IQ(32)

I’m up from nothin’, I come from nowhere

goin’ solo on the road to everywhere

Don’t need the hard sellin’, feelin’ the ground swellin’

The blade of my saber sickle-cellin’ the haters

flossin’ traitors to vapors while I be makin’ that paper

if I want ya I’ll take ya, circumvent your equator

There’s nobody can save ya, my shit is greater and greater

I’ve become the Creator



“Up from Nothin’” went multiplatinum and stayed on the Billboard charts for six weeks. Life as a rap star had begun. Luxed-out tour buses, sold-out concerts, signing autographs and riding in limos, smoking spliffs big as ice cream cones, and staying in hotel suites the size of his mama’s backyard. He hung out in the VIP section with the celebs, did a commercial for a tequila company, performed at the BET Awards, and got a Grammy nomination. He shot a pilot called No Diggity and got the part of a demented drug dealer in a movie about street racing. He’d always been popular with the females but this was a whole different level, bitches lined up like job applicants arguing over who got to give him a blow job first.


Cal made thirteen more albums. Four multiplatinum, four platinum, and the rest gold. He was a full-on star, king of the block, an MVP in the game everybody wanted to play. Along the way he married Noelle. Yeah, the shit went bad but they had some good times, he had to give her that. When exactly he began to fall apart he couldn’t remember. It snuck up on him gradually, nobody noticing at first. How he got more and more reluctant to go out, spending most of his time at the crib incommunicado. If you asked him what he’d been up to he’d shrug or act like he didn’t hear you. When the fellas talked him into playing Madden he’d fumble on purpose or punt the ball sideways into the stands. He slept twelve, fourteen hours a day or had insomnia and wandered around the house until five in the morning. He got paranoid. Said some of his jewelry was missing and somebody was tampering with his food. He stopped showering and shaving. He lived on Krispy Kremes and Spicy V8. He complained about allergies, headaches, and backaches but Dr. Macklin couldn’t find anything wrong. He adopted a stray cat.


Bobby Grimes didn’t know about Cal’s condition until they were recording new tracks for the first of Cal’s new three-album, fifty-five-million-dollar deal. It had happened a week earlier at the Rock Steady Studio in Santa Monica. Bobby arrived late. Charles and Bug were on their phones texting. Anthony was staring at a photograph of a seagull like it was flying away with his youth.

“How’s he doing?” Bobby said.

“See for yourself,” Anthony said.

Cal was in the booth, supposedly working on a hook for the single. He stood at the mike, haggard and hopeless, his stomach like a soccer ball underneath his nine-hundred-and-ninety-five-dollar cashmere bathrobe. He rapped in a monotone:


My brain is in pain with none of the gain

what’s happening in my mind I can’t quantify or justify

my lifestyle eatin’ me alive like Bug on a chicken thigh,

my sex drive in a nose dive

off the high board, don’t need the awards

I’m prerecorded, exploited, I need to be Sigmund Freuded



Bobby watched, horror and disbelief billowing up inside him like a mushroom cloud. “Why is he in a bathrobe?” he said.

“He says they’re more comfortable,” Anthony said.

“More comfortable than what, clothes?”

“He says he’s tired.”

“He doesn’t look tired, he looks mentally ill. My God, he’s big as a house.”

Cal droned on:


I got to stop roamin’, be a pigeon goin’ homin’

back to Mississippi, make some homemade chili

while I be chillin’ with my kinfolk

I ain’t seen since I was an egg yolk

in my daddy’s egg sack,

I can’t see, I can’t feel, my world is going black.



Bobby sat down at the mixing board with Big Terry, Cal’s longtime producer. “Why are you letting him go on like this?” Bobby said.

“Cal does what Cal wants,” Big Terry said, “you know how he is.”

“Well, could you get him back to work, please?”

Big Terry turned on the intercom. “The f*ck you doing, Cal?” he said. “Your kinfolk are in Inglewood and you couldn’t find Mississippi on a got-damn map. You better get serious in there.” Cal didn’t seem to hear him, staring at a horizon only he could see.

“This is unbelievable,” Bobby said. “I knew he had problems but I had no idea it was this bad. How long has he been like this?”

“He’s been going downhill since the divorce,” Anthony said. “I could hardly get him to the studio.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me this before I signed him to a three-album, fifty-five-million-dollar deal?”

“Really, Bobby, I thought he’d have snapped out of it by now.”

“What about you?” Bobby said to Bug and Charles. “You didn’t think to give me a heads-up?”

“We figured he was sick or somethin’,” Bug said. “Like he had the flu.”

“The flu? You thought he had the flu? All that blubber and not a single brain cell.”