Mike Black
My dinner meeting with Meka Brazil turned into dinner with Meka and Wanda. When Meka mentioned that she was meeting me for dinner, Wanda invited herself to join us; which turned out to be a good thing ’cause she told me that State Senator Martin Marshall was having a fundraiser that night, and Mr. Marshall was somebody I needed to have a conversation with.
Wanda’s presence at dinner with Meka did put an entirely different spin on the night. Especially when Meka looked at her watch and announced she was late for that evening’s conference call. She immediately slapped her Bluetooth on her ear, started punching numbers on her Blackberry, apologized and ran out of there.
Wanda turned to me. “That’s gonna be you one day.”
“No. It’s not. I can’t ever imagine a time when I’ll become as attached to that thing as she is. I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t like bein’ that accessible.”
“You’re already accessible. You’re on Kevon’s phone more than he is,” Wanda said.
“That’s because you, Meka, and now Bobby call me all the time to talk about what we just talked about at the meeting.”
“Which reminds me, how did your meeting go with P Harlem?”
“How does any meetin’ with P go? P talked, we listened.”
Paul ‘P Harlem’ Roberts is one of the two major rapper clients that Wanda represents. The other is The One. His real name is Earl, real nice guy. Get that nigga a bag of weed and some pussy and he’s a happy man. But not P. Don’t get me wrong, he’s all for pussy and weed. P is words, P is conscience, P is anger. That’s what his music is all about. But he’s real about it, so he says what he thinks. Sometimes it gets him in trouble.
There was an incident at strip club in Atlanta, P was there with his whole set and they’re droppin’ paper like its water. Some young gangster comes in, sees P, and gets the DJ to put him on the mike. When he gets done, he comes over to P and says, “What you think?”
P says, “Somebody got to explain to me why they even let you near the mike with that weak shit,” and turns his back on the little gangster.
Shots were fired and the little gangster ends up dead. P was arrested but the case was thrown out. There were no witnesses. People could definitely say that P was there that night, but nobody saw him with a gun. “But that ain’t his problem this time.”
“What is it now?”
“He won some award, so at the show P gets up and says he’d like to thank his record company, ‘But I can’t ’cause they robbed me blind. These bitches want me to sing and dance, but they want me to do it for free.’ Now they won’t re-sign him.”
“I know all about it. But that’s not why they don’t want to sign him,” Wanda said.
“Why not?”
“There’s only so much of a market for what Paul does. They told him if he started callin’ women bitches and hoes that he’d sell more records.”
“What about them robbin’ him blind? Isn’t that, like, our job to see that they don’t rob him blind?”
“All legitimate expenses incurred by Paul. The contract allowed them to subtract tour expenses from his royalties.”
“I understand now. But don’t you usually send somebody on tour with them to keep shit like this from happening?”
“I did. I sent Webster Houston.”
“What happened?”
“He said he was seduced by the dark side of the force,” Wanda said and shook her head.
“P turned him out?”
“Something about how orgies and room service go together.” Wanda looked disgusted. “So what did he want?”
“He just wanted to vent.” Actually he wanted me to kill some A amp;R guy at the record company for disrespecting him. I told him that I wouldn’t kill him, but he should expect an apology.
But Wanda didn’t need to know about all that.
I’ve been making a real effort to keep her away from that side of things. I’ve been thinking that it’s not a good idea for her to be the managing partner of our legitimate businesses and be advising a criminal organization. Better she stick to business.
What surprised me is how Bobby has gotten into the whole legit thing. Bobby always has looked at things a little differently from the rest of us. So he asks Meka a lot of questions-makes her explain shit. I don’t think she likes Bobby. But he gets me to see things in ways that I hadn’t considered.