Don’t get too comfortable. Ever.
—SEAL
New York City 21°
0700
Miracle of miracles. We take the morning off.
“Hey, Lazer,” I say to him in his highchair. “What do you think if Daddy stays home from work this morning to play?”
Lazer ’s smile lights up the room. First we start with his action figures and then we get into some serious block building. I haven’t thought about anything other than how to build a higher tower in hours.
“Should we knock it down?” I ask Lazer.
And before the grin on his face is fully formed, the tower of blocks comes crashing down.
“Let’s build it again,” I say.
1145
SEAL walks in. He reminds me that it’s almost noon and I have a 12:30 p.m. meeting today with the Zico sales team. I kiss my son on the forehead with a big smooch and head out the door with SEAL.
I’ve got on a winter coat and my Knicks knit hat. SEAL has a T-shirt and jeans on. His shoulders are angled up into his neck as we walk to work and his hands are in his pockets. He must be cold. This is unusual for him, I’ve never seen his body look like this before.
We are on a direct walking path to my office today, which is also unusual. Sara convinced SEAL the weighted vests were a bad idea so we look like civilians today. I guess SEAL doesn’t think there are any imminent issues en route. Or maybe he feels the urge to change our pattern so we are less likely to be detected. Whatever the case, it’s a normal person’s commute—a direct shot.
As we hit the corner of 57th and Broadway, we wait for the WALK sign. “You ever worry about all these meetings you take? Like what if the direction isn’t going the way you want it to go?”
“Never let them boo you,” I say.
One of SEAL’s eyebrows arches.
“No matter what, you can never let them ‘boo’ you. You have to control the situation.”
His shoulders immediately drop down into a normal position and he asks, “What do you mean?”
“Can I tell you a story?” I ask. The WALK sign illuminates.
“Sure. Just as long as it’s not about a big red chicken,” he says.
“Okay, well after my video debuted on Yo! MTV Raps, I went on tour to support my CD. My first single, ‘Shake It Like a White Girl,’ was starting to get national radio play. While I was on the road, I got a call from Mike Ross. A promoter had reached out and asked if I would perform at the Increase the Peace charity benefit in Atlanta. Apparently, the promoter was getting African American artists and Caucasian artists to come together and play one big benefit show. Some of the biggest acts were confirmed. I guess Vanilla Ice was booked that day, ’cause they called me as the ‘Caucasian’
representative.
“The show was at the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta and they bused in about twenty-five thousand kids from all over Atlanta to attend. I’d known the crowd was going to be tough, but they were worse than I’d anticipated. The kids were unruly. There were fights in the stands. They were throwing shit at the stage. They had to keep putting the house lights on to control the audience. And…
they booed everyone… I mean, EVERYONE. It was insane.
“Shortly before I was supposed to go onstage, LL Cool J was on. They had to move up his start time because he had another gig later that night and he had to fly out. The fans in Atlanta… they booed LL. I was like, ‘If this crowd is booing LL, I’m in big trouble. Real big trouble. They are booing L and I’m supposed to go up and sing my song, “Shake It Like a White Girl”?’ I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get out of this thing. I did not want to go on. I was physically sick. what, but they were pissed. Before the crowd could even get the ‘B’ in ‘Boo’ out of their mouths, I came up with a crazy idea. My label had given me some free T-shirts to give away. I grabbed the cordless mic from the soundman backstage but also grabbed a pile of a hundred or so T-shirts and took them out with me onstage.
“Didn’t sing a word. But I didn’t get booed either. Remember when you told me to ‘control my mind’ the first day you moved in with me, well, I’m telling you in business… ‘control the situation.’”
“Yo, Jesse man, motherfucking JESSE! You see!!! That’s what I’m talking about, motherfucker.
That’s what I’m talking about,” SEAL says, as we get to the entrance of my office building.
1300
my chair and start to think about all that has happened with SEAL. I’m reliving the past days in my mind when… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz—I’m out. Like saliva-drooling-out-of-the-side-of-my-mouth asleep. Three hours later SEAL comes in and wakes me up.Yoni is in amazing shape. When he moved to New York from Florida eighteen months ago, he weighed 240 pounds. I don’t know if it was the New York women or what, but something clicked in face goes from happy-go-lucky to furrowed and pasty. Whatever SEAL said it manipulated my nephew. He decides to join us. grab a table in the back and order some light appetizers. The conversation is centered on Yoni and how far he has come with his training. It escalates.
“Not sure. He fell back about a hundred meters at mile four.”