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ten 10-inch batteries would die much faster. The best thing about
the 777 was that it had dual, high-speed tape dubbing capabilities,
so I would always take home the tapes that Jeff and I had made,
stay up all night, and re-record our demos at high speed. That's
how it was done back then. Just one tape at a time. It was boring
and monotonous - I'll tell you, it's like building a wall when you're
nine, dammit. But it had to be done, so I did it.

Then I gave those tapes to everyone. I didn't care if you even

knew what hip-hop was. If you had two ears and somewhere to
play it – my name is Fresh Prince – I have it on my pants – and
you have to hear this tape.
Overbrook was in Hilltop, and Hilltop was run by about thirty
guys who called themselves the "Hilltop Hustlers." One of the
best rappers in the crew was Steady B, and Stead was Lawrence
Goodman's nephew. Word was that his uncle had just hit on him
and that he was going to have music out later that year. I wanted
Stead to take my record to Lawrence - the problem was I lived
over the bridge in Wynnefield. And if there's one thing a Hilltop
Hustler would n't do, it's help a nigger from Wynnefield.

But then it hit me: Dana Goodman lives in Wynefield! Maybe

she'll give Lawrence our recording.
Dana and Lawrence, like a lot of brothers, had a bit of a sibling
rivalry. Dana saw the money his brother was making with his
record label and decided to start his own. He called Jeff and me
and said he wanted to get together. So we invited him over to
Jeff's house to listen to our music.
Dana was wearing a navy blue Sergio Tacchini velour
tracksuit, the kind with the red and white elastic around the wrists
and ankles. The zip of the tracksuit was undone just enough to
reveal seven or eight thin gold chains dangling against the Afro
on his chest. He was exactly the kind of older guy who could
almost get away with dressing like a kid, except for the socks .
Dana always wore sunglasses—inside,
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outside, at noon, at midnight, on the basketball court, in church.

You never saw Dana except with dark glasses on her eyes.
That day, Dana pulled up in front of Jeff’s house in a brand-new, four-door,
steel-blue Audi 4000 CS Quattro with a five- speed transmission, and for the
first time in my life, I saw a phone in a car. It was the first car phone ever—a
rotary-dial home phone that somehow worked in his car. Dana got out on
Rodman Street. He was a hood. A loud showman, and the ring on his pinky
glinted in the sunlight. Jeff and I were standing on his mom’s porch. Dana saw
us, spread his arms wildly, and in his deep , broken baritone voice, he shouted
toward the playing children and the passing neighbors, “Yoooooooo! Over
there, soooooo!” pointing at Jeff and me. “They’re hot, guys! Get them
autographs right now ! That’s DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince!

You'll hear more about these guys !

You called us to you.
"Come on, guys. Get on my chest!" Jeff and I got down on
sidewalk and Dana hugged us like a proud dad.
"I really love what you two did in New York! You're rocking Philly!"

Jeff and I smiled.

"Well, you know, that's how we are," I said.
Then one of Jeff's neighbors, a guy a few years older named Keith, called
out, "Hey! Dana! Is that you, dude?! Seriously, fuck it, it's Dana Goodman -
what are you doing in this hole, dude?"
Keith and Dana shook hands—the kind of long, elaborate, multi-step
handshake that was common in the previous generation and didn’t go well with
Dana’s sweatpants.
“What are you doing in these parts?” Keith asked.
"Well, you know. I came here to discuss this with these guys."
"A small business," Dana said.
“A deal?” Keith looked at Jeff and me. Something had changed
in his energy, but our youth and enthusiasm blinded us to such
trifles.
Keith pulled Dana aside and put his arm around her shoulders.
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"You know this is Jimmy Townes' brother, right?"

Dana looked back at Jeff.

"Jimmy Townes' brother?"

Keith leaned close to Dan and whispered something in his ear that we couldn't
hear.
Dana looked down, then started nodding. "Yeah, yeah, sure, dude, it's just a
little business. I 'm trying to help them ."
“Ro-di-na,” Keith said, loud enough for us to hear this time.
We heard it too. Then he said goodbye and went his own way again.
Dana went with us to the basement. Jeff and I played him everything we had.
Dana picked out two songs that he liked the most: the first was called “Just One of
Those Days.” “Just One of Those Days” is a slow groove, 92 bpm, where I rapped
about one of those days when nothing was going right. For the chorus, Jeff sampled
“Puttin' on the Ritz” by Irving Berlin, a ragtime song from 1928 that was the first
ever to be performed in a film by a mixed-ethnic ensemble. Typical of Jazzy Jeff,
where he mixed old-school, intellectual music with scratching and hip-hop beats.
That was exactly the dynamic between us: Jeff’s musical sophistication and in-
depth knowledge combined with my natural gift for storytelling and humor.

The second song was "Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble,"

inspired by Grandmaster Caz's "Yvette." In this case, Jeff
sampled the theme song from the famous 1960s sitcom Dream
of Jeannie. He used a brand new Roland 909 drum machine and
pulled down the toms to sound like a bass line. In the song, I
talked about that night in Judy Stewart's basement when I almost
got frostbite from my lover's art. Dan really liked it.
He could have passed away laughing.

"Dude, did that really happen? But no bullshit: did that really happen?"
"Yeah, man," I replied. "Terrible night."
He burst out laughing.
"Boy, there's something about you two, you funny niggers," he said.
Hip-hop has evolved so much over the decades that when I
listen to these songs today, I cringe at how simple
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and it feels repetitive. But at the time, what we were doing was
revolutionary. Jeff and I were playing with song structure in a way
that no one in hip-hop had ever done before. We had choruses
without lyrics. We had verses that were half sampled and half rapped.
The verses I composed told a story – each verse led directly into the next,
requiring the listener to hold on and find out what would come at the end of the
song. It was a new day – dare I say… a breath of fresh air.

Dana bobbed his head to the beat, clapped his hands, stomped his feet. And
finally, he pretended he couldn't take it anymore and said, "That's enough,
enough, turn it off!"
Jeff pressed the stop button on the quad bike.
If we were in an animated movie, Dan would have dollars rolling around in
his eyes right now. But in our world, he was fiddling with the gold chains on his
chest and saying, "Oh, guys! What if we recorded something?"
Jeff and I flinched – we were completely off guard.
We were jumping a meter in the air, slapping each other, screaming – we were
so naive. We thought it was cool. You just invite a guy over to your house and
he says, “Let’s record something!” and boom, you’re a star!
We didn't realize that Dana didn't even have her own company yet.
Zero distribution, just a few connections on radio and television.
And DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were his first foray into
in the music business.

A week later, we entered Studio 4, a professional recording studio that Dana

had found in downtown Philly.
It's hard to describe the look on Jeff's face when we walked into the main
control room. It was like he was a seventeen-year-old virgin walking onto a porn
set and finding out he was the main star. Dana handed us a recording contract
and we signed it.
We had never been in a real recording studio before, so we
weren't entirely sure what to do or how it all worked.
Dana already had some idea, thanks to the many Pop Art hits he had worked on
with his brother. He had his own ideas about what
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how it should look and what he wants to hear. The contract clearly stated that
Dana was the producer and co-writer of our music. Gradually, he wanted Jeff to
change the tempo, adjust the pitches and sounds, add cuts. Jeff disagreed with
many of Dan's creative decisions, but Dana saw it clearly - he pays for the time
in the studio, so he decides. Jeff fumed, but this was our big moment, our one-
time chance. We're not going to screw this up now.

They pretty much ruined “Just One of Those Days” on this recording . The
tempo between the verse and the chorus was different. For reasons I don’t
understand, they changed the keys in the song. The mix was terrible. Jeff still
hates that track, even though we re-recorded it later.
“Girls” came through the recording process almost flawlessly and still held
together as a song. Despite Jeff’s grumbling, it was decided that we would
release “Girls” as our first single and “Just One of Those Days” would be the B-
side. We would release them to give people a little bit of a buzz while we recorded
our first full-length album.

The single "Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble" was "released" in

March 1986, although no one knew about it because it was released
under Dan's new record label, Word-Up Records. No offices, no
staff, no distribution - the single wasn't even in stores.
Dana was selling vinyl out of the trunk of his car. Nothing was happening. To his
credit, he did everything he could.
He was a real gambler – he spent his money and put his complete
trust in DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
Even though no one knew we had a record out, Jeff's victory at Battle for
World Supremacy meant that promoters started calling, wanting him for shows,
and I was an integral part of the package. Take it or leave it. We started hitting
the better clubs in Philly. We played in Delaware and Atlantic City.

The shows were so big that they were secured by contract, and on one
occasion we had to sign the contract and fax one copy back by five o'clock that
day or we would lose the show. Jeff and I were in a bind—damn it, who in our
family had a fax machine?
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JL sat in “JL’s Corner” in Jeff’s basement, in his own world,

“reading” the back cover of the Ohio Players album, the one with the
naked girl covered in honey inside. Jeff and I were getting more and
more desperate as we tried to keep the $1,500 from disappearing
before our eyes. The fifth one was fast approaching.
Neither of us had a fax machine. I thought maybe my mother
would have one at work, but it was late and it was Friday.
Fotÿík didn't like this "modern shit." And Word-Up Records only had a rotary-dial
car phone in its mobile sales office .

JL sat there quietly while more and more tension grew between Jeff and me.
The tension grew.
“So you have all this computer nonsense down here, but you don’t have a
fucking fax machine?” I reproached him. “You can get a guitar sampling pedal
from some Nazi in Vienna and you don’t have a way to fax the stupid contract?”

"What do I have to do with it? What are you doing in this band ?"
JL didn't even look up. And in a bored, monotone voice, he said, as if he
were saying it to the girl from Ohio Players as he was to Jeff and me: "I have a
fax machine..."
And so James Lassiter became our manager.

I know a great idea from Jim Rohn:

"Take a good look at the five people you spend the most time with,
because they describe who you are.”
I've always understood this idea in a way that was natural to me. Somewhere
deep down, I knew that my dreams depended on the people I surrounded myself
with. Confucius said it best: the quality of your life will rarely be higher than the
quality of your friends. And by the grace of God, there has never been a time in
my life when I looked left or right and didn't see an extraordinary friend, someone
who believed in me and wouldn't let me down no matter what.

JL was a senior in law school, and while Jeff and I saw his hiring as a
manager as a normal act of some sort,
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convenience, we quickly realized that JL was no ordinary guy .

He started contacting all of our venues and concert promoters
and asked Dana for documentation and information about the
financial side of record sales and studio expenses.
And when he didn't like the findings, he hired a New York lawyer to oversee all
our business affairs. JL was one of those guys who didn't care about fame or
money. He wasn't eccentric, and he didn't put up with flashy clothes or flashy
trinkets. He simply prided himself on protecting the people he loved.

JL read the recording contract that Dana and I had signed. He highlighted
and circled and crossed out clauses, but that didn’t really matter because we
had already signed it anyway. He sat in “JL’s corner” with a stony expression
on his face and asked, “ Did you two read the contract?”

Jeff and I looked at each other vaguely.

"I don't read it, do you?" I began.
Jeff shook his head and said to JL, "N-e. What's in there?"
JL didn't hope for this answer.
"It's here that you are pretty stupid."
Dana was always positive. He told us how hard he was working and how
much money he was spending on promoting the record. Jeff heard it on WHAT
a few times around midnight and a few friends and family members caught it,
but they played it sporadically.
"You have to grease the radio station. You have to invite
people to dinner and stuff. You know? It's in competition. Just try
to beat me...! But they really do, you just don't have any luck!
Give me some time and you'll be TOP!"

Because I had secretly decided not to go to college, I stopped doing homework,

didn't study for tests, and even skipped school. As for the little guy, as long as
I kept the ice cream shop disciplined, did my homework reliably, and didn't get
locked up or killed, he was fine. But my mother was friends with all my teachers
at Overbrook, and that was a big deal.
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Mother's ultimate parental mission was for me and all of her children
to go to college. College was everything to her .
That's why she pulled herself together and moved to Philly. That's why she
tolerated her dad's drinking and violence. And that's largely why she moved
back to Woodcrest. A college education was the cornerstone of a successful
life for her. And without it, I'm hopelessly lost.
lost.
Hope keeps us alive. Hope is the elixir of survival in the darkest of times.
The ability to conjure up a vision of brighter days gives meaning to our
suffering and makes it more bearable. When we lose hope, we lose our
central source of strength and energy.
My mother’s hopes for her children had sustained her through the
darkest years of her marriage. But now I had created my own hopes. I
put most of them into hip-hop. I had harbored hopes that I would release
albums and perform in front of fifty thousand people screaming
“Hoooouuuu!!!” whenever I called them. Those hopes now gave me
strength and kept me going. I would have died if I had to give them up.
I couldn’t. Never.
It all came to a head one afternoon towards the end of the fourth
term. I didn't go home after school. I headed straight to Jeff's for the exam.
When I finally got home, it was about ten o'clock at night. I felt my mother's
presence before I even put the key in the front door.
I bet she was in the kitchen the whole time waiting for me.
“Hi, Mom!” I said with mock cheerfulness.
“Do you have a problem?” she asked in the same tone.
"No, I'm fine, Mom."
"No, you have a big problem. Or at least you will soon."
"What's up, Mom, what happened?"
"I was talking to Miss Stubbs. So you suddenly forgot where you went to
school after four years?"
"No, Mom, I just have a lot."
"What's more important than getting into college? You know very well
that these schools will be interested in your end-of-quarter grades."
We've come too far for you to just throw your life away. So what's your
problem?"
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I could read anger in my mother's voice and attitude, but somewhere beneath it

I saw something else: she was scared. My heart sank.

"Mom. I've been working with Jeff for almost a year. People say he's the best
DJ in the world. Rap is really hot right now. He's on the radio, on MTV—and
Run-DMC got to Japan. I'm telling you, Mom. We're making songs that are as
good as everyone else's. Every time I go on stage, people go crazy. We got a
producer who's putting money into it. We have a manager. Nobody in Philly raps
as well as I do. Everyone says we're going to be stars. I just need some time to
make it happen."

"No. You can't be a rapper," she said curtly.

"What? Why not?"
“Because I don’t know what it is. Now listen to me carefully: you won’t miss
another class. Not a single test. You’ll do every homework assignment they give
you. You’re going to college in the fall. Period.”
"Mom, listen to the music ..."
"I've been listening to you hip-hop all the time! My whole life! It's a hobby, not
a career. Good night."
She got up from the kitchen table, turned to leave, and I stopped her with
what was possibly the worst thing I've ever said to my mother.

"Mom, I'm not going to college."

After previous generations who had endured all sorts of hardships and sacrifices,
here I was—a blessed young man enjoying the privileges earned by a long line
of African Americans tirelessly striving for a stable, educated life in the American
middle class.
A generation of mothers and fathers who grew up in the agony of segregation
and abject poverty, Gigi's family fled the South to escape Jim Crow laws.
My mother had to deal with school board red tape, financial uncertainty, and
photo ops for decades to get me where I am. I'll sign her order if I don't go to
college because of some music I make at basement parties with friends called
Jazz and Ready Rock.
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Our hopes finally collided. They were essentially incompatible.

One had to give way. One of us had to leave with a broken heart.

The thing I've learned over the years about giving advice is
that no one can predict the future with any certainty, but we all
think we can. So advice is, at best, one person's limited view of
the infinite possibilities open to you. People's advice is based on
their fears, their experiences, their prejudices, and ultimately it's
simple: it's about them, not you. When people give you advice,
they base it on what they would do, how they perceive it , what
they think you could do.
The point is, while we are all subject to a series of cosmic laws, patterns, trends,
and currents—all of which are somewhat predictable—you are happening for the
first time. YOU and NOW are unique phenomena, and you are the most reliable
proof of all those possibilities.

I always loved the scene in The Good Place on the basketball

court where Jaden's character shoots the ball and yells, "I'm
going to play league!" My character, Chris Gardner, talks him out
of playing basketball, but then catches himself saying, "Don't
believe anyone who tells you you can't do something. Even if it's me...
When you have a dream... You have to make it happen. When someone
loses, they'll tell you that you'll lose too. If you want something, go for it.
Dot."
My mother’s life was saved by a college education, which then
embodied her basic premise: a college education is the only shield
against the brutality of this world. And without a college education,
I would be doomed in a sense. This wasn’t supposed to be her
advice to me—it was “the truth.” According to her, it was impossible
to be a rapper.
But I am not my mother. Just as her education protected her
from the hardships of her early life and provided a shield,
performing and hip-hop protected me from mine . It all becomes
clearer to me now that I look back. We found ourselves at a
stalemate , rubbing against each other and arguing, and reality was still there.
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completely different. Both things were true: one was true for her, the other
for me.
But at that time, neither of us could compromise , because it would
mean destroying everything we stand for.

The little boy was caught somewhere in the middle. My mother was demanding
that he force me to go to college, and I was begging him to please understand
what I was saying.
It was clear that he would have the last word. Fotÿík would be the judge,
referee, and executioner of the dreams and hopes of either his wife or his
son.
The little boy thought about it for about a week. He took me for a
drive , and my mother for a walk. He asked us questions and listened to
our answers. Meanwhile, Woodcrest was as cold as an icebox. My mother
and I were really warm to each other—we kept it to “hello” and “goodbye.”
And then one evening the little boy called us both into the kitchen. My
mother and I were sitting at the table, and the little boy was leaning
against the stove.
The photographer had been in this situation before, except that he had been in
my shoes, his parents telling him what he could and couldn’t do, when he loved his
camera so much, but they had told him it was just a hobby, not a career. At heart,
the photographer was an artist who had been robbed of his dreams and passions
because they were “unrealistic” and “impractical.” But he also knew firsthand how
cruel the world could be to an uneducated black kid. No matter what the
photographer did, someone kept telling him he couldn’t do it. He should have
gotten a job because there was no way he could start his own business.

People told him it wasn't that easy to get white people to work
for him. To get real supermarkets to buy ice from black people.
He had gone against the wild current of doubt and betrayal his whole life, but he
still did everything his own way.
"So, we'll do it this way," said the photographer. "You're a year old.
Your mother said she could arrange for all those schools to hold your
spot until next September. We'll help you and support you in everything we can."
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"You need to succeed. But in a year, if it doesn't work out, you'll go to whatever school

your mother chooses. What do you think?"

In my mind, the year was endless. I was ecstatic about it.

He turned to his mother. "What do you think?"

Mother was obviously not happy about it, but it was a compromise,

who kept her dreams alive. She said just one word.
"Because."

And with that, the photographer returned to his work.

My experiences with my father are a mixed bag, so to speak.

But that evening, in the kitchen at 5943 Woodcrest Avenue, he demonstrated the most

remarkable leadership skills I have ever seen.

This is what a real father should look like.

A few weeks later, my mother called the dean at the University of Wisconsin, the
school where I had been accepted. She told the dean everything.

"This is terrible," she began. "My son wants to take a year off before college. He does

something called 'rapping.' He has a manager and a company is paying him to record an

album. It all sounds kind of fishy to me, but we were wondering if you could hold his spot

until next September."

The Dean listened patiently. "I think it's wonderful, Mrs. Smith."

"What?" the mother didn't understand.

"For a young man of his age. He would never get that kind of life experience here. He

should definitely try it."

It brought my mother to her knees.

"And we'll definitely keep his place here. If he doesn't do well with the album, he can

join next year. That won't be a problem."

