ROGUES VS.  REVOLUTION posted December 29th 2011

PART 3 by Nina Bhadreshwar

'The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!' Luke 12 v 2

 

While the world was distracted by a colourful discourse on pimps, Gs, hustlers, bitches and hos, another very real war was brewing.

 

By September 1995, I was bored, lonely and angry.  Very angry. Even my comedy wasn’t relieving my anger anymore. Something wasn’t right at Death Row – everyone was sneaking about and whispering, too many closed doors. I had resisted Suge’s offers of payment for several months til my  official papers came through in May. I then got a pay cheque each month for $1000 – a third of what I was supposed to get according to my contract. I didn’t mind as I seriously believed in Death Row; I believed in the artists, where they came from and what they were trying to do; I believed in Suge’s ghetto-empowering philosophy, the dignity of the real gangs and people I’d met prior to Death Row. But now it was an administrative job for me, I felt trapped. Suge told me to use all my magazine contacts and to get the celebrities involved in Club 662 either doing radio drops or attending.  He gave me one weekend at Can Am to complete. Smashing. I did it but it made me question again what exactly I was doing.

 

I’d just met Dre a few times – at the studios and maybe three times at the office. He was a very quiet, unassuming man with a warm handshake, open smile and few words – a very focused person. He was pleased to hear I came from England and asked to read my comedy scripts. He came back two weeks later and told me how much he liked one and that he wanted to do something with it.  That was in May. I’d not seen or heard from him since then and his work on Tha Dogg Pound album had been minimal. He seemed to be pulling away from the company and was never at any of the meetings or social events.  Suge never referred to him.

 

 Even when we were supposedly arch enemies, I always felt able to be straight with Suge.   At best, he was a unique  entrepreneur, a boss who let me fly, acknowledged my hard work and let me know very clearly what he would and would not tolerate. He was utterly unique. I grew up because of Suge, not despite him; everyone else in my life wanted to keep me as a child. Suge made me an adult, treated me like an adult, like a male player with accountability.  At worst, to me he was a name-calling bully.  Well, he did call me a cut-throat , a bowl of soup and a groupie. I think now he was trying to warn me about the dirty game I had landed myself in but I never heard him. The press and media about Suge will tell you a lot about America’s fears but nothing about the man himself. Suge was fiercely loyal, a complex character but real. His lack of articulation did not mean he wasn't aware of what was going on. 

 

 

However, I felt he was being horrid to me when I had worked so hard for him.  I thought he was stalling me like he was stalling all the artists and all the workmen and people on the other side of the pink invoices.  I could smell greed. And tyranny. I took the closed doors as rejection and it hit hard. I was an outcast once again just when I thought I’d found a home.  And I didn’t like the fake vibe up in the office. New people were coming in.  The energy was changing. When I first came to Watts, what I loved about a real gangster was their loyalty; they were true soldiers.  Once they claimed allegiance, that was them for life, following the code, no deviation.  They had heart commitment. But it’s hard to run a creative enterprise like that. Artists need freedom to thrive but not every artist is intelligent enough to know, until they get burned, how much they also need protection. I was fast realising how many fake gangsters used the codes to hide their false hearts behind. I didn’t trust certain people so I was getting into trouble left, right and centre for breaking protocol up at Death Row. I didn’t follow rules; I broke them.  I forgot I was in America and you have to follow the rules - there is no alternative.

 

 

My one close female friend was the actress Regina King. I’d asked her for an interview for Deathrow Uncut back in January. She’d refused and then I sent her a copy of my magazine and she’d agreed.  She came up to the office and was in interview for three hours! As we left, she asked for my number.

‘I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. I’m away in New York for five weeks but will call you as soon as I get back.’

True to her word, she did. She wanted me to write a script with her as she was sick of getting the same stereotypical black-girl-from-the-’hood roles.  I was ecstatic and agreed. We met once a week, fitting in around her film schedules. I’d usually go round to her apartment in Echo Lake and we’d riff on certain characters and situations, I’d go home and type up, we’d hone and chop and develop. But Regina also included me as a friend – inviting me to barbecues, outings, family parties, over to hers for the Superbowl, to bake cookies and rehearse my comedy. She was my first proper audience! Regina also knew the history of Death Row better than me and was a friend and  fellow acting colleague of Tupac’s. She was concerned about me working at Death Row and was constantly trying to set me up with other jobs.

 ‘They’re using you, Nina!’

‘Don’t be daft. How? I’m just doing a job anyone could do.’

