A Good Dude

RILLA TIME

The music was deafening. A thudding bassline reverberated off of the walls in the small club, making Candace feel like she was trapped in the darkness of Rilla’s car trunk.

It was hot, too. Candace dotted her forehead with a paper napkin and sucked on the straw poking from her Long Island iced tea. There was only ice in the glass. The teenager barely got a teaspoon of liquid, but it was enough to satisfy her dry mouth for the time being. What she really wanted was another round. She could have one if she asked, but this was already her second drink. Candace knew she really shouldn’t partake at all (truth be told).

The atmosphere in Club Tron was ripped. Busty broads with tight jeans and belly rings crowded around the stage and cheered for the featured artist. Candace watched them from a distance with a smug sense of satisfaction. These women, with their thick thighs, coochie cutters, and lip gloss reminded Candace of how she must have looked eight months ago when she saw Rilla in concert for the first time.

Candace scanned the crowd, finding it funny how the women carried on like Lil’ Wayne was up there. Their
moody boyfriends watched casually from their tables, or they hung out on the walls and near the exit. They were excited, too, but black males have to be careful of the amount of praise they show each other, lest they be accused of
dick riding
.

And it wasn’t that the men here tonight would never dick ride. Candace knew these same Negroes would pump their fists and yell out just as loud as the females if it really was Lil’ Wayne up there. But Club Tron didn’t have the clout to bring in big names like that. Club Tron was lucky to book local rappers like DJ Get Busy and MC Smurf and Rilla.

Rilla lived right around the corner, which is why he was being hated on. Most niggas aren’t apt to get starstruck by someone they run into at the convenience store a few times a week. Especially when this particular rapper was Puerto Rican.

And that was a shame. Raul Canales, aka Rilla, was arguably the most famous entertainer to hail from Overbrook Meadows. His first single, “Traffic Stop,” got national radio play, maxing out at number thirty-seven on the U.S. charts. His music video was a constant on BET for months, but that was two years ago. Since then, Rilla learned something every recording artist has to accept sooner or later: The music industry is a fickle beast. Having talent doesn’t automatically guarantee you a contract, and it doesn’t guarantee you can put food on your table, either.

Rilla’s debut album,
Rilla Time
, sold only 27,000 copies nationwide, and he was unceremoniously dropped from his label. He was then schooled on the financial side of the music biz. Twenty-seven thousand copies at ten dollars a pop sounded like a quarter-million dollars to Rilla, but he was still getting bills from BMS Records six months after being released. No other label was willing to take a risk on the 25-year-old rapper, so Rilla took full advantage of every opportunity.

Club Tron was basically a hole in the wall. On Sunday nights, old men gathered in the back to throw dice on a dusty pool table. The drinks were watered down, and the place could only hold 150 people, but Rilla performed like he was at the House of Blues. He performed like there were cameras there and this might be telecast live. He dropped to his knees while singing
Mama Canales
and put a hand over his heart. He closed his eyes and the words dribbled from his lips like a condemned man’s last wish:

I saw yo strength when Marcus died

You was there

You held him close

You had his blood stains in yo hair

And two months later when they got me

Nobody cared But you was there

You held me close and got blood in yo hair

The Grammy people didn’t think those lyrics were too special, but Candace did. She watched Rilla perform from a seat adjacent to the stage. Butterflies danced in her belly and she giggled and reminisced. Candace had these same butterflies eight months ago when she caught
a Rilla concert in her hometown, Brooklyn, New York. Rilla didn’t have a large crowd on that night, either, but his performance was the same whether there was thirty or three thousand in attendance.

* * *

Candace was one of the girls at the front of the stage back then. She screamed and danced and threw her hands up when the hype man told her to. She got caught up in the magic of the evening. She wasn’t expecting more than a fun night out, but an odd thing happened at that New York Summer Jam. While singing his song
Tasty Lady
, Rilla looked out into the crowd and asked if there were any tasty ladies out there. Of course Candace raised her hand, but she wasn’t alone. At least a hundred other girls proclaimed their tastiness, but Rilla only wanted
one
girl to get on stage with him.

“Mmm. I need a
tasty lady
to come up,” he boomed through the microphone. “Who wanna let me sing this song to them?”

“Me! Me, Rilla! I’m tasty!”
cried the multitude.

Rilla put a hand to his forehead as if shading the sun. He was just as handsome then as he is today. His skin was darker than most Latinos, the color of coffee with one cream. He had warm eyes and thick eyebrows. Rilla had a perfect complexion; not one scar, dimple, or pimple. A neat goatee framed his platinum-laden mouth. His hair was short. Rilla wore jewelry, but not as much as you would expect on a rapper. His watch wasn’t custom made, and his necklace wasn’t extravagant, either.

“I think I see her,” Rilla had said. “Yeah. I see her. She got pretty eyes, long hair, brown skin . . . .”

All of the light-skinned women in the audience groaned in defeat, but caramel-colored girls like Candace felt reinvigorated.
Maybe he’s talking about me
, she thought.

Candace was only seventeen years old. She had a nice figure, but some of the ladies at the concert were seriously stacked. The girl standing right next to her had an ass you could set a dinner tray on, but in the back of her mind Candace kept a little hope. She thought Rilla was looking right at her. What he said next erased all doubt.

“I see her, y’all. Yeah, I see her. I think she got on braces. Say, let me get some light over here. I think that’s my girl right there.”

Rilla pointed, and a huge spotlight spun in that direction. About twenty girls were bathed in the brightness, but Candace was in the middle. She was the only one wearing braces, too.

“There she go right there!” Rilla announced. “Come on up here, girl. You perfect! Can I sing my song to you?”

“Me?” Candace asked and put a finger to her chest— fully aware he couldn’t hear her above the uproar.

“Yeah, you! With the pink shirt! Come on up here. Y’all let her up.”

Candace felt like a princess as the sea of people parted to let her pass. In the back of her mind she still felt there was some mistake. When she got close enough, Rilla would shake his head and sneer.

“Naw, not you!”
he would say, and everyone would laugh, and Candace would flee the scene with her head held
way
down, but each nervous step got her closer to the stage. And no one was laughing. They cheered her on, and when she made it to the front a bodyguard hefted her onto the platform.

Candace never felt more insecure, but Rilla and his hype man looked at her like she was the best thing they’d seen in New York. Candace stood five feet, three inches. She had large eyes and skin the color of a Snickers bar. She had a big smile. Her dimples made her appear younger than she was, and her braces furthered this effect.