Jrnl Entry No. 6.17.2004

So, I’m still stuck here not knowing what to fuck to do with myself. I had an interview the other day but I don’t think anything is gonna become of it. I actually interviewed with the company last year and they didn’t hire me. The guy went through the interview with me rather quickly. I got there late because there was a problem with the trains. I got to the train station at 8:20 A.M. and the train didn’t arrive until 8:55 A.M. and the interview was at 9 A.M. I called and let him know there was trouble with the train but that is a common excuse around New York City and employers probably think it is bullshit unless they actually call and check the train line themselves. I wrote him in my thank you letter that since this is the second time he has called me in to interview within a year, I’d be willing to work for him on a trial basis for a reasonable rate; however, I don’t think he is trying to hear it. They probably don’t have any blacks on the accounting team.

I have this little business plan that I wrote for a record label to put out my own albums but I don’t have a team to help me with the shit. I don’t know if I can get anybody to come on board to help me, being that I don’t think I am the illest rapper alive, and I don’t know how somebody else will feel about my skill. If they don’t believe in the product, they are not gonna work hard to promote it. I’ve applied for a few assistant manager jobs online and haven’t heard anything. I put out applications a few months ago and haven’t heard anything. I’m not having any luck. My daughter is here in New York with me. I can’t buy her shit or take her anywhere. I feel like my car is about to break down any day now because the alternator belt is squeaking. 

Watrina has bought her a new 2001 Ford Explorer to put more of a dent into her income. I’m trying to get to the studio to start recording my album but I have no money for that. I’m just stuck right now and everybody is looking at me like “what you gon’ do” Even Watrina, though she is trying to be so cool about it, is looking at me to do something. I don’t know what to do. Like I said, I’m applying for accounting jobs and getting nothing; I’m applying for part time jobs and also getting nothing; I’m doing what I know how to do and nothing is coming my way. I’m hoping that I hit the mega 
millions lottery. Watrina, who never plays the lottery has even started buying Mega Millions Lotto tickets so I know something is wrong.

All this week, I’ve done nothing but come home from running and sleep all day. I think I’m missing a nutrient that I need for energy being that I cut rice, pasta and potatoes out of my diet. I’m trying to maintain my weight and young looks. I guess it’s working because last week at the Costco grocery store, this gay guy saw my bran on my arm and asked me when I was going to graduate from college and that I looked 19. I told him I’m goin on — and he didn’t believe me. I’m gonna try to use that to my advantage in the next ten years with this music shit being a rapper on my label. The only problem I have with that is I have out grown the baggy pants and big shirts dress code. I don’t want to dress like that anymore. I guess maybe I could try to set a new trend amongst the young. But even Jay Z said “Crisp pair of jeans, nigga button up” and the younger kids still wear baggy jeans and ridiculously over-sized T-Shirts. Even still, I think the young kids like him.

All I got left after this accounting shit, that seems to be coming to an end, is this rapper/label dream. I thought about going back to school, but I’m only doing that if I get another accounting job. I’m not about to put myself in major debt and I ain’t even working in my field. How can I increase my status as an accountant and increase my salary when I don’t have a job to begin with. Watrina wants me to look for a sample room for her but she doesn’t understand that I am not interested in it. She needs to get a college student to do that shit. All I can help with is marketing and promotion ideas and accounting, and maybe fashion shows in some way; anything else, she is gonna have to probably find someone else to do it.

I’m bored as shit. I’m also tired of wishing I had a different life of parties and events to attend and many friends, genuine or fake. Right now, no one calls me. I have nowhere to go on the weekends unless I just go somewhere and find a few people that I do hang out with. Other than that, no one thinks two shits about me. I don’t have a cell phone readily accessible and maybe that is why no one contacts me. I’m a social nobody, which is why sometimes I go a few weeks without going out because when I do go out no one knows me or cares to know me. I thought about trying to change that by just talking to people but I tried that once before and it really didn’t lead to any significant change in my social life, just a few people to say hello to when I see them out, but not really anyone inviting me to any hype parties or anyone helping me get on as a music producer.

I haven’t been really trying to network about my music since the winter time. I’m just not the one to be playing myself calling mutha fuckaz who seem like they ain’t interested in my calls. Everybody say that everybody else is busy so you have to keep calling, but it just ain’t me. I try to change my attitude about it but I always revert back to my pride and don’t call. In some ways I think that attitude is holding me back in accomplishing my dreams. I’m not out there enough, meeting enough people and calling and networking with enough people. So I don’t know. I feel that little by little, this dream of mine is diminishing. After it is gone, there will be nothing to live for especially if I don’t have a nice job in accounting. I can’t live up under Watrina forever. It’s been cool for the last year but to be like this forever is not the move. She says I just need a job to help pay the electric bill. Hell, I need more income than that in my life. I’m trying to stay sane. I guess it is not hard staying sane because I don’t have a lot of friends encouraging me to do anything stupid like sell drugs, rob a bank, or smoke drugs. I smoked some weed when I was in Ohio with Tracey because, “Why not,” I ain’t working, no one wants to drug test me and no one probably will want to drug test me because no one is gonna want to hire me. I guess sleeping during the day is my drug. I’m just lazing around wasting time. I wish I could be out making business moves but I don’t know how. I don’t know the first move to make. I got my rendition of a business plan, now what? 

