GRANDGOOD

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Third excerpt from J-Zone’s forthcoming book, Root for the Villain: Rap, Bullshit, and a Celebration of Failure. What happens when your rap career ends and money is short? You go the Tim Dog route and juice a woman for comeback album money, you go the Hammer route and launch another search engine, you occupy Wall Street while you starve and freeze, or you (gulp) get a J-O-B! A hilarious look at a foray into the foreign territory of the 9 to 5 world, post-rap career.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing after the high school basketball game I had been covering was over.

“Yo man, you J-Zone?” the point guard asked me before I could ask him about his 19 point, 8 assist performance.

I asked him to repeat his question. Not to flatter myself, but to make sure I’d heard him correctly. My ears weren’t bullshittin’.

“Ummm,” I stammered.

“Dude,” he cut me off. “The YouTube videos of you chillin’ in the drive-thru at White Castle and licking whipped cream off those foam titties are classic!”

I was part shocked that someone born after 1985 knew who I was by face, part embarrassed that my attempts to be professional as a sports reporter were trumped by being known as the Onion Ring and Titty Man, and part flattered that an obscure and pseudo-famous rap guy like myself was even remembered years after my modest music career had gone kaput. I guess that’s what happens to the quasi-successful middle ground rap man who’s teetering the top of a fence that separates two universes – he eventually falls over to the “real” job side. And it fucks up folks who fail to realize he wasn’t that famous in the first place.