Читать книгу The Baddest Bitch in the Room - Sophia Chang - Страница 12
ОглавлениеD uring Christmas break in 1985, my junior year of university, I leapt at the opportunity to visit my brother’s friend Steve Palmer in New York. He was doing his graduate studies at Columbia. I stayed with him and his roommates in a four-bedroom apartment close to campus. I loved the Upper West Side, with its brightly lit diners and cafés filled with students bristling with ideas, but it was the East Village, at the opposite end of the island, teeming with punks in leather and kohl-laced eyes, that spoke to me. Here was the epicenter of New York City nightlife, from clubs like the Palladium, the World, and Pyramid to live venues like the Cat Club and CBGB.
One night after poring through the show listings in The Village Voice, I dragged Steve down to one of the city’s greatest live venues—the Ritz, now Webster Hall. I don’t remember who was performing, and it didn’t matter. I was determined to see a show in New York. By the time we got to the venue, we’d just missed the show. The crowd was filing out as the video for Stevie Van Zandt’s star-studded anti-apartheid song “Sun City” filled a screen onstage.
Shit, that’s it? This is my one evening at the Ritz? Maybe I’ll see someone famous. Shortly before arriving in New York, I had seen a video of a blue-eyed English soul group called Curiosity Killed the Cat that featured the highly telegenic band with coiffed hair performing in a New York alley. I became obsessed with the fantasy of running into the pretty lead singer somewhere in the Village. I scanned the crowd from the balcony, hoping to spot him. Just as I was about to give up, Steve pointed toward the stage at a tall, gangly man with a mess of black hair covering his face and wearing a black motorcycle jacket, black jeans, and dirty sneakers.
“Sophia, isn’t that Johnny Ramone?” Steve said.
Holy shit, standing alone by the stage was the guitar player for the Ramones.
“I’ll be right back!”
I raced down the stairs and elbowed my way through the crowd that was moving in the opposite direction. I marched up to him and stuck out my hand.
“I’m Sophia Chang. You’re Johnny Ramone, right?”
He took me in for a second and peered down at me over his rose-tinted, wire-framed glasses. “No, I’m Joey.”
FUCK. A massive fumbling entrée into the inner sanctum of the New York punk scene.
“Well, you all look the same,” I offered, playing off the fact that all the Ramones rocked matching bowl cuts and biker-esque uniforms and shared a last name. Joey spread his lips into a crooked smile and didn’t say anything. I’m in!
I kept babbling and didn’t inhale for three straight minutes. My verve and sense of humor must have worn him down and worked up an appetite because he invited me out for burgers. I asked Steve to come along. Joey and I walked slightly ahead of him, gabba-gabba-heying. At one point he slowed down to talk to Steve and asked, “I’m not causing a situation here, am I?” Steve told him no.
We went to a small dark spot near his apartment at Ninth Street and Third Avenue. We stood at the jukebox and played music for each other. He was smart and funny and so very New York. It was a magical night. I had been hoping to find the singer of an utterly forgettable one-hit-wonder band, and here I was, with the man who fronted the band that had defined the punk rock I grew up on back home. In retrospect, that single act of fearlessness had set into motion the events that would shape my entire career. It was my first big networking move, and I’ve been honing those techniques ever since. I spent the next several months drudging through classes, dreaming of breaking out of Vancouver. New York was so amazing, but Paris was the obvious choice for me as a French major.
In the summer of 1986, I went overseas for the first time on a tour of England, France, and Italy with Jen Fraser. We shopped, visited landmarks and museums, ate great food, and it was the only time in my life I drank coffee. The soundtrack for the many hours we spent using our unlimited student Eurail passes was the Fine Young Cannibals, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Talking Heads, which we listened to on my Walkman by splitting a set of headphones. But seeing the Ramones in northern England was definitely the highlight of the trip. Their show was exactly as you’d expect: a nonstop jackhammer of three-chord rock and roll. And after the show we all hung out at the hotel. Joey slouched forward at one point and tugged gently at my big white plastic hoop earring (yes, it was just as ugly as it sounds). To his surprise, it slid right off my lobe. He pulled back suddenly and said, “Did that hurt?” It didn’t because it was a clip-on.
