Introduction

Sugar
The sun was peeking through my vertical blinds as I finished writing my eighth song. Contractually, this album was to have fifteen songs, and it was due in three months. At the rate I was going, I would be done writing before the week was over, and if everyone played along, I could finish recording before the deadline as well.
I stretched my arms and cracked my knuckles in front of me. My eyes stayed fixated on the blinds as the sun increasingly shone behind them. Suddenly I could see the notes dancing on the blinds. They weren’t even the notes for the eighth song. They were the notes for the seventh. I rushed over to my keyboard and just as my fingers touched the keys, Malik’s voice startled me.
“Babe… what are you doing?”
“Writing.” My fingers started pounding away at the keys, then I entered the notes on the songwriter app on my iPad. My eyes darted back to the blinds. The notes were still there, dancing, and I could hear all the sounds. Malik’s voice continued in the background, and I felt like I was working overtime to allow the music to drown him out. My fingers pounded at the keys, and I put the notes in as fast as I could. I felt like the notes were going to run away from me, even though they were still there every time I looked up at the blinds. It’s just that they were moving so quickly. I knew I had to get the song out, or somehow it would be gone.
Malik’s hands gripped my shoulders.
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed at him. In an instant his hands were gone from my shoulders, but now he was standing in front of the window. He was in front of the blinds. He was in front of the notes! “Can you just get out of here and let me work?” I was panicking and I don’t know why he couldn’t see that.
“You haven’t slept,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it!” I hollered. What was everyone’s problem? As soon as I was on a roll and productive, everyone wanted to worry about sleep. Sleep is for the dead, and I was alive. In fact I was feeling more alive than ever. I just wanted to finish.
Malik shook his head and moved away from the blinds.
My eyes went back to the notes. I was almost done. I could literally feel the song coming out of me as I glanced, played, and wrote. Glance, play, write, glance, play, write, glance, play, write…
Malik was still talking in the background. This time though, it didn’t sound like he was talking to me and that made me feel just a little bit better. I felt a little less interrupted.
When all the notes were off the blinds and in the app, I exhaled.
Malik was back in my music room, cleaning up.
“What are you doing?” It was my turn to ask questions.
“Cleaning up. It looks crazy in here.”
“Thats what housekeepers are for.”
“You fired Stanley.”
“Who’s Stanley?”
“The last housekeeper.”
“Oh. I can’t keep up.”
“You keep firing them.”
“They need to do their fuckin job.”
“You need to take your fuckin meds.”
That infuriated me. I stood up and knocked over the keyboard, stand and all. “Get out!” I screamed at Malik, as the sound of his voice agitated my brain. I hated not feeling heard, but when I screamed, everyone heard me loud and clear.
He dropped the trash bag that he was holding in his hand, looking helpless. Tears were in his eyes, and I wanted to do something about it, but I couldn’t. I was too angry. He knew the meds hindered my creativity. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t hear the music, I couldn’t see it or feel it… I could only sing it. I could sing it with any feeling they asked for, except my own emotion. But I wasn’t a fuckin radio. This was my chance to prove myself as a songwriter and composer. I could do my own album with minimal input and features… as long as I stayed clear of those stupid creativity-stealing pills.
Malik didn’t say anything. He left the trash bag in the middle of the floor and walked out. I picked up the trash bag myself, and continued where he left off.

Malik
I paced back and forth in front of the building, waiting for the valet to bring my car around. Just as he pulled up, Sugar’s mother, Miss Sharon, was calling me back.
“Is everything okay now?” she asked when I picked up.
“I don’t know, I left,” I said.
“You left?”
“Yeah. Miss Sharon, I’m not cut out for this.”
“Malik, she’s in a manic state. I told you these things could happen when she went off her meds.”
“I know but… I was just trying to clean the room and she flipped the damn keyboard over. I’m just not gonna deal with it today.”
“Malik, you don’t get to choose when you’re going to deal with a crisis.”
“True. But I need a minute to myself. She flipped that got damn keyboard over like it was a card table and her partner reneged in a Spades game. What’s next? I told you, if she put her hands on me again I wasn’t stopping at shaking her. So I left to protect the both of us.”
“Well you coulda called me to say thats what you were gonna do. I guess I’ll drive over there now.”
“The place is a mess and she fired Stanley.”
“Stanley? The housekeeper?”
“Yeah.”
“He was there for a month!”
“I gotta go, Miss Sharon,” I said as I pulled up to the bistro not far from Sugar’s apartment in Silver Spring Maryland. I was going to have a coffee, and breakfast, and then decide what my next move was.
Sugar never went to bed the night before. Her manic states were like coke binges. She could stay up all night and eventually crash some time midday. The fucked up truth of the matter was, I knew that under these circumstances, her album would be fire. It wasn’t a healthy way for her to live though, and her tantrums were otherworldly.