‘No. No one would touch Death Row and now they’ve got a nice girl up there suddenly artists think it’s ok. But it’s not. It’s trouble. Suge was always trying to get Pac signed but he kept telling me,’I’m not going there. I’m doing my own thing.';

 

We couldn’t have been more different, Regina and I: she was confident, aggressive,  streetwise, knowing, talented. I was reticent, very shy and unsure how to reveal myself. But Regina was my friend and she obviously cared for me although she didn’t understand why I didn’t want a piece of the Hollywood pie.

‘You need to get hungry, Nina!’

But I’d no appetite for Hollywood.

 

I was now the only female left up at Death Row. Hen Dogg, the artist and Suge’s homeboy, was the only one conversating with me as more and more I was elbowed out of Suge’s office onto dealing with setting up the purchase order system and dealing with Club 662 logistics. It didn’t used to be like that. It used to be Roy and Nina. Then Roy, Nina and Norris. Now it was Roy, Norris and Jake.

 

I felt like I was being continually watched but why? Leaving Death Row would mean taking my Apple Mac computer with me and that had nine months of Death Row business on it as well as my own magazine stuff. But the majn reason I felt I had to go was because  Tupac was signed to the label now. Tupac was my real friend – I didn’t want to work for him. I just wanted him to be free, in every sense of the word.  I knew Suge was looking for an excuse to jump on me with his ‘groupie mentality’ theory and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, knowing his paranoia alone would do that.  Plus it would make things worse for Tupac.  I couldn’t remain Tupac’s friend and stay at Death Row; there would be an obvious and disastrous conflict of interest. How ironic – given what was about to happen.  Still, Death Row was my job but Pac was my reason, my first loyalty.  I had to leave.

 

Nonetheless, it was hard. Death Row was my family – Hen Dogg’s quiet wisdom, Aaron’s dramatics, Jake, Norris, Roy, George’s yapping and the grumpy promotions department with Black and B Man.  But the energy was choking me, eating and sleeping Death Row chaos and the phones. The phones!

‘Nigga be trippin’. I told you. Hit me back.’

‘Hey. Where Snoop at? Tell that skinny mofo to call here now. Been 187ing his ass all day.’

‘Suge on line 8.’

‘Suge. Yeah. Can’t find Snoop. I know, I know. Right. Can Am. OK…Hey bro, getting the fax together now. Be two minutes, homie…Two minutes….Quik, he says he’ll holla at you after two…’

 

I drafted up a resignation letter to Suge, kept editing it over several days and finally, at the end of work one day, handed it to Norris. It basically said I wanted to write and didn’t think Death Row was the place for me. Norris had been trying to stall and dissuade me for two weeks.

‘Don’t go, Nina. Tupac’s coming soon. We’ll be very busy. We’ll need you.’

‘No – I need to go, Norris.’ I was near tears. ‘Give this to Suge.’

I packed my box and unplugged the computer. Roy shook his head sadly. ‘Well, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, Nina.’

Norris kindly gave me a lift home with my computer.

‘Just think about it, Nina. You can always come back.’

But I shook my head, thanked him and closed the door afterwards, hearing his footsteps going down the stairs.  I never got any response or acknowledgement of my letter from Suge. Nobody left unless he wanted them to leave.

 Then again, I never said goodbye.

 

Now what? I didn’t have a job to go to. Two of my own magazine’s distributors hadn’t paid me and my savings were fast running out. But the way I felt was so strong, I didn’t care.  My plan was to get some basic anything job, finish my script with Regina and return to England to salvage my magazine. But I was lost. I didn’t know my purpose anymore. I’d spent all my money supporting myself on this mission.  I wanted to go home but didn’t want to return empty-handed to prove my family right – Nina’s mad, broke and incapable. I’d die before I became a dependent. At least, I’d left the intense madness of Death Row.

 

So I thought. In reality, I’d just jumped into the eye of the storm.

 

Death Row had developed from a representation of the ‘hood in Hollywood to a tyrannical dominion. Its subjects were grumbling, resentful and frustrated, a mix of bonafide Crips and Bloods, its charismatic leader now a fully-blown tyrant, getting more paranoid by the day. Chain of command was conflicting with chain of  loyalty. According to rumour, it was an empire run by a cruel despot, its subjects living in fear, ripe for revolution.  Enter Tupac.

 

The media just became a propaganda machine. It just saw black people from the wrong zip code waving guns yelling ‘bitches, hos’, ‘money’. They were ignorant to the depths and drastic differences between gangster mentality and revolutionary mentality and lazily lumped it all together as ‘gangsta rap’.  The gangster mentality is fierce, wild-wild-west stuff,  big on loyalty and chain of command, protection  and accumulation of assets. It is also intensely conservative, fearful and protects the status quo with little room for development.  If you’re lucky, you become an O.G. or re-appropriate your business expertise over your artillery. If you’re excellent and totally loyal, you die. Early. Gangsters have more in common with white right wing Republicans than revolutionaries. They fear change like death.

