“Mama, no one’s coming to Tuscaloosa. Believe me,” I said. “Look, I’ll come home soon. I just need to do what I’m doing here ... whatever it is. And then I’ll come home. I promise.” I expected my mother to argue, but she didn’t. I guessed she just heard the finality in my voice and accepted my position. It was the strongest I’d ever felt in her presence. “I love you, Mama,” I said. “And I’m sorry about everything that happened.”
“I love you, too,” she said, resigned. “And I’m sorry ... about what happened.”
The studio Dame was always working at was more like a glamorized hut with shoddy music equipment. I hadn’t seen nearly as many studios as Dame, but even I could see this when I arrived there after the long phone call with my mother. The place was mediocre at best, and it made me wonder why Dame would really travel so far from the comfort and familiarity of the choice of studios he had in the States for this. It didn’t make sense. Maybe the gossip was true. The room, which was just a few feet larger than a standard-sized bedroom back home, was at the back of a single-story building that looked like it used to be a community center.
When I walked in, I saw dozens of women, dressed in skintight spandex and outdated club gear, all beautiful and clearly awaiting one of the men in the studio. I recognized some of their faces from the hotel lobby and while I tried to smile, few returned my glance long enough for any communication, leading me to understand that the man they were waiting for was Dame. They clicked their tongues and I was sure what they were sharing wasn’t far from the disdain the women in Atlanta expressed in my presence. These were different faces with the same goal. This made me feel both powerful and jealous at the same time. I was powerful because, as Naima said at the hotel, I had Dame’s eyes, but jealous because as I looked at these women, I wondered just how long I could keep his eyes. I was almost fifteen years older than many of these girls and I knew I wasn’t willing to do half of the things they probably had promised Dame in whispers in his ears. Looking at their perfect brown skin and flawless bodies, I knew some probably had gotten past the promise and provided.
“You came?” Benji said, walking out of the back room. His skin had tanned, too, and he was now sporting a little face towel over his bald head to block out the sun. He came over and hugged me as the other women looked on disappointed.
“Yes,” I said. “I was getting bored at the hotel.”
“Well, let me take you back there. Dame will be happy to see you,” he said, and I heard one of the women groan in disgust.
In the studio, Dame presented a picture of what people expected a real artist to look like when he was working. While his body was in the room and he was communicating with the people around him, his mind was gone. It was off somewhere creating a masterpiece that was being ushered to sonic reality. He was focused and intentional and in his eyes, I saw love for music that changed, once again, what I’d thought of him. What listeners heard on the radio—the rhymes set to beats—was only a piece of what Dame was in the studio to develop.
“Whoa?” Dame hollered into the microphone when he finally looked up to see me sitting on the other side of a piece of glass that separated him from the man working the soundboard. “What are you doing here?” A smile washed over his face and he pulled off his headset.
“I see the fans are in full effect,” I said, nodding toward the women pressed up against the window once he came over to me.
He kissed me on the cheek and smiled. “Don’t be all jealous. That’s just the industry,” he said. “I told you that.”
“Yeah, you did. I just didn’t think they’d be here, too.”
“They’re everywhere.”
A woman with breasts double the size of mine and a waist that could fit into a bracelet waved at Dame, and he smiled back.
I couldn’t hide my annoyance. I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my not-so-ample breasts.
“See, that’s why I was a little nervous about you coming.”
“Coming where?” I asked. “To Ghana? You asked me to come.”
“Yeah, but I just kept thinking maybe this would be too much of a peek into my world. I don’t want you to get the wrong impression.”
The woman slid her finger into her mouth seductively and started sucking it like a baby with a lollipop. Even Benji stopped to stare; his mouth was hanging open like Dame’s.
“Oh, I have the impression,” I said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dame said, turning back to me. “Maybe we need to leave Accra.”
Over lunch, after we left the studio, Dame admitted that the gossip was correct. He was planning to leave his record label. Apparently, he hadn’t been happy there for a long while, felt they were controlling his sound and not allowing him to grow into an individual artist who couldn’t be compared to others on a list. So he wanted to start something from scratch with a new label. He explained that one of his friends who’d worked with world music with an international label was transferring to lead a new imprint. Dame was switching over there as soon as his contract was up. They were trying to create a new, international sound.
“World music?” I asked, hearing drums and other primitive beats in my head.
“It’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’ll reinvent the sound and add a more developed edge to the music. Like what jazz did for the blues and hip-hop did for jazz. It’s the next level,” Dame said passionately.
“You sound like a chef.”
“I am a chef,” he said, sitting back in his seat and looking out into the road with me at trucks passing by. “They’re trying to turn me from a man into a slave. But I’m not having it. I want to do all of the production and the business,” he protested. “Like James Brown, I’m going to own my shit when I leave here.”
“All of the contracts and endorsement deals you have, you already own your work,” I said.
“Yeah, but they still have a say when it comes to my art. I want all mouths to close when I’m doing what I do. I do the wax and I do the deals. After this imprint, I’m opening my own distribution and everything. That’s where the real power is. I can do it on my own.”
“That’s a big undertaking.”
“I have big shoulders.... My granddaddy gave them to me.” With his eyes, he followed a blue truck passing by. “That’s what happens when you work on a plantation all your life. You get big shoulders ... pass them down. Anyway, enough about me. So how was the phone call with your mother? How did it go?”