Paris was exactly as I’d hoped—les musées, les parcs, les cathédrales! Le pain, le fromage, les pâtisseries! But everywhere I went, there were les Parisiens. I thought I would move there after school, but I didn’t feel like I could fit in. I would speak French with a near-perfect accent in the stores, and they would respond in shit-ass English. The women were so impressive with their makeup and looking tirées à quatres épingles—dressed to the nines—that I felt even more invisible there than I did in Vancouver.
Having visited the City of Lights, I was more convinced than ever that the City That Never Sleeps was my destiny. Joey and I talked weekly over the phone, and I wrote him letters about my life in Vancouver. I loved making him laugh. His laugh sounded as if he were awkwardly reading a script, “Ha-ha-ha.” Those conversations made me feel connected to New York in an almost palpable way.
On April 22, 1987, at twenty-one years old, I left home for New York. My friend Julianna Raeburn and I were up all night working on my French honors thesis on Racine’s Andromaque. I wrote my hurried thoughts onto a yellow legal pad, tore off the perforated sheets one by one, and handed them to Jules, who typed them up. We alternated between drinking Earl Grey tea, rolling around on the graying yellow wall-to-wall shag carpet (no respectable 1970s home was without), and working. I was writing until the moment I left for the airport. I was so anxious to get to New York that I didn’t stay for my graduation. In fact, I didn’t even confer with my parents, which seems remarkably selfish, in retrospect, particularly in light of the fact that I didn’t have a real plan: no job, just a couch to stay on, and a couple of friends my folks didn’t know.
My folks and I never had conversations about my future. For myself and any first-generation Asian immigrants, going to college was fait accompli. It never occurred to anyone in my family that I wouldn’t follow the road to academia, that I would instead pursue the path of a hustler. My parents couldn’t have been too surprised that their daughter ran off to New York—risk-taking was in my DNA. I sat them down in the living room and told them that I was going for six months, but I knew in my heart that it would be longer than that. I told them I had a place to stay and they didn’t need to worry. They didn’t have much of a response or any questions. They knew I had made up my mind.
When I arrived in New York, Joey had arranged for me to stay with his friend Legs McNeil, a renowned music journalist, and his girlfriend, Carol, on the Upper West Side. Carol worked for Paul Simon and got me a gig there as an assistant. It was a great first step into the music business, of which I so desperately wanted to be a part. Paul had just enjoyed a massive resurgence in popularity with Graceland, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year and sold more than fifteen million copies. My parents were relieved when I told them I was working for Paul Simon, because they had heard of him and it seemed solid.
It was a lush learning environment because Paul was a self-contained ecosystem: his whole team—manager, tour managers, business managers, travel agents, and publishing—was located on the fifth floor of the legendary Brill Building. Some of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century—Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Leiber and Stoller, and Neil Diamond had walked through those same pristinely polished brass double doors. It wasn’t until I learned more about the music industry and became a manager myself that I realized the genius of Paul’s business vision.
I became particularly impressed that he owned all his publishing and had hired someone to administer it. For every song, the record companies typically own the recorded masters, and many artists do deals with publishing companies that give away half of their publishing income because they need the advance money. In return, the publishing company administers the songs and collects monies due the writer. They are also supposed to solicit work for the songwriter, which includes composing songs for other artists as well as placements in TV, film, and advertising. This means that every time you hear a Paul Simon or Simon and Garfunkel song, no matter who has recorded it, Paul is getting a check. That’s extraordinary when you consider the depth and breadth of his catalogue.
Working with Paul, I was exposed to the most elite echelons of the music business. This was where I met the mighty Mo Ostin, who started his career in the 1950s at Verve Records, where he worked with jazz legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong. He was then hired by Frank Sinatra to run Reprise Records and went on to run Warner Bros. Records, where he signed Jimi Hendrix, the Sex Pistols, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I have to add that Mo would bristle at the adjective mighty. He is by far the humblest person I’ve ever met, despite his colossal accomplishments. I was also fortunate enough to meet Lenny Waronker, producer and president of Warner Bros., and Michael Ostin, Mo’s son, who headed A&R at Warner Bros. Michael and I connected immediately. We shared the same dry sense of humor and a love of music and food. He would become my lifelong friend and mentor who taught me key lessons about parenting, family, and graciousness, all by example.