 

A revolutionary mentality, however, is to do with abrupt, rapid and drastic change, revelation, hidden codes and subterfuge. It is unchained and guided by a great feeling of love for humanity.

 

Pac had learnt from history, real family history; he knew the outcome for political revolutionaries. But he was sharper and more dangerous. His aim was not to become a political revolutionary but to be an artistic revolutionary. He would change the way people saw the world, the way they thought. That was the whole concept behind THUGLIFE. That was how he was going to bring about his revolution. Pac was out there on his own, reclaiming, renaming the problem, the territory and the strategy. Still people couldn’t hear him – all they saw was the smokescreen, the media fodder of an easy-to-digest rap feud, the controversy, the gangster camouflage. 'Thug Life' was Pac reconfiguring the demonisation of America's black youth, teaching them the way to success and to lift themselves out of the trap set for them while remaining obscure to the media and authorities who continued to oppress them. If you check Pac’s language, it’s all there. There was no glorification of violence for its own sake.

 

In fact, that’s what he was fighting against. Exactly that fake, weak mentality that was oppressing his people. No one ever loved gangsters more than Pac because he knew their hearts and their struggle - the finest of people in the worst of situations.  Pac knew the game, really knew it, first hand and better than anyone. He also knew it was stacked against him. Yet he never backed down or peeled out. Pac loved Suge like a brother to the end but he resisted oppression.  He knew he was being robbed, however, and that his appeal had been denied; he would be returning to jail in September. Mentally and spiritually, Pac was always his own man. When Pac said he’d kill Thug Life, he meant it. He owned Thug Life, he represented it and he would take it to its ultimate closure. There is no post-Tupac gangsta rap. He ensured that. That was the revolution: he took the main enemy down by claiming it and reconfiguring it. He went inside enemy lines and staged a coup. He executed while others were still (are still) stuck on the concept.  Still the media, the industry, fans run round in circles like reactionary headless chickens, chasing something that no longer exists. Death Row’s gone, gangsta rap is gone. But Tupac hasn’t and there’s a reason why.

 

But the true revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no sentimental attachments, no property, not even his own name. His entire being is consumed by one vision, one purpose, one passion – the revolution. Body, mind and soul, in action and in words, he will break every connection with the social order and the entire civilised world, with the legal system, the etiquette, conventions and morality of that world. Pac was pure sunshine and created more than he destroyed. What he did destroy was poisonous.

 

I wasn’t interested in Regina’s suggestions I work for other film or record companies. I’d had a bellyful of it. So how was I going to eat and pay the rent? I got a job as a waitress at ‘Junior’s’ on Olympia and Pico. I am officially the most rubbish waitress ever and lasted one month before being fired due to my inability to count change back from a dollar and always spilling the food. I couldn’t even be a waitress. My self-esteem was by now rock bottom.

 

After five weeks, I received a phone call from Big C Style, Snoop ’s bodyguard and business partner. Big C Style was a proper O.G, LBC roller. Big C Style had known Snoop for many years back in Long Beach.  He was affiliated to the Nineteenth Street Crips and was Snoop’s ‘sleeping partner’.  C Style had a dark and dubious past, was some years older than Snoop yet got on well with the young people they had gathered to be on the label. I’d interviewed him and his own crew of artists for the last issue of my magazine so knew him. But I had never given out my phone number and I hadn’t told any of the artists I had left Death Row so I was very surprised to hear from him.

‘Nina, we setting up our own record company.  We need your help.  Are you interested?  We know you’ve got your computer and you’re good at what you do.  We want to use all that interview stuff you had in your magazine.’

 

I am not one for regrets but here’s the one. This is the big screw up.  This is me being an idiot, being a bowl of soup. My weakness was my own, the blame’s on me. I just wish more than anything that in that split second I’d said, ‘No, sorry.’

 

Instead, the words that came out were:

‘Are you paying? Because, C-Style, I’m broke.’

‘We’ll see you straight, Nina, don’t worry.  Just get down to Silver Lake this afternoon.  Snoop wants to meet with you.’

‘Silver Lake?’

‘Yeah, Soundcastle Studios.  We all down here.  Nineteenth Street Records.’

‘Well….I’ll have to go and pawn my camera to get the cab down.’

‘I’ll give you the money.  Just get down here as soon as you can.’

‘I’m not sure, C-Style…I don’t want to be doing any record company stuff.’ I looked at my two month late reminder notice for my rent and sighed. ’This for real?’

