kept saying, “Rash, this relationship is changing you. You’re losing yourself.” But I was so far in love that I couldn’t see that the relationship was asking me to give up more than anyone should. Maybe it was those nights when I would smoke weed just because Erykah did, even though it made my lungs hurt. Maybe it was when I no longer felt that I could pray the way I wanted to pray. Whatever it was, it never really hit me until after that phone call.
“I’m in love with someone else,” she said.
“Who?”
I don’t know why I asked, because I already knew. She had been talking a lot with the West Coast rapper the D.O.C., but it was strictly platonic, she told me. Now I could hear his voice in the background. I felt eight different emotions at once. Anger. Despair. I wanted to hang up, but also to beg her to reconsider.
The funny thing was that about a month before, I had been scheming on ways that I could get out of the relationship. She had called me up talking about, “Man, you better start talking with me or I’ll have to start talking with somebody else.” Maybe she saw me breaking out on my own too much. Maybe she feared that if I had something going on of my own, what we had wouldn’t matter as much. I don’t think any of that is true, but who’s to know. All I know is that I was feeling the pressure of being asked to be someone I was not. I didn’t feel I could be the man that I wanted to be and the man that she wanted me to be at the same time. But I had stuck it out, hoping that things would get better and relying upon love to fix whatever was wrong. Maybe I withdrew from the relationship too in order to protect myself. Maybe I thought that would make her realize how much she needed me. I should have known better.
There’s a difference between thinking something might happen and having it really go down. I wasn’t preparing myself for the breakup; I was still thinking about the ways that we could make things work. But I guess God had a plan. What happens when the person you love tells you they no longer love you? What happens to the love you have that you can no longer express? You send that love to the skies. You keep your thoughts in a good place. You do your best.
Losing Erykah definitely opened up some doors that I had kept locked in my psyche. You know that room you haven’t visited in a long time, that you sealed up to protect yourself from the truths inside? I opened up those rooms, and what I found was pain—but also a new beginning. It felt at times that I was taking on her pain, too. I had loved so purely that for someone to reject that love caused a pain that I could not have imagined. I was a child asking, “Why would somebody want to hurt me?”
Erykah was a chapter in my life. When she broke up with me, my whole heart dropped. It felt like a death, but worse because she left me by choice. That year, it seemed like everything fell apart. My heart was broken. I lost the love that I thought was supposed to be for life. My latest album, Electric Circus, had sold poorly and been panned by critics and fans. I was wondering if my career was over. I didn’t know how I was going to make it as an artist if people weren’t in tune with my creativity. Am I going to be able to keep making records? Is this the end of my career? I had hit the lowest point of my life, personally and professionally. This was a turning point. The only options were to give up or to get up.
So I got up. I stepped into manhood and started believing in myself—as an artist, as a man. It was a spiritual transformation. “No longer am I going to dim my light for anyone or anything. I’m going to let it shine. This is what God gave me, so I’m going to wear this. I’m going to wear my greatness.”
I had to trust that God knows best. God has the greatest things in store for you if you just allow them to happen. You may feel pain, but those pains are really the labor pains for the birth of the best things in your life. Emerging from my relationship with Erykah was like one of those butterfly-from-the-caterpillar moments. It was like the light was beaming down upon me. I had won the battle for myself, and because of the battle, I became myself.
It took me months to grieve the loss of the relationship. I’d spend hours on the phone with close friends and family. After all of it, though, I came to the realization that I was better for having been in the relationship—and for being out of it. Loving Erykah taught me how to love a woman right, but it also taught me certain things about being a man. Part of what I came to understand about manhood—really, about life—is that there are certain things one should never compromise for a relationship. The most important of these is your relationship with God. I was distanced from my faith when I was with Erykah, even though I was also exploring a host of other forms of spirituality. It took losing her to realize what I had to regain.
Breaking up with Erykah marked the beginning of a new phase of my life. It was one of independence, but also one of understanding. I’m a better man for having been with her—a better lover, a better person. We still talk from time to time to this day. I think we always will. We just have that soul connection; whatever bound us together can reach beyond the limits of place and time.
When I travel around the world, people still ask me about Erykah. “Why did you all break up?” “You were such a wonderful couple.” I hear that, and I feel at once wistful and warm, knowing that everything in life happens for a reason.
That time with Erykah was interesting. I think that was truly his first love. She invited us all out to Dallas once. She wanted our family to come and meet her family. I really liked Erykah. And even though his little heart got broken, she was sort of responsible for teaching him—particularly about his health. They were strictly vegans. I said, Lord! He was walking in them sandals, wearing smocks . . .
