On the Come Up(91)

Time out. Time. Out. “What?”

“I already heard the beat,” Dee-Nice says. “Wrote it last night. Got your verses, the hook, everything.”

“He let me hear it earlier,” says Supreme. “I’m telling you, shit’s straight fire.”

James gives an excited clap. “Hell yes!”

Hold up, pause, back up, slow down, all of that. “I write my own stuff though.”

“Nah,” Supreme says, like I asked if he was cold or something. “Dee got you.”

Did he not hear what I said? “But I got me.”

Supreme laughs again, though this time it doesn’t sound like he’s amused. He seems to look around at everyone from behind those shades. “You hear this? She got her.” He turns to me, and the laughter is gone. “Like I said, Dee got you.”

Dee hands me the folder.

I open it. Instead of wildly scribbled rhymes all over a piece of notebook paper like I’d usually have, Dee has typed up an entire song. There are verses, a hook, and a bridge. He even wrote a damn intro, like I can’t get in there and spontaneously say something.

What the hell?

But the lyrics? The lyrics are what really get me.

“‘I pack gats the size of rats, and give fiends what they need,’” I mutter, and can’t believe I’m saying this my own self. “‘In the hood they call me PMS, I make chicks . . . bleed’?”

This has gotta be a joke.

“Fire, right?” Supreme says.

Like hell. For some reason, I think about those kids at Maple Grove. When they repeated “On the Come Up” back to me, I felt some kinda way. I knew what I meant with that song, but I don’t know if they did.

The idea of those six-year-olds repeating that I make chicks bleed . . . it makes me feel sick. “I can’t rap this.”

Supreme gives another one of those unamused chuckles, and it leads to more chuckles.

“I told you, James, shorty got a mouth on her,” he says.

“Aw, you know me, I love that sassy black-girl shit,” says James.

The fuck? That word sassy has always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason, like articulate. “Sassy black girl” is ten times worse. “What the hell did you—”

“Y’all, give us a few minutes,” says Supreme. He takes me by my shoulder and guides me out into the hall. The second we’re out there though, I shake him off.

“Look, you can say what you want,” I tell him straight up. “But I’m not about to rap something I didn’t write, and I’m damn sure not about to rap something that’s not me. I already got people thinking I’m a hood rat and a hoodlum. That song won’t help!”

Slowly, Supreme lifts his sunglasses, and I can’t lie, I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen him without them. I’ve always wondered if he was scarred or had lost an eye or something. But deep-set brown eyes look back at me.

“Didn’t I tell your ass to follow my lead?” he growls.

I step back. “But—”

He advances. “You’re trying to ruin this shit before we get it?”

I may have backed up but I’m not backing down. “I can write a song myself. I don’t need Dee to write shit for me. Hype already clowned me, saying I had a ghostwriter. I can’t go and actually have one. That’s phony as hell.”

Supreme clenches his hands at his sides. “Baby girl”—he says each word slowly, as if to make sure I hear him—“you’re in the music business now. Keyword, business. This is about making money. That man in there”—he points toward the studio door—“got more cash at his disposal than he knows what to do with. We’re about to damn near commit robbery and take as much of it as we can. You just gotta do this song.”

I hear him, and I almost get it, but I shake my head. “That song isn’t me. This ain’t cool.”

He slaps the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “Neither is being broke! Or food drives! What? You scared you won’t look ‘real’ rapping this shit? I can get you some goons to roll with, baby girl. Make this shit look as real as possible. I did it for your daddy.”

“What?”

“Law wasn’t no damn gangster when I met him,” Supreme says. “He was barely out of the church choir. Working some ol’ raggedy-ass jobs to support your momma and your brother. I’m the one who told him he had to start rapping that street shit. I’m the one who told him to roll with them GDs to look authentic. But his ass took the shit seriously.

“You though”—he holds my cheeks between his hands—“you can be smarter than that. You just gotta remember to play the role, not become it. We can do everything Law and I didn’t get a chance to do.”

Granddaddy calls the eyes the windows to the soul, and I suddenly get that. Now that Supreme doesn’t have his shades on, I can finally see what I am to him: a do-over of my dad.

I move away from him.

“I’m trying to help you, Li’l Law,” he claims. “I’m your Moses, leading you to the promised land! Get out of your goddamn feelings and let’s get this money.”

Let’s. We. Us. I’m the one going into that booth. I’m the one who people will see and talk about. Not him.