‘For real, Nina.  We won’t fuck you like Death Row did.  There’s no Suge Knight in this.’

This was in mid October 1995.  I met Snoop and C Style at Soundcastle Studios, which is near Echo Park.

 

The studio was full of young people, eagerly working on tracks or penning rhymes. They were very welcoming and introduced themselves.  They had copies of my magazine around as Big C Style had told them about me and some of them had been up at the studios at Tarzana so I already knew them or had interviewed them.  One of the producers, L.T. Hutton (a former member of B-Rezeel, an R’n’B group signed by Death Row) told me that Jake Robles was dead, had been shot two weeks previously.  I couldn’t believe it.  My eyes filled.  Jake was my friend and colleague and no one from Death Row had even bothered to contact me to tell me.  I had missed the funeral and everything.  I was gutted. 

 

 Snoop called me out into the car park, put his arm around me and led me to his jeep, away from his homies.  He hugged me and then stood back with a very serious expression on his face, very rare for Snoop.  He was always upbeat and making people laugh. 

‘I’ve always liked you, Nina.  I’ve always trusted you.  I need your support right now.’

He told me he, like me, was trying to get off Death Row too.  He knew he had the court case to fight and no one believed in him but, if I had his back now, he would make sure I was well looked after.  He wouldn’t treat me like Death Row had. 

Snoop could see I was upset. ‘You’ve gone.  Jake’s gone.  Death Row is going to go downhill now.  There’s no one up there to help us.  I believe God will look after his own and if we do things right. Everything’s going to work out for us.   So are you with me, Nina?’

I said, ‘Of course.’  He really seemed to be begging me, which was strange.  The legal system damaged both Pac and Snoop more so than the outcome. It changed how they viewed society and their place in it. Pac went one way, Snoop the other.  But, at that time, Snoop really felt like the world was against him –  which in a way it was: they believed he was guilty and his sentence was as good as passed.  He had a young family and was genuinely scared. He hugged me again and we got into his big Cherokee with the brand new, eardrum-busting sound system.  Snoop yelled to his cousin, Joe Cool: ‘Are you ready?

‘Nigga, I was born ready!’ and Joe Cool jumped into the front of the jeep next to Snoop.  Joe Cool was always playing with me, drawing pictures of women in sexual positions on the paper plates for the donuts at the studio and waving them in my face.  I was always preaching at him but we were cool with each other really.  On October 23^rd,  he  told me about the hit Suge had ordered on me from the red room at Tarzana.  I laughed it off because, at that time, it sounded so ridiculous. But it bubbled about my head. Snoop said nothing which said everything.

 

I asked Snoop to tell Joe Cool to stop drawing obscene pictures and waving them at me.  Snoop laughed.

‘You don’t like a bit of dingaling, Nina?’

I frowned. ‘What?’

‘Dingaling. You best talk Dinglish.’

‘What are you talking about?’

I stared out of the window.  I never used the language of sex in Los Angeles, having heard too many tales from forty/fifty year old ex-pimps and playas when I lived in Watts.  For me, all the playa/pimp posing had the complete opposite effect. I may have still been growing up but I didn’t want to end up like any of the women I saw attaching themselves to  rappers.  It was the all-out gangster mentality, the commitment in action which grabbed me. That was my sex.

 

As we drove along to Riverside, where Warner Bros. was situated, Snoop  played ‘Two of Amerikkka’s Most Wanted’ at full volume.  'My new track...what do you think?' I loved it and called it ‘Gangsta Party’.  This was October 1995 and Tupac had barely been out of jail three weeks.  Snoop said they had recorded this track just a fortnight after his release.   I asked Snoop how Pac was doing.  Snoop just nodded and said he was ‘Alright.  Chilling.’ Snoop never sounded bothered about Tupac and, whenever I started talking about him, he’d immediately change the conversation. Snoop knew how close I was to Tupac and that I’d had a bee in my bonnet about his release since Day 1. He also knew that it had worked. Maybe he thought I could do a similar miracle for him. Maybe he just needed some help at that time. Or maybe it was something else… 

As we drove along, we talked about the project and Snoop said he would give me what I needed to handle his business, pay my rent and run it from my apartment.  He said I had my computer, which had all the Death Row info on.  (I did wonder how he knew all this since I had never told him.)  He told me not to let anyone at Death Row know about it.

 

Once at Warner Bros., Snoop took me straight to the Black Music Section and to Steve Prudholme’s office.  Walking with Snoop is an awesome experience.  He just walked with this quiet regality, very smooth, and yet somehow ethereal like he could disappear in a flash.  He was very assertive, though, when it came to business.  What he said was short and to the point.

