....there was a lot of talk and very little action. We had great ideas. Big dreams, huge aspirations, as they say. There was a murky vision but no plan whatsoever as to how to execute anything. I had a small catalogue of five-year-old Hip-Hop and Techno tracks, a demo version of the Fruity Loops music program (which was taking up an incredulous amount of space on my six-year-old desktop dinosaur hard drive), and a new friend who'd completely blown my hair back the week before, singing karaoke at Soho's. She had made her decision--she wanted to pursue a career as a professional singer...and she wanted my help.
It had been fifteen years since I had anything to do with the business of music, aside from memberships to a couple free loop sites and a Myspace artist page to commemorate a rap CD I'd done in '98. I had a few page views and a comment or two. A stray fan or three from my short 90's stint as an MC said they were happy to see me making a "comeback", even referred to me as an underground Hip-Hop "legend". That was certainly refutable but enough to fuel a small creative fire in me that'd never really burned out.
It began on an evening while working at The Cannon Brew Pub, two and a half years ago. I was closing down the kitchen line for the night when a co-worker handed me her cell phone. "Here, somebody wants to talk to you."
I tucked the phone under my ear and continued fishing burnt fries and sweet potato sunspots from the cooling fryer grease. "Yeah?"
"Hey, this is Nesrin," the voice said. "Somebody told me you do music. Like, you know about the business of it. And I just wondered if I could ask you some questions 'cause I'm trying to make a decision, here." We were mildly acquainted at the time, had seen each other around town, hung out with mutual friends, and so I listened carefully to a barrage of inquiries about how to break into the business as a singer, how one gets paid, the likelyhood of 'making it big', and whether she should relocate to someplace more profitable like New York or L.A.
I'm not sure if what I said could've possibly influenced her to leave the security of a management career, or the potential upper-five-figures (perhaps more) she could garner with her recent business marketing degree. For when she told me she was teetering between seeking a job at National Geographic and the Lotto odds of becoming the next Alicia Keys I said, quite pointedly, "Stay as far away from the music business as you can get. Light years. Put light years between yourself and every A&R rep on the planet. Go for the NatGeo gig and never look back."
Over the next couple months the idea waned, but our friendship hadn't. The music prospect quickly took a back seat to other situations such as lost love, long-distance relationships, my college graduation, and her finding a new living situation. The week before she moved out of her apartment I showed up to use the washing machine, and it looked as though a tornado blasted through the living room--she hadn't yet begun to pack, mind you. It was a thousand sheets of paper, strewn about the sofa, the dining table, the end tables, the floor, the book shelves, the desk. I took one up and looked it over. Song lyrics.
"Couldn't sleep last night," she confessed, a little embarassed. "So, I was writing." She snatched the page from my hand and muttered something about it not being finished and that she never shows her writings to anyone. Ever.
"Well, when are you ever let me hear you sing this stuff?" I asked.
"Dunno," she shrugged. "I'm not ready yet. Maybe one day."
It took another two months to coax her to sing for me. I had since undertaken a production project with a local MC who dragged me out of retirement, and my creative energy was surging again. I had brand new sample packs downloaded into Fruity Loops, hundreds of sounds and loops and effects to choose from. My girlfriend was back home in Japan for a while, and so I was up most nights, splicing and chopping and tweaking new tracks into existence for Roman Flux. My theory was: I'll make the tracks, hand them over, send him on his way to write/record his lyrics, and if the bolt of lightening called success ever strikes him, he can pay me on the back end. If not, then I had fun with the creative process, and I'll see what I can do with a literature degree. Nesrin's hesitance in giving me a reason to extend my musical services wasn't doing much to change that thinking. Then she invited me out with her to Soho's.
I was beyond nervous for her. In fact, I was secretly, prematurely embarassed for her. The place was packed--Monday night karaoke. I'd caught her humming along to something soulful at The Tap several weeks prior while we waited for our drinks at the bar, and it was enough to tell me she could at least carry a tune...under her breath...muttering absently to a song playing at a hundred thousand decibels. Singing solo to a much more rehearsed, much more successful, and infinitely more seasoned entertainer's song was a whole different animal. And if she couldn't pull it off satisfactorily, then what? What do I say? What expression do I conjure on my face? How do I explain that there's no time in my life as an underpaid line cook to produce tracks for an inadequate wanna-be singer with zero vocal technique, who could quite possibly be tone deaf, and who might not even know it? Then, how do I change the subject and never return to it again?
They called her name, and she took the stage--she would sing Lauryn Hill's version of "Killing Me Softly". Oh, brother. I sipped my amaretto sour and lit a cigarette.
But by the end of the first verse, I was transfixed. I wandered away from my bartop table and drifted closer to the stage, so pleasantly surprised and bemused that my mouth had run dry from hanging open in a silly grimace. When she was finished, the crowd exploded with appreciation. It took her ten minutes to get back to our seat as people stopped her every three feet with a compliment or a moment of conversation. When she was within arm's reach I gave her the biggest, warmest bear hug I could muster. This girl was the whole package, a producer's dream, with a soulful raspy voice likening that of Lauryn Hill herself, or Amy Ray, or Billie Holiday, perhaps. That was it. She would be my secret weapon, and visa-versa--to look at me, few people imagined I made Hip-Hop and RnB tracks. I suppose I look more like grocery store jingles or bad country and western. But I knew precisely what to do for a voice like Nesrin's. And we needed to get started as soon as possible.
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