A few weeks later, in early May, about a month before graduation, I was bagging ice at

ACRAC. In case you didn't know, bagging ice is as boring and monotonous as it sounds.

And every time

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You can work your back doing it. You could scoop about two kilos of ice into an
aluminum scoop. Two and a half scoops into a five kilo bag, which you then had
to twist to pull the top down, and then shove it into a ziplock bag and from there
into a shopping cart. If you stacked them correctly, you could fit twenty-four
bags into one cart. Then you drive the cart to the freezer, take the bags out one
by one and put them in a pile. In four hours of this hard work, one person will
make about two hundred to two hundred and fifty bags. It's all over again and
in a way, you just completely switch off for a few hours.

I always liked to do it at night because Power 99 played hip-hop. I would

listen to the “Power 9 at 9” countdown, get lost in my own world, and get carried
away by new hip-hop songs. I would rap and memorize my favorite songs.

I scooped and dumped ice to the rhythm and created my verses.

But that night I was quiet. For the first time, I understood the old saying: “Be
careful what you wish for, because you might get it.” I stood my ground in front
of my parents, and they caved in. Now I have to prove it.

"Number five-five-five-five! We have a brand new track from

Kool Moe Dee, 'Go See the Doctor'."

Yeeee… dnooooo… I'm walking down the street, I'm driving my beat

I'm clapping and stomping my feet, wondering how I'm doing.

When a girl walks by, I wish I had a lot

And I'm like, hey beauty, what should I go on a date with?

(freely translated from the original text)

I'm as good as Kool Moe Dee, I thought, trying to boost my confidence. But
my mother put a bug in my

heads. What if he's right? What if being a rapper really isn't that bad? And only
a year? Isn't that enough? This last year just whizzed by. Maybe I should go to
college. I did all this with Jeff in high school - maybe I could do music in college.
Machine Translated by Google

Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it.
I don't want to stay with my parents. I need my ex, my money, my car...

"Number FOURYYYYYY!!! Beastie Boys are back with 'Hold It Now,

Hit It‘.“

I'm cruel when I get involved

A dollar roll fills the pockets.
Big beer, small beer, I don't really care.
When I get full, I'll yawn.

(freely translated from the original text)

Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it.
Dude, I'm as good as the Beastie Boys. None of that. Except they're on the
radio and I'm bagging ice. Maybe it's my destiny, bagging. But dude, if I'm still
standing here with a photo in ten years, I'm probably going to be scratching my
head.
Like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys must have been bagging ice or
something, right? Or maybe they just had a clique, like one in a million …

"Number-number-number THREE!!! Look out, people – hot new

single from Stetsasonic's debut album, On Fire. You've been asking for
it, so here it is – 'My Rhyme'."
But I'm one in a million. Jeff is one in a million. Mom is not my target. How
can she even dare to judge whether a rapper is good or not? She's judging
things she doesn't even understand. What about Melanie? You can't keep a girl
if you run off to college. She'll find another guy in two weeks.

Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it. Take it, pour it.
"And we're back with issue TWO!!! Your old friends are here."
Oh, yeah, RUN! D! M! C! and their 'My Adidas'!' This was my party. It pulled me
out of my slump. I was already drumming to the beat again and rapping along.
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My. Aaaaa-didasky walk to the concert

And to the coliseum too, they're cool there

We're on stage, at Live Aid

People were generous, just let the poor have a good time

(freely translated from the original text)

The spatula in my hand suddenly flew around, completely unintentionally.

So this is the power of hip-hop, I thought.

My Adidas shoes will take me to a new land

Now with a microphone

Big boss here again

(freely translated from the original text)

But my reverie didn't last long. I couldn't get my mother out of my head. I
had failed to protect her from the photo. I hadn't been brave enough to pull
myself together and leave with her then. And now? All the hopes she had
placed in me... The dreams that had helped her through all the pain and
hardship... I was spitting right in her face now. I couldn't shake the feeling
that I was betraying her again.

He finished "My Adidas" and a commercial started playing on the radio. I

realized I hadn't even noticed the end of the song.
Damn, I complained. Not even "My Adidas" can get me out of this.

I arrived with the last cart to the freezer. Done for the day . I counted the
bags while the ads kept blaring – new mattress sale, “everything must go.”

Maybe I could sell mattresses, I thought. Any plumber can

do that . I could rap in mattresses.

Take a nap, a nap or twenty

Choose any one, or even a dozen

Machine Translated by Google

I threw the shovel aside and shut down the machines.

"And we're back with 'Power 9 at 9'! We have a newbie here today ."

I started turning off the lights and suddenly I couldn't find the keys.
I've lost them a few times and had to have the photographer pick me up. I
dreaded the thought of having to call him to come get me.
Now I'm standing here, wanting to be so independent, but I'm actually going
to have to call my dad to pick me up because I can't find my keys. Damn!

"The phones won't stop ringing all day , as you all want to hear from these
guys! So get ready for our homegrown guys, straight from Philly – DJ Jazzy
Jeff and the Fresh Prince! This is their… 'Girls Ain't Nothing But'–"

I froze completely. I stared with my mouth open and my heart pounded. I

wanted to scream, I wanted to jump to the ceiling, but at the same time I didn't
want to jump so high that I'd hit my head on some satellite in the sky and
interrupt my song on the radio. And then the words. The words that I knew so
well and had repeated a hundred, maybe a thousand times before, now came
pouring out of the radio:

Look, guys, I don't want to ruin your dream.

But trust me – girls, there are only problems with those!

That's my voice. That's me. On the radio. Me. My verses. My voice!

I wanted to call everyone, but I didn't want to miss it.

So last week, as I was walking down the street

Suddenly my eyes fall on a decent beauty

Excerpt from the song "GIRLS AIN'T NOTHING BUT TROUBLE"

("Girls are just trouble", loosely

translated from the original text)

I ran outside. I wanted to grab someone, tell someone. "IT'S ME, PEOPLE,
IT'S ME!"
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But it was ten o'clock at night. No one was there. I started to

giggle uncontrollably. That is still my reflexive reaction to
extremely emotional situations. I couldn't stop. It was a joyful,
blissful laugh. The pure joy of a child seeing a Christmas tree.
The joy of a great discovery. Of renewed hope. Of a new life.
The joy of being true to yourself.
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CHAPTER SIX

IGNORANCE

We knew
Thecomplete
tour bus shit.
stopped in Woodcrest. We agreed to meet at
my house because my street was the widest.
The whole family gathered to see us off. Mother, the photographer,
Gigi, Ellen, Harry. Pam was home now too. But Melanie said she
couldn’t bear to see me go—so we said goodbye the night before.

The neighborhood kids had never seen a tour bus before, so

they ran around, checked the tires, peeked into the trunk , and
chatted with the driver.
So Dan somehow managed to do it. The song “Girls Ain’t
Nothing But Trouble” hit local radio in May 1986—finally. It was a
bit of a stumble when it first appeared in March, but by the end
of May it had really taken hold. We heard it was being played in
Delaware, New Jersey, and even New York.
I graduated in June, which meant I had a whole month ahead
of me as a fourth-grader with a hit song on the radio (far too
much for a seventeen-year-old). As I came down from the stage
in my cap and gown, waving my diploma, the first thing I did was
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went to hug my mother. But she jokingly refused to hug me,

snatched the diploma from my hand and said: "Boy, this is MINE."
In July, Jeff and I were locked in Studio 4 in downtown Philadelphia by Dana
to record our debut album, Rock the House.
Because Jeff and I had been making songs since we met, we had the album
ready at lightning speed. But Dana kept playing with the songs, remixing them,
and reworking them, until he completely ruined the production. Our relationship
with him had been kind of sour for a while, but we didn't have time to focus on
that. We had a hit song and right now we had to figure out how to make money
from it.
We had a few shows in various corners of the East Coast with LL Cool Jem
and Whodini, including a couple of sold-out shows in New York. Then we
planned our first big gig: opening for Public Enemy and 2 Live Crew, two of the
biggest hip-hop acts in the country at the time.

We were throwing our luggage into the bus. It was as if my biological family
was mentally handing me over my new, hip-hop ones.
JL was the new "father" - instead of the sensible adult, he was here now.
He gave his mother and father an itinerary with everything—bus stops, hotel
names and phone numbers, addresses and dates of performances, agent
names and contact information.
JL was twenty-one. He was the oldest of us, so mom and dad had peace of
mind knowing he was in charge of us. The youngest was Omarr— he was only
sixteen, and even at that age his fashion sense was a total bomb. He always
had the hottest hair and was the only person I knew who carried a straightener.
Most groups traveled with at least two dancers for symmetry, but Omarr’s leg
surgery was so successful that he was more than enough for us. The two of us
grew up about ten doors apart, and he had been there for most of the important
events in my life. He had been through my Raleigh Choppers, cowgirl days, had
already had some ice, and even lied to me when they loaded me into the
ambulance.

"Oh, sure, man, you're a scoundrel, you got him there!"

Omarr wasn't due to graduate for another year, so JL had to walk down the
street to their house and promise his mother that he would take responsibility for
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that Omarr do his homework and maintain his status as an honor student (Miss
Brown—who had previously played a key role in naming him Fresh Prince—had
made this a condition of Omarr going on a trip with us).

"Mrs. Rambert, you don't have to worry at all," JL said to Omarr's mother. "I
graduated from Overbrook, Will graduated from Overbrook, and I give you my
word: I will personally make sure that Omarr graduates from Overbrook, too."

For the next year, JL helped Omarr with homework in hotel rooms, on buses,
in rest areas, and they even missed our day at Six Flags Over Georgia because
of Pythagoras.

Ready Rock had been to a party the night before and was completely
devastated. He threw his bags on the bus and was in limbo in his cubicle before
we even left.
Jeff had just received brand new Anvil cases for transporting turntables,
records, and beatboxes. I didn’t notice it at the time—I was so excited about
everything—but Jeff was kind of quiet and withdrawn that day. Over the years,
he confided to us that because of his sheltered childhood, he would suffer from
extreme anxiety attacks and other physical reactions whenever we had to go out
of Philly. He would have bouts of vomiting that would last thirty to forty minutes,
but for a long time he would just sit there and not say a word.

We all decided together that when we were traveling to these foreign cities
and towns, it would be wise to have security with us. And back then, in the early
days of hip-hop, "security" meant your biggest, tallest friend who never smiled.
Ours happened to be Charles Alston, aka Charlie Mack.

Charlie Mack grew up in South Philly, one of the rougher parts of the city. His
parents were separated and he lived with his mom. They moved frequently
throughout his early childhood, until the chaos of his family life eventually drove
him to the streets.
Charlie Mack started out doing street work at just eleven years old . It wasn't
long before he progressed to carrying a gun and even
Machine Translated by Google

bigger drug dealing. At the time we met him, he was two meters tall, almost one
hundred and forty kilos, and no one dared to mess with him.

That day he had broken out with a green garbage bag full of one- and five-
dollar bills—no doubt the proceeds of the previous evening's delivery of regional
drugs—slung over his shoulder like some kind of mob Santa.

"Charlie. You can't just walk around here with a garbage bag
full of dust," JL told him.
"What, what, what can't I do? I'm not going anywhere without my money,"
Charlie grumbled.
Charlie's voice is incredibly deep and he talks way too fast for
someone who's over six feet tall. And when he gets excited, he'll
calmly repeat the same word or phrase over and over until you give up.
"Boy, boy, boy, boy, again, again, easy, easy, easy , easy." This
will probably derail anyone - the timbre of his voice combined with
the speed of repetition are barely understandable, but somehow
they magically make the listener agree.
So we let him cool off, and Jeff, JL, and I talked to him later. We talked about
our dreams and what we wanted to accomplish together. We gave Charlie a
choice: he could continue to be a drug dealer, or he could take the plunge and
build a real life with us. We couldn't pay him what he would get on the streets,
but we promised him that when we could, we would.

Charlie paused. I could see that he was reflecting on his whole life. He had
dreams too. And somewhere deep down, in the back of his mind, he knew he
had a better life—he just needed someone to say it out loud.
"I think I'll go with you," he said.
He eventually dedicated his life to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
As it turned out, this commitment was not without its twists and turns . But one
thing remained true forever: Charlie never sold drugs again.

–
Machine Translated by Google

The bags are finally loaded. Everyone has already said their goodbyes. The
whole platoon is on board. I hug my family and step into the doorway of the bus.
Three dirty rubber steps, the threshold to a new life, a stargate, an express from
childhood towards the unknown infinite. I am on my own. The little photo can
no longer hurt me. But

At the same time, I am no longer under his protection. Away from the feeling of
shame that I have disappointed my mother. Away from the fear in her eyes that
seem to say: She is ruining her life.
As the door began to close, I met Gigi's gaze.
She had the same smile on her face that I saw every Sunday of my life at the
Baptist church.
"Remember, dear," she said, "be kind to everyone you meet on the way up,
because you may meet them again on the way down."

The sun was setting as our bus bumped across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
Pennsylvania turned into Delaware, Delaware into Maryland, and the initial
excitement faded. The rumble of the road lulled my heart into a kind of reverie.

The thought crossed my mind: I'm in charge now.

I had never been so in love with Melanie Parker before. I wanted to build a
proper life for us, to protect her from the chaos of the world. I wanted to do
everything right.
I wanted to get married since I was five years old. I wanted my own family.
Even in my childhood games with my siblings: we played “White Family.” Ellen
was “Kathy,” Harry was “Dickie,” and I
„Junior“.
Later, in my teenage years, my fantasies never included multiple girls or
wild orgies. I always fantasized about one woman. I wanted to charm her with
perfect, unshakable devotion and affection . I wanted to be the best man she
had ever known— to fulfill all her dreams, to solve all her problems, to take away
all her pain. I wanted her to adore me. I wanted to be so trustworthy and
emotionally reliable that I could fix
Machine Translated by Google

her thoughts about all men. And if I had to slay a dragon for her ,
climb her hair, enter a heavily guarded castle , and let my kiss
act as an antidote to the poison she had to experience, it would
be just a weak icing on the giant cake of my love.
I was eighteen.
From the day I met her, Melanie had been the center of my
life. I made it my long-term goal to heal the pain of her trauma .
Looking into Melanie's eyes became a kind of substitute for
Gigi's appreciation. I always needed a woman to fight for.
When I performed now, I performed for Melanie. When I started
making money rapping, in my mind I was now making money for
her. I had inextricably linked my self-esteem to the sliding scale
of her happiness. When she was happy, it meant I was a good
person. But when she was unhappy, it meant I was a monster.

We arrived in Tallahassee for our first cut of the line down South.
The rest of the guys went to the venue early to set up the stage
and do the sound, and since I was just rapping, I only had to
arrive forty-five minutes before the show started. The first night I
walked into the dressing room and found the whole gang hanging
out with six or seven girls. Jordache jeans and "bamboo" earrings
everywhere . It smelled like the perfume section at the Merry-Go-
Round.
I politely asked Keisha, Mercedes, and Cinnamon, or whatever
their names were, to leave. And I called a crew meeting.
“We need to get the rules straight on this,” I said. “I don’t want
any girls in the locker rooms. No girls on the bus. And whatever
floor of the hotel we’re on, I don’t want any girls there either. I
don’t want to smell any perfume and hear all this giggling and
stuff. I’m in love with Melanie, we’re in a relationship.
and I'm not here for any nonsense."
All the guys looked at each other, as if to say, " He can't be
serious." Ready Rock raised his hand and I pointed at him.
Machine Translated by Google

"What, buddy?"
Ready Rock, a little confused, said, "So where are we going to drive in?"
"All those fans?"
"I hope somewhere where they teach you to speak politely," I replied.
“Will, that’s crazy, man,” Charlie Mack chimed in. “You’re not here
"Alone. It's in all of us. Aren't you a little angry with yourself?"
"Look, dude, I want to propose to this girl. We're getting married."
And I'm definitely not going to screw it up for some bunch of horny pigs."
"Hey, bro, I respect that you're in love and all," he said.
Omarr. "But that doesn't mean I'm a pig."
Now I was like some kind of spotless altar boy. And the boys
didn't like it one bit . But when I set my mind to an idea—when I
commit to a certain set of values—there are only two options.
One: I complete the mission.
Second: I am dead.

We knew complete shit.

We didn't realize that we had to pay for the bus driver, or else he could
just go home. We didn't know that some places took a small cut of every
show —that they lied to you about the number of tickets sold. We didn't
know that the wild audience would throw things at us if they didn't like us—
coins, bottles, flashlights, shoes, and one night in Oakland, even an M-80
firecracker. We didn't know that different states had all sorts of curfew laws
and other rules that meant they could shut up your show if you didn't shut up
and get off the stage as quickly as possible. We didn't know that you had to
tip the security guys at the event if you didn't want your stuff to get lost. We
didn't realize that two inches on a map could be the equivalent of twelve
hours on a bus.

People often talk about blissful ignorance.

Maybe there's something to it... but until there isn't.

We punish ourselves for not knowing. We constantly complain about
what we could have or should have done and how big a mistake it was to do it.
Machine Translated by Google

They did this or that, that unforgivable thing. We beat ourselves

up for being so stupid, regret our choices, and lament the terrible
decisions we make.
But the reality is completely different – that’s life. Life is a journey from
ignorance to knowledge. From incomprehension to understanding. From
confusion to enlightenment. According to the laws of the universe, we are born
into a confusing situation , a complete revelation, and as humans we have only
one task: to unravel this damned conundrum.
Life is a learning experience. Period. Overcoming ignorance is the very
essence of our journey. We are not even supposed to know at the beginning.
The whole point of venturing into uncertainty is to bring light into the darkness of
our ignorance. I once heard a great saying: Life is like school, with one major
difference – in school you are given a lesson and then you are tested. Whereas
in life you are first given a test and then it is up to you to take the lesson.

We all wait until we are filled with deep knowledge, wisdom, and a sense of
security before we move forward. But we understand it completely backwards –
it is by moving forward that we gain knowledge.

For the next few years, our ignorance flooded us with pain and suffering, but
looking back now, it's clear to me that it couldn't have been any other way. The
universe only teaches us through experience.

And so even if you have no idea what you're doing, you just have to take a
deep breath and jump on the damn bus.

You couldn't find three more different groups to put on the same stage than DJ
Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Public Enemy and 2 Live Crew. But that's how
hip-hop was back then.
I found myself looking at the audience even more than the performers. We
were each strumming a completely different chord in the human spirit.
Machine Translated by Google

Public Enemy stirred social awareness—people stomped and

shouted and cheered, venting their discontent with authority. I
noticed the attention of the security guards in the building—
especially in the South—increased as Chuck D taunted the
audience to rebel in the name of our shared sense of injustice.
As part of their show, they had an acrobat dressed as a member
Ku Klux Klan. They acted out a scene in which he was convicted of his
crimes against humanity, and then, in the most shocking moment of the
whole show, they put a noose around his neck and hung him right on
stage. For about half a minute his body twitched and thrashed in the air,
and the audience watched him until the last shudder. And then the silent,
lifeless body sways above the main stage... and then:

GOOD! Rhythm! Rebel!

Chuck D belted out “Rebel Without a Pause” as chaos and all hell
broke loose . And while I’ve seen other performers match the level of
intensity that Public Enemy conjured, I’ve never seen anyone surpass them.

