Tag: Timberlands

Jrnl Entry 9.13.2000 “MY HIP HIP STORY” PART VIII

Yeah, I live in New York now and have been here for a year. That feeling I used to have when I’d visit of walking around blending in as a New Yorker with Timberlands on and baggy jeans caused me to move here. I am finally here now, and it’s not feeling good at all. My plan was to move here, find me a couple of women to chill with, and make moves in the music industry. What actually happened when I got here was that I wasn’t able to meet any women, none! I thought I could maybe meet people out shopping or something, in a nice lounge bar, but it’s not like that here. Come to think about it, I don’t think it’s like that anywhere. When I was going out in Cleveland, I never picked up any women. I guess women don’t talk to you if they don’t know you or know of you, or someone that they know knows you. “I know I look good so it couldn’t be my looks.” (Ed O.G.) When Ed O.G. made that song “Gotta Have Money To Make It Witt The Ladies In The 90’s” He was telling the truth for the 90’s and beyond because it’s year 2000 and the same applies. If you don’t have a fly ride or are not a celebrity in New York and don’t know nobody, you are doomed.

I’m here trying to accomplish my dream of getting into Hip Hop, but with no women and no friends, it’s getting hard. I’ve talked to at least 100 girls in the last year, more than I’ve probably ever talked to in life, and didn’t strike anything with any of them. I talked to about 5 over the phone and nothing became of them. It’s ridiculous that there are millions of people walking around in this city and you can’t talk to anyone, at least not on a meeting and get to know on a relationship level. New York has some of the finest women of all races walking around, but you go and speak to them and it’s like “why are you saying something to me?” Even if you are polite, you still get dissed. Right now as I am writing this, I am depressed and don’t know what I am going to do. I don’t even like being outside in the city. I feel like it’s just me here and the rest of the outside world I’m seeing through a sound proof glass.

I went out last weekend with Burton who came to New York from Ohio. I talked to a really nice young lady by the name of Michelle at the Club Two Eyes We exchanged numbers and she gave me the wrong number. I talked to about four other girls that night and gave them my number and no one has called. Women here don’t give out their phone number like I can get to em’ and kill em’ through the phone. I told Michelle, if after calling a couple times and I see that you are not interested, I will not call anymore because I don’t have time for that. I told her I was a mature young man looking for a mature young lady, out of college or stable in her life. She told me she was in graduate school. I asked if we could get to know each other? She said yeah and we exchanged numbers. I called her Sunday night, and she gave me the wrong number. It just gets me down that I can introduce myself to a woman that I like, talk to her for a moment, and then she gives me the wrong number. I’m at the point now where I’m telling myself that I will not introduce myself to anymore women in this city.

I haven’t made any connections in the Hip Hop world neither. I ‘m kind of confused as to what type of Hip Hop I should be making. Underground artist such as Mos Def and Slum Village, who both have dope albums, they don’t sell. I want this music to be my living, and a good living. How am I supposed to live producing songs on albums that don’t sell to provide me with that living? The tracks being produced out on the mainstream, I don’t like half of them. I just try and make funky music. It must not be funky enough because out of like 25 tapes that I’ve submitted in person to rappers such as Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Talib Kweli of Black Starr and Reflection Eternal, and Rampage of the Flip Mode Squad, I have gotten no calls. I gave a tape to Black Rob’s brother and he gave me no call. I gave a tape to this kid named Poo Cabroxi, he called me and wanted two tracks on the tape. After I gave him the two tracks on a separate tape, he never called me again. He was telling me that I was gonna be recordin’ the songs in Daddy’s House Studios because his boy who wanted the songs was signed to Bad Boy Entertainment.

I sent a tape to my cousin who used to work for Motown. She is in Atlanta now. She didn’t respond. I cursed her out for not responding to me to tell me anything. She talked to me like she was some big A&R, not my cousin. She said since I cursed her out, she cannot help me. And she was working in the same office building as the Organized Noise producers who produced Outkast. She never introduced me to no one, so I said fuck her. I also know a guy who is down with DJ Clue. He is one of my good friend’s cousin by the name of Windexter. He was on the inside cover of Clue’s first mix tape on a major label. He grew up with Clue’s manager Richie. Every time I call this guy, he is never home. Or when I do talk to him, he never seems to have time to hang out, not even as a friend, which was my initial plan anyway because I thought he was a cool cat. I asked him to introduce me to Richie one time. He told me to call him one Saturday so he could listen to my tape, but he wasn’t home when I called. I even told him that if I get paid, I’d pay him, but he still hasn’t responded to me.

So I’m just here and I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do with my life. I’m not gonna quit yet. I’m just feeling really down. So what started out as a bud in 84/85 lead me here to New York City feeling kind of depressed in the year 2000. I expected the rejection in the music industry, but the rejection from these women, I didn’t expect, and I am not handling it so well. But hopefully with time things will get better. I feel I want this music Hip Hop dream so bad, that I’m willing to go through all this because anywhere else I’ll have nothing to chase but a corporate ladder, which I don’t feel like chasing right now. I have a feeling that chasing that ladder will probably take me further in life than this Hip Hop dream, but what can I say. I want Hip Hop to be my life, not accounting in a corporation and definitely not in an accounting firm. It’s providing me with a means to live, but it’s not in my heart, HIP HOP IS!

