P. Diddy Named Me Pretty?
Where there's smoke there's usually predatory fire. Something that drew me to the man when I was called on to "help" him with his interest in getting in the publishing back door.
Watching the publishing world work clues you in to a level of Brobdingnagian chicanery that is shameful and shamefaced to the extreme.
Sour grapes, hater-age? Not necessarily. Even if the first book I got published, A Long Slow Screw (reprinted in French by Editions Inculte and in Italian, both, as Paternostra) started at Random House and then precisely one unsuccessful meeting later ended up at Robotic Boot, the undermanned offshoot of Hydrahead Records, I’d say it’s more the systematic screwing born of a changing marketplace.
This, though, was followed by Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking at Harper Collins. So far, so good. But there was a box to check on the contract regarding the author’s interest in having their book digitized. Having experienced the dirty end of the digital stick with music, I declined. When digital copies started appearing I returned, contract waving in my hand. Have you ever seen a corporation shrug? I have.
Then there was the French version of my play The Inimitable Sounds of Love: A Threesome in Four Acts. I only link to the English version here because the French one not only has the title wrong, which they caught before publication and refused to correct, but has, on the first page a mistake so noteworthy that I declared it dead to me when it first made its way to my hands.
So not a sterling record but a steady one and for those aspiring authors believing these were all products of agents extraordinaire know this: I’ve not gotten a single book deal via an agent. In fact the two step, as I am familiar with it, involves me publishing something — an article, a book — and with a new found awareness that I can write something that drew a little heat and light, an agent tracking me down. I’ve had to date three. Wait…no, four.
But the chance to appear in the Diddy blast zone? Endlessly appealing. Even if the idea of “hip hop fiction” turned my stomach in its vain attempt at relevancy.
With not a published book to boast between them. At least none of mine.
“Have you heard of this fella P. Diddy?”
This was a funny question to ask. Like no one would want to assume that just because he was Black and I am Black that we knew each other, or knew of each other. I got that. But he seemed like such a pop culture figure to me that it struck me as silly as asking if I had heard of Taylor Swift. At least in the ‘90s.
So, yeah, I had. Turns out Diddy was, as a result of getting his beak wet with Vibe Magazine, interested in starting a publishing imprint. The conceit was simple: hip-hop themed novels.
Not so simple was the fact that he’d be picking the themes, and I may, or may not, have had my name publicly associated with them post-publication.
“So ghostwriting you mean?”
The agent cleared his throat and I could feel him leaning into the phone.
“Sort of.” And then another catch: “you’d have to work closely with Mr. Diddy.” I had never heard him called this and laughed. Since Diddy’s reported dust ups with Drake, and the former EIC of Vibe, Keith Clinkscales I was was much more than happy to mix it up with someone who, for any given reason, might decide to swing on me.
If that was a feature and not a bug I was IN. Mostly as I was pretty sure Diddy was by no measure kicking my ass. Emphasis here on “kicking”. In fact I generally welcomed professional relationships that might at any given moment burst into sudden and teachably effective acts of violence.
Kevin Powell from the first season of MTV’s Real World had already tried a such like maneuver on me. The occasion? Me taking over Code Magazine, a fashion magazine for men of color published by none other than Larry Flynt. I had grown weary of his Black Panther poetry journal stylings and asked him to change it up. Just a bit.
“But the American public is stupid. They need to be educated,” he was strident. I wasn’t buying it. We were at loggerheads. “Well I guess I’ll be seeing you somewhere.” Word was that he also had come to blows with Clinkscales. And now, a threat?
“I tell you what,” I laughed. “I’ll pay to fly you anywhere I will be, or me to anywhere where you are if you think getting your ass kicked by me will make you a better writer.” [An offer that still stands.] The phone went dead and so went my relationship with Kevin Powell.
But the chance to appear in the Diddy blast zone? Endlessly appealing. Even if the idea of “hip hop fiction” turned my stomach in its vain attempt at relevancy.
Then the other shoe dropped: I would deliver one book a month, $5000 a book, maybe no public credit. And these were the days when I was getting $2 a word for most pieces making this from top to bottom about what I would take home from two articles. Non-hip-hop articles. With my actual name on them.
Does this now in any way diminish the man’s accomplishments? That is, all of the alleged raping?
Well…define “accomplishments”…
But still I pushed, since it seemed to make some sort of sense to get closer to the man who was The Man, for at least a period of time. The plot of the first book, had it been delivered by a white guy, would have been a lot of things, and they all would have been bad. But coming from Diddy? Well, it made a lot of sense. From the vantage point of now. Even if they were in no way less laughably offensive.
“Yeah, man. Can’t do it.”
The inevitable lecture from the agent regarding “taking opportunities” and “it’s called getting books published” notwithstanding if it walks like a crazy duck, and talks like a crazy duck it, in all likelihood, is a crazy fucking duck. Now while I knew Bill Cosby was not right from the moment I met him, it took decades for the Diddy circle to square itself as he labors now under a raft of accusations, all seeming to culminate in sexual misdoings of the most crucial kind. The kind that involve power and the abuse of.
So, is it the power that informs the sex or the sex that informs the power?
Who knows? And in Diddy’s case, never having pursued his hip-hop fiction imprint because of, apparently, being, allegedly, too busy raping the men and women who worked for him, some of whom might have been underaged (or named Bieber), it may be that he doesn’t know either.
But here’s hoping Diddy’s day (days?) in court, where he can face his accusers, yields some insight. Until then? I’m betting on the former, if it matters. Mostly because he both won’t stop. Can’t stop. [Sorry about the lame Diddy lyrical call out. Apparently he’s not the only one that both can’t and won’t.]
Does this now in any way diminish the man’s accomplishments? That is, all of the alleged raping?
Well…define “accomplishments”…
OK…So you have ordered the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
Might you consider giving it a review in either of those places?
I’ve been told it matters, somehow. So please: review away! Unless you think it sucks. Then, maybe, just keep that part to yourself. At last count there were 55 reviews…so yeah…GET AT IT!!! Every one helps. Or so they tell me.
AND if you want to come to the book deal in Venice Beach, California on EASTER SUNDAY, please do so. I’ll sign any book of mine you bring, will answer ANY question no matter how unreasonable, and may get a tattoo of your name if you pay the right price.
BE THERE.