2 Live Crew touched a whole different kind of energy. Luther Campbell, aka
Luke Skywalker or Uncle Luke, ran on stage and yelled “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeejjjjjjjjjjj!?”
to the crowd, and fifteen thousand people screamed “WE WANT SOME
KUUUNDYYY!!”—including maybe eight thousand women in attendance. (I still
don’t quite get it.) We’d never heard of 2 Live Crew before, but they were a big
hit in Florida. Their hit single was called “We Want Some Pussy.”

They gave the audience permission to unleash, at least verbally, their inner
beast. They then amplified this with the mock, lewd sexual scenes they
included in their shows. And, if I'm being completely honest, some nights
they simply skipped the pretense .
But what really caught my attention was how smart everyone was. It
was a time when "authorities" - whether it was government, business,
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law enforcement, or even many parents—were skeptical and fearful of the

growing influence of hip-hop and hip-hop artists. Rap concerts were under intense
scrutiny, especially when we were touring the southern states. When you’re on
tour with Public Enemy and 2 Live Crew in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi,
and Alabama, you can be 100 percent sure that you’ll be under intense scrutiny
from head to toe.

Before concerts in the South, there was always a meeting with local sheriffs
and police chiefs, where we were briefed on local laws and regulations governing
what behavior was tolerable on stage.
We were informed that any violation would result in the show being immediately
terminated and we would be forcibly removed from the stage and arrested.
Needless to say, both public fellatio and the hanging of Ku Klux Klan members
were strongly condemned in Mississippi.
With all these things at stake, these meetings inevitably escalated into social
debate and legal interpretation. Chuck D knew the law—he had local attorneys,
community leaders, and legal scholars who armed him with the counterarguments
and information necessary to defend his First Amendment rights.

And when all else failed, he had bail money arranged in advance. But he certainly
wasn't going to be told by some local sheriff that he couldn't do his show the way
he wanted. So on this tour, he hung a Ku Klux Klan member night after night.

It was Luke Skywalker, who wanted to be arrested .

He saw it as highly effective publicity. Uncle Luke was a brilliant businessman.
He had his own record label, distributor, agency, and sales force, not to mention
barbershops, supermarkets, and nightclubs. He had yet to figure out how to
expand his business beyond his regional base. But he knew that if he got
arrested in Macon, Georgia, the Baton Rouge and Shreveport, Louisiana, shows
would sell out within twenty-four hours of the headline announcement. (And he
would have an absolutely amazing stage experience to boot.) He was also well
aware that not only the nation but the world was looking to shed more light on
the question of art versus morality.
Machine Translated by Google

At the time, Tipper Gore, then the wife of Senator Al Gore, was leading
the fight against blasphemy in the entertainment industry. At the time,
Federal Communications Commission rules forbade the broadcasting
of blasphemous material, and 2 Live didn’t have a single song that
was n’t blasphemous. (Even record store owners were being arrested
for obscenity for selling their albums.) So Uncle Luke got a boat, built
a radio station on it, and effectively based it off the coast in international
waters, from where he could legally broadcast back to the mainland.
Luke saw that the 2 Live Crew were right in the middle of this battle,
and he intended to use this explosive mix to expand his business
worldwide.
Ultimately, the United States Court of Appeals ruled that rap was
protected by the First Amendment. (More than twenty years later,
Luther Campbell eventually ran for mayor of Miami-Dade County.)

I remember sitting in these meetings and desperately wanting to

raise my hand and say, Excuse me, Sheriff, sir, you don't have to look
at me because my grandmother agrees with you. But honestly, maybe
you could just arrest them right away. Because Chuck is definitely
going to hang the Ku Klux Klan tonight, and Luke is going to have him
out before the first chorus is over.
Well – and our show, Sheriff, sir, is good, wholesome, family
entertainment! Jeff is the best DJ in the world. Ready Rock C can make
the theme song from Sanford and Son sound like it’s underwater!
Omarr never went to school until he was six, but now he’s the best
damn dancer ever… He’s as good as… Some white dancer… Fred
Astaire! And if there was ever a black boy you think your daughter
Becky Sue should bring home, it’s me, I tell you.
You won't have any trouble with us. Can we go then?
I don't remember JL ever speaking at these meetings. He
was more likely filling out notebooks and writing everything down.
He studied every word. Later he went back to the regulations and
studied them again thoroughly. He met with the managers of Public Enemy.
He befriended tour promoters. He got Luke Skywalker to reason with
him about major labels versus self-distribution. JL spent
Machine Translated by Google

He spent less and less time with us at the monuments, clubs or amusement
parks and more and more time studying the music business from every possible
angle.

The tour opened our eyes to the industry and the intricacies of how it all works.
Public Enemy had a management company , accountants, A&R reps, and road
managers. We just had JL. Word-Up Records, Dan's label, still didn't have any
other artists under it. Dan wouldn't tell us how many records we'd sold. Our
record still wasn't available in stores outside of Philly.

However, the breaking point for me came when we discovered that Dana
wasn't answering Russell Simmons' phones.
At the time, Russell was probably the most important person in the hip-hop
world. He had been representing artists and producing records since 1977. He
co-founded Def Jam Records, the biggest hip-hop label of the 1980s. He also
scouted, managed, and produced all the biggest artists, including Beastie Boys,
Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and Whodini.

Apparently Russell had been trying to contact us for months, but not a
single message had reached us because he was trying to reach us through
Dana.
That pissed us off.

Russell absolutely adored DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. He was
completely blown away by the first part of "Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble,"
where I say, "Yo, my ass, my ass / Just, man, a guy came up to me and hit me
in the ass / And, man, he said something about how I was talking to his girl /
And I said - man, I don't even know her!" (freely translated from the original text).

"That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," Russell said.
"What kind of rapper admits to being poked in the eye?"
Russell saw our honesty, sensitivity, and self-deprecating humor—
something unheard of in hip-hop at the time —as a ticket to places rappers
had never gone before.
Machine Translated by Google

Russell wanted to work with us. But unfortunately, Dana refused to talk to him.

I always wondered how JL and Dana reacted to Russell's enthusiasm in

completely opposite ways. While Dana was threatened by Russell's interest, JL
saw Russell as a potential mentor and a gateway to other opportunities.

And JL had a plan: although Dana was in charge of recording our music, JL
was in charge of managing our career. He agreed to hand over management of
DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince to Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen of
Rush Management on three conditions: 1. they would put Jazzy Jeff and the
Fresh Prince on tour with their biggest artists, 2. they would hire JL to oversee
our accounts, and 3. they would teach JL how to run the business.

Russell agreed.

It hurts me so much when people I care about miss out on a chance to

move up. I’ve been in that situation maybe fifty times in my career. I try to climb
and fly as high as humanly possible, and I want to take the people I love with
me. But it’s always the same: at critical moments , when the need to climb the
next rung of the ladder presents itself, some people—like JL—will jump at the
opportunity and others will pack it in. Whether they don’t see the bigger picture,
or they can’t handle all that this fresh challenge might entail, or they’re slaves
to some hidden, self-defeating spell, I keep reliving the pain of waving from the
bow of that new ship and leaving them behind on the shore somewhere.

“You have to cut us out of this Dana deal,” I told JL.

“It doesn’t work that way,” JL objected.
"So it can just slow us down and we can't do anything about it?"
"What are we doing? Doesn't he have some legal responsibility?"
"He's under contract," JL pointed out. "You guys just make records. Leave
that to me."
Hip-hop was now a global business, and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
were ready to be packaged and sold worldwide.
We needed to be distributed throughout the nation and the world.
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Jive Records was based in London. (Jive would later become

famous for masterminding the careers of Britney Spears, NSYNC,
and the Backstreet Boys, but in the 1980s it was the biggest hip-
hop label in Europe .) With Dan under his thumb in the United
States, JL took over the international distribution deal with Jive to
sell Rock the House overseas. Jive hired Dan's Word-Up Records
as the official distributor of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince in
the United States.
It seemed like an easy win for Dana. She would continue to sell our music in
the States while we worked on gaining a bigger reputation around the world and
going to the studio for

Jive's account. Jive will basically cover all the costs, but Dana
will still have a steady stream of income at home. Dana couldn't
wait to sign this deal. Dana got a big check and sold our
international rights to Jive.
Jive Rock the House immediately remastered and re-released it in March 1987
with new packaging and a new burst of energy, and the album became a major
global hit. They also managed to sell this new version as an import in the United
States.
Dana realized that he had agreed to a lump sum payment instead
of royalties, and so he could do nothing about the import. So he
demanded more money and threatened to refuse all cooperation.
with Jiva.

A legal battle ensued. And as soon as the lawyers dug through our papers,
they discovered that I was seventeen when I signed the contract with Dana.
According to Pennsylvania law, no one under eighteen can legally sign a contract
without a parent or legal guardian present. I signed mine in the lobby of the studio
before recording, so from a legal standpoint, our contract with Dana was never valid.

And lo and behold, Dana Goodman was out of the game. No more DJ business.
Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
Dana was furious. He first blamed Jive and Russell Simmons. But since he
didn't have the lawyers or money to go after them, he decided to take his revenge
on the nearest convenient target: me.
Machine Translated by Google

People in the neighborhood started telling me, "Hey, dude,

Dana's really pissed. If I were you, I'd watch out."
Then one evening he pulled up to our house, parked his car on the
street, and just sat inside. I was so angry, but the little guy didn’t even
flinch. Without a word, he opened the front door, walked out to Dan ’s
car, and leaned into the open passenger window. He saw a gun on the
dashboard.
"Are you looking for someone?" the photographer asked.

"Where is that bastard?" Dana replied grumpily.

"Well, if the bastard you're looking for is Will, he's in the house."
"Go ahead and beat him up. The whole family is home, so if you
even touch Will, you'll have to beat us all up... But we're not
interested in any fucking threats."
At that moment, the photographer turned his back on the guy who
could have easily shot him and slowly walked back toward the house.
I'm not sure if it was his military training or his childhood on the streets of
North Philly, but he taught me a valuable lesson that day: It's better to
die than be a creep.
I was in the living room, peeking out from behind the curtains,
watching Dana start the car and drive away.
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CHAPTER SEVEN

ADVENTURE

this book is a movie, at this point we would reach the editing,

Be where the music starts to blast ("For the Love of Money" by the O'Jays)
and everything is wonderful.
Our hero cannot be missing. He is on the rise. Every bullet
finds its target. In every kiss, the passion is as hot as a thousand
suns. He can't wait to run to the bank to have all his checks
cashed. His name dances on the lips and rings in the ears of the
social elite - he no longer has decorated pants on the sides, his
stage name now dangles on his chest on a twenty-four-karat gold
chain with a herringbone pattern full of ethically sourced diamonds.
This year, it became clear that he would never go to college.
–

Our debut album Rock the House— led by “Girls Ain’t No-thing But
Trouble” as the first single and now signed to the international
distribution system Jive Records—went gold (selling over 500,000
copies) and eventually peaked at #83 on the Billboard 200. And
while it wasn’t considered anything groundbreaking at the time, at
least Cinderella got to go to the ball.
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Well, I don't want to sound like that old man at the end of the bar who
keeps blabbering about how music was incomparably better in his time.
How these kids don't know anything about real rap. In fact, there's
a brain science that has come up with a theory that the songs
you listen to as a teenager become embedded in your emotional
memory, their nostalgic power trumping any other period in your life.
But that's not the point here. Something like this probably happens to other people.
But this is not some dopamine-fueled opinion, distorted by wistful
memories of a fairytale adolescence. No!
What I 'm telling you here is objectively and factually true: the late 80s were
the best time in the history of hip-hop. Done.
Period. Amen.
Please sit down. Let me explain everything.
From the moment Jeff and I got on that bus in late 1986 until the
summer of 1988, we played nearly two hundred shows. And I'd like to
name a few of the hip-hop icons we shared the stage with (imagine my
"least-ass" voice):

Run-DMC
LL Cool J
Whodini
Public Enemy
2 Live Crew
Salt-N-Pepa
Eric B. & Rakim
N.ÿW.ÿA.
EPMD
UTFO
J. J. Fad
Beastie Boys
The Geto Boys
Heavy D aÿBoyz
Sir Mix-A-Lot
Kid ’n Play
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MC Lyte
Queen Latifah
Grandmaster Flash
Ice-T
Mantronix aÿJust-Ice

Eazy-E
Too Short
MC Hammer

Doug E. Fresh aÿSlick Rick

Big Daddy Kane
Biz Markie
Roxanne Shante
MC Shan and the whole Juice Crew

AÿTribe Called Quest

Leaders of the New School

Naughty by Nature

Should I continue, or is that enough?

This was one of the best times of my life. Everything was
new – we were defining the culture. We were part of a wave.
A tsunami that swept hip-hop across the globe. Every artist was unique—every
show was something that had never been seen before in hip-hop. We played to
crowds where sometimes fifty percent of the audience had never seen anyone
rap before. They were absolutely amazed. There was an intoxicating energy of
discovery and adventure all around.

It was a time of my life filled with firsts and new, horizon-expanding

experiences. The manager who ran our accounts at Jiva was a Japanese
woman named Ann Carli. At first, Jeff and I were a little confused about how
she was going to lead our careers, but then she spoke up. She was at the heart
of the early sparks of hip-hop in New York. She introduced us to the secrets of
the global hip-hop cuisine. I felt an adventurous spirit awaken in me.

I discovered the vital importance of travel – it provides critical insight.

Things I perceived as infinite on the streets of West Philly
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The problems were quite trivial, somewhere in a rodeo arena in

Omaha, Nebraska . I promised myself that I would eat whatever the locals ate.
I've already eaten seared alligator, sea snails, camel, and chocolate-
covered crickets. (Everything tastes like chicken. No, it doesn't—I've
just always wanted to try telling myself that.) I wanted to see and try
everything.
Based on the modest but honest success of Rock the House , Jive
Records was eager to record a follow- up album with us as soon as
possible. In the fall of 1987, our very first trip outside the United States
was planned—a six-week trip to London, where Jive was headquartered.
We were to record in the company's studios.
But two weeks before the departure date, JL called me. At one
morning. Just the ringing of the phone makes your heart skip a beat.
“Jeff had an accident,” he told me.
Completely confused, I replied, "What happened? Where is he? Is
he okay?"
"I don't know. I'm going to the hospital. I'll get back to you."

There were no text messages back then, no way to just call people in the
car, no minute-by-minute updates on how your loved ones were doing . You
could have made sure no one was near the landline, and kept checking your
phone for a dial tone— and waited and waited. And the longer you waited,
the more specific and disturbing the images your mind would paint—until
you were absolutely certain you would never see each other again. At about
3:15, the phone rang again. This time, the ringing was louder than it should
have been.
It's like a place for me is calling my name.
I picked it up.
"Because."

"He's fine," JL said. "He's got a broken leg and a cast from his ankle to
his butt. He's fine otherwise. But the doctor said he shouldn't fly anywhere.
We'll have to postpone his departure for about eight weeks."
In the background I heard Jeff yelling, "Fuck WHAT he says."
the doctor. I'll be on a plane to London in two weeks."
And just as he had planned, two weeks later we were staying at the
Holiday Inn Swiss Cottage. Charlie and I were huddled together
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in one dingy hotel room and JL, Ready Rock and Jeff with a cast over their
entire leg in another. Just us – five kids from Philly , dull English days and
soggy English nights, but also a private recording studio reserved just for
us at Jiv's expense.
We spent more than a month in London, but I couldn't tell you
anything about the city itself. We never went for a walk in Hyde
Park or to see Westminster Abbey . We didn't see Buckingham
Palace or go up to the Tower.
We didn't sit in a thousand-year-old pub and have fish and chips. And we
certainly didn't go to a football match.
In fact, we couldn't even cope with the time difference.
Every day we would wake up at four in the afternoon, arrive at the
studio at six, work until six in the morning, then grab some free
breakfast from the buffet at Swiss Cottage and go to bed around
seven. We kept to this schedule for almost six weeks.
And it was paradise.

That is, until the night Jeff decided he wanted to take off the cast.
His six-week deadline for removal had passed while we were still in London,
and his leg was starting to itch, but he didn't really want to leave the removal
of the cast in the hands of the British National Health Service. He felt better
thinking that Charlie Mack and I would do it.
Generally, when someone asks me if I can do something, my answer is
always yes. A somewhat tricky character trait that Charlie Mack and I share
wholeheartedly.
"It's a cast, nothing more, just a cast. We'll just take it off and be done
with it," Charlie said nonchalantly.
I was pretty confident too. Such a simple operation. It's just a cast.

I called room service and asked for a steak knife. What I didn't know
was that British hotels don't provide steak knives (they would make cutting
a steak so much easier).
That threw me off a bit, so I said, "Okay, can you send us thirty butter
knives, please?"
The butter knives from Swiss Cottage had a tiny serrated
blade at the end (which suggests they weren't exactly butter knives).
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My plan was to give Charlie fifteen knives to start cutting at Jeff's ankle, and I
would take the other fifteen knives and work my way down. According to the
calculations going on in my head, we should dull the serrated edges of all the
"grease knives" just as we met at Jeff's knee, just enough for a brief clap of
hands before making the final ceremonial cut. I vaguely remembered that this
method of starting at two ends and meeting in the middle had been used
successfully during the construction of the Panama Canal, as well as in the
construction of the United States railroad system.

The cutting began. It wasn't going very well, though. Grease knife after
grease knife broke and fell to the ground, while Charlie's sweat-stained face
slowly turned from confusion to frustration.
"Dude, these knives are complete crap," he said with relief.
I was twelve when I last had a cast, and they were made of calcined plaster.
Cast technology has apparently advanced since then, and Jeff's was made of
some new alien material, which I later learned was called fiberglass.

After about six knives, I called a break. I was fed up , so I suggested we put
Jeff in the tub. We'd run the water as hot as he could stand, which would soften
the mess. I assured Jeff that it would go down right away. He agreed.

Charlie and I helped Jeff into the tub. Both of his feet were completely
submerged. And then we just waited. After a moment, a worried look crossed
Jeff's face.
"Dude, you guys are going to have to stop this nonsense, it's starting to
"Strangle," Jeff said.
I remember thinking to myself, What would MacGyver do? MacGyver was a
hit TV show in the 1980s in which the main character, Angus MacGyver, gets
himself into all sorts of trouble and then comes up with some brilliant solution. I
was trying my best to turn on my inner Mac when I suddenly heard the hotel
room door slam open and seconds later JL's head pop into the bathroom.

By now Jeff is writhing and moaning in the bathtub while Charlie

Mack and I are on our knees, holding two "grease knives" and other
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Twenty-eight are scattered all over the bathroom floor. JL pauses for a moment,
apparently trying to make sense of what he's seeing.

Completely flustered, he yells, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"

"JL, JL!" Jeff whines. "You've got to get this shit off my leg!"
"WHY ARE YOU IN THE BATH?"

JL had worked in a hospital for the past two years. So even though he
wasn't a pro at it, at least he knew not to soak a fiberglass cast in hot water
while it was still on someone's leg.
"THAT PLASTER CAN'T GET SOAKING!"
"Just take it off, you idiots," Jeff growled.
"Stop holding back, buddy, it can't be that bad," he snapped.
Charlie.

“PUT HIM OUT OF THE FUCKING BATH!” JL snapped.