‘This is Nina.  She represents me and is to be treated with appropriate respect.  What she says comes straight from my mouth.’  He introduced me to everyone, including Karen Lee, Head of Black Music but formerly the publicist of Tupac.  It was quite weird.  That morning I had been walking two miles to the pawn shop to pawn in my camera and now people high up in the music business, who wouldn’t have given me a second look otherwise, were ingratiating themselves before me.  I sorted out what the schedule was and what they (the record company) needed from the artists.  Once outside, Snoop gave me a roll of $350 in cash. 

He said: ‘I’ll never ask for this money back, Nina.  I don’t like coming up here and the artists don’t need to be getting messed about by this record company.  It’s up to you to make sure things run as smoothly as possible cuz my priority right now is this court case.’

 

Every time we met, he’d give me some money.  He got me picked up by a limo to go to various locations.  He did get cross with me at one time because I would catch cabs down to the studio which was $30 one way and he said I got treated better than an artist.  My orders were to keep in close contact with him – at least three phone calls a day – first thing in the morning (before 7am, when he left for court), at lunch time during recess (unless I’d come by bus to the courthouse downtown), after court, on his way to the studio.  However, the most important phone calls would be after 10.30pm each night.  He was on house arrest so had to be in the house from that time onwards.  He would go over the day, any problems, what Warner Bros. were doing or not doing and what he wanted me to do the following day.  C Style would also call me throughout the day to give me instructions.  I worked for C Style and Snoop between October 16 and December 15, 1995. The music was good – I genuinely liked it. It had more pace and a deeper funkier feel than the stuff I’d been hearing in Can Am and the young MCs were becoming more confident, taking more risks, freestyling with ferocity and flavour.  They were prolific too – two or three songs a day.

 

The very next day, I was on it. I drafted up materials, went up to Warner Bros., made sure I introduced myself and got a schedule sorted with all the various peoples in departments, set out our promotion material, went home and started drafting up editorial and a plan for publicity and promotions.  As well as the phone calls to and from Snoop and Big C-Style.

 

However, Regina didn’t share my excitement when I told her.

‘Nina, I wouldn’t do it.’

‘It’s just work, Regina.’

‘No, that’s some underhand shit. They’re getting you in the mix, setting you up.’

Setting me up for what? But I’d taken the money now to pay off the rent I owed. I couldn’t just say no.  Still, I wanted to talk to Suge. Why would he put a hit out on me? If he had, they kept missing. Or maybe they had got the wrong address. Maybe they were busy. I half-wished they’d hurry up and get me out of this nightmare.

 

The LBC crew were the group I was initially promoting as they had a single/twelve inch out called ‘Beware of My Crew’. They would be the first release from the Doggystyle label Snoop was setting up. No big deal after Death Row Records and its roster of artists? Not the case. The LBC consisted of three young renegades: Badass, a baby-faced nineteen year old with shoulder-length dreads who lived up to his namesake; Techniec, a fifteen year old with plenty of aggression, a cool demeanour and talent to boot – he was more amenable as he had a very hands-on cool father and manager called Fish; and Li’l C-Style (no relation to Big C-Style) – a fourteen year old wild buck gang member, a generous, loyal soul with a murderous flow, dynamic charisma and form (although no one told me this), on the run from the police.  My job was to look after these guys in particular, make sure the record company got what they needed to promote the LBC crew without bothering the artists too much and that all promotion and publicity was taken care of – both on a national and international level. Really, I was there to prevent the record company having to interact with Snoop or Big C-Style and to make sure Warner Bros. didn’t neglect any of their obligations in terms of producing and promoting the music in the most competitive way.

 

They say the first casualty of war is the truth. That was the element I smelled missing up at Death Row and still smelled it at Soundcastle. But I was now a Hollywood cliché – a broke and struggling nobody caught in the middle and going nowhere. In L.A., speaking the truth means you’ll soon mysteriously ‘disappear’.

 

One night I had just got in from comedy and made my obligatory reporting-in-to-Snoop phone call at 10.45pm.  He then asked me to go over to the apartment he shared with his fiancee and son at Toluca Lake.  I told him I had no money and he said he would give me what I needed when I arrived.  Los Angeles is not like London; Los Angeles is like half the size of England and to get from my apartment in Venice to Toluca Lake was like going from London to Derby ……not cheap.   I finally arrived at the apartment and told the cab driver to wait while I ran in for the money.  The way I was dressed and the time (gone midnight) did not help me at all.  I was tired, stressed and dressed in my pyjama top and a pair of khakis; I’m sure he thought I was a drugs courier.  I didn’t even know which apartment it was and there was no intercom.  I stood on the stone steps, peering through the locked glass front door in despair.