One of the greatest privileges of working with Paul was watching him create. It was one thing to see an artist perform or meet them backstage after a show; it was completely different to work in close quarters with one. Paul would sit in his office and play the acoustic guitar, but it was the studio that I found the most bewitching. Witnessing Paul interact with top producers and musicians opened a whole new world for me. This was the art of storytelling. Paul has one of my favorite voices of all time, but his songwriting gift, his ability to tell the story of someone’s life in just a few minutes, is astonishing.
My direct bosses were Danny Harrison (rest in peace) and Marc Silag, Paul’s tour managers. Danny and I had a great rapport. He took me out to eat and taught me my first Yiddish terms, though he was an Irishman. Danny, in a stroke of genius, got me my first working visa by adding me to the application that Paul’s agency was putting together for a tour. The list was long because of all the talent on the tour, and there was one standout name. It read something like this for about twenty-five names: Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Ray Phiri, Bakithi Kumalo, Joseph Shabalala, Headman Shabalala. . .and the very last name was Sophia Chang.
I quickly learned that to succeed, you have to be loyal to the right people—and have a backbone. One day Paul’s manager, Ian Hoblyn, an intimidating, handsome, well-dressed Brit, came storming into the office waving a piece of paper. I was alone.
“Who left this on the copier?” he yelled.
I didn’t know what it was, but clearly it was highly confidential.
“I did,” I said, without hesitation.
“Well, you have to be more careful! Things like this can’t be left lying around!”
When Danny got back, he went in to see Ian, who complained to him that I had left the paper on the copier. He could have let me take the fall, but Danny told him that he was the guilty party. My action and his response were both exercises in loyalty. And I believe I gained the respect of both those men that day.
Danny appreciated my efficiency, work ethic, and hunger to learn. He presented me with increasingly complex and difficult tasks, which I devoured. Less than six months after I’d started, Danny entrusted me with an assignment far beyond my pay grade.
On December 13, 1987, Paul put on a monumental benefit concert at Madison Square Garden that included Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Lou Reed, James Taylor, Chaka Khan, and Nile Rodgers, among others. The proceeds would benefit a mobile medical unit that would provide health care to homeless children. Warner Communications, then headed by Stephen Ross, underwrote part of the show. Danny put me in charge of creating the financial reconciliation package that Paul would present to Stephen. I had to account for every penny spent—from lighting to sound to ground to laminates and catering—and provide all the backup receipts and invoices. It was a huge and daunting responsibility for a twenty-two-year-old with no business background, but Danny’s belief in me was more important than my own. I knew that he would be judged as much as I would. I quadruple-checked every number and was thrilled to hear that everything went off without a hitch once it got to Stephen.
By the time I went home for Christmas that year, the six-month time limit I’d imposed on my stint in the Big Apple had passed, and it was clear that I hadn’t gotten it out of my system. My parents must have been concerned. There was no such thing as a gap year back then, even between undergrad and graduate school. They must have suspected that I wasn’t moving back any time soon; they knew their daughter better than I knew myself. My mother told me recently that their friends used to tell my folks that they were crazy for letting me run loose in New York. I think it’s pretty fucking amazing that they never buckled to that peer pressure and insist that I come home. I’m really proud of them for that, especially considering how gossipy the Korean community can be.
When I tried to explain to my mother what I had been doing, the only thing she understood was that I was somehow in business, so her natural response was “come back to Vancouver and get an MBA.” I lied and told her I’d think about it.
