When It's Time Out For Play Play
"We just sold out of every piece of merch you had in the shop."
That was how Xavier greeted me as he entered the studio a few days after my date with Trisha. She and I had been texting back and forth daily since then, and even sat on the phone caking for two hours last night. Keeping it a buck, I hadn't even wanted to get off the phone, but she had a client early in the morning and needed to get in a few hours of sleep at least, so I reluctantly said goodnight to her sexy ass midnight voice and let her go.
I was really feeling her and it seemed like she felt the same.
"Did you hear me?"
Blinking, I turned from the notebook I'd been jotting down lyrics in and looked at my brother.
"My bad, Zay. What's up?"
Lifting his chin, he narrowed his eyes and looked down his nose at me. "What you on that you didn't hear me, loud as I was?"
Unbidden, my lips split into a wide grin as I thought about Trisha in those skintight biker shorts, her thick thighs looking like the gates of Heaven.
My brother's grin matched my own and he held his palm out for me to slap. "My nigga! You hit?"
Slapping his hand away from me, I shook my head. "Nah, fool! It's only been one date." Not like that mattered to me, but I could tell from Trisha's body language when I said it jokingly that she wasn't down. It was no hardship to leave it alone because I was really feeling her and didn't want to do anything to push her away—including push for something that I wasn't hard up for to begin with.
He shrugged. "You say that like women ain't tryna buss it open for you after watching you perform a thirty minute set."
"You know damn well that those are groupies. They don't care about me; they just wanna say they fucked a rapper."
He gave me a blank look and I rolled my eyes.
"It's not the same, Zay."
Finally he dropped down into the seat next to me instead of continuing to stand over me. He spun in a circle before stopping, eyes wide with realization.
"Oh, your ass done got boo'd up now!"
Another grin cropped up on my face and though I lifted my shirt up over my head trying to hide it, Xavier crowed.
"Woooooooow! Already, No? You just met this girl? It is ole girl you were making heart eyes at after the show a few weeks back, right?"
I dropped my shirt and glared at him. "Heart eyes?!"
"Hell yeah! You were like the wolf at the club from the old Looney Tunes cartoons. Whistlin' and poundin' on the table and shit. Real goofy, love-at-first-sight type of shit."
Cringing, I swiveled to face the soundboard. "Maaaan, shut up! I was not that damn corny."
"Ha!" He slapped his knee like I'd told a whole ass joke. "You were original Frito-Lay up in that bitch."
Without saying another word, I shook my head and picked up my pen, bending back over my notebook, even though he'd interrupted my flow and I wouldn't get it back that quickly. I felt the heat of his stare on the side of my face and just when I got ready to cuss his ass out, he opened his mouth.
"I think it's time to leave the state."
Snapping my head in his direction, I met his solemn eyes with my confused ones. That wasn't even the last thing I'd expected to come out of his mouth. He'd caught me way off guard with that one.
"Uh, what?"
"You heard me."
"Yeah, but I feel like I missed the context. That was random as hell."
He shook his head and flipped open the folder that I hadn't even noticed, beckoning me to move closer.
"You were in lala land with your girl and didn't hear everything else I said. Hear me now, No. Every stitch of merchandise in the shop has sold. The t-shirts, the hoodies, the backpacks, the mugs, the vinyls, the tote bags. It's all gone. Not only that, but the contact page has been overloaded. You've received over two thousand messages on the website asking when you're gonna go on tour."
I stared at him with my mouth gaped open. He continued on, reading off of a sheet he pulled from inside the folder.
"Ma put a poll up on the blog with five different cities and asked people to choose which cities they want you to perform in. There were almost four thousand comments on the post filled with cities not listed on the poll. The top cities were Sacramento, Tulsa, Orlando—"
"Hold up, hold up, hold up." With each word he spoke, my mind was being blown to bits and pieces.
My website was ran by my mother who was a talented web designer and on the day-to-day basis, I had no idea how it was doing. I generally kept up with my merchandise as it moved through the site, but in the past few weeks I'd been so busy trying to finish up the next album that I was more or less in the dark about that too. I'd noticed the number of people who followed me on Instagram and Twitter shoot up quickly, but those numbers didn't translate into sales. Not usually. Now Xavier was telling me something different and I needed a minute to wrap my mind around all of this.
Xavier paused and gave me a knowing look. "Am I going too fast for you?"
I shook my head then nodded. "Yes. No."
Laughing, he pushed back in the chair and stood up. "Come on, let's take a walk while I explain what's happening right now. Maybe the fresh air will do you some good."
In no position to argue, I followed him down the hallway and into the lobby where Lonnie was stretched out on the couch reading a book. Xavier told him what we were going to do and he joined us on the sidewalk, leaving a few feet in between us as my brother and I walked along the neighborhood of stores that made of surrounded Rhythm & Rainbows.
We walked down to the coffee shop on the corner and grabbed drinks, Lonnie following behind us at a safe distance.