 

A well-dressed elderly white lady passed down the hallway, saw me and let me into the complex. 

‘Can you tell me where Calvin Broadus lives please?’  I asked.

‘I’m sorry, dear.  I don’t know anyone by that name.  I’ll ask my husband.’

A tall, thin elderly man appeared further down the corridor.  I repeated my question.

‘Is he tall and a musician?’

‘Yes.’  (I had never heard Snoop described in that way but it was totally accurate).

The man indicated a door down the hallway.

‘Thank you so much.  I would be stranded otherwise.’

‘Not a problem.’

I trotted over to rap on the door.

 

Snoop answered with a big grin. ‘Were you walking on tip toes?’ In a tired and rough mood, I asked straight away for the money for the taxi.  He gave me a hundred dollar bill and told me to come back for the rest.  I ran out to the cabbie who moaned because he got no tip.  Snoop held the door open so I wouldn’t get locked out again.

 

On my return, he led me into his spacious apartment.  There was a big TV, stereo system, black cultural pictures and mini sculptures, a large leather couch and a black tiled and chrome breakfast bar/kitchen where Snoop  and a couple of white men were building spliffs.

‘This is lovely,’ I said, looking around at the décor, much more tasteful than that of his house at Claremont.

‘Thanks.  Do you like it?  Shante decorated it.’ (Shante was his fiancee and high school sweetheart, also the mother of his two year old son).

I told him she had good taste and sat on the couch.  I was shattered.  Killer, his favourite dog (a huge tan, muscled hound who came up to my thigh and loved Snoop) came up to me and lay his head on my knee.  He generally lived up to his name or at least snapped at most people except Snoop …and me, strangely enough.  At the studio, he would lay on my feet.  Once, when I was at Snoop’s house in Claremont, he got me to do a grocery run to stop me losing my temper at a macking Rappin’ 4-Tay who kept pestering me for ‘socks’.  Snoop told me to drive his Lincoln town car and made me take Killer as protection. I was terrified I’d crash the car more than being jacked and was talking to Killer all the time, asking  directions. Snoop had given me two hundred dollars for groceries.  I was told to buy ‘picnic food’…so I did.  I got everything right apart from the fact I bought bottles of Coca Cola instead of Pepsi.  (‘No, Nina! Niggas drink Pepsi!’) 

 

Snoop showed me Shante’s computer and office. ‘Keeping it all in the family,’ he said.  ‘Our business.  That’s what it will be one day.’

 

Then he sat down on the sofa and Killer went to him. 

‘I’ve got you some money to send off to Li’l Style and Badass of the LBC Crew.  They’re in Vegas and they’ve lost all their money.  I want you to Western Union it first thing tomorrow morning.’

He handed me a roll of four hundred dollars and I told him I’d do it as soon as the drugstore opened.

 

Just then, Daz, Kurupt. and Soopafly came in through the French windows.  Tha Dogg Pound’s album had just come out.  I felt a bit cheated as I’d been involved so much in the album’s production, as had Jake, yet, because I’d left Death Row, I missed out on the glory of its release.  Tonight was the night before the release party at Vegas…and also the first public appearance of Tupac Shakur as a Death Row artist...all at Club 662. I had helped orchestrate all three but where was I? Sitting in my pyjamas doing a cash run. Kurupt was boasting about all the pussy he was going to get, the money he was going to spend.  Yet Tha Dogg Pound’s release party was inevitably going to be eclipsed by the mere presence of Tupac.  There was a heavy atmosphere already.  Kurupt. hugged me. The others said, ’What’s up, Nina?’  Snoop chatted with them and then they left, after collecting some weed.

Snoop returned to the sofa and said, stroking Killer’s head, ‘I love Killer.’

‘Why?’ I asked.  He looked slightly surprised and annoyed.

‘I don’t know.  I just do.’

Then he told me Bruce, the weed man, would give me a lift back to ‘save me on taxi fare’.  So that’s how I ended up stuck in a jeep for two hours with Bruce sermonising  me about Global Joy –  something he’d set up on the internet whereby people could get whatever they needed to make them happy and just spread positivity round the globe.  And about his business idea for making Snoop  jelly beans and about his own psychic gifts and insights, that he did excellent massages – in fact, would I like one? (Er…no.) Bruce was a harmless guy but I was more concerned about the change in dynamics. Snoop was building a different camp around him - again, lots of new people with new agendas. Nothing felt real and I felt edgy.