Jrnl Entry No. 9.13.2000 “MY HIP HOP STORY” PART VI

When my friends and I would drive to New York we’d spend like half the day on 125th, and the other half at The Fulton Mall. We didn’t even spend the night in the city because we thought hotels were too much, and plus we didn’t know anywhere else to go anyway, no clubs or nothing like that. One time my friend Burton and I went for New Years. I think it was New Years 1993. We got a $40 room on 125th Street. One of those places with the bathroom down the hall. Except for the bathroom situation, it was a pretty comfortable room, nice and warm. The heat was kickin’ so, we had to open the window to survive.

We got there on a Friday night and New Years Eve was that Saturday night. Late in the night, I went walking around 125th and the surrounding area. He didn’t come with me because either he was scared or cold, or tired. I had had a forty of OE and I was wired, not tryin’ to go to sleep. I just walked around. It felt good to me to walk around the streets of New York City. I was fly too. Come to think about it, I could have gotten robbed. I had on some $80 Brand X Girbaud Jeans, some black chuckers Timberlands, a red black and white long sleeve Tommy Hilfiger shirt, and a green and blue check goose down Nautica coat, with a green and black hat with the flaps over the ears to match the coat. I ran into some Spanish kids and we were talking. They asked me if I liked Hip Hop, and of course I said yeah. I told them I was from Ohio, etc. At about 3 A.M. that night, I returned back to the room and went to sleep. We got up that morning and took our bath in the bathroom down the hall. It was disgusting, but hey, a nigga had to wash his ass you know that.

He had an appointment to get his dreads done at a shop in Brooklyn on Vanderbuilt called Tendrils. We found our way there. We were talking with the lady who was doing his hair, asking her where was a mall, like the ones we have at home? While doing his hair, she told us to drive straight up Flatbush Ave for about 45 Mins to an hour and we would run into a mall on the left hand side. We had heard on the radio about this bomb concert that we definitely were attending later that night. It was A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and The Souls of Mischief. We loved all of those groups, especially The Souls with their debut album. The way they flipped rhymes on that album was incredible to us. So after his hair was finished, we went driving down Flatbush and we ran into the mall. Just as I was about to run left, a car came along and scrapped against mine. DAMN!

So this guy gets out his car talkin’ loud, saying for me to give him $300 or something, or he hopes that I have insurance or I was going to jail that night. I got back into my car because it was cold, and the talk of jail scared me. I was stretching down toward the floor, and he thought I was reaching for a gun. He started saying that he had one too. I think my car was still running. I just put it in drive and made a break for it, I WASN’T GOING TO JAIL! FUCK THAT! So it was on. He ran back to his car and started chasing us. Burton was in the car calm and cool saying, “why are you doin’ this, we goin’ to jail, we goin’ to jail.”

In the chase, I slid and hit the back of a parked car. I backed out of that, and then on my next speedy turn in the snow, I ran off the road and hit a brick wall. I backed out of that, and the guy got out of his car and started running toward my car. Burton said he had a nine cocked to the side ready to fire, but he didn’t shoot. I was driving off and I guess he just gave up and stood back there outside his car.

I went and parked my car in a parking lot, and got out and hid for a moment to calm down. After about 15 to 30 minutes we got back into the car and started driving trying to decide if we should attempt to go back into Manhattan to try and go to that concert. We came up with all kind of crazy country shit that probably wouldn’t have happened. Like we were thinking there would be cops at the Brooklyn Bridge waiting to see if we tried to get on or off the bridge. And we were also thinking that maybe a cop would spot my car in Manhattan while parked and at the concert, and when we we’d get back in the car they’d surround us and arrest us.

We decided not to take the chance and that we should head back home, but the problem was, how did we get back to route 80 from Brooklyn? See, we usually headed straight down Amsterdam from 125th St and drove to like 178th and see a sign that said George Washington Bridge, hit 95 South, which turned into 80 and go home.  We just started driving and somehow we got back to 80. I still don’t know how we did to this day. We passed the Science Center and seen that statue of the guy with the world on his back where Tribe and De La shot the video for “Award Tour.” I live here in New York now, and that is on the Grand Central Parkway. To get from the Grand Central Parkway to 80, you have to cross the Tri-Boro Bridge which cost you $3.50, and I don’t remember paying to go across it. I don’t remember crossing the Queens Boro Bridge neither, so I don’t know how we got back on the road to get to Ohio but we did; made it back like right around 12 or 1 A.M. just as the New Year was coming in.

When we got back, I told my mom that someone hit the car while it was parked on the street at the hotel we stayed at.