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO YELL AT US, JL, WE DON'T CARE!" he snapped
Charlie.

Charlie and I, as instructed, pulled Jeff out of the tub and laid him on the
bathroom floor. We had some canned food in our hotel rooms, as the room
service at Swiss Cottage wasn't quite what we had imagined. JL immediately
went and opened a can of corned beef. He walked over to Jeff's cast, the jagged-
edged lid in his hand, and while Charlie and I tried to cut one from the top and
the other from the bottom, JL made gentle cuts across. Suddenly it was like
butter and in less than two minutes he had a full-length cut, which Charlie and I
were able to easily pry open.

Jeff was free.

JL angrily threw the beef lid into the trash can and muttered as he left:
"You're all as stupid as a cue."

Where it smelled like medicine, we were perhaps stupid and getting stupider.
But in the studio, we were rocking out. Those recordings were probably the
purest creative experience of my career. We recorded so many songs , and
the record company liked a lot of them so much,
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that they decided to try to do something that no one in the rap world had ever
thought of before : what if DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince released the first double
album in hip-hop history?
Jeff and I had no idea what this album would do, whether fans
wanted to hear it, whether MTV would like it, whether radio would
play it, whether the hip-hop establishment would just rip it off.
None of that mattered to us at all—all that mattered was that we
were completely fascinated and absorbed in the creative process.
We were just having fun— as best friends at the center of our new
family and on the cusp of a globally significant art form that was
just beginning to take off.
It was a dream ride, but in the rearview mirror, a dream slowly began to emerge.
a foretold seed of impending discord.

Some people enjoy high altitudes, but others can't breathe at them. And what
do people do when they climb a mountain and find the air too thin? They try to get
back down as quickly as possible.
Quincy Jones called it "altitude sickness."
In high school, Ready Rock and I were best friends.
We would drive around the neighborhood every day, battling and creating. An
inseparable duo. But as DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince emerged, beatboxing
became less and less of a key art form within our group. The record company also
wasn’t interested in songs that featured beatboxing. As a result, Clate was pushed
further and further to the margins of our new family. I kept telling him not to be afraid
of anything – “I’ve got your back.” In retrospect, it was a lot of change in a short
space of time, and the experience required an emotional maturity that none of us
had ever reached .

And to make things a little more painful and complicated, Charlie

Mack and I have slowly but surely become almost fused together.
We didn't just share a hotel room - now we share pretty much every aspect of life.
There's even a song on the album that celebrates my relationship with Charlie Mack
called "Charlie Mack (The First Out the Limo)." This song was about Charlie
overdoing his security job - he would sit in the front with the driver in the limo and
get really
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He got annoyed when Jeff or I got out of the car before he did.
He always snapped, "Can you at least let me look around before
you come out?"
You won't find a single song about Ready Rock on the album.
From 1987 to 1990, I never went out without Charlie Mack by my side.
While Jeff and JL were quiet, brooding nerds, Charlie and I were loud,
expressive lions of the drawing room, the center of attention at all times. We
were always up for some kind of event. We both loved to party. We loved to
talk . We loved to travel and gamble and drive fast cars. And the women
loved us. Charlie not only matched my adventurous spirit , he often surpassed
me. This guy didn’t want to sleep at all. When we had ten hours in a city, he
saw no reason why we should spend even a minute in a hotel. He often
literally dragged me out of bed to go to Paisley Park in Minneapolis, or to hear
an activist speak in Chicago, or insisted that we absolutely have to take a
picture on the "long noodle," as Charlie calls the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

"Come on, man," he always said, "you'll be snoring when you stretch your quills."
Another reason for our chemistry was that Charlie and I are
incredibly competitive and each of us has a high opinion of
ourselves . We would spend days arguing about who could run
faster, who could drive better, who could throw the football
farther, who was prettier or funnier or smarter, and most of all, who the girls like
Charlie hated it when a woman just walked past him and started flirting
with me. He couldn't stand it. Why would a woman want to waste her time
with me when she could have him?
Finally, he reluctantly added, "Dude, the only reason those girls are so
obsessed with you is because you're famous."
And I said, "No, Charlie, you have it the other way around: I'm famous,
"Because there are all these girls hanging around me ."
We were each other's yin and yang. We filled in the gaps in each other's
life experiences. We saw each other's blind spots and made up for each
other's shortcomings.
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Charlie, just like the little guy, had a highly developed instinct for life
on the streets—he called it “ghetto radar.” Charlie just knew when
something bad was about to happen. We were out somewhere,
everything was going smoothly, and out of the blue, Charlie whispered
in my ear, “Come on.”
I didn't understand. "What? Sure, let's go."
And then, more urgently, “Go. Go. Now. I said ‘let’s go.’” I
remember thinking that Charlie Mack was the human equivalent
of an overly sensitive fire alarm that always goes off at two in the
morning when there’s no sign of a fire.
And because it's a fire alarm, you can't just ignore it , because one day
it might actually be a fire. But Charlie Mack was an infallible, perfectly
calibrated fire alarm. I would always growl in confusion when we
listened from the parking lot to the sound of gunshots coming from the
party we'd just left.

We balanced each other's weaknesses. Charlie knew the streets

intimately, and I understood the broader emotional patterns. I was a
smartass and more of a middle-of-the-road type. Charlie's physical
appearance was scary and intimidating. I could smile. I knew how to
put people at ease and how to get us pretty much anywhere.
Each of us had our own significant flaws, but collectively,
Together we formed one truly capable personality.
I was Charlie’s ticket to the chambers he would never have otherwise
entered. And Charlie was a hammer that would come down hard on
anyone who dared to speak ill of me. He encouraged me to defend
myself physically. That’s when the wave of criticism began to rise, with
its catchphrase that I was “softer” and “feeler.” I didn’t talk dirty . I
rapped about my high school experiences. I used a lot of humor. Some
of the nastiness that was spread about me included that I wasn’t a “real
MC” or—worst of all —that I wasn’t “black enough” and that my music
wasn’t “real hip-hop.”

"Put a bomb in the face of that son of a bitch and that's it!" Charlie
always said. "He won't say that shit again."
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And so with him, who was covering my back, I started doing

exactly that : when someone spoke badly about me, I threw a
bomb in their face... (and then quickly hid behind Charlie).

He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper was released on March 29, 1988. It
was supported by the songs "Brand New Funk" and "Parents Just
Don't Understand" and eventually peaked at number four on the
Billboard 200 and was certified triple platinum (for sales of over
three million units).
The record was groundbreaking in that one half of it focused
on a DJ-style ride, a kind of “scratch album,” in which Jeff fried
steel drums like it was a race, almost killing them. And the other
half was the rapper’s part, where I could completely let loose the
reins of the hyper-creative, poetic playfulness of my nineteen-
year-old mind.
And then the unthinkable happened: It was announced that
the 31st Grammy Awards would include a rap category for the
first time. And "Parents Just Don't Understand" was nominated
alongside "Push It" (Salt-N-Pepa), "Going Back to Cali" (LL Cool
J), "Wild Wild West" (Kool Moe Dee) and "Supersonic" (J. J. Fad).
This was the first time I had ever seen Jeff cry. I was more
excited than ever, but I’m not exactly a “success cryer.” I wasn’t
mature enough to ask at the time, but I’ve always wondered what
it was about Jeff that made him so emotional. Was he
remembering his childhood cancer? Or his mother and musical
family, who had tried for so many years, and he was the one who
had the honor and succeeded? Or was he scared? Did he realize
that there was no going back—that his old life was gone forever
—and that the bar was set really high now?

Charlie Mack, who had just joined the Nation of Islam, said,
"This is the will of God. You are bound by the will of God. You have
won! I tell you, you have won. None of those hits will beat yours.
There is no escaping what God decrees."
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Charlie Mack had been talking in these spiritual rhymes for a few
months. But just as Charlie Mack had planned, on February 22,
1989, Bobby McFerrin won Song of the Year for "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Album of the Year went to George Michael for Faith, Discovery of
the Year went to Tracy Chapman, and Best Rap Performance went
to DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince for "Parents Just Don't Understand,"
making us the first rappers ever to win a Grammy.

We ended up boycotting the ceremony itself because the National Academy

of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the Grammys’ governing body, refused
to broadcast the rap award. We felt like we had been slapped in the face—rap
music had taken over the music industry by storm that year. We deserved to be
there. Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen organized the boycott on behalf of DJ
Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, along with Salt-N-Pepa, Ice-T, Public Enemy,
Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, Stetsasonic, and many others.

And even though we weren’t at the Grammys, Jazzy Jeff and the
Fresh Prince were everywhere. Our lives had changed forever—well,
almost. Jeff’s mom had planned a celebratory dinner for Jeff and me
after our first American Music Award. We burst onto the scene like
heroes returning to their hometown—people clambering out of their
houses to greet us, clap and shake hands. It took us twenty minutes
to make it to Jeff’s mom’s house. When we finally walked in, she
gave us a big hug, swelling with pride and joy. Then she gave Jeff
five dollars and a shopping list.

“Jeffrey, I want you to go to the convenience store and buy me some bread,
some baking soda, and see if they have those sweet potatoes they sell in cans.”

"But Mom…" Jeff began.

"Oh, nothing, boy, go and buy the things I told you about."
And so we, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, had to fight our way through
among devoted fans all the way to Looney's.
They didn't have sweet potatoes.

–
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Russell Simmons was organizing a global destruction of all

barriers to hip-hop, and Jeff and I were one of his battering rams.
We were the “clean” group, the “orderly” group—to Russell, we
were the perfect weapon against all opponents. We were the tip
of the spear. We launched Yo! MTV Raps, which thundered hip-
hop onto television in broad daylight. When the Four Seasons
hotel chain refused to accommodate rap artists on tour, Russell
convinced them to accommodate DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh
Prince, opening the door for other hip-hop artists in the future.
Daytime radio stations were terrified of putting rappers on the air live,
so they always made it a point to pre-record the rappers to make sure
we didn't say anything crazy. Jeff and I were part of the first wave of
people allowed to talk on daytime radio live.

Our shows kept getting bigger and bigger, and the crowds kept
getting louder. One night in Detroit, at Joe Louis Arena, I got so excited
that I forgot the words to “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” I had never
done that before. My heart sank to my stomach. There are few things
more embarrassing than forgetting the words to the very song that
eighteen thousand people had spent their hard-earned money to come
and hear. But a miracle happened: the entire crowd started throwing the
lyrics back at me. Every one of them knew every word. I held the
microphone up to the crowd, and they finished the song. I had to do
everything to keep from crying. Thousands of people were throwing my
words back at me. I felt loved and protected by a crowd of strangers. Like being cradle
We were hot and unstoppable.
By the age of twenty, I was a world-famous rapper, a Grammy
winner , and a fresh, newly minted millionaire (pun intended).
Now I'd like to throw away the microphone triumphantly, like us guys do.
We're working on it, but I'll need it in the next chapter.

Gigi had been saving for months to move into a sixteenth-floor

apartment overlooking the Main Line. It was beautiful.
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a building, designed for retirement living. Her house on North Fifty-

Fourth Street had become a burden to her—too many stairs and
generally unsuited for her advancing years. With the first money I
earned, I surprised Gigi by taking her to the apartment she had been
saving for. She had thought all along that we were just going to look
at it, but then the real estate agent handed her the keys.
"Darling?" she breathed. "How did you do that?"
"Well, you know, Gigi, there's this thing called rap..." I said and took
I put my arm around her shoulders.

Melanie and I moved into Gigi's old house on North Fifty-Fourth

Street. My childhood home was now our new home. I had promised
Melanie I would take care of her, and here I was, providing her with
the first safe home in her short life.

I had won. All my dreams now blossomed into the vivid sound and
color realms of THX and Technicolor.
I have matured for life.
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CHAPTER EIGHT

DISEASE

He had fair skin and light eyes. I didn't exactly see the kind of guy...
endured.
I've always been attracted to guys who look like Christopher
Williams. The women always just barely passed me by so they
could catch a glimpse of Al B. Sure! or El DeBarge.

I had just returned home from a two-week stretch of the Northwest : Seattle,
Portland, and a bunch of little ones in between. I did this by running straight from
the stage to my car and taking the direct route to the airport to get back to Melanie
as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to give my inner animal room to grab the
wheel and tell me to speed down the highway of life, booze in my veins.

Melanie and I met at her aunt's house. I had a car drop me off right from the
airport. We planned to walk from her aunt's to our new house. To reminisce a little
about the good old days, we wanted to walk around Overbrook and stop at the
Sugar Bowl for a sundae and a Philly soft pretzel, like we had done a thousand
times before.

I always loved how Melanie could see how much she missed me. Even though
I was only away for a weekend concert...
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When I came back on Monday morning, she acted like I had been gone for
months. She knew how to make a guy happy to be home again.

When I arrived on the Northwest Line, she was in the kitchen with
her aunt, cooking together, just as she had so many times before. This
constant traveling can be unbearably lonely—you almost feel like your
heart is slowly but surely drying out. Her aunt was wearing her usual
dark blue hijab and her glasses pulled down damn low on her nose so
she could see into the pots. The smell of food seemed to caress and
soothe my parched soul. Melanie had one of her painter’s smocks on,
replacing her apron. ( I always thought that was odd. Paints are
chemicals— that smock has no business in the kitchen.)

I looked at Melanie. Everything was the same as always . Except

for one thing. Her energy. It was different. Something was strange.
Because of my upbringing, it was like I had an electric collar wrapped
around my central nervous system. When I sense that something is not
right, that someone’s behavior is not in line with what is going on in
their heart or head, my whole body experiences what I can best
describe as a gradually increasing electrical discharge. A kind of
bzzzzzz. And then I feel like I’m shivering, but not from the cold.
It was warm in the kitchen, but I was freezing.
We sat down. We had dinner. We talked about the neighbor's dogs.
How Melanie's aunt was in Portland once. She didn't like this part of the country
at all - too much rain. Melanie laughed too much.
Bzzzzzz.

After dinner we watched Confessions. I know every word Eddie Murphy says
in that movie. He was my idol. Melanie and I have seen that movie at least ten
times, but that night she was laughing too much.
BZZZZZZZZZZ.

Her aunt went to bed. We were finally alone. Melanie snuggled up to me. I
had missed her so much on this trip. We started kissing. But her kisses didn’t
feel very loving. More like how she should act now—if she could hide the fact
that she had been snoring with someone.
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BZZZZZ. BZZZZZ. BZZZZZ. BZZZZZ.

I still don't know how I knew. Or where I got the confidence to surrender so
wholeheartedly to my instinct. I took her arm from around my neck, pulled away,
stood up, and yelled, "Do you think I'm a complete STUPID?"

“What?” Melanie said.

Nothing very convincing.
"I know what you did, damn it. Don't look at me like I'm an idiot." I was ready
and taking a big risk. I didn't have a single ace, but she laid out her cards.

“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry. “It only happened once.
But I don't love him. I'm so sorry. I love you. We were just friends and then
you... were gone! I didn't know what you were doing out there.
I missed you. I swear to God, I'll never do it again."
What? I guess? But wait! Why?
I've been knocked down in the past. Knocked unconscious. My first day at
Overbrook High, when they hit me over the head with that lock: just a flash of
blue and then you're in this weird, alternate universe where all the things you
once believed in are suddenly available. Gravity, action and reaction, love,
whether you're having a good time or not.

This is not possible. I did everything right. I win.

I'm the best. I've made a home for us. I've spent months and months arguing
and tugging with a voracious, gluttonous bunch of pigs to keep girls far enough
away from buses and hotel rooms. I haven't touched or kissed another woman,
and I haven't even looked at any of them, really . I'm going straight home from
the airport. We've already talked about having kids and wanting to make a
better home for them than the one we both grew up in. How could you do this
to me?
How could you do this to us?

But on the outside I was strangely calm, because none of these thoughts
manifested as actual feelings. I wanted to be angry—you know? You're
supposed to be angry when someone turns you down, right? But I didn't feel
anything at all.
Melanie was crying on the couch, hiding her face in her hands.
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Dan Aykroyd lashed out at Eddie Murphy. Eddie begged for mercy: "It's the
Dukes' fault . They 're the ones."
And I just stood there, frozen. When someone turns you on, you have to do
something. But what? I felt no emotion, but I certainly wasn't going to be a jerk.
Not this time.
What do you do when someone turns you down? I knew I had to leave now,
sullenly. But I also knew I had to do something violent to emphasize my
departure. I scanned the room, looking for options. Next to the fireplace, I noticed
one of those pointed wrought-iron things you use to move logs in the fireplace.
Okay, but what about that? If only I could feel some emotion to give me some
direction…

Nevertheless, I took matters into my own hands. The front entrance to

Melanie ’s aunt’s house was a beautiful wooden atrium with a hundred panes of
glass. I paused for a moment, looking at Melanie, who was crying, deeply
uninterested in my not-so-deliberate but absolutely necessary feigned tantrum.
With icy calm, I aimed the pointed iron thing at the front door and began to break
out the windows. One by one, in a nice way.

I beat up about twelve, maybe fifteen, of them, when I felt I had made enough
of the dramatic gesture of a twenty-year-old cuckold. I slammed the pointy thing
on the ground—it scared the hell out of me. It clanged a lot louder than I expected.
Shit—what if Melanie’s aunt heard? flashed through my mind. I should probably
disappear.

Melanie and I were supposed to go home together, but I decided to go to

Woodcrest alone.

Mom had had enough. While I was on tour, she kicked the photographer out
of the house. This time for good. The photographer moved into the apartment
building above the ACRAC office. I knew Mom would be home alone.

It was about a twenty-two minute walk. I couldn't believe I had just broken
all those windows. I couldn't figure out where I had gotten it. It felt so strange to
break things just because I thought I had to, not because I
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I would have been driven to do something like that by emotion. The

contradiction was so funny. I suddenly started giggling as I replayed the scene
in my mind. I thought, Will, you're a real fool. And that made me laugh even
harder. The whole thing was so far-fetched.

When I got to Woodcrest, my mother was sitting on the front steps. She had
obviously already spoken to Melanie's aunt. Normally,
She didn't sit on the step. Her eyes were shining. She hoped I would be okay,
but she was bracing herself for the storm. She knew her son.
When I saw her eyes, I felt how completely and deeply attuned she was to
my pain. It wasn't just me anymore, it was both of us. And as if a dynamite had
exploded and broken through the dam of my suffering , I collapsed onto the
sidewalk, ten feet from where the tour bus had first taken me from her.

My mother runs downstairs and wraps me in a big hug, and I wail and wail.
My childhood home looks on silently at my torment. I believed that once I left
Woodcrest, I would never have to experience such feelings again.

"How could she do this, Mom? How could God let it happen?"
Mother didn't say anything. She just held me in her arms. I was an adult
now. She couldn't solve my problems anymore. I could feel her tears dripping
down my neck.
She picked me up and took me home.

Heartache should be considered a disease – it causes a state of weakness

similar to mental illness. The pain I suffered was so severe that I would have
preferred to be stabbed or beaten or have my tooth pulled without anesthesia.