 

The next morning (or rather six hours later), I cycled over to Westwood Village and Western Unioned the money as agreed.  However, my job wasn’t yet over.  The rest of the day was then spent yo-yoing between calls from the lost LBC members, Li’l Style and Badass in Vegas, an irate, paternal Snoop  in Toluca Lake and later Claremont, and a furious C Style in Long Beach who was stranded with the Warner Bros. photographer, a make-up artist and other members of the LBC crew for the record company’s photoshoot.  They ended up having to re-schedule the shoot because Badass and Li’l Style stayed on in Vegas, funded by Daz, to carry on with their gambling.

 

On several occasions, we had to do radio appearances requiring Snoop’s presence.  When this happened, it all had to be scheduled around Snoop’s daily court appearances and 10.30pm curfew so it was either before eight in the morning or early evening.

 

On Snoop’s 24^th birthday, we had a radio show to do for Power 106 with the Baker Boyz. A limo came to collect me at 5.30am and then we went out to Claremont to collect Snoop and the others.  The LBC guys and myself rode in the limo while Snoop and his men led the way in the blacked out jeep.

 

But even at 7am, he was cool, calm, collected and totally focused on endorsing his protégées, the LBC…even though he had court in a couple of hours. Li’l C –Style, Badass and Techniec introduced themselves on air and gave a reasonable interview. As usual, everyone and their mother wanted to have their photo taken with Snoop and to talk to him so it took us a while to get out. When we got to the limo, one of the homeboys suddenly exclaimed:’ Where Lil Style at? He only told five-o his location!’

Just then Li’l C-Style appeared and I yelled out the limo as he desperately looked about for us. I pulled him in the car and the limo driver zoomed off…just as we saw the police cars pull up outside the radio station.

‘Nigga, you can’t be giving out your name and address on air when you wanted!’ declared Big C-Style.

‘Ok,’ I thought.  ‘How exactly am I to promote a fugitive?’

 

Another time, when I was away to leave them at Universal following a filmed interview, I went up to Snoop’s blacked out van. His electric window would down and he grinned and told me his instructions for the afternoon.  It was like gazing at someone in a fume cupboard, a potently fragrant fume cupboard.

‘Nina, I’m going to have to wind this window up as it’s letting all the smoke out!’

 

Although Snoop did pay for my taxi fares and my first month’s rent, my phone bill was mounting up and FedExing the white labelled records out to hip hop djs in England and across America was costly. Snoop, who eight months earlier, had been promoting himself as Black Jesus, who Joe Cool painted a Dogg Pound last supper scene, now couldn't get one interview with any leading magazine. What was going on? The second month, Snoop and C-Style started making excuses or stalling on my money.  Life was still hard and a struggle. I just wanted to get enough for my flight home. On top of this, I was trying to shepherd the young members of the LBC and follow the instructions of Snoop, C Style and work to Warner Bros’. constantly changing schedules.  I was sending out press releases to magazines and radio stations and Snoop was mad as no one wanted to interview him. It didn’t make sense.  I still didn’t quite get how Suge wasn’t supposed to know any of this.  There was something not quite right.  I knew how obsessively jealous Suge was over his artists.  He couldn’t be unaware of all that was going off.

 

I often had to take the buses downtown to the courthouse to meet up with Snoop during recess and sort out business.  One day in November, when I was in the courthouse car park, passing some documents to Snoop and getting some details from C Style, I noticed Suge walking down the ramp with a shorter guy I didn’t recognize.  Suge abruptly left the guy alone.  He looked so alone my heart went out to him and I looked closer. He looked around him uncertainly and then turned to the trunk of the limousine to get out a soft drink. Suge had moved off to speak to his homeboys.

 

 I stood behind the trailer van with C Style and then moved to the other side of the limousine.  Suddenly something twigged inside me.  I had always imagined Tupac Shakur as being tall – six foot odd.  But as I gazed on the lonely guy, looking strangely vulnerable as he swigged down his Iced Tea and looked around him, I recognised him. My heart burned with compassion for his loneliness and sadness. I put my rucksack down, at the front of the car.

‘Is that Tupac?’ I whispered to C Style. ‘He’s so small!’

C Style laughed.  ‘Yup!  That’s Tupac alright.’

I started moving towards him.  I had on my dungarees, thermal vest, grey hoodie and trainers.  My hair was loose and too long; it was ages since I could afford a trip to the salon. In other words, I looked like a scarecrow. As I walked towards him, he looked straight at me and his eyes widened and shone, sparkled. ‘Boiiinnng!’ eyes. That was my best present always – just witnessing Pac’s joy.  He put down his drink and smiled a wonderful, face-splitting smile you wanted to breathe in, that shot my heart through my head.  Emboldened by this warmth, I said: ‘Tupac, I’m Nina.  I wrote you in jail.’

