Music and Songwriting: What’s Going On!?

It had been a long February; I was working on this never ending drama filled reality show for MTV, trying to juggle sleep and ideas. I knew Crown Jones had several projects going and was always doing something, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t forget about us, but I didn’t want to be a nag. I would check in…but he would say he’s not in his creative space, he can’t think of anything…blah, blah, blah. I said ok, whatever. I’ll check back in March. Crown and I had already decided we would start our own labels so we could release our project under them. I never wanted to start a label until I turned 40 because I knew how much hard work went into it, but I was forced. But what made me being forced so much better, was finding this male R&B singer named Garrett. He had raw talent. A fellow cheerleader from the One Heart movie introduced me to him. He reminded me of Robin Thicke mixed with Justin Timberlake. I felt that he had “it”. We had a meeting and decided he would release an EP under my label and we would get the ball rolling for him. Everything coming from my pocket, I knew I had to keep this freelance thing rolling, but just in case, I secured an investor. When all else failed, I knew Ikory “Magic” would have the perfect R&B beats I needed. Garrett picked the beats he liked most, told me what he wanted the songs to be about, so I got to writing. It was now March, and I was script supervisor for a short film that was filming close to Garrett’s place of residence, so I asked him if he wanted to meet that weekend to go over the songs I demoed for him, and to sign the last contract before we start recording, to secure him into a 2 album contract. I felt that if I’m about to start investing time and money into you, then I need to make sure you’re not just going to run off to the next label and let them reap all the benefits of my work. He had his friend call me who was his lawyer. He told me that a 2 album deal is too much, he needs advances, there was a background check ran on me that had thievery on my record, that he got artists signed to Atlantic, he makes $325,000 a year and doesn’t have time for this. He was supremely rude and unprofessional! Garrett felt like I was hiding things from him, his parents didn’t trust me and so therefore there will be no contract to be signed. Ripped up the contract and couldn’t believe everything that had happened. Garrett was 20 at the time and could have come to me if he wanted me to have a meeting with his parents. He had no personal information on me to run a background report but my name and the address of my business. I call a local police sergeant and asked him to run a background check on me and gave him the information he needed to run a legit background report on me, since there is such a thing as identity theft. The report came back with only one ticket on it that I had received while working with freaking MTV. That’s when I knew, God dodged a bullet for me. I didn’t need to be working with anyone who didn’t trust me and felt some kind of way and never came to me about it, but wanted to be sneaky…and sneak the wrong way. I informed Magic about the situation since those were his beats, and told him I would be looking for another male R&B artist and I would be in contact soon. Crown Jones had informed me that something happened to his computer and he was getting another hard drive and would have it by April. So here I was, one failed artist attempt already and no music to start the Apollo’s Interlude album. Screwed!