My girlfriend cheated on me, which to my damaged mind was clear evidence

that I was worthless—I figured she wouldn't have cheated on me if I was good
enough.
I disappointed another woman.
I desperately needed a break from it all. But since there are no pills for
heartache, I resorted to the road.
Machine Translated by Google

homeopathically administered medicines in the form of unplanned shopping

and exuberant sexual escapades.
Unorganized shopping: the other week I took ten friends...
He flew from Philly to Atlanta and closed a Gucci store.
"Take what you want, I'll snap it," I said, throwing
my Amex credit card at the counter.
Now I had my Amex. And it was—unlike my heart—
unbreakable. The money was flowing. We had just launched the
“DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince Rap Hotline.”
1-900-909-JEFF was the very first 900. Premium-rate phone
numbers were an unprecedented and revolutionary way to
connect with fans (and, in essence, the precursor to modern
social media). Fans would call our number, and we would leave
a message every day—a few minutes long—about where we
were and what we were doing. The first minute cost two dollars,
and each minute after that cost forty-five cents. At the height of
the line’s popularity, we were getting five thousand calls a day.
No hard math. My Amex wasn't just unbreakable, it was invincible.

Exuberant sexual escapades: up to this point in my life, I had only had sex
with a woman other than Melanie once.
But over the next few months, I became a real pig. I had sex with so many
women, and it was so fundamentally against my nature that I developed a
psychosomatic reaction to orgasm: it made me feel really sick and sometimes
I actually threw up. In any case, I believed fervently that this beautiful stranger
would be “the one”—the woman who would love me, who would heal me, who
would take the pain away from me.

But I ended up like this. How could I not? It made me feel sick and miserable.
And looking into that woman's eyes only deepened my suffering. I was doing
the exact thing I hated the photographer for – I was hurting women.

–
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I was broke, so I bought my first house, a mansion right across from

Merion Park, in a wealthy neighborhood overlooking the City Line.
I saw it in my dreams—bleached hardwood floors, a split-level ceiling in
the living room, and a jacuzzi in the master bedroom (not in the
bathroom— in the bedroom). The first thing I bought here—before the
beds, the couches, the towels, and even the silverware—was a pool table.
I finally bought a bed. It was the first time I had ever slept in a king
-size bed. Harry and I had slept in the same bed for most of our
childhood. Charlie Mack and I had shared a room when we were
traveling . That first night on Merion Road I realized that I had never
really slept alone. I didn’t like it very much. My heart was bleeding—I
was dying for Melanie Parker.
I wanted her back.
My mind at that time still associated performance with love. The
whole basis of my self-esteem was fundamentally dependent on
whether my wife was happy. My self-image was inexorably tied to
women's opinions of me and their appreciation of me as a person. I
realized that if I wasn't getting the love I so deeply desired, it must be
because of some flaw in me as the main character. That if I had played
my role of "boyfriend" better, she wouldn't have cheated on me.
As you can probably imagine, that's exactly what happened to me the first time I went in.

first class on the express to the land called Agony.

Melanie worked at the Merry-Go-Round at the Gallery, a mall in
downtown Philly. I had it planned down to the last detail : a grand,
romantic gesture of forgiveness. I’d walk in, our eyes would meet, I’d
tell her I forgave her, and she’d fall into my arms, tears of gratitude and
regret streaming down her face. Then I’d tell her I wanted to marry her
and that my wife didn’t have to work at some lousy Merry-Go-Round.
We’d give her boss the middle finger, jump in my shiny Benz 300CE,
and I’d take her to her new mansion on Merion Road, the one with the
jacuzzi in the bedroom, not the bathroom.

Parking was hard at the Gallery, so Charlie Mack dropped me off.

He could have stayed in the car and left it parked right in front of the
store so I could have a nice walk around Rome.
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into the Merry-Go-Round, really mess with her head, and carry her over the
threshold of the waiting gas station.
“Thoot – thoot!” Charlie honked.

"Hey, dude, you know I don't have a driver's license, right? So when the cops
come, I'll take the horn," Charlie said.
That donkey ruined the whole show for me.
“Then why don’t you get your fucking license?” I yelled.
"You know I'm accused of possessing a gun! I'm not a man yet! Just go get
Melanie, man. Do it - before the hairy one comes rolling in!"

I ran into the store. It was a quiet day. The place was almost empty. Melanie
was behind the counter, folding Jordache jeans. She didn’t see me—I watched
her for a moment (I would have watched her longer, but Charlie didn’t have that
driver’s license). Even in those few moments, I knew I didn’t want to be without
her. Everything that had been empty inside me seemed to fill up when I saw her.
All the pain suddenly subsided. All the thirst was quenched.

She looked up and our eyes met. There was a brief but undeniable moment
of clarity. Melanie loved me more than anything. And I loved her.

Bzzzzzzzz.

Damn. My damn electric collar again. I don't know what it is, but I believe it. I
dig my attention deeper into it.
I walk up to her. We hug. It's still not the same.
BZZZZZZZZ.

I let her go. We smile. I look around the store.

He had fair skin and light eyes. That's exactly the kind of guy I hate.
BZZZZZZZZZZ.

I look back at Melanie. She pretends to speed up the folding of her clothes.

"I have lunch in a quarter of an hour, we can go get something to eat," he says.

BZZZZZZZZ.

I look back at him. Now he's pretending not to see me.

I see you, you bastard.
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I charge at him through the store. He tries to escape—guilty! But there’s no

hiding place in the Merry-Go-Round. I lunge at him. Melanie screams. Meanwhile,
Charlie Mack bursts out of nowhere and tears me away from him. The store is
done for. And so are his beautiful green eyes. Charlie pulls me and I pull Melanie.
We clamber into the getaway car.

"Nigger, I told you I'm charged with possession of a gun."

"Did you get a rake ?" Charlie snapped as we pulled away from each other.
That was Melanie's last day at the Merry-Go-Round. She vowed never to see
that boy again. I took her home to her new place on Merion Road. What with the
hot tub in the bedroom, not the bathroom.
We promised each other that we would get through this together. I secretly, in my mind,

Sahal: If you come back, I promise I'll be good enough.

JBM is an acronym for Junior Black Mafia. Their motto in Philly was
“Come with us or get fired.” It meant you were either with them or
against them. You were either part of them or you were done.

When you're a twenty-year-old rapper from inner-city Philadelphia

who just made his first million dollars, the only people who can hang
out with you are other rappers, professional athletes, or drug dealers.

I chose drug dealers.

Bucky was five feet five inches, and that five is still a question mark. He was
a former Golden Gloves champion and one of JBM’s highest-ranking lieutenants.
When he was in the room, he had the first and last word. If you had a
disagreement with him , he would happily take off $30,000 worth of jewelry and
challenge you to take it out on the street. But when you were downright
disrespectful, the jewelry didn’t matter at all, because then the finger, whose only
adornment was the trigger of a gun, would speak.

Bucky loved to laugh. He reveled in my sense of humor.

Looking back, it's clear to me that he came to Merion Road to take a
breather, to get away from the stress and brutality of the street. I was
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his personal court jester. He loved to hear me make fun of people

– his favorite kind of humor was insults, and that was what I
happened to excel at.
However, one evening I made the mistake of making a joke
about his height.
"Hey, Buck, do you want to pick up that next one? Or
"How about a stool?"

No one laughed even a little. Buck stood still, which was an ominous sign.
The room went completely silent. He walked over to me, his chin barely
touching my chest, and just stood there. I knew that meant I had to bend down
so he could talk to me.
I lowered myself like a pack wolf in the wild submitting to an alpha.
male.

Buck whispered in my ear, "If you're that star, watch out,

"so that I don't make a few in front of you."
The logic of his analogy was flawed, but I got the point clearly.
From that moment on, I never joked about Buck again.

Merion Road was party central now. There were twenty or more people in
the house at any given time, music blaring, pool tables being played, the kitchen
was littered with Philly cheesesteaks worth thousands of dollars. ( I could have
bought an entire Overbrook Pizza for the money I spent there .)

There were boxing matches (in the backyard behind the house) – and basketball was
played… in the living room.
And we also gambled here – on everything. Needless to say, this
environment did not cater to Melanie's artistic aspirations twice.

“Willard, can you turn the music down a little?” she would say.
"Oops, sorry, baby, give me a second. I'm showing these pussies how to
do it..."
I felt like my forgiveness was such a huge gesture of love that she should
be grateful to be here at all.
The truth was, I never really forgave her.

–
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However, it really picked up steam on the weekends.

It wasn't unusual for $150,000 to be won from Friday night to Sunday
morning . My buddy Bam was the best pool player. He always took all our
money off the table. But one Saturday night I was really rolling on the pool
table. I wasn't messing up at all. Long- board shots, combinations, eight-point
spot shots, masterful shots on the cue ball that sent it into beautiful positions,
everything was falling exactly where I wanted it to. Buck started to get short
(sorry!)... I mean, he was unlucky, and ended up losing $30,000. He sent
one of his boys for more money.

But Buck lived in the Southwest—a good forty-five minute trip—so he threw his
car keys on the table. The whole room gasped—“Aaaaah , shit!” My heart
skipped a beat for a second , but I’m not a piece of shit. Right next to the keys
to his custom-made black BMW 325i station wagon, I threw the keys to my
brand-new, sea- green Benz 300 .

“Eat them,” I said.

I cleared four balls from the break. High balls. The room was as quiet as a
church. Bucky took his first shot – an easy two in the corner. He had a great
position on the seven on the side. But he was a little too aggressive and
chipped out of the corner position.
He had to sink the four back. But Buck's no shit either.
He cleaned the entire set and all I could do was watch helplessly and chalk up
my custom-made cue for a shot that I might never get the chance to play again.

Bucky aimed for the figure eight. Push against the railing, over the corner.
The eight slowly sailed toward the corner pocket. The weight of the eight was
about to grab my car keys and drag them down the drain. As the ball
approached, the onlookers thundered, “Ooooooooooooo…”

But... Nooo! The eight smashes into the edge of the pocket, causing it to
sway slightly, and it stops just in front of the gaping mouth of the pocket.
The crowd is going crazy.
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I have a new life. But I need to get some serious action going. I still
have to pocket three balls before I can poke the eight-ball crouching in the
corner—and if I miss once, it's Bucky's turn, and he's not going to miss
again.
My first ball is that dreaded straight shot across the table. I
don't want to mess around - I'm going to aim for it, right in the
middle of the pocket. There are two balls left. I'll aim the second
shot at the side pocket, but the third shot is in the corner, which
means I have to be a little tactical (in this case, poking it from
underneath to get it to spin back). If not, it could roll straight into
the corner pocket, lick and secure the win for Bucky.
My idea of billiards was never to dwell on each move for too long
under any circumstances . Aim and boom. Done . Aim another one,
boom. Don't give my head a second to punish me for the slightest doubt
or indecision. Charlie Mack always said, "Money doesn't come to crooks."
And that gradually became my motto in life. But that night, my cool mind
made me invincible .

And as I had been doing all evening, I was doing well. Bucky could
only watch helplessly, chalking his cue for a shot he would never get
again. I cleaned all the balls, tapped the eight, and respectfully picked up
both car keys.
Bucky was furious, but he was too big of a tough guy to show it. He stormed
out of the house, violently slamming the door, and only then did he realize he
might have to call a cab.

I ran after him.

“Hey, Buck,” I shouted after him.
"Not now, nigger, leave me alone," he said, like the ultimate tough guy
about to stop a car.
“Buck, here.” I held his keys in the air. “Your damn
"My valuable car has been stolen."
"What?" he asked, confused.
"You're my friend. I don't care about your car," I explained.
"Really?" he didn't understand. He looked at me as if I had four heads.
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"Buck, I'm not going to invite you to my house and then take away your car.
I'm an asshole, but not that kind of asshole." I shoved the keys into his hand.

I didn't understand it at the time, but later I would clearly understand that
this was a gesture of humanity that didn't exist in the environment Bucky was
forced to survive in. He understood it and was obviously deeply moved by it.

"What are you kidding, Buck? It's not that serious..." I said.
He pulled himself together, shook the keys in his palm, and said, "Because I would

" He kept your car."

I turned to go back into the house. Bucky unlocked the car with a beep and
yelled at me, "Hey! Whoever pulled you over, they're going to have to deal with
me."
And he meant it.

At the time, I didn’t connect my desires and generally unbalanced behavior

with my wounded heart. When I bought a crimson IROC-Z and dressed the
rims in a matching crimson coat, I didn’t see it as therapy. Nor did I associate
buying a custom-built Suburban with four two-foot speakers taking up the entire
back half of the car with feelings of inadequacy, loss, and betrayal. I simply
thought, how funny it is that when I pick someone up, I don’t have to call in
advance—I just turn the volume up to about seven and they know who’s
coming.

I was ravenous and showing off. I bought my first motorbike: a blue Suzuki
Katana 600. I couldn't even ride it and crashed it the first week. But I was doing
too well to ride a beat-up motorbike, so I bought a new one, a red one.

This one, for once, was hit by JL. The damage wasn’t too bad. Just some
minor scratches on the sides. But then, to avoid embarrassing JL, Harry came
to her rescue. I took it as a sign that maybe motorcycles weren’t for me, so I
bought a turquoise Corvette with a T-top roof.
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I lined up all my cars and bikes in front of the house and invited the
photographer to stop by to see how well I was doing. The photographer arrived
in his two- tone blue Chevy work van. He always believed that vehicles should
be used for work, not just for show. I was standing proudly outside the house
when he got out of the van. We hugged.

"I just got this corvina last week," I said.

“Is this all yours?” he asked, looking disdainfully at my brand
new fleet of vehicles.
"Yeah," I said proudly, my arms folded respectfully at my sides.
body, but a hip-hop attitude was taking over my mind.
"Boy, what do you need three cars for?" he asked. " You only
have one ass."
That wasn't exactly the answer I was hoping for. But his math didn't work out,
because the 1988 Grammy for Best Rap Performance went to DJ Jazzy Jeff and
Fresh Prince for "Parents Just Don't Understand."

Melanie and I haven't had sex at all.

Something was broken. We both wanted nothing more than to make it right
again, but we were barely twenty years old. Our romantic fantasies were too
fragile to survive the cruelty of our immaturity.

I started traveling to Los Angeles a lot. For the first time, I became aware of
the pulsating energy of the city. Every time a plane landed at L.A. International
Airport, something inside me woke up and immediately identified with the place.
Something about me and something about L.A. clicked together, creating a

harmonious harmony. The energy of the city was absolutely captivating. I didn't
need as much sleep. I was always fresh. My skin looked better. I was eating right.

I wanted to exercise. I was full of inspiration. Since then, I have realized the
critical importance of the environment around me. The city you choose to live in
is as important as the life partner you choose.
Machine Translated by Google

And I had just met Tanya Moore. To me, she embodied the
sunshine and possibilities that defined L.A.: a quintessential
West Coast element. Pretty as hell, cultured, but street-smart.
She knew which neighborhoods to walk and which to drive in. She knew that my
red Phillies baseball cap had to come off immediately and I could put it on when
we crossed the Mississippi on the return flight.

Pooh Richardson was a star point guard at UCLA, which, next to being a
millionaire rapper, was the best deal a twenty- two-year-old black kid could dream
of. Born and raised in the heart of South Philly, he walked around UCLA like the
goddamn mayor.
Pooh was a big deal on campus, and when his friends from Philly broke out , he
really made a splash.
Pooh dated Tanya's cousin, Tgia, who basically ran Pooh's life. She decided
what he ate and what he advertised. She cleared the room immediately when he
needed to get ready for training.
The relationship seemed so adult to me at the time. Pooh was a star, but he
literally never knew where his sneakers were. His only job was to play basketball
well— Tgia did everything else. They were partners in this “Pooh Richardson is
going into the NBA business” project. (He ended up playing in the league for ten
years.)
Charlie Mack and I arrived at Pauley Pavilion where UCLA was playing
Stanford. After the game, Pooh and I met in the locker room.
“Philly is here!” he shouted.
The first thing a Philly guy notices when one of his buddies moves to another
city is how crappy his haircut looks. Philly is famous for this haircut—we invented
it, and we know how to do it.

“Hey, dude, your barber’s a little bit of a jerk, huh?” I said, obligingly . I probably
would have said that regardless of what his haircut looked like.
When you're from Philly and someone gets their hair done in another city, you just
have to say it looks terrible.
"Yeah, we still have to work this out," Pooh joked, running his hands along the
sides of the cutout. When you're from Philly, you have to say something along
those lines, too.
Machine Translated by Google

He introduced me to Tgia and her cousin Tanya. I must have been admiring
Tanya's beauty too much , because Pooh grabbed a towel and put it to my
mouth.
"Hey, buddy, look how you're drooling. Don't let us slip here yet."
and don't be lazy."
I pushed the towel away and felt a little embarrassed, but in my expression
I still let my smile and personal charm shine.
"Come on, buddy, stop talking nonsense, okay?" I laughed and turned around.
introduce yourself to Tanya.
“There must be something in the water in Philly,” Tanya said. “That you’re all
"They grow so well."
Pooh jumped into it.

"Hey, Tanya, I'm telling you. This nigger's next. You better get him ."
Buckle up, because he's going to shoot all the way to the moon!

I thought, tie me up? Damn, she got me.

JL was the only one of my friends who had ever seen me cry. One train ride to
New York, I broke down when I told him the Melanie story, sobbing into his
chest. JL is not a sensitive person, and I didn’t hold it in . (He later confided in
me that he had given himself to me completely at that moment. He said he
knew he had to protect me.)
JL stopped me once.

"Hey, dude, you've been a mess lately. What's up?"

I had a period of months where I was literally fighting every weekend. I don't
know if it was knowing that Bucky had my back, or that I had Charlie Mack right
next to me, or if it was the only elixir that could calm my raging heart, but without
warning I started dropping bombs on anyone who even looked at me sideways.
I was really pissed off because Grammys, millions of dollars, and a crimson
IROC didn't even begin to fill the void inside me.

It's like this with money, sex and success: when you don't have it, you can
somehow justify your suffering - hell, I should have money, sex and success!
However this idea may be
Machine Translated by Google

misleading, psychologically it will give you hope. However, no matter

how rich, famous, and successful you are —and you are still full of
insecurity and anxiety—a terrifying thought will start to creep into your
head: maybe the problem is me.
Of course, I quickly put this nonsense out of my head.
I just needed more money, more women, and more Grammys.

The record company was ready to do another album with us after He's
the DJ. That sold three million copies and was the first ever to win a
Grammy in the rap category, but this new album was going to surpass it
by a long shot. JL wanted us to record it first in a rehearsal room at Jeff's
mom's house. While I was buying cars, clothes, and houses, Jeff had
turned his basement into a Star Trek -style home recording studio . JL
thought it would be most financially beneficial for us to put our ideas
together in southwest Philly and then return to London for the final
recording. Jive owned the recording studios there , and we had priority.

But Jeff and I saw it differently. Jeff had heard about a famous
recording studio in the Bahamas – Compass Point Studios in Nassau.
He suggested we go record there. After all, people like Mick Jagger,
Grace Jones, David Bowie, Sade, even Iron Maiden had recorded there.
Now that we were on top and had our own multi-platinum album, it was
a no-brainer to go record where multi-platinum artists were recording.
Jeff couldn’t wait to dig into the studio and see all the equipment. I
couldn’t wait to see the two giant casinos they had just built in Nassau.

We were really excited. JL protested, but was outvoted two

to one. No more sniping in Jeff's mom's basement.
Next Friday he's leaving for the Bahamas and that's it... all ten of us.

I've never been to the Bahamas before.

