SEPTEMBER 2000 - EM

926 52 5
                                    

"Congratulations again, man. Thanks for your time and enjoy the rest of your night," MTV VJ, John Norris, said as he shook my hand one last time. He pointed me in the direction of how to get the fuck up outta there and I darted for the door. I had just finished what felt like my 50th interview of the night and was anxious to get to the afterparty. I jumped into the backseat of the black Escalade that would take me and D12 to Gotham Hall in Herald Square for the MTV VMA Don-Dada of afterparties.

"Slim be lookin' drained as fuck whenever he come outta a interview," Kuniva laughed as he sparked a freshly rolled blunt.

"Try 10, ya dumb fuck," I replied in an accent.

"Ten muhfuckin interviews?! Goddamn, I hope they all had some different questions for yo ass."

"Not really," I mumbled.

"Ay, that's the price you gotta pay when you win 3 moon men in one night," Proof reasoned. "My man did the damn thing!" He slapped me on the back and dapped me up before swigging his personal bottle of Hennessy. I grabbed one out of the console's cooler and joined him.

"Ay yo, I can't believe you spilt all them pills everywhere onstage Em! That shit was fuckin' hilarious!" Denaun hooted.

"Man, I thought they'd get my ass for that shit," I smirked, shaking my head. 

I looked out the window at the busy streets of New York City as Big L & Big Daddy Kane's Platinum Plus bumped through the speakers.

"Ay, you good homey?" Proof asked, breaking my stare.

"Yea, yea..." I answered, as calmly as possible. It didn't matter. Proof knew when shit was on my mind.

"She gonna be there?"

"Who?"

Proof sucked his teeth. "C'mon man, you know who."

"Oh," I said, looking back out the window. "I don't know man. She ain't said two words to me the whole night. Fuck that, she ain't said two words to me in two months. So I have no idea if she gonna be there or not."

"Man, don't take it like that. She was sittin' far as fuck from us. Over with Macy Gray and her peoples. I saw her smilin' and clappin' for yo ass every time you got up on that stage though," Proof reassured.

"Yea well...she looked dead at me on the red carpet and immediately walked the other way. So..." I trailed off.

"Well, don't go jumpin' the gun Doody. You know what they say when you assume shit..."

"Yea...I guess we'll see," I muttered. 

I didn't know what the fuck was up with Lex. For weeks now, she'd been barely taking my calls. And when she did, she'd quickly come up with some bullshit excuse about why she couldn't talk. She'd even changed up her studio times so we didn't have any overlapping sessions. Supposedly, she was diggin' this new studio she found up here in NYC and that's where she was doin' a lot of the recording for her new album. But something told me there was something else goin' on...

            I felt the bass from Big Pun's It's So Hard in my core as we walked into Gotham Hall

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

I felt the bass from Big Pun's It's So Hard in my core as we walked into Gotham Hall. It was massive. I'd been to a lot of parties, but being in a place like that always made me think how fucking crazy it was that I was there in the first place. I scanned the room. Everyone was there. Whitney Houston, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Juvenile, all the pop sensations... I nodded at Bob a.k.a Kid Rock who waved to me from the bar, a tall blonde on his arm. Snoop, Dre and his wife, Nicole, walked up and each handed me a drink, congratulating me again on my wins. I threw back all 3 shots and grabbed a beer off a platter from a server as he walked by.

"Just wait for the Grammy's Slim. You gonna blow they asses out the water wit the Marshall Mathers LP! Just watch..." Dre hyped.

I was half-listening as Dre, Snoop, and D12 were all yappin' about some shit that had happened on the tour over the summer. The crowd parted for a moment, and that's when I saw her. She was fucking gorgeous. Her hair was down and looked lighter, like maybe she had dyed it. Her dress hugged every curve of her body perfectly. She sipped her drink in between laughing and talking with Andre 3000 of Outkast. She was so at ease with him, I found myself getting jealous. I knew they'd known each other for a couple of years now. I remember Lex calling me the day she met him. She had been in the studio with The Roots and he had come in to see Erykah Badu. They were still together at that time, and little Seven had just barely come out the womb. Lex said she had done her best to keep her cool, but knew she probably looked starstruck as fuck to meet one of her favorite rappers of all time. As jealous as I was at how much she admired him, I knew Lex well enough to know she'd never touch him; cuz that was Erykah's ex and baby daddy and Lex respected her way too much to go there.

I didn't realize how hard I was staring at her until she just happened to glance in my direction. She did a double-take as soon as she noticed me and her smile turned to something that resembled panic. She quickly averted her eyes and said something else to Andre before walking off in the opposite direction. Once again, she was giving me the cold shoulder. I knew I hadn't imagined that shit on the red carpet earlier. Something was up. And now that we were finally in the same place at the same time, I was gonna find out.

From Infinite to Kamikaze: A NovelWhere stories live. Discover now