While rapping had always been my dream, the business of it was a family affair. Not only did my mother run my website and manage the inventory of my shop, my brother was manager, and my father was my accountant. Everyone that that had a hand in what I was doing—outside of Cyndi and Lonnie— was blood. I didn't want it any other way.
"This is what we've been waiting on, No."
"You know that I know."
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. "Then why do I feel like you aren't as excited as you should be? This is huge!"
Sighing, I shook my head. "You're not seeing the bigger picture, that's why. Of course this is huge, but it also feels…" I drifted off, knowing that he wouldn't like what I had to say next.
"Feels..?" Xavier stopped and turned to face me. "What is it?"
Thumbing my nose, I took a sip of my iced Chai to buy me some time, wishing I'd smoked before we had this conversation. "This feels kind of bittersweet, Zay."
His eyes ballooned comically. "Bittersweet?! You wildin'!"
Yeah, I really wished I'd smoked earlier. At least I'd be chill and not feel like I had to go in to prove a fucking point. As it were, I blew up on him.
"I'm wildin'? Did you forget that I've been doing this since high school? I've been trying to get on since fucking high school! For twelve years I've been putting my blood, sweat, and tears into this shit, trying to get it to pop off and it's been slower than a motherfucker—word to my nigga molasses. Come on, Zay. You've been right here in the trenches with me, up on the late nights, selling CDs at King Flea Market when we were damn near babies, and graduating to all of the buy Black marketplaces when they shut King down to build high-rises and a light rail. The mall concerts; the showcases; the random cyphers, all of that, just to get on—to get somebody to notice me. And now, two years after I've finally started to profit enough from shows to where I could quit my day job and do this full time, now somebody big gives me a head nod and I get to 'blow up'? Yeah, Zay, this shit feels bittersweet."
Wordlessly, he stared at me and I rolled my eyes, ready to walk away from him and head back to the studio to finish writing the song I'd been working on. "What, fool?"
Snapping out of his trance, he grinned that sheepish grin he liked to use when I realized he'd fucked up and wanted to be forgiven, and tossed an arm around my neck, hugging me to his side. "You ain't have to give me a history lesson, No. I remember all of that shit, vividly."
I shoved his ass away from me, ignoring his laughter. "Nah, your ass needed that reminder. I'm not wildin' for wishing the recognition had come at the beginning of my journey."
"You're right. I'm sorry for insinuating that."
His easy acquiesce came too quickly, making me narrow my eyes at him in suspicion. "Why do I feel like there's a but coming?"
He tossed his head back and laughed, the always infectious sound making me smile even though I didn't want to. "Because you know me. Look, No. Your feelings are valid, but consider this: if you had gotten this same nod from Plus ten or twelve—or hell, even five—years ago, would it still hit the same? Your rhymes have always packed heat, but these past couple of years your flow has evolved. Yeah, you might have wanted it back then, but now? Now, you truly deserve that shit. Mama always says that everything happens for a reason. Maybe you were meant to build the foundation of your career before any outside hands touched it so that you could always remain true to yourself."
This time, I was the one staring. Xavier was the one person who could be silly as hell one minute and then turn around with a straight face and speak wisdom directly to my fears and shake that shit up. It was scary sometimes.
"You own all of your music; you own your house; you own your truck; you own the fucking studio, Xeno. Now, when all of the things you've hoped for begin to fall into place, you can stand firm in the fact that it's legit and not smoke and mirrors or a scam to throw a few dollars at you. You won't fall for that shit because your foundation is already built. Your name is known in Houston—you and I know that, if it had to be, that could be more than enough. Shit, you've made a million outta Harris county alone! And that's in the past five years. That's two hundred k a year, my nigga. Who's out here making two hundred thousand a year that isn't in the medical field?"
He was making a mad amount of sense, but still—
"That's not enough, Zay. That's pennies."
"Pennies?!" He took off down the sidewalk, only to spin on his heel and come right back to me. "Now you really wildin'!"
"Nah, you're just not being logical. Stop thinking small-minded. One million is two houses and Lonnie's salary for a year and half—two years if I pay him less." I heard a loud snort and craned my neck to see Lonnie staring at us with a crazy look on his face. "It's hypothetical, man. You know damn well that I'm not touching your money unless I'm increasing it." When he gave a single chin dip, I turned back to my brother who had started laughing. "Okay, so with that one mil I have a house, and Mama and Daddy have house, but now what? I'm back broke. I'm house poor. That's pennies. I want wealth, something I can leave to my kids."
A sly grin took over his face and I sighed deeply. I swear Xavier could jump from subject to subject without check for incoming traffic. "Oh, kids, huh?"
Trying and failing not to burst out laughing at his inflection, I started back down the sidewalk in the direction of the studio. "Here you go."
Jogging to catch up with me, he nudged me in the shoulder. "Nah, here you go. One date with a baddie and you're out here talking about kids? Wait 'til Mama and Daddy hear this."