When they broke up, I tried to be supportive of him. I tried to be good in hearing him talk about Erykah. But after the third or fourth late-night call, I told him, “Boy, you better get up. I’m tired of talking about all this.” Erykah took away some of his manhood because everything was to please her. But he walked away a better man.
I still stay in touch with Erykah. One day she called me and told me how good he looked and all that. Rashid probably would have been a good person for her, but she was so lost herself at the time. That was part of the problem with that. I’m never shocked by what Erykah does. She’s a person who’s brave, and bravery sometimes can look like foolhardiness.
SURPRISINGLY, I DIDN’T TALK TO MY MOTHER a lot about my relationship. Maybe part of me wanted her to feel that she was more important. I wanted her to know that she was the most important woman in my life. I had a lot of talks with my aunt Mattie, though, calling her at three in the morning, then calling her again at five thirty in the morning. I had a lot of conversations with different people who knew Erykah, like a spiritual advisor who worked with her. I was just gathering information. I would ask God, “Why? I gave all my heart to this and felt like I was doing the right thing. Why is this hurting like this?” There are some lessons to be learned. There are some things you’ve been doing in your life that you must recognize are not good qualities in order to become a stronger person.
When I was with Erykah, I held myself back. Something magical happened after we broke up. Out of my grief at losing the relationship, I found a way to reshape myself as a man. I started owning my excellence and the recognition that came with it. It helped that Kanye was around at that time, too, because his confidence bolstered mine. Seeing somebody so uninhibited about his art was an inspiration. “Listen to this!” he’d always be saying to me and anyone else who would listen. “This is good. Check it out.” It made me ask myself, “I feel the same way about my music, but why don’t I say that?” I started realizing that the more that I speak the things I want, the more they come to me. If you’re doing things out of love, why shouldn’t you be letting people know about them?
You can feel me all over, I’m live, I help culture survive
I opened the eyes of many
Styles y’all wrote in the skies with your lows and highs
Open your mind to hear me
—“I AM MUSIC”
Success didn’t come to me overnight. It’s arrived in stages over a period of years. You look at some artists, and it seems like they’re propelled into the stratosphere. One day their feet are planted squarely on the ground, and the next, they’re thirty-five thousand feet in the air. It’s been different for me. I’ve soared and dived over the years, but I’m fortunate enough to say that the trend has always been upward.
Finding success in stages, as frustrating as it’s been sometimes, has helped me keep perspective. Sometimes I feel bad for kids who get famous at age twelve or thirteen. If you’ve reached the pinnacle of success as a teenager, where do you go from there? That’s never been a problem for me. Part of it may be because of where I’m from. Just try copping a superstar attitude in Chicago. Folks won’t go for that. Part of it, too, is that I’ve kept the same people close to me since I was young. I have the same friends. Derek, my friend since high school, has also been my manager from the beginning of my career up to now. They help remind me who I am—and who I’m not. My friends are quick to tell me when something I’m doing ain’t fly. They’ll speak their minds.
Thank God that there are certain things I didn’t get too soon as far as success and recognition and popularity and money. It made me develop my character. I had to work for these things. It made me appreciate each level of achievement. I appreciate it and respect it. I may see my face on certain magazines or on a billboard, but I never think, “Celebrate me! I made it.” There’s more to do: higher levels to get to, more rhymes to write, more souls to affect, more scenes to shoot, some Oscars to get.
I break bread with thieves and pastors, OGs and masters
Emcees and actors that seize and capture
Moments like the camcorder
You ain’t killin’ it, yo, that’s manslaughter
Though paper can’t change a man’s aura
It can feed a man’s daughter
I stand for the blue collar, on the side makin’ a few dollars
Like Sam Jack they maneuver through drama
—”THE FOOD”
I used to feel self-conscious when people called me a celebrity. I wanted to prove to my mother and my friends that I hadn’t changed, that I didn’t think I was somehow better because I had a little fame. So I’d go out of my way sometimes to show them that I was just Rashid. That’s why I squeezed myself into the small seat in the hatchback after signing my first record deal. That’s why I turned down certain gifts or special treatment. The problem, though, came when I started holding myself back in the name of staying humble.
The people I look up to the most—Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama, Harry Belafonte—they are all what I call humble kings. They wear their greatness like Jesus wore it. Jesus knew that he was the Son of God, the Messiah, but he still kept his humility. So many of the greats carry themselves as humble kings and queens.