When we landed, it was sunny and thirty-five degrees. Our luggage
and equipment were held up at customs, so we
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We went to the beach. Rum punch and chicken strips until sunset , and then we
went to the casino until sunrise. And that's how the first week of "recording" our
new album went.
We had a six-week recording schedule, and we booked the studio for the
entire time, so we had to pay for it whether we were using it or not. Our first real
studio session—the ninth day in the Bahamas—was more like a night at the club:
Jeff would DJ and we would all hang out with the girls and have food and drinks.
Occasionally, I would get up to the mic and show off for the audience rather than
trying to innovate or create new music.

After that first session, JL pulled Jeff and me aside and warned us
that we would be paying $10,000 for every day we were recording, and
that if we didn't start recording immediately, he would make a fast track process.
Jeff and I were a little touched by it.
“You don’t understand the creative process,” I objected. “This pro-
Wednesday, those people, everything we do is our inspiration.”
“Yeah, J,” Jeff chimed in, “don’t ruin our work.”
"Just let us do our thing and you do yours," I said.
JL nodded, very slowly, as if to say, Okay, I get it.
One month, and a few hundred thousand dollars invested in our "process,"
and the red recording light hasn't even come on once - we haven't even finished
a single song yet.
I think JL was absolutely justified in doing what he did.
I couldn't believe he did it at the time. I would n't do something like that to him.
But I think he felt that times were cruel, so he resorted to equally cruel measures.

It was Friday night. About twenty of us were hanging out at the studio.
Our L.A. gang had flown in to help with the “creative process .” I had
about five rum punches in me and had progressed from chicken strips to
spicy chicken, black beans, and rice.
It must have been hot in there because I had my shirt off.
It doesn't matter how old you are – there are scenes from your childhood
that always give you goosebumps or make your stomach do a somersault.
I just happened to be the center of attention in the middle of Compass Point
Machine Translated by Google

Studio A, when the door slowly opened. First I caught a glimpse of JL opening
the door wide, and then...
Photo.

The whole room froze. Those who had already had the honor knew –
the other guests could only speculate. The photographer calmly absorbed
the entire scene before him. The omnipresent stench of rum punch and
hot chicken. The naughty Bahamian bikinis wiggling. And we were “at work”.
Sodom and Gomorrah are ready for the photographer.

He stopped and then:

"Fuck you all," he thundered. "I need to talk to you."

sÿWillem aÿJeffem.“

We landed at Philadelphia International Airport at 2:38 p.m. I slept through the

entire flight. I don’t remember taking off or landing. It’s probably not a medical
condition, but I’m pretty sure I was in some kind of awkward coma. James “JL”
Lassiter beat me up and told my dad everything. The whole thing was a total
disaster.
But at least our third album, And in, was finished in two weeks.
This Corner…

The sad result of the photographer's relentless, bulldozer-like incursion into

Compass Point was his aggressive, yet impressive, assessment of our behavior.

"Guys, you're screwing around with an opportunity that most people don't even dream of."

You got a big company to finance your project, and you just sit here in the studio
with girls? These people don't pay you for your nonsense. Feel free to do these
stupid things, but not when you have to work. This won't last forever."

While Fotrík's Bahamian intervention saved us from

more inevitable disasters, the first domino was already seriously swaying. We
didn't even have a wink. We quickly pitched the best tracks we could. But the
album lacked any vision or continuity. Jeff and I were unfocused and thrown out
of our usual harmony.

And in This Corner… was cursed from the very beginning.

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CHAPTER NINE

DESTRUCTION

The downward
And inspiral
Thiswas in motion.was
Corner… released on Halloween 1989
and received zero response. In a desperate attempt to salvage
some of that momentum, we hit the road to perform in front of
people and promote the album and do everything we could to
get the album to breathe some life into it, but it was a futile
struggle from the start.
The winter of 1989 became more and more miserable as time went on.
It started with Ready Rock. He recorded a bunch of songs,
none of which made it onto an album. He was one of the best
beatboxers of all time and was definitely the most popular at our
live shows . But hip-hop was changing – beatboxers were
increasingly marginalized in this art form. He felt underappreciated
and overlooked.
As a result, our disagreements grew into a rift, a rift into open conflict, until
Ready and I came damn close to going to war.

–
Machine Translated by Google

Clate started being late everywhere: to the airport, to soundchecks, to meetings.

He slept all day and was in a bad mood all night. During the tour, our arguments
escalated in both frequency and intensity. In his mind , he and Jeff were the main
attraction and I was just riding the wave.
"Me and Jeff are the only talents around. Everyone else is just our pawns,"
Clate shouted during one of our countless clashes.

It all came to a head one night in Kansas City. We usually called Ready Rock on
stage about halfway through our show. He came out and did a fifteen-minute entrance
with me, then left again , and Jeff and I closed the show. He had a grand entrance—I
rapped and at the end of the verse I yelled, “Ready Rock, give Jeff a hand!” I pointed
dramatically to the side, the lights came on, and Ready Rock C made a helicopter
sound effect with his mouth that scared the hell out of the audience. He could
alternately open his hand over the microphone and close it around it, changing the
frequency and creating the illusion of a helicopter flying from left to right.

The audience went wild with joy.

But this evening I shouted, pointed, the lights came on, but Ready Rock was
nowhere to be found. Jeff just kept the beat and after four more bars I took it again:
"Ready Rock! Help Jeff out a little!"

Clate didn't climb.

Without missing a beat, Jeff moved on to the next track and we continued the
show as if nothing had happened.
It is incredibly painful for me to write this chapter because these conflicts and
misunderstandings had such simple solutions, yet our immaturity ensured that we had
to suffer the painful consequences in order to learn the most basic lessons about
human relationships. It is so clear to me today how painful it must have been for Clate,
who, from being my one-time best friend and creative right-hand man, became
someone who was increasingly singled out and alienated, and asked to step out of
the frame during photo shoots. And the worst part was, we never even talked about it.

But that evening we were like two stubborn rams.

Machine Translated by Google

After the performance, I stormed backstage in anger.

“Where the fuck is Clate?” I yelled. I burst into the locker room,
and there he is! He’s sitting on my chair, sunglasses on, calmly
eating a bag of Doritos.
"Man, where the hell have you been?"

Clate didn't answer—he just sat there, crunching.

“Why don’t you get out?” I roared.
He continued to crunch. After a few seconds, he swallowed and said, "I just didn't
feel like performing today."
That shocked and stung me. But I said nothing.
We stared at each other. Our new reality hardened more and more with each
passing second. He had about ten seconds before my heart hardened completely
against him. Like concrete.
Nine, eight, seven, six.
Buy. Buy. Cock.
Five, four, three.
Purchase. Cock.
Two.

"Okay, fine," I said, turned around and left.

I have never called Ready Rock again since then.

The next night Jeff and I changed our plans. Clate stood on the side of the stage.
There came a part of the show where we would normally call him out. We skipped it
completely and moved on to the next song. Same thing in Dallas, same thing in
Houston, same thing in San Antonio.
We stopped talking. Clate started riding on other groups' buses, and when he
rode with us, he stayed in his cubicle. One day, towards the end of the tour, we heard
a strange noise coming from his cubicle.

Klap-cvak, form. Klap-cvak, form.

Charlie Mack's cubicle was directly above Clate's. Charlie, irritated by the noise,
leaned out of his cubicle to investigate.
He pulled back the curtain of Clate's cubicle.
“Hey, dude, what are you doing?” Charlie shouted, jumping down from his cubicle.
Machine Translated by Google

Clate was cleaning his Uzi semi-automatic submachine gun. He had no ammunition.
is, but he practiced loading the gun and pulling the trigger.
Klap-cvak, form. Klap-cvak, form.
Gone was my high school friend—the wild laughter, the excitement of street
corner battles around Overbrook, the joy of discovering new sounds. In his place
was a person I didn't recognize.

There have been few things more painful in my life than watching someone I
truly loved destroy themselves. The photographer used to say, “You can stop a
murder, but you can’t stop a suicide.” Ready Rock made a good living doing what
he loved. He had performed in front of thousands of people and traveled the world.
He had a group of friends who would have died for him. But somewhere inside him,
there was an unfathomable or wounded part that, for some reason, couldn’t grasp
the full scope of the opportunity that lay before him. He had set out into a land of
plenty, only to claw and claw his way back into the inhospitable desert.

Throughout my career, I've seen this pattern over and over again. I've given
people hundreds of job opportunities, and many of them have completely collapsed
and been crushed by the pressure of those opportunities. As the great black poet
Charlie Mack once said, "You either go crazy or you shine, brother."

We all have to deal with the natural process of destruction. Nothing lasts forever
—your body starts to age. Your best friend graduates and moves to another city.
That tree you once climbed in front of Stacey Brooks' house collapses in a gale.
Your parents die. Everything is subject to change. Always. Up and down. Nothing
and no one escapes the entropy of the universe.

And that's why self-destruction is such a terrible crime. It's hard enough as it is.

When we got back to Philly, Ready Rock grabbed his bag, I grabbed mine. No
goodbyes, no eye contact. I watched him make his way through Woodcrest. He
never looked back once.

–
Machine Translated by Google

Because of my childhood experiences with the destructive tendencies

of the photo, I have developed a very low tolerance threshold for
sensing this type of energy in people around me. The funny thing is
that I can always recognize it absolutely unmistakably in others, but
when it comes to myself , I am as blind as a mole to the same energy.
The first (and only real) single from the third album was called “I
Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson.” At the time, I often used Mike ’s
invincibility as a metaphor to explain the difference between natural
destruction and self-destruction.
Imagine you're going to fight Mike Tyson for the title in top form.
You're scared to death, you hire legendary trainer Freddie Roach, you
follow a perfect nutrition plan, a perfect training regimen, you do
everything in your power to prepare yourself to face Iron Mike. In
perfect physical and mental condition, you step into the ring, and Mike
destroys you in fifteen seconds. You've done everything you can, and
you still lose. You're just not as good a fighter as Mike Tyson. That's
a bearable loss. Something I call natural destruction.

But if you were to goof around during training, eat the wrong foods,
and let some idiot coach you— and then Mike knocked you out in
fifteen seconds—then you have to face an unbearable loss. Then you
have to spend the rest of your life wondering how things could have
turned out if you had actually done something about it. Somewhere in
the back of your mind, you will always know that you lost not only to
Mike Tyson, but above all to yourself. That fight wasn't you against
Mike—it was you and Mike against yourself .
And that's exactly how I feel about And in This Corner... The music
business is fickle - some records take off, some don't. Sometimes you
have a track that you think will be a hit and it doesn't get a response.
And then the one you didn't think much of turns out to be a real
blockbuster. It's an inevitable process, a natural law of ebb and flow.
When you just throw $300,000 out the window for rum punch and
chicken strips and your father has to come running up to you and drag
you home for a ride and then in your mother's basement
Machine Translated by Google

You somehow manage to put together a few tracks with your best friend,
and you perfectly embody the essence of an unequal battle. It's two against
one: you and the universe against you.
It is honorable to lose against the universe. Losing against yourself is
sad.

And in This Corner… was a complete flop. We had a good start.

Three million records sold – triple platinum sales – and the first
ever Grammy for rap. The expectations and investment were
very high. And we fell flat on our face.
We knew this album was much ado about nothing, but it only really
took shape when we went on tour again.
The crowd thinned out considerably. People weren't as angry with us. They weren't
throwing texts back at me anymore. And our fees went down by almost seventy percent.
We explained it to ourselves as "promotion".
Looking back, I realize I felt like we were headed for a big mess, but I
had no idea what to do or how to stop it. And I certainly didn't expect it to
be this bad.
At that time, Melanie and I lived in that awful demilitarized
zone between the blessed good old days of romance and hopeful
tomorrows and the inexorably approaching days of rage , fury,
and destruction from which there was no escape. Trapped in a
terrifying state of silent lovelessness, where two people coexist
in the same house but rarely in the same room. Where the air is
saturated with indifferent words, not yet full of venom, but
definitely deliberately devoid of kindness. In that peculiar hell
where you know there is nothing left to solve, but it is not quite over yet.

Charlie and I were now spending more and more time in L.A.
Tanya was at the airport the moment I landed with a rental
car, hotel keys, dinner reservations, everything I needed. I
always found L.A. girls to be organized and business-minded.
They were always cool.
Machine Translated by Google

and they always had a dream or an opportunity in their sights. There was
something about the culture of Los Angeles that developed and elevated the personality.
Tanya didn't want anything from me at all. That's just how she was. She
made me feel at home.
We've known each other for almost a year and we haven't kissed a single time.
I had a vague idea that Tanya and Los Angeles would play a significant
role in my rescue. I think I was subconsciously searching for a lighthouse and
a lifeboat. I could feel the clouds gathering somewhere on the horizon. Gigi's
words echoed in my mind: Remember, darling, be kind to everyone you meet
on the way up, because you may meet them again on the way down.

Becoming famous is fun, but only to the extent that the material world
allows you. Being famous is something everyone can do. But losing fame is a
pain.
I had a bad feeling about something bad happening—and I knew I had a
part to play in it. By the end of the show, I could see the blank expressions on
the faces of the crowd. I noticed how sales calls that had once been answered
within two hours were now taking two weeks or going unanswered. And what
worried me most of all, my American Express card wasn’t bursting at the
seams, it was wriggling like crazy. And in the midst of all this turmoil, the
delicate compass inside me was starting to point west.

Charlie felt it too.

He took it into his own hands. He pushed it forward, he blazed a trail, he
talked himself into it—everything he could to dig out and bring to light God’s
brighter future. Charlie wasn’t shy. He probably introduced me to just about
anyone within earshot, even people he didn’t know.

"Little Richard! Little Richard!" he shouted all round the

Soul Train box office awards.

And then, all excited, towards me: "Will, it's Little Richard and he's with
Diana Ross... Come on, come and shine with them ."

"Damn it, Charlie, have fun! Leave them alone," I snapped.

and he could have fallen into disgrace.
Machine Translated by Google

"So do you want the picture or not? You have to be seen with
these kind of people." Then he dragged me over to Little Richard
and Diana Ross and basically gave them a list of my entire
discography.
"You must have heard it - he got a Grammy. Oh my, like a Grammy
"A bunch of people, all together!"
Charlie Mack is bigger than most human beings, and certainly
bigger than most security guards. So once he figured out that he
wanted something, like a photo or a chat, he just hacked his way
into it.
L.A. illuminated the boundaries of my fame. I was a big name in the hip-hop
world, but a complete ignoramus in Hollywood. At the Lakers game, ignoramus.
In Roxbury ultra nick. When Eddie came in, he was the boss. It was so
humiliating, so embarrassing, so frustrating.
I remember one night in L.A. when a go-go band called EU (Experience
Unlimited) from DC was playing at the Palladium. They supported us in 1988
and '89, and I became friends with the lead singer, Sugar Bear, and the rest of
the band. Spike Lee had just used their song "Da Butt" in his movie Mad Men,
and EU was now the hottest band in the country. Charlie and I planned to take
a break from the emotional grind of Hollywood nothingness and escape into the
world of music for just one night.

We headed to the Palladium and arrived at the backstage entrance.

A crowd of fans begged the bouncers to tell them their cousin had left them a
ticket, but the ticket office was closed – a classic rant where the security guards
just looked off into the distance and ignored them. Charlie did what he always
did, stepped forward and spoke up for me.

"Hey, dude, I'm here with the Fresh Prince."

“With who?” the security guard asks, looking past Charlie to me.
I've always hated these exact moments where I have to stand there
and try to look recognizable. Because now everyone's staring at
you to see if you're famous enough to get past the "bouncer
selection." You're a little out of the loop. And when you just released an album-
-Loser, you are on a very thin and shaky branch.
Machine Translated by Google

"Fresh Prince, dude. Fresh Prince. You know, Jazzy Jeff and out,"
Charlie explained.
The bouncer looked at me with that universal look that means: I'm leafing
through my business card and... no, there's no one like that there.

"Hey, if you don't have petals, you'll have to move back."

And at that exact moment, the door opens. The head of Sugar Bear from the
EU peeks out. He looks around. And that’s when I made a rookie mistake – I
jumped into action without thinking. But seeing a familiar face was like the proverbial
lifebuoy someone had thrown to me, just as I was drowning in an ever-deepening
sea of insignificance and irrelevance.

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "Hey! Sugar Bear!"

Sugar Bear looks directly at me. There’s a moment of mutual identification. I
point to the security guard and say, “Hey, dude, tell this jerk to move and let us
in.”

Sugar Bear stops, looks at the security guard, and shakes his head slightly.
His eyes scan the crowd, checking to see if the person he’s really looking for is
there. He’s not, so he turns and disappears back inside.

I turned and walked the walk of shame with the grace of an ex-celebrity. I
was raging inside, but as is my emotional nature, I was completely calm on the
outside. I didn't know where I was going, but I went. One step at a time. Charlie
didn't say anything, but he kept pace with me. We walked in silence for several
miles.
What the hell was going on? After we got off the tour, Jeff had retreated to
his mom’s basement. His response to our career plummeting to the brink of
extinction was a kind of hibernation—he turned down the opportunity to do shows
in Africa and tour Australia. I was angry that he was hiding—it felt like cowardice
on his part. And it brought back to life my greatest weakness: I’d worked hard
my whole life not to be a jerk. I believed we had to face the obstacles that came
our way, but I couldn’t do it without him. It felt like a betrayal on his part.
Machine Translated by Google

JL complained about Charlie and I spending so much time in L.A.

“You’re just wasting your time – you should come back home so we
can get back into the studio, write and record,” JL said.
Melanie and I barely spoke. And here I am, on the empty streets of
Hollywood on a Thursday night, completely numb and confused about
everything.
Charlie Mack was like an old-time boxing trainer whose fighter had
just been beaten up in the previous round . If I hadn't been on Hollywood
Boulevard, he would have poured ice water on my shorts. I was badly
hurt. But I knew I had one more round to go.

We reached a crosswalk. The red hand seemed to be gesturing

directly at me. Brake. Stop. Breathe. Think. My anger subsided. The
thought stirred passion in me, and then…decision.
"This will never, ever happen again," I said.
"I promise you that."
Charlie didn't even open his mouth. He just nodded. He knew I was
Something big is happening. And he was ready to go with me.
The light turned green and we continued on our way.

I didn't pay taxes.

It's not that I forgot or anything, it's just... I just didn't pay my taxes.
In January 1990, Uncle Sam decided I'd had enough fun and now he
wanted his due.
I owed the financier about three million dollars in income taxes . I
think Uncle Sam doesn't find anything over a million annoying, he finds
anything over 2.3 million annoying and aggressive.

So, in keeping with how I was used to approaching problem solving

at this time in my life, I threw it at JL.
“Wait, you didn’t pay any taxes?” he asked. We were talking
on the phone, but I could tell he had sat down.
JL is to this day the most humble, sensible and tax -responsible
person I have ever met.
Machine Translated by Google

He never spends money casually under any circumstances. No cars, no

jewelry, no trips, no hot tubs—in the bedroom or bathroom. While Jeff
and I were able to wildly flaunt our booty, JL never left his childhood
bedroom. He even took this phone from his mother in the kitchen.

"No, nothing," I admitted.