I knew Sugar for nearly fifteen years before we started dating. We were friends. When you’re a teenager in the industry, you sometimes cling to other teens in the industry because you are constantly surrounded by adults full of commands and demands. Sugar was a way bigger star than I was when we were kids. My fame didn’t really hit until I was in my early twenties, and messing around with the international supermodel Lynda Lovence. Towards the end of that fling, Sugar swooped in and her affiliates helped to add fuel to my career. In the process we got closer. Everybody warned me about her. She’s crazy. She’s a diva. She’s difficult to work with. She is not for the faint of heart. One of those was for sure. Sugar is not for the faint of heart.
After our third date, her mother showed up at her apartment unannounced. Sugar and I were hanging out in her music room. She was sitting at her keyboard, belting out a tune that she had written. She complained that the label had a number of restrictions in her contract. They weren’t too keen on allowing her to write and compose her own material. They had developed an image for her, and they insisted that she stayed within the boundaries of that image. Sugar’s self-made material reached far beyond those boundaries.
“What a pleasant surprise,” her mother said sternly from the doorway of the music room; her tone and words unmatched.
“Ma, what’re you doing here? I’m on a date,” Sugar gestured towards me.
“Yes, I see, thats exactly why I’m here.”
I stepped forward towards Miss Sharon and extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Malik.”
“I know. Its nice to meet you,” Miss Sharon took my hand and peered into my eyes. She was very elegant in comparison to her daughter. Sugar was a bit rough and tomboyish. Their faces matched, but thats where the resemblances ended. Miss Sharon stood straight and tall in her wide-legged pants suit, while Sugar sat with her legs gapped open, wearing ripped jeans and a lace top. Miss Sharon’s hair was dark, shiny, neatly cut, curly afro. Sugar, flipped her long multi-colored locs over her shoulder. They both had a roughness in their eyes.
“So, Malik, I’m not really one for marathons around the bush… you like my daughter huh?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah… uh, yes Mrs….”
Miss Sharon smiled. “Miss for now. Miss Sharon if you’re here to stay.”
Sugar rolled her eyes.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors,” Miss Sharon went on.
I didn’t know how to answer that.
“C’mon boy, that Sugar is crazy, hard to work with, a diva, blah blah blah…”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Sugar didn’t tell you where it all comes from?”
I shook my head, no. I looked at Sugar who sat with a smirk on her face. I was worried that maybe the diva comments had more to do with some kind of secret with her mother.
“Sugar, you can tell him or I can.”
“You’re here, I’m sure thats what you came here to do.”
“I came here to make sure you’re handling this situation the right way.”
“Oh Ma, you really have to let me do things in my own time.”
“And when is that? After an episode and a violent confrontation. Tell this man now what you have going on girl. You don’t wanna get in this too deep and get cold feet. Tell him now.”
Sugar sighed. “I’m bipolar,” she mumbled.
“Bipolar?” I repeated.
“Yeah, I’m bipolar. Like bat-shit-fuckin-crazy. I’m not a diva. I’m just nuts, okay?” Sugar threw her hands up as if to say “whatever,” but her face alluded to a sense of indignance.
“Thats it?” I asked, somewhat relieved that dating her didn’t mean I was exposing myself to the illuminati or holly-weird.
“Yeah. Thats it,” Sugar said, sounding relieved as well.
“Malik,” said Miss Karen, “I don’t know your past, I don’t know what you’re used to. But I felt that Sugar needed to let you know as soon as possible, because you are bound to experience some things that you never have before with her. I suggest you do your research on bipolar disorder. These are not your average pms mood swings.”
I did my research. On some days I thought I could handle it. On others, like this June morning, as I sat at a small table alone sipping my coffee, I wasn’t sure.

Taylor
​I fumbled with my phone, glancing at the song lyrics, while I waited for Q-Note to hang up the phone. I looked down at the words that I wrote, that I had practiced over and over in the mirror. I knew I was going to blow him away with this. I also knew that he might shut me down. Q-Note and I had developed a big brother-little sister relationship after he produced my album, and co-produced my following album, and although he was very supportive of my moves, sometimes I worried that he would get in the way of my progress. People seemed to be afraid of me growing up. Whether or not Q felt that way, remained to be seen.
By the time Q hung up from his phone call, my palms were sweating and all I could hear in my head was that 8 Mile theme song by Eminem. There’s no reason to be this damn nervous, I thought to myself.
“Aight so whatchu got?” Q asked, settling into the engineer’s chair.
I looked towards the booth. “The beat you gave me last week—“
“Yeah, you wrote something?”
“Yeah.”
“So g’head.”
I looked towards the booth again, “I wanna just spit it in the booth.”