Like I was watching the Wayans on Oprah, and I was wondering about how they got started, what was the first move they made. They developed movie and comedy ideas, but what did they do after they had the initial ideas, where did they take them to. That is my cross road. I have the product, now what, 
where do I take it to. I tried networking in the clubs with my beats but that brought me nothing. I don’t know where to go, who to call. No matter how hard I think, I come up with ZERO! This is my life, I guess that is living if you can think about what move to make, you have something on your mind driving your brain power, that is living I guess. I wish I could live differently, but if nothing different comes along soon, I guess I will keep on living. Fuck it.

Jrnl Entry No. 2.10.2000

I do not like a woman who is not ambitious and adventurous. Why do I say this you wonder, just out the blue huh? Well last night I was talking to Rhonda on the phone and she was talking about coming to see me in like April, and she was talking about how I would still be working. She said she wouldn’t go anywhere by herself even if I gave her directions because she is a woman, and I guess women aren’t strong enough to find their way out on their own for the first time in NYC by themselves. That right there told me that she and N.Y. would not get along because she would be afraid to move anywhere. I already got a feeling that she thinks she is too clean to ride the train. So I gues that ends my thoughts of being with her soon.

I have sort of come to the conclusion that I should leave Ohio in Ohio and start a new New York life on a search for a New York wife. I feel that I love Sausha and could live with her, but bringing her three kidz and her to New York will not work out especially how I’m tryin’ to live. I want us to work and not depend on the system for anything. She is used to depending on the system. She works from time to time, and at times she doesn’t work because she knows that she has the system there to back her up. Really she needs the system to back her up with three kidz and no father present. I don’t think she would ever be able to make it here in N.Y. unless she worked two, three jobs and was tired and frustrated all the time. I don’t want my life to be that way. So I think I am going to tell her that I live her, but her moving here would be a big burden on my shoulders that I am not trying to carry right now.

I’ll probably keep talking to Rhonda to see what she wants to do, which will probably be nothing. I know for a fact that once she actually sees this place, she will never be willing to move her and her daughter here. And I think that Rhonda and I have known each other too long and feel that we can say anything to each other, get smart with each other and that is O.K. Like last night I asked her did she have the Genuine CD, and she said, “no, should I?” Now I was saying to myself that smart remark was totally uncalled for. Her and I talk cool when we are not really tryin’ to get together. I guess it’s only meant for us to be friends. I mean I’ve had her clothes off three times in my lifetime and my dick didn’t get hard either time. Yeah, I’ll just take my time with her, and I’m gonna tell Sausha that I want to take my time with her also, and which ever works out works out. If neither works out that will be fine also.

I will keep my eyes open on the New York Streets for something beautiful coming my way. I was going to go to this talent show at this college to try and meet a girl. But I said forget it because like I’ve said before, it’s time to move from the twenty one to twenty three year olds and move toward the twenty six to twenty eight year olds; a sexy young beautiful thang my age; a real woman, doing real things you know.

I’m seriously thinking about just taking Sausha in. I can’t stop thinking about her. At this point in our lives we would probably get along the best. Maybe I should sacrifice being selfish for what I want and really give her the push that she needs to be the woman that she wants to be. I know she is willing to work. She is not gonna leave me hangin’ takin care of her kidz. She tries to satisfy me. I can tell that someone like Rhonda will have attitudes sometimes and be like fuck me. I don’t think she will let me fuck half the time that I want to. Like she said on the phone one day, she ain’t gonna be lettin’ no man abuse her body. And I think that she is already set in her ways and got things she won’t do. See with Sausha she will be getting set in her ways with me, not without me.

Rhonda is set in her ways without me. She will have to learn to satisfy me, and from her attitude just by talkin’ to her, she doesn’t seem too concerned with learning to satisfy a man. She is playing hard like she doesn’t care about a man right now. I mean after I told her that I think about her a lot, and that I would like to try and work on a relationship with her, she really gave me no response. She hasn’t been thinkin’ about me. She’s tryin’ to be all cool like “if it’s meant to be, it will be.” I don’t think Rhonda will ever get to the point of loving me like I want a woman to love me. She has probably been through it all with Parker, and now she is hardcore. This nigga had kidz while she was still with him, and bitches knockin’ at his door while she was there. So now she has a hard heart. I ain’t got time to be tryin’ to soften her heart.