"Like – nothing at all ?"
„The. See. No, the lady – the. See.“
"You're really a scoundrel, man," JL said. "You know you're in the big-"
"What the hell, right?"
I didn't notice it at the time, but JL kept referring to a "you,"
which clearly meant that he didn't just consider me the "vocas." I
later found out that Jeff didn't pay his taxes either. To make
matters worse, JL had been very lax about billing us for his
services, so we not only spent all our money—we also embezzled
JL's share.
We were all broke.
JL got a tax lawyer (for Jeff and me—he paid his own taxes), scheduled an
appointment, and showed him the notice from the CFO . He also hired an
accounting firm, Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, to look at our hypothetical future
income.
First all the cars went. Then my motorbikes. Stereos are very expensive
when you buy them, but they are worthless when you get rid of them. And
then a terrible decision was made —the financier, the lawyer, and the
accountants all agreed on it: I would have to sell the house on Merion
Road, including the pool table.
Now you could best describe me as rich and famous,
just think of the words "rich" and "famous."
To say I was broke is an understatement – I was screwed.
The walls began to crumble. I thoroughly enjoyed Sodom and Gomorrah – far
more than Jericho.

There's a strange thing that happens when you fall in life: suddenly
everyone you've ever had any disagreements with, for some reason...
Machine Translated by Google

For some reason, they see your fumbling as proof that they were right and you
were wrong. They are hard on the ground and seem to take immense pleasure
in the fact that God is finally punishing you. People tend to have a schizophrenic
attitude towards winners—if you've been down too long, you're suddenly an
outcast and they feel it's their duty to hustle you back up. But if you're ever
unlucky enough to be up too long , it's best not to go out at all.

One evening, in the middle of what would later turn out to be the last eight-ball
games we ever played on my first pool table on Merion Road, Melanie came
down the stairs. She looked absolutely stunning in a royal blue miniskirt and
matching leather jacket. She stood on the

Seven-centimeter heels – she never wore heels . Big “bamboo” earrings that I
bought her and that she had never worn before. Perfect make-up. No glasses
this time. Eyeliner. And that neckline – she definitely wouldn’t have gotten away
with it at her aunt’s house. So why did she think she would get away with it at
mine?
She walked gracefully down the aisle, made up of me, Charlie, Bam, Bucky ,
and a few of my other JBM buddies. Everyone looked at her , but no one said a
word. JBM had a clear policy—they respected other women at all times.

"Where are you going?" I asked, missing an easy eleven on the side.

“Out,” Melanie replied.

All I could think about now was: Why the hell is this happening to me?
Right now? He's trying to test me in a room full of Philly's toughest tough guys
and killers? When the financier wants to take everything from me? In rags? And
he's going to miss this embarrassing side eleven for it?

BZZZZZZZZ.

"What's 'out'?" I said, while Charlie prepared for another

a nudge that made me turn over a hundred dollars I didn't have.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Out.”
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” I replied, trying to define the game.
nice and save face. "You should go back upstairs."
Machine Translated by Google

“Call it what you will, Willard,” she said, and headed for the door.
"If you walk out that door, I guarantee it won't be a pretty sight."

We stared at each other. Our new reality hardened more and more with each
passing second. She had about ten seconds to get back up before my heart
hardened to her. Like concrete.

Nine, eight, seven, six.

Charlie sank a high ball on the side.
Five, four, three.
Eyeliner. Neckline. "Bamboo".
Two.
"See you later, Willard."
Melanie left.

An hour later I was alone in the house. Melanie and I were no longer
in the demilitarized zone of unlove. The blessed good old days had
finally had to capitulate to days of rage , fury, and destruction.

Melanie's taxi pulled up in front of the house around 2 a.m. I

waited for her outside. I picked up everything I had bought for her
over the years - clothes, shoes, handbags.
Anything that will burn.
I poured gasoline all over it.
We met each other's gaze.
I struck a match.
FUU

From that time until the moment I write this chapter, I have not seen
or spoken to Melanie. I have expressed interest on many occasions
over the years, but to no avail. She was the victim of one of the most
miserable moments of my life. Yes, we were young.
Machine Translated by Google

Yes, we hurt each other. But she didn't deserve to be treated

like this. She didn't deserve to end up like this.
–

Charlie Mack was in love with Mimi Brown, one of the most iconic DJs in
Philadelphia history. She was exactly the seductive, hot voice from our
childhood dreams, and meeting her in person only confirmed it. Charlie
never missed an opportunity to get me on the radio. I was constantly
doing interviews on WDAS FM, on Mimi's show. It was like Charlie was
now my media manager, and he only had one contact in the music
industry : Mimi Brown.

This was my third interview with Mimi in two weeks. She had
started a show called Rap Digest— I was running out of topics,
but Charlie felt we were nowhere near the key points we wanted
to cover.
"Mimi, for God's sake - I'm telling you! People just love the way you
talk to each other! Get on the phones like crazy! We have to move on!"
Charlie dissolved with all his tenderness.
From the very beginning, Mimi was a huge supporter and advocate
of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. She was one of the first to play
our stuff and was one of the pioneers who pushed hip-hop into daytime
radio in Philly. And she loved the local boy.
It was always the same with Mimi, whether we were in the spotlight or
not, whether the album was a hit or a flop – she wanted us to feel at
home in her studio. We were always welcome.
It was a win-win for everyone involved – Mimi had a great interview, I
felt respected and appreciated, and Charlie got the opportunity to make
up points with Mimi.
The studio was a cozy little soundproof room with glass on two sides.
The radio people could walk around and watch the interview and the
talents who came in. Mimi and I were always a particularly attractive
attraction – we laughed and joked a lot and played an interesting, for the
time revolutionary,
Machine Translated by Google

a mix of hip-hop and R&B. The way we interacted with the staff behind the
glass made it feel like a live recording.
One afternoon I started rapping live, which doesn't sound like much
now, but I swear it was jaw-dropping at the time—it was one of the first
times that anything like that had ever happened on Philadelphia radio. You
see, this was a time when the promotional slogans of many radio stations
were, "All music—no rap!"
The crowd behind the glass was growing and going wild—some
because they realized they were witnessing the birth of a new era, and
others because they might have thought they were witnessing the death
blow to Mimi Brown's career . As I'm playing and performing for that glass,
I suddenly freeze when it occurs to me... I'm looking face to face, eye to
eye with Dan Goodman. He heard me on the radio and thought he'd show up here.
If the bastard you're looking for is Will, he's in the house. Relax-
Come on, come on, and slap him.
Dana stares, emotionless, and whispers in the ear of the guy she's
with. The guy nods and heads toward the studio door. I continue on my
way out, my eyes fixed on Dana. I try to signal Charlie, but he's fixated on
Mimi.
The door opens. A guy enters the cabin and stands behind Charlie.
Charlie's ghetto radar clicks back on. Charlie moves almost imperceptibly
so that he's within range - he's no longer looking at Mimi. I'm getting ready,
the crowd is clapping wildly. Mimi and I sit down and want to continue our
conversation.
“You should thank Dan Goodman,” the guy shouts.
"Hey, dude, I'm on the radio. Live. Relax," Charlie whispers.
“You should thank Dan Goodman,” the man shouts, even louder this
time.
"Dude, if you want something, come out. But you'll be quiet here,"
Charlie said, more emphatically now.
The guy put his hand on Charlie's chest and tried to push him away.
"Tell your buddy to thank Dan G—"
Before his lips could form the U in “Goodman,” Charlie delivered a right-
handed punch to the box, and the guy’s head exploded like a watermelon.
It was as if Charlie had shot his fist out of a cannon.
Machine Translated by Google

The guy hit a metal rack of eight-track cassettes, which sent them flying all over
the room. The guy was done for. Then Charlie grabs me and Mimi and chases
us into the back parking lot.
“Charlie, Dana's there,” I shout.
“Come on, come on,” Charlie cuts me off. We run out to the back parking lot
and the radio security guys grab Mimi. Charlie throws me in the car and we’re
gone that very moment.

I had never been in prison before. There were too many of us and too little
space. I honestly felt like we didn't deserve something like this.

Apparently there is some arcane law in Pennsylvania, a sort of “slave/master

clause,” that says that if one person commits a crime while under the control or
direct influence of a master, then the “master” is legally responsible for the
actions of the subordinate/slave party. The man’s legal team argued that I was
criminally liable for Charlie’s actions because of my “dominant” position over
him. Charlie was never arrested, even though he was the one who broke the
man’s left eye socket and permanently damaged his cornea. The man’s legal
team evidently decided that I was a “swindler,” and logically deduced that I was
a better financial target than Charlie.

But they had miscalculated. I certainly couldn’t get out of this financially. But
as I sat in my jail cell, facing charges of assault, criminal conspiracy, assault,
and reckless endangerment for a wound I hadn’t even inflicted, I finally
understood the phrase I’d heard so many times: Hard. Bottom. I was literally
lying on a cold stone floor. Everything I had, everything I’d built, the woman I
loved. It was all gone. I was completely broken. As I lay there curled up in a ball,
trying to figure out how the hell I’d gotten here, I made a terrible mistake and
followed the cosmic law of hard bottom: Well, it can’t get any worse…

–
Machine Translated by Google

I hope none of you will ever need this information, but if you can, don't get arrested
on Friday. I was released Monday morning (they don't release anyone on
weekends). I went straight to Woodcrest to see my mother. I haven't spoken to her
yet. I was sure she would be very upset.

The crazy thing about all of this is that when I saw the police car outside
Woodcrest, it never occurred to me for a split second that they were coming for me.

One of my childhood friends, Lil' Reggie, had just become a cop. He had
exactly the kind of personality you'd expect from a cop. Reggie was the talk of the
town. His mother adored him and everyone respected him.

When I walked in, my mother and Reggie were sitting in the kitchen.
She hugged me…
BZZZZZZZZ.

Damn. My damn electric collar again. What's up?

Reggie says the hell to my mom all the time?
I gave Reggie a fist bump, we hugged and chatted a little about life. He heard
about everything that happened with Charlie and about my weekend in jail.

“I want you to know that I stand behind you,” Reggie said.

BZZZZZZZZ.

"Um, um, yeah, Reggie, I know," I said.

"I'm going to ask you a few things and I need you to be completely honest with
me..."
BZZZZZZZZZZ.

"Do you happen to know...?"

He named four people. They were all JBM guys. Guys I had gambled with for
the past two years—and not robbed them.
the car.

My heart jumped into my throat. I felt like I had to swallow it back into my chest
immediately.
"Maybe I know them. Why?"
"Willard, do you know them or not?" she blurted out to her mother, who was trying to

somehow fix my mess.

Machine Translated by Google

"Hey," Reggie said, "I'm here to help you. You know what they do, right?
What do they drive?"
I nodded.
"Will, you've made a good name for yourself in music. Those guys are bad."
The FBI is watching them. And the cops are trying to catch them. They
say they have photos of them going in and out of your house, driving their
cars, and some of your trips. You know it's a crime to give them money
and take it from them?"
I couldn't breathe.
"It really doesn't look good," Reggie added. "You have to end
it . Now. 'FBI raids house and puts big rap star behind bars' - that
would be just icing on the cake."
Mother had a stony face, but inside her a volcano boiled and spewed.
This is exactly why she wanted me to get off my ass and go to college.
"You weren't involved in any of what they did, were you? I can't help
you if you don't tell me the truth - you're clean, right?" Reggie insisted.

"Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We were just playing pool and

partying," I replied.
"Okay, but you're going to have to pull back for a while. Maybe get out
of Philly. It's going to be ugly."

I called Tanya and asked if I could stay with her for a while. She was over
the moon with excitement. The problem was, I couldn't afford a plane
ticket. My Amex was completely drained.
Kaput. I decided to try something.
I called Bucky.
We met in Fairmount Park, not far from Plateau.
I pulled up behind his black 325i and jumped into the passenger seat. I
loved his car—it had an Alpine CD player that played up to twelve CDs.
When I bought mine, I could only afford six CDs.

I told him everything—that the cops were circling, that I was moving to
L.A., and that he should disappear too. He chuckled and slumped down.
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head on the armrest. He knew that his life was like a roller
coaster, destined from the start to accelerate, from one escape
to another. He closed his eyes. We just sat. In silence.
It was about six in the afternoon. It took me two hours to get there.
do L.ÿA.

I was extremely annoyed to interrupt him and ask for money.

“Hey, Buck, I need some money to get to L.A.,” I began quietly.

“What are you going to do in L.A.?” Buck asked without opening his eyes.
"I don't know exactly yet. I just love it there. There's one
steakhouse I like. Our album was a disaster, so... maybe I'll try playing."
"You've got some fucking brains for that acting," he said, smiling, apparently
replaying some of my funniest moments in his head.
"You're the most farting nigger I know." He was laughing his ass off now .

“How much do you need?” Buck asked.

"Nothing big. I just need to get there, find a place to stay."
And also move around a bit there.
"Okay, I have ten grand here. If you need more, I can go get some."

"No, okay."
Buck had a secret compartment under the mat under the driver's seat.
He reached into the back seat, grabbed a Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpet from
a brown paper bag , and stuffed the money into the bag. He handed it to me.
But when I grabbed it, it wouldn’t let go.

He looked me straight in the eye.

“You do realize you’re no stickier than me, right?” he said.
"Of course, Buck, sure," I replied, a little confused.
“I’m just like you. We’re exactly the same.” He paused for a moment, then
said, “I could do anything you do. Easily. I just screwed up.
We were each born in a different place. That's all."
"Yeah, exactly," I said.
Bucky dropped the money.
"Just be nice, buddy," he said.
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"None of that, Buck. I'll give it back to you as soon as I can." He

chuckled again, as if he somehow sensed that he wouldn't be able to get them again.
need.
"After I get settled in there a bit, you should come to L.A."
Bucky laughed that same knowing laugh.
“Okay, buddy, it’s worth it.”
He punched me.
I flew away.
Three days later, Bucky was dead.
Machine Translated by Google

CHAPTER TEN

ALCHEMY

She got us an apartment in Marina del Rey. She knew someone who
Ask
he knew someone, so it came to just 1300 bucks a month
I didn't care at all.
Bucky still had $7,700 left in his brown paper bag. He was shot
in the head in front of his house. It was a set-up.
Reggie explained to us that it's a classic scenario - once the cops
start snooping around, people throw each other overboard.
I didn't leave my apartment for weeks. Partly out of fear, partly out of
exhaustion – I was in shock. My whole life had collapsed like a house of cards.

I think my state of collapse and utter exhaustion triggered an

amazing wave of mercy from Tanya: we never explicitly talked
about it, but we both knew that she was my wife now.
And it was she who set out on the harrowing mission of “breathing
life back into Will.” We spent every moment together. Tanya
pampered me, comforted me, cared for me. She cried with me,
shared my pain with me. We talked for hours and hours.
I met her mother and grandmother. She didn't cook, but she could
order some damn good takeout.
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We fell in love. I could have hidden in that apartment with her forever.

But then, a few weeks later, as if a kitchen alarm had gone off—just below
my audible frequency, but right on her soundwaves—it was all over. Tanya
suddenly changed course, like a completely drunk trucker driving down the
Texas Highway.
Panhandle.

"Okay," she said, "that's enough. It's time to get back to life."
"What?" I asked as this icy shower of reality washed away-
la our love nest in Marina del Rey.
“You have to do something ,” she said. “You took a break—that’s fine.
You needed it. But that brown paper bag is almost empty.
What will you do?
"What do you mean, what am I going to do?" I didn't understand, completely upset.

“What don't you understand about the question 'what will you do?'?” Tanya
replied , just as upset as I was, but in a completely opposite sense.
"You need to get out. Among the people."

"Get out and do what? Go where?" I shouted.

"I don't know, damn it!" she snapped. "But whatever it is, in this kitchen
You won't find it! Just go… what do I know… maybe to Arsenius."
The Arsenio Hall Show was the biggest talk show in America at the time .
Anyone who was anyone appeared on Arsenio. It was like the Panama Canal for
celebrities—all roads to public success led through the Arsenio Hall Show. Charlie
had been dragging me there for months.

“We have to stay in the center of things,” he used to say.

I became half-friends with Arsenio around the time Jeff and I took
the Grammys by storm. When we appeared on Arsenio's show, he really
liked me.
“Go to Arsenius and do what?” I shouted.
"Arsenio loves you! Just go to the show and enjoy it. Between.
People.
"He's crazy," I said. "So you want me to go to the Arsenio Hall
Show and stand there like a fool, because maybe I'll talk to
someone?"
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"Yeah, that's right - because maybe you'll get to talk to someone there !"

"Then I'm not going to do it. Such nonsense. And besides, I'm not in
the mood for such nonsense."

I arrived at the Arsenio Hall Show at about 4:30 p.m. The show started at five.
The half hour before was prime time for getting to know the people on set.
Charlie Mack was in his element.
"Hey, buddy, Eddie's here tonight! I can catch him," he said.
Charlie.
Eddie Murphy was on the show that night. He knew who I was— he
kept calling me “Young Prince.” Arsenio was a lightning rod for magical
moments. Many people argued that Bill Clinton’s saxophone performance
on the show had boosted his chances of winning the presidency . Michael
Jackson, Mariah Carey, Miles Davis, Madonna—Magic Johnson even
appeared at Arsenio’s 24 hours after announcing his HIV-positive status.

As I stood backstage, I felt electric waves of possibility running

through me—it was like a lush forest bearing ripe fruit on every tree. The
show was the culmination of it all, a connecting bridge , a cosmic garden
of opportunity that Arsenio cultivated with foresight and utter purpose. If
only I had known this
Tanya said before, I wouldn't be against the oven.
Charlie and I did this almost every day for months at a time. He would
constantly approach famous people we didn't know personally and, against
their will, drag them to meet me.
I met absolutely everyone – politicians, actors, musicians, athletes,
managers.
Benny Medina was an A&R manager at Warner Bros. Records.
I didn't know who it was, but Charlie clearly felt he was important enough to
reach out and get me. Benny had previously worked under Berry Gordy at
Motown. At Warner Bros. he now had some of their biggest hip-hop acts under
his wing.
Machine Translated by Google

acts, including Queen Latifah, De La Soul, and Big Daddy Kana. He was about
six feet tall, stocky, with brown skin, curly hair, and a bushy beard—you could tell
he considered himself a real tough guy. He knew exactly how to navigate people
and talk to them. He didn’t mince words and got straight to the point. Benny could
laugh when it was time to laugh—which was almost always—but he could also get
pretty heated when someone was holding back his artist from taking off or
following his desires.

"Hey, Will—this is Benny Medina. Benny, this is Fresh

"Prince – but you know that," Charlie Mack introduced us.
Benny knew everything about my music. We talked for a while about hip-hop
and the impact technology was having on the music industry and the future of
video on demand, and then out of the blue he asked me, "Can you play?"

Act? Do you mean doing things to elicit joy and enthusiasm from the people
around me? Do you mean bending my perception of myself in various ways to
hide behind something? Do you mean believing deeply in stories that don’t exist,
never have, and never could exist? Do you mean playing the role of someone
everyone around me wants me to be, instead of who I really am?

I have a general rule – when someone asks me if I can do something, my

answer is always “yes”.
"Yeah, sure, sure, I can definitely play, yes, sir," I said, a little too eloquently.
"Yes."
"You can tell," Benny said. "You can see it in your music videos.
"Maybe I have something for you. I'll get back to you."
I didn’t think anything of it. In Philly, we make fun of guys like that. “Doing it
for Hollywood” is the worst thing there is—it’s the definition of insincerity. It
happens like a conveyor belt in L.A. Life went on and I forgot about it. But as it
turned out, that quick three-minute “Hollywood chat ” ended up being one of the
most meaningful conversations of my life.