“You want me to record it before I hear it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Just let me do it this way Q.”
He shrugged, “Whatever.”
I went into the dark booth and closed the door.
“You don’t want the light on?” he asked.
“No.”
“What kinda depressing shit did you come up with for this beat? Its a pop sound—“
“Just drop the beat,” I said, not wanting to waste another second. In less than a minute I could hear the beat blaring through the headphones. I glanced at the lyrics, but once I started, I never looked at them again. I bursted into a fit of laughter after I got that first verse out, and Q stopped the track.
“Whoa whoa whoa, wait! What the fuck? What the fuck was that?”
I started laughing even harder.
“Yoooo… nah. Wait…” Q was out of his seat and waving his arms around. “Come out here yo!”
I came out of the booth, as my nervous laughter died down.
Q nearly spun around in a circle. “Where did that come from? I mean who was that in the booth just now?”
“It was me.”
“Since when? Where did all this slurp-it, stick-it, squish squish shit come from? You feelin inspired by Cardi B or something?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Nah,” Q said as he sat back down in the engineer chair. “Sit, sit, sit… how many verses did you write?”
“Three.”
“So there’s more? There’s a whole song of this?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
My heart started racing as I sat down and Q’s face got serious. “I’ve been coming up with stuff like this for a while, I just—I knew that y’all would shut me down.”
Q shook his head and cleared his throat. “Who’s y’all?”
“Y’know, you, Lance, Silver Records.”
“I’m not in the same boat with Silver Records. I’m signed to The Macks. Sometimes I produce for artists at Silver Records, which includes you.”
“Yeah… I just mean like, you’re the producer, you have it in your head how I should sound.”
“Maybe, but you write your own shit for the most part. I didn’t even know you had this in you.”
“I just feel like everybody wants to keep me in this little box and Taylor Thompson, the lil teeny-bopper singer and rapper. I’m growing up Q. I do more than Giggle these days.”
Q nodded. “There’s no doubt about that. I mean, I ain’t tryna keep you in no box. I just know this probably isn’t gonna go over easy with Silver Records. But I got your back. I ain’t gon hold you, that first verse is fire. I know the beat is sick… with you spittin on it like that, its gon sound sicker. You are gonna shock the shit out of some people, but I think its worth it.”
I was in complete shock. “You do?”
“Yeah, whatchu thought, I wasn’t gon like it?”
“I thought you were gonna say nobody wants to hear that kinda stuff coming from me.”
“Like you said, you do more than Giggle these days. I think most young artists have this transition period where the… sexy or sexually explicit side comes out a lil bit, and its a little hard for fans and the label to take. But it is what it is.”
I took a deep breath.
Q laughed. “I think thats the first time I heard you breathe since you got here.”
I laughed with him. “Dude I was nervous as fuck. I didn’t know what you were gonna say.”
“Its cool,” he said, “so whatchu wanna do? Record this?”
“Yeah, shit, let’s go for it.”

*****
When I got home that night, my mother and grandparents were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea together.
“What’s everybody doing up?” I asked.
“Nobody sleeps when you record in The Bronx,” my mother said.
I shook my head.
“You didn’t even share your new material with me.”
“I guess I forgot,” I lied.
“Well is it an r&b song? What did you do? I know its a track from Q-Note.”
“I already recorded it. I’m a little worn out from it. You’ll hear it in the studio or something soon.”
“No rough cut?” my grandfather asked.
I shook my head no.
“Is it that boop to da bap rap mess again?” my grandmother asked. She taught me to scat when I was little, and when I started rapping, she blamed herself and scatting.
“As a matter of fact, yeah, I did a rap song.”
My mother nodded. “Okay well, we’re glad your home. I’ve been trying to back off and be less involved with your career, with your father being the head of Silver, but he’s all caught up in the raucous that Sugar Evans is causing these days.”
I smirked. Sugar Evans hated my guts and I had never done a thing to that girl. Sometimes I felt her antics were for my father’s attention, which he blanketed her in. She was the only artist he kept on a pedestal. He and my mother had been apart for years, but still she interrogated him about his odd relationship with Sugar. He told us both that deep down inside, he felt bad for Sugar being in this industry without a father figure. She supposedly had mental issues, and no one but her mother for support. For a while my mother still didn’t believe that. She thought he was messing around with her. When she started dating Malik though, my mother thought maybe my father really was just trying to be a father figure.
I thought if we were on the same label, and she had this relationship with my dad, then we could be cool with each other. Sugar obviously thought different. She kept her distance and made it clear that Malik was to do the same. She was not happy about Malik being on the Giggle remix, and made a huge issue about us performing the song together. We were never able to perform the song on the same stage.
I accepted the claim that she had mental issues, and kept the peace by keeping my distance.