You know really, I don’t know what I want to do. That is what I will tell Sausha is that I don’t know what to do. I just can’t rush into her and the kidz moving here and how we are gonna make it together. She should understand that; after all, they ain’t my kidz.

It’s the next day and I went to the talent show at Adelphi University in Long Island. There are a lot of good looking girls at Adelphi. I met up with Silvia, a girl I met there once before. She called me once but never again because she says she lost my number. I told her she stopped calling because I told her I had a daughter. She seems like she would be a lot of fun. She likes to dance. Every time I looked she was on the dance floor. She is also beautiful, to me that is. You know many people have many versions of what beautiful is. She is thick like I like. There is one problem with thickness; thickness can never have a kid because it is already on the verge of fat, and a baby will just blow that verge to being light weigh obese, and I can’t deal with obesity.

I also met this girl who says she is about to graduate and is going to graduate school because she wants to make six figures. I hope she is getting some job experience to go with all these degrees that she is trying to get. It is a whole different world out here than anyone can imagine. I’m finding that out now that I am living on my own. Maybe with an MBA in hand, she can make six figures. I don’t really like her, but I think it will be nice to talk to someone who has some real traditional plans for success not dreams like I have, and dreams like Latonia has of becoming a famous choreographer.

Today I’m going to get a view of Big Pun’s body in the Bronx. He had madd skills like an MC is supposed to. I liked him. He had a very good first album that sold platinum. His new album will probably be on some bullshit because the whole Hip Hop world is on some bullshit now tryin’ to sell a bunch of records. White people control the world, and they are controlling the Hip Hop world as well. Maybe this is not the case but I know the Hip Hop I’ve been hearing lately is not impressing me.

Swiss Beats is a good producer, but he is staying within a niche, which I hate it when producers do that; the same with DJ Premier. Everybody thinks he is like the Hip Hop producer God. He uses the same formula for everyone’s songs that he do. Sample a noise two, three times and flip the sample back and forth in a musical way over a hardcore beat. I applaud Swiss Beats for being original, be he really is not being original because it sounds like each new song is a sample of the last one.

MCs are watering down their lyrics like DMX, screaming and hollering about the same ole shit. Jay Z just free styles on the mic and he sounds like it. I’ve said it before that his first album was the best lyrically; classic lyrics! He sales two million right out the box so he doesn’t care anymore, and got the nerve to be sayin’ on some song I heard that he is still hungry. Pharoah Monch, now that is a hungry MC. He gets second runner up for best album of the year, The Roots get first both for their album and the live album.

Big Pun’s first album was a great of all time; not because he is dead, or because it went platinum, but simply because it just was. It was a real Hip Hop album mixed with a little bit of mass appeal, but not enough to distort it. For example: Busta Rhymes album “Extinction Level Event”. At the first listen I was sick with all the songs he had on it to try and grab mass appeal. He had all those bounce and party songs on it, and Bone Thugs and Harmony rap alike songs, I didn’t want to hear it again. One bounce song I can do with, but he had two or three too many. And for what? The album only sold as much as the one with “Put Your Handz Where My Eyes Can See” did, which had no bounce songs on it.

I seen Darren Lighty’s name on a song of Will Smith’s album with Kay Gee of Naughty By Nature. My frat brother says he lives next door to him. Darren could be my key to becoming a producer for real. But I bet you Cultcher is just gonna bullshit me. He probably will never talk to Darren and give him that tape I sent him, and that is even if does live next door to him. I’ll see.

Living here for seven months, I’ve discovered that New York is bullshit. You can never make enough money in this bitch. Your car gets all scratched up on the street somehow. I’m accumulating scratches little by little. You can’t drive anywhere during the day because of traffic and cabs and shit. Any outing that you may want to partake in is gonna cost you thirty to forty dollars. The bitches are bullshit: either they got a boyfriend, they scared to get to know you, or they just ignore you when you try and talk to them. They are nice to look at, but they won’t even let you get close enough in trying to get to know them to kiss em let alone fuck. Most black women in the city are busted, wearing weave thinkin’ they are cute when all they really got is a big ass and maybe tidies to go with it. But yet in still, I can’t return back to Warren, OH. If I move to Atlanta that will be too far away from my daughter. I want to maintain a relationship with her. Hell, her mom may move in a couple of years. I’ll wait and see.

I’m too timid to talk to people when I see em about me being a producer. I got to break myself from that and just start kickin’ it to whoever when I get the opportunity. I had the opportunity to talk to Biz, Lord Finesse, Grand Puba, Red Alert, U-God, Kool Keith, Big Kap; and I didn’t take advantage of none of those opportunities.

I really don’t know what I am going to do about a woman, about my money situation, about my music. I’m not confused on these subjects. It’s just that things aren’t going the way, even half the way I planned them. Then again, I didn’t plan anything really. I just moved hoping something would fall into place. Thing haven’t fallen into place, nor are about to fall apart, but the thread is coming out of the seam.