–
Machine Translated by Google

Benny Medina is the real Fresh Prince.

Benny grew up orphaned by his extended family in a housing development
in East Los Angeles. As a teenager, he was taken in by a friend’s wealthy
Jewish family who lived in Beverly Hills. Benny was Afro-Hispanic and attended
high school in Beverly Hills. He was a good kid, but the gap between these
two worlds created a lasting cultural divide that was an explosive source of
tension… and humor.

By the time I met him on the Arsenio Hall Show, Benny Medina was slowly
plotting a move to television.

The universe is not logical, it is magical.

A major aspect of the pain and mental anguish we experience as humans
is the fact that our minds seek, and often demand, logic and order from a
universe that lacks any logic.
Our minds still desperately believe that life is as easy as a slap in the face.
Like one plus one is two. But the laws of logic do not apply to the laws of
possibility. The universe is subject to the laws of magic.
Detroit. A few weeks after my "Hollywood chat."
JL had booked a few shows to help us out of our collective financial trap. Joe
Louis Arena was always a blast— we loved playing there. We were all booked
up in the same hotel room again. It was strange how comforting it was to be
together in such a cramped quarters. Jeff had his headphones on and was
playing beats. Omarr was watching TV. Charlie was cutting his toenails . I
hated it when he did that. I felt like Mel Gibson in Braveheart— all I had to do
was get a Scottish battle shield and paint my face blue.

Neither of us knew that this would be the last time we would tour together.

JL burst into the room.

"Hey, get up. Quincy Jones wants to talk to you!"
"Quincy Jones? With me? And why? What have I done?" I was still shaken
from the previous episode.
Machine Translated by Google

“Have you met someone named Benny Medina?” JL asked.

"Yeah, the guy from Warner Bros."
"Well, he's working with Quincy," JL whispered, almost knocking me out.
front teeth as he shoved the phone against my face.
"I told you so," Charlie said.
“Hello, Mr. Jones, how are you?” I said in a tone and diction that
would make my mother, my father , and Gigi proud. “Great, sir, thank you.
Detroit. Yeah, Joe Louis. We're performing tomorrow night."
"Hey, buddy, what's he saying? We can't hear him!" Charlie Mack said, and a little
he tamed his vigor.

"Sssssttt!" JL hissed at him.

"Hey, J, leave me alone, I'm a grown man."
“Will you shut your grown-up mouth?” Jeff chimed in.
"Hmm, sure," I said. "And when is that? You, well, okay...
Hmm, well, yes, definitely. I have time. I'm not performing until tomorrow night. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Okay. See you later.”

I slowly put the phone down. The whole group stared at me as if I had just
taken a pregnancy test.
"Quincy Jones wants me to come to his birthday party-"
you,” I said to myself and the group at the same time.
“Get out?” Omarr asked.
"No. Von and that guy Benny Medina have some idea for
"What kind of TV show do you want to start?"

"When are you supposed to be there?" JL asked.

"Tonight."

Quincy Jones' party was the same night as the Soul Train Music Awards. He
was honored with the Heritage Award for career achievement, and the birthday/
after party was held at his Bel-Air mansion. JL put me on a plane at three in the
afternoon from Detroit, and I landed in L.A. just as the sun was starting to set.

It all felt like a dream. It made me a little bit gloomy. I was flying
alone, which was unusual and uncomfortable for me,
Machine Translated by Google

and now that the traffic on the 405 had slowed down, I had a moment to think –
Why the hell am I going to Quincy Jones' house?
It was about a half hour from Los Angeles International Airport to Quincy .
When I drove up to the place, I was surprised by the valet parking. Quincy Jones
had valet parking at his house —twenty guys in red uniforms in his driveway. It
looked like the British were about to arrive. It was about the same size as Sue
Ellen Ewing's fucking breakfast horse.

When I arrived, the party was already in full swing. Everyone from Steven
Spielberg to Tevin Campbell was there. Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie were
just arriving when I arrived. It was too much for me. I realized I didn't belong
here. And just before my fragile self-image made me take the corner, I saw
Benny Medina, a familiar face - a lifeline thrown to me just as I was drowning in
a sea of insignificance and irrelevance, and so on and so forth.

"Hey, man," Benny shouted, "he did it too!"

I wanted to say, "Yeah, man, fuck it, I'm out of the game. " But instead , I
said, "Hey, dude, don't take that jacket off—put it on me. Or you're going to
break up with it."

Benny was wearing one of those Versace jackets that looked like it had
been painted by Picasso. He laughed, tugged at the lapel, and said , “If it goes
well today, it’s yours. Let’s go see Quincy.”
It just felt too fast. Can't I at least get a drink first? Or one of
those triangle toasts with cheese or salmon or something?
Damn. Are you going to chase me out of the parking lot after
Quincy Jones? I need to take a breather. Do you want me to get
all mangled up here?
The center of the party was Quincy's giant living room—two-level vaulted
ceilings and a few hundred of Hollywood's biggest animals and A-list rainmakers.
Quincy was the center of attention, like a magician in a designer jacket with a
keyboard embroidered on the left hip. Benny and I walk into the room, and before
Benny can introduce me, I meet Quincy's gaze.

“Heyyyyy, everyone!” Quincy yells. “The Fresh Prince is here!”

Machine Translated by Google

That would be embarrassing – if just anyone shouted something

like that about me. But this was the most important person. That's who
Quincy is – he adores people and enjoys them. Every person is a
unique work of art for him. He doesn't play some celebrity or non-celebrity.
He can really find something interesting in everyone.
Quincy rushes across the room, arms outstretched, and hugs Benny and me
in one big hug.
“Welcome, man, welcome,” Quincy blurts out.
“Thank you, Mr. Jones. This house is amazing!” I blurt out .

"Oh, you like this? This is Bel-Air! Benny wants to film the whole
thing in Beverly Hills. And I keep telling him, man, fuck Beverly Hills !
Beverly Hills looks like a piece of shit compared to Bel-Air! Did Benny
tell you anything about the show?"
"Well, a little bit. I mean, like, he told me he grew up in Watts."
And he moved in with a rich family..."
"Where are you from?" Quincy asked.
“Philly,” I say with the obligatory bragging and pride that Philadelphians use
to make it clear that our city is better than yours.
“Oh, man, I love Philly!” He leaned closer to me and whispered , “I had some
business in Philly that I’d rather not even talk about.” Then he laughed and
nodded— I knew immediately that he was talking about the indescribable wild
days of his youth.

"Okay, there we have it. Perfect: your character is from Philly. Will is from
Philly! And then he comes to Bel-Air!" Now he was talking the whole thing again.
Quincy was clearly getting a little tipsy. But I realized that this was his house, his
birthdays , and his awards, so if he wanted to get drunk and yell all the time, then,
damn it, Quincy, get drunk and yell all the time!

“Brandon! Brandon!” Quincy shouted across the room to a white

man in his forties. The guy seemed unassuming and reserved on the
outside, but when he spoke, everyone listened intently . That is, until
Quincy interrupted him and shouted his name.
He startled him and the other people with him. Quincy waves at him.
Machine Translated by Google

"Brandon! So now it's from Philly to Bel-Air!"

Brandon Tartikoff was the head of NBC and the network's most influential
decision-maker . He decided which shows would be financed and aired on the
station. And at his side was his second-in-command, Warren Littlefield (Littlefield
eventually had the entire network under his thumb).
“Come and meet the Fresh Prince!” Quincy said. We all shook hands. They
gave me a look that I didn’t understand at the time, but I understand now —the
kind of look managers get when they get to know you after hours of talking about
you without you. And they still haven’t quite decided whether to bet on you or not.

"Okay, can I have everyone's attention?" Quincy shouted.

"Let's do a little test. All the furniture out of the living room!"
I looked around and thought: Well, that's it - a party rehearsal!
Damn! Quincy is a real badass! And who's going to be rehearsing?
“Get Will a copy of that Morris Day script we were working on,” Quincy said.
Slowly at first, then painfully, I remember that Will is my name. My father gave it
to me. And since he wasn’t here and no one else was moving…

Yes, that's right. Quincy Jones wants to do an impromptu audition with me in

front of some of the biggest icons of entertainment , past and present, not to
mention the highest-ranking National Broadcasting Company executive, directly
associated with The Cosby Show, Cheers, The Golden Girls, LA Law , and The
Jerry Seinfeld Show. My knees buckled. Couch chairs moved around and
someone handed me a script.

I grabbed Quincy by the shoulder, maybe a little harder than was appropriate.

"Quincy, no, wait, no, I can't do that right now," I whispered in his ear.

Quincy looked at me with unwavering, slightly sly joy.

"You guys keep going!" he commanded into the airwaves. "I'm going to talk to
Will in the library."

–
Machine Translated by Google

Quincy Jones understands magic.

He sees the universe as an endless playground of magical possibilities.
He sees the miraculous potential in every moment and in every thing and
person around him. His superpower is that he has learned to act as a kind of
lightning rod for the universe. He always positions himself precisely to absorb
and radiate the ever-present , endlessly returning magical flashes of genius
that surround us all.

Quincy Jones is an intuitive, artistic storm chaser. He can sense the

subtle glimmers of the impossible that are about to strike. He has prepared
for decades, studied music, played thousands of concerts, learned from the
masters, and surrounded himself with the most advanced performers and artists.
Quincy used to say, “Things are always impossible, but only until they are
not!” He learned how to prepare the ground and invite energy into it. He saw
himself as a kind of guide. His main goal was to ensure that under no
circumstances would we miss that miracle. That we would not miss that
subtle magical opportunity that was evidently (for him) calling the shots.

Gigi had a similar perspective on these things—she always said, “Don’t

stand in the way of your blessings.” Although these opportunities flow
abundantly and continuously around us, we can miss them—or worse, stand
in their way or push them away.
Gigi always lovingly told the biblical story of the death of Lazarus.
Lazarus was a great friend of Jesus, so when he fell ill and died, Lazarus’
sisters Martha and Mary were devastated. They sent a letter to Jesus, asking
him to come quickly. Jesus had to walk two days, in the heat and dust, from
the other side of the Jordan River. He was already exhausted—he had been
working all week (he preached during the Feast of Dedication).
When he arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead and buried for four
days. When Jesus approached the tomb, he saw that the stone was still in
place at the entrance to the cave, as was the burial custom at that time.
Jesus sobbed, all agitated, and said something like this:
"Well, I'll just sum it up. You're going to have me drag myself fifteen
fucking furlongs in the heat - sorry for the words - to a miserable
Bethany, where the Pharisees and Sadducees are running around like cockroaches and the whole
Machine Translated by Google

"They tremble so that they may look upon me, to perform a miracle and raise
your patriarch from the dead, to restore your family to blessed wholeness and
light, and you cannot even roll away the stone in front of the tomb? If I am to
raise this wretch from the dead, you lazy, lazy people, could at least roll away
the afflicted stone!"

This was a concept that Quincy fully understood. Magic requires awareness
(faith—you must believe in magic), preparation (moving the stone—you must
identify and remove unwanted resistance and obstacles within yourself), then
surrender (staying out of the way and trusting the magic to do its work). Quincy
helped people move stones out of the way of the blessed light that is always
trying to shine through. The universe wants you to experience that miracle!
Move that damn stone! Quincy was only moving furniture, but he was really
trying to get all of us— Brandon , Benny, and himself—to move the stones out
of the way.

Quincy’s bookcase was dark mahogany. High-backed leather chairs. I don’t

know if the rugs were Persian, but they looked expensive. I don’t remember
much else about the room, because I was completely blinded by the stares of
the Grammys, Tonys, Emmys , and Oscars scattered around me like butter
knives in a Swiss Cottage hotel bathroom. A framed poster of Oprah Winfrey’s
The Color Purple hovered over my left shoulder. Over my right was a plaque for
the sales of Michael Jackson’s Thriller —48,000,000 copies sold. (I could have
just written “million,” but I wanted you to imagine that number with every single
zero.) I could feel Michael looking at me in that classic Billie Jean tiptoe pose,
as if to say, So what are you going to do, Will?

We sit down. Quincy stands in front of me. He's been in this situation before.
This is his job. He makes a living by moving rocks.
“Go ahead, Philly,” he says. “What do you need?”
Machine Translated by Google

"Quincy, I... I'm not... ready for the test," I stammered. "I didn't know
when you called, like what exactly was going on and so on."
"It's just a few scenes. I have people there who will read it with you."
"Just be yourself and enjoy it."
"Quincy, I can't have a test in the middle of a party. I need to
prepare, I just need some time to work on it."
"Okay, okay—how much time do you need?" Quincy asked.
"Well, like, hmm, give me a week, I'll find an acting coach and I
can study it so I can actually act it, not just read it."

Quincy considered my words.

"Okay, so you need a week?"
"Yes, a weekday, that's just right!"
"Okay, so you know what happens in a week?" Quincy asked.
But before I could answer, he continued, "Brandon Tartikoff must
have some kind of traffic jam for one of his shows and he'll have to
fly to Kansas and fire someone. Then he'll have to reschedule
everything for next week."
"Oh, okay, okay! Two weeks would be even better," I said , completely missing
the subtle nuance of what Quincy was actually trying to convey.

"Okay, two weeks. Then there's something at Warren Littlefield's

elementary school that he's completely walled up to and he can't get out of
because his wife's going to beat him up for three periods if he doesn't get
there. And he's going to have to reschedule everything for two weeks after that."
"Sure," I said, and slowly I began to understand what all this meant.
he thinks. "So the moon...?"
Quincy leaned back, his gaze perfectly clear, completely sober,
completely sober.
"But now everyone who has to watch this show is sitting in
the living room, waiting for you. And you're about to make a
decision that will affect the rest of your life."
I thought about it. I looked at Michael, then at Oprah. They looked
back at me immediately. We know, honey, it's hard.
Machine Translated by Google

"So what are you going to do, Philly?"

"Okay, fuck it," I said, relieved. "Give me ten minutes."

I don't remember much about that rehearsal—all I remember is one big

collage of jokes, bursts of laughter, punchlines, and improvisation—Quincy,
then Brandon, then Benny—twenty magical minutes that culminated in the
applause from the entire room. The applause, like a defibrillator, brought me
back to consciousness and threw me back on the original track of my mental direction.
Quincy stands up and points furiously at Brandon Tartikoff.
"So what? Did you like it?" Quincy exclaims.
“Yeah, yeah, I liked it, Q,” Brandon replies calmly and not too excited yet.
He puts the cards on the table.

"Stop talking in riddles! You know what I'm talking about! " LIKED
"DO YOU LIKE IT OR NOT?"

Brandon knew very well what Quincy was talking about.

“Yeah, Quincy, I liked it,” Brandon said firmly and confidently.
“Yeah!” Quincy shouted, clapping as he turned to point at another man,
who turned out to be Brandon Tartikoff’s lead attorney , who had also been
invited to Quincy’s party “for strategic reasons.”

“You!” he called to the man who was about to bite into a mini
pizza. “You’re Brandon’s lawyer. You heard what he just said.
"Give me the draft contract right now!"
I was like, " Damn, Quincy Jones is really powerful. That lawyer isn't even
his! He wants other people's lawyers to work. Wednesday, nine o'clock at
night, party!"
The lawyer looked at Brandon. Brandon tried to
enter.
„Quincy, hele…“
"NO DELAYS!" Quincy shouted. "Give me the draft contract. NOW!"

Brandon steps back and nods to his attorney, who pulls himself together
and heads to the NBC limo, where he spends the next two hours drafting the
contract.
Machine Translated by Google

Then Quincy makes the same emphatic gesture with his index
finger/ magic wand, only this time he points at me.
"Do you have a lawyer?"
"Well, no, I don't have any, not with me to the party..." I stammered.
Quincy turns again, now in full magical transmission mode.
leader, with a wand pointing at a new victim.
"Get me Ken Hertz on the phone! He's Philly's new lawyer!"

(Just a side note: Ken Hertz was in the maternity ward at Cedars-
Sinai Hospital, where his second daughter had just been born. But
when you’re a young lawyer and a new father, and you get a call from
Quincy Jones at ten at night, and it’s twenty minutes from Cedars-
Sinai maternity ward to Quincy’s house, you’ll be there in eighteen
minutes. That night I met Ken Hertz. He represented me in the NBC
negotiations and in every other deal since . He’s my lawyer to this day.
He named his daughter Cori.)
I said Quincy was a little tipsy, right? He had no reason to say
everything as loudly as he did—the room wasn't that big. We could all
hear him more than well. But maybe he knew he wasn't talking to us—
he was shouting to be heard in the rock-filled caves, summoning and
invoking cosmic magic.
I think he needed to be heard loud enough so that the miracle would
not miss this house under any circumstances.
"NO EXTENSIONS AT ALL!" Quincy shouted over and over again.
He repeated this mantra perhaps fifty times over the next two hours .
It was his answer to every question, his response to every stutter, his
solution to every legal problem. Until, after a good two hours, Quincy
Jones , Brandon Tartikoff, Benny Medina—and Will Smith—finally
slapped each other and signed a deal to make a pilot for a television
show with the working title Fresh Prince.

And here begins the story of how my life took a three- hundred-and-
sixty-degree turn, turned upside down. And I would like to
Machine Translated by Google

Stop for a moment – I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.

Six weeks ago, I was curled up in a ball in Marina del Rey, lost, depressed,
and scared. And it was at that very moment that the universe gave me a new
family: James Avery. Janet Hubert-Whitten . Alfonso Ribeiro. Tatyana Ali. Karyn
Parsons. Joseph Marcello.

James Avery: Uncle Phil. Six feet three, three hundred pounds. Shakespearean
actor. My second father. He demanded the utmost dedication to his craft. “You’re
not a rapper here—you’re an actor. So act like it.” I spent the better part of the
next six years chasing his approval.
Janet Hubert-Whitten: Viv's first aunt. Triple threat – singer ,
dancer, actress. A force to be reckoned with on all fronts. Starred
in Cats on Broadway. A dedicated character on our show. She
fought tirelessly to preserve the dignified portrayal of African
Americans on The Fresh Prince. In retrospect, the show suffered
greatly with her departure.
Alfonso Ribeiro: Carlton Banks. Acting since he was nine. “The
Tap Dance Kid.” Broadway. Television. Film. A staunch ally, a great
friend—he was there for me no matter what. He gave me the best
advice (“Hey, dude, I heard the producers discussing your
character’s name. Put it on me: give your character your name, Will Smith.
Because then people will call you that for the rest of your life.” – Carlton).
Tatyana Ali: Ashley Banks. Already more experienced than me at eleven .
Singer, dancer, actress: Sesame Street. Talent show Star Search. The Bad
Boys with Eddie Murphy, where she starred alongside Samuel L. Jackson. Spent
her teens on set and eventually graduated from Harvard. One of the most
disciplined people I've ever met.

Karyn Parsons: Hilary Banks. The least experienced of the lot, along with
me . She crushed a sea of Hollywood bigwigs and won the part. She was so
smart that she said "no way" when I tried to explain to her that we weren't actually
cousins,