Live Fast,Die Young 5:The Fall Of An Empire

Chapter 20

I couldn't believe that I had actually done it,I had signed my first multimillion dollar deal with Warner Bros. to distribute my label "Funky Fresh Entertainment",with Double Trouble being the first act. The twins also had their own separate contracts as artists on the parent label,which was worth $100,000. Within a four month period,they completed work on their debut album and I had signed two more acts to my label: A rapper named The Evil Genius and a teenage rap group from Inglewood called Heads Of The Class,whom I discovered during a talent show at Morningside High. I had yet to find an R&B act and Miranda kept breathing down my neck every chance she got. While all of this is going on,I had yet to see a steady cash flow and I still had one foot in the streets. One thing I've learned firsthand about the music industry is that you're not guaranteed a lot of money upfront. The only money that's available is the money that's advanced to you to record your album. In other words,a loan that you'll eventually have to pay back once your project is released and God forbid if it flops, that'll sink you further into debt. To keep from going broke,I took all the money I made from the last kilos I've sold and bought fifteen more. While still continuing business in Inglewood,I've decided to expand my operation to the Eastside of L.A.,a gated apartment complex located on 59th and Central. It wasn't exactly the projects but it wasn't far from it either. There were a lot of low income Section 8 families that lived in the building and most of them turned a blind eye to what we were doing,they didn't bother us and we didn't bother them. One of the residents,a girl named LaShonda,who was a single mother in her early 20s had wanted in on our operation. She even went as far as letting us use her apartment while her son was at school and we would leave an hour before she picked him up. We had a system,we had two lookouts standing on each side of the gate and one guy on the inside that would let the customer in. From there,the customer would walk straight to LaShonda's apartment,where they would find someone standing guard outside of her door to collect the money for the desired purchase. That individual would go inside, retrieve the product,and hand it to the customer. We also had a rule: No smoking in the complex and if you're caught in the act,you were going to catch a serious beatdown and get banned from the premises. I created this rule so that we didn't draw attention to ourselves and we were very discreet with our operation.In fact,we only operated four hours out of the day. The bottom line was that I wasn't going to wait several months for an album to get released,I needed some quick money and the streets were the only way I could accomplish that.