On that first visit home, Vancouver felt so small, so provincial—how people dressed, the shopping options, the restaurant opening hours. The fresh air and beauty of Vancouver never escaped me, but it wasn’t enough to contain a twenty-three-year-old who had big dreams of being in the music business. I hadn’t been away long enough to really miss Vancouver, and the excitement of living in the Big Apple overshadowed any kind of nostalgia I might have. Everything felt the same: the people, the restaurants, the streets, the theaters, the stores. Whereas New York felt like a city of endless adventures and possibilities. I remember on that first trip doing that annoying thing of talking about how everything was so much better in New York. Decades later, I would see my kids do the same and told them to reel it back because it might make their friends who lived there feel bad about their hometown.
Once back in New York, I told my roommate Kevin Bruyneel, a friend from Vancouver, that I was afraid to tell my parents that I wasn’t going home. Other than suggesting the MBA, my parents didn’t harp on me. It occurs to me now that they never asked Why don’t you get married? When are we going to get grandchildren? or Why don’t you get a real job? which was pretty damn extraordinary and gave me the freedom to chase my dreams.
My first five apartments were on the Upper West Side, with a brief stint in a studio above a Burger King near Grand Central. Then, after fully settling into New York life, I made the move to my sixth place in two years, this time downtown, where I spent all my nights. One of the women who worked for Paul sublet me her second-floor walk-up 360-square-foot studio on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue, surely the noisiest corner in the Western Hemisphere. The floors rumbled as the trains passed below, and there was a steady sound of sirens from the ambulances racing to St. Vincent’s Hospital, just two blocks away. My roommate at the time was Loren, whom I had met in the summer of 1984 at a French language program sponsored by the Canadian government at Laval University in Quebec.
We were two broke girls, but we didn’t care because we were in New York! We slept on the floor and reused plastic plates. Every time we washed them we would laugh and say, “Too good to throw away!” which was the brand slogan printed on the bottom. My boss Danny took us to Macy’s and bought us our first set of real plates, and Loren’s boss, Michael, gave us two futons.
Going from our little hovel on Fourteenth Street to Paul’s world was like stepping through the looking glass. Paul invited Loren and me to our first Yankees game. Our buzzer rang at precisely the prearranged time. Loren and I flew down the filthy stairwell and burst onto the sidewalk to find the Paul Simon smiling in front of a pristine black stretch limo. His driver rushed out and opened the door for us. We had never been in a limo. It felt endless, as if we could swim in it. We bounced about the leather interior, fiddling with the knobs that controlled the air, stereo, and windows. Paul sat back, watched us, and smiled.
As we pulled off the Cross Bronx Expressway and approached Yankee Stadium, our eyes widened. We were about to enter the most famous stadium in the world with one of the most famous artists in the world. The driver took us to a special side entrance. Paul led us to our seats around the curved concrete corridors. When we reached the opening to the seats, I stopped midstep and gasped as I set my eyes on the enormous green, manicured field for the first time. During the seventh inning, a young boy approached Paul and asked for his autograph. The Yankees were losing badly, and Paul said yes, as long as the boy stayed until the end of the game. After the game, he gave the boy his autograph and asked Loren and me what we thought the clever headline would be in the New York Post the next day.
When Paul dropped us off, we invited him in to play Scrabble. I don’t even remember feeling self-conscious as the three of us mounted the dingy stairs. We lay across our shitty New York futon, laughing and anagramming. I was really good at Scrabble and figured I’d win. At one point, Paul looked thoughtfully at the table and began laying his tiles across the board in a deliberate fashion: T-H-A-N. Ha, he’s going to play than and miss the double word score! I thought. But he reached for a fifth tile. That could only be thank, which was impossible because I had the K and both the blanks were on the board. Paul laid down an E.
“What’s a thane?” I asked.
“An aristocrat, like in Shakespeare.”
I challenged him and looked it up. Note to self: Never challenge Rhymin’ Simon, a man who made his living entrancing us with his lyrics, in Scrabble, or much else, for that matter.
During one of my parents’ visits to New York, Paul gave us his season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Much like my first time at Yankee Stadium, I was stunned by the scale of the place. The stage was the size of a football field, the sets were extravagant, the costumes elaborate. And ah, the voices. Plácido Domingo was starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Turandot. That was an amazing experience for me, but even richer for my father. The child who listened to opera at the house of a friend who could afford a record player, he never could have dreamt he’d end up in seats in the orchestra section of the Met, front and center.