I’d barely finished the sentence when he rushed from where he was standing, lifted me off the  tarmac and held me in the tightest hug I’ve ever had. And he wouldn't let go.

‘What’s up?  How you doing?’  He just kept holding me and looking at me and I couldn’t think what to say except: ‘I never thought I’d meet you.  I can’t believe this.’

Cool not.  I could feel his back muscles through his white sweatshirt.  Time seemed to stop. This awesome silence that said more than I ever thought I would ever feel.  At last I came out with something stupid like,

‘Ninety three til now.  I can’t believe this.’

It was that moment of complete recognition and yet awkwardness, meeting a penfriend in the flesh. And he is still holding onto me.

 

By now we had somehow ‘waltzed’ or hugged our way to the front of the limousine.  No one's ever held me so tight for so long- I practically had to prise myself out but he still stood with his arms around me.  It must have been a full minute. I felt so much love radiating from him but something else too – a deep sadness, deeper even than my own.  In my messed up state, with so much self-hatred still, I found it hard to deal with such love and the sadness overwhelmed me.  But I didn’t care.  I was with my friend, someone who knew me - knew me better than anyone now living, even the dark parts, the secrets - and still loved me.

 

We were still just enjoying the moment that I didn’t want to end, completely oblivious to what was going on around us.  Suddenly a preacher (Preacher Tatum) who often hug round with Snoop, MacKinley and his gang, praying for them during court and in the studio, came up from behind us and hugged us both.    I didn’t like this whole ‘group hugging’ thing; it spoilt the feeling we were sharing. Tupac just smiled benignly. Then Preacher said, ‘Yes, Nina’s a Christian sister.  She’s a sister in the Lord.’

 

I was so mad at this as it implied Tupac had ‘unclean motives’.  Pac knew I was a Christian.  He read the sheaves of copies of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jnr. and Bible texts I sent him, returning them with his own notes on them and questions. Pac was on another level entirely, beyond religious conventions, seeking eternal truths and all-out commitment. And I had told Pac he had a higher calling on his life. I pulled away, frowning (at the preacher), saying, ‘He knows!’ trying to imply that he already knew me and that he was far beyond me. Tupac stared at me when I said that.  He stared for ages. I felt embarrassed and moved to pick up my rucksack, still watching Tupac out of the corner of my eye.  Just out of the blue, Tupac turned to Preacher and asked him to pray for him so he could become a Christian.  In front of Suge, all the homies, Snoop and his crew, Tupac bowed his head and asked the Lord for forgiveness.  He stated that he believed Christ had died for him and his sins and asked him into his life.

 

The men were looking on in astonishment and Suge just shook his head but Tupac looked quite calm when he looked up from the prayer and straight at me.  I couldn’t believe it, I daren’t. My head was in another time.  Tupac moved next to me and asked how the magazine was doing. 

‘OK.  Have you got a copy?  There’s loads up at the office.’

I didn’t know how to tell him why I wasn’t working there anymore.  Tupac shook his head.

‘I’ll send you a copy to the studio.  I printed that editorial you sent me as you laid it...like you said.’

He nodded but continued to say nothing, just stand next to me.  There was no sense of awkwardness whatsoever from his side.  It was strange but beautiful.  Just remembering this always encourages me.  I felt him so much.  I wanted to crush all my broken soul against him, there was so much acceptance and love.

Finally, I said: ‘I owe you.’ During 1993, when I was battling suicidal depression and anorexia, it was Pac who had made me feel not alone, who had assured me of a purpose in this world and a need for my voice. He was the one who told me to carry on with my writing.

‘You don’t owe me anything.  Just be successful.’

He might as well have said, ‘You just have to fly to the moon.’  My face fell.

I was aware that the others were staring at us and moved off.

 

Just then, a tall gorgeous Mexican beauty with long black straight hair down to her waist, thigh high black leather boots, black mini skirt and halter neck came up to ask Tupac for his autograph and a photo of him with her.  Tupac  eagerly complied.  He asked for a pen.  No one had one or gave him one.  I rummaged in my rucksack and handed it to him. He snatched it and looked at me strange.  What had I done now?  He took her number.  Suge glared at me. Snoop and his crew moved towards the court. It was time to go in.

 

I stood watching the parade into the courthouse. There should have been an earthquake then. But instead I was left realizing the lines had been drawn. Regina may have been right. Meeting Pac had reminded me of his true friendship compared to my fake acquaintances but I was caught up in the war. And I had a feeling Pac was about to be too.

 

...tbc