A few days after I’d started work, Danny asked me about a check I’d received. I hadn’t been paid yet. When he showed it to me I saw that it was written to Sonya Chang, who was Paul’s personal assistant. She was Korean American and would become a mentor. Twelve years my senior, she had a huge, authoritative personality such as I’d never seen in an Asian woman. She insisted that I, too, dominate space, rather than shrink in the corner, and move with unapologetic confidence and entitlement, like a white man. Sonya had impeccable style. She took me with her when she shopped for Paul, and those outings were my first glimpse into how the wealthy live—the top Armani salesman brought cashmere sweaters to his home, an army of Egyptians assembled and counted threads to make his bed more luxurious, and everything was perfectly tasteful and beautiful. She introduced me to my favorite designer, Azzedine Alaïa, and the Diptyque perfume that I’ve worn since I met her.
But more important than taking me for a walk on the fine side, Sonya imparted some of the most significant and enduring spiritual lessons of my life. She was the first person to talk to me about depression and addiction. She took me to my first Narcotics Anonymous meetings so that I would have a better understanding of what it meant to her to be sober. I sat in wonder as complete strangers got up and bravely shared their stories of addiction and loss. She was also the first person I met who spoke about spirituality in any meaningful way. She was a voracious reader and had studied many faiths and philosophies. I now believe she was a Buddhist by practice because she often told me to let things go, which is essentially the practice of nonattachment. She taught me to be more aware of my behavior and interactions with people.
Once she moved to LA in 1992 I continued to spend time with her friends. A few months later, she called from LA and said gently, “Soph, some of our friends told me that they love you but don’t enjoy hanging out with you that much, because you’re not present. You spend the whole time talking about work.”
I had never been confronted like this. I was caught off guard, but Sonya’s approach was disarming and so full of love that I didn’t try to defend myself. I recalled telling her friends how busy I was, with pride and self-importance. I worked hard to alter my behavior after that. I came to have a deeper appreciation of the notion of being present, as it’s a central tenet to Buddhism. Sonya taught me to have hard conversations, which remain an important component of all my relationships. She would always say, “Go to the love, Soph,” because that’s the foundation.
That philosophy served me well as I began to expand my circle of friends in New York. Now that Loren and I lived downtown, we spent most of our time in the East Village, shopping for clothes on Eighth Street, eating mustard chicken at Cafe Orlin (rest in peace) on Saint Mark’s Place, where the wait for the bathroom could be endless because junkies would pass out in there. We saw countless shows by artists like the Godfathers, Squeeze, Fishbone, Big Audio Dynamite, and the Pogues, mainly at the Ritz. I went there so often that Anne, the woman working the door, started letting me in even if I wasn’t on the guest list.
We were also deep in the hip-hop scene. We’d frequent Nell’s, New York’s premier hot spot, which we could practically see from our apartment. It was famous for being extremely choosy about its clientele and famously turned away Cher. Jessica Rosenblum and Mercedes, who ran the door, made sure I never waited more than a couple of seconds on the cold side of that red velvet rope. The crowd outside would be five to ten deep on all three sides, filled with Eurotrash, wannabees, and B&Ts (bridge and tunnels, our derogatory term for people from the outer boroughs and New Jersey; this was clearly long before Brooklyn became a thing). She’d grab me and hug me, then gently slide us through the doors into the world that was Nell’s.
Upstairs, folks would lounge at tables or on velvet couches, eating fries and listening to a live jazz band, but downstairs was where we spent all our time, because that’s where the dancing was. DJ Jules, a dapper handsome Brit, and DJ Belinda, a gorgeous Jamaican dancer, would move the crowd until 4:00 a.m., playing mostly hip-hop, R&B, and reggae. My girls and I were out at the clubs four nights a week. I would roll in at midnight with five or six badass bitches, many of them Asian—Korean, Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese. We gravitated toward each other by our shared race and love for hip-hop. We were beautiful and smart and independent. We rocked baseball hats, baggy jeans, and Timbs and danced our asses off for hours and hours. We were boy crazy and the boys were crazy for us. One of my friends told me, “Soph, we used to love it when you came through the door because we always knew you’d have a bunch of fly women with you.” I had countless crushes and numerous one-night stands, but I was not interested in having a boyfriend. My job was my man.
Another regular spot was the Building, a decommissioned Con Ed power station. The gatekeeper there was Lysa Cooper, the queen of downtown New York nightlife. A beautiful black woman with big brown eyes and crooked, soft lips that either curled into a ferocious snarl or opened broadly into a staggering smile, Lysa had an eye like a hawk. She would see me approach from down the street and summon my girls and me in. The envious seas would part, and we would be pulled in by one of her big bouncers. The inside was raw and industrial but had been finely redesigned, incorporating the old elements with the new. The ceilings above the dance floor were at least fifty feet high. There was a mezzanine, an upstairs, and walkways with railings that allowed you to see the dance floor. The venue showcased artists like A Tribe Called Quest and the Beasties, and it was where I first saw Leaders of the New School perform. Even then, Busta Rhymes had boundless energy and walked on both sides of the high railings.
Our favorite spots were the underground hip-hop clubs that moved week to week. Social media didn’t exist, so in order to know where to go, we had to get ahold of a flyer that the promoters distributed to the right people. We would call each other, and word spread. They named their clubs after chocolate bars, like $100,000 Bar and Payday. They rented out high school gyms, rooftops, abandoned Chinese restaurants, community centers. Back in the day, none of us ventured into the Lower East Side except for these clubs. We would get out in the early morning hours and wait for ages for a ride because the cabbies were never in that neighborhood. The writer Greg Tate once told me that if a white man was found on Avenue A, he was adventurous; on Avenue B, brave; on C, crazy; and if he was on Avenue D, his ass was dead.
It was a privilege to be in New York City in those days when the industry was taking shape. It wasn’t just the music; it was the sense of community. People deliriously diverse across both race and industry sectors assembled around their shared love of hip-hop. MCs, DJs, B-boys, graffiti artists, managers, label execs, publicists, agents, attorneys, promoters, even artists like Keith Haring, Tony Shafrazi, and Francesco Clemente were regulars.
Outside of the clubs, the whole hip-hop industry convened at an annual convention called the New Music Seminar founded by Tom Silverman, owner of Tommy Boy Records, and his partner, Mark Josephson. Tommy Boy Records was home to artists like De La Soul, Queen Latifah, and Naughty by Nature. The NMS comprised showcases at night and panels during the day. Tom had invited me to be part of a group that determined what panels would be held and who would moderate.
The seminar was the first place I ever spoke publicly. I was invited to be on a panel about women in hip-hop in 1991. One of my co-panelists was Joan Morgan, self-described hip-hop feminist, and a friend for the ages. She was a surreal blend of South Bronx Jamaican who could talk shit and go hard like the boys, but attended Hunter High School and Wesleyan University. As we seated ourselves at the table, I was mesmerized by her beauty: closely cropped hair, big brown eyes, soft full lips, and high cheekbones. My infatuation rose to a whole other level once she opened her mouth and her brilliant words rang through the room. She talked about what it was like to be a black woman operating in hip-hop and the singular insight it gave her into how black men and women related to each other. She would eventually articulate this as the inherent conflict of being a hip-hop feminist. She was the first woman I met who called herself a feminist, and it would take me decades of learning and living to claim the moniker myself.
At one point during the panel, someone in the audience asked why there was a white British woman on a panel about hip-hop. I responded, “We are here today to talk about being women in hip-hop. What we are not going to do is question the validity of any of us talking about this.” I was particularly sensitive to the topic because as an Asian woman my bona fides had also been questioned. It felt good to be on the panel, but even better to be outspoken. That was my first taste of holding a mic, and it was delectable. I wanted more, and it would come soon, but it would take decades for me to fully embrace center stage.
Over the next years, Tom had me graduate from being a panelist to moderator about a range of different topics. The hottest one was the LA uprisings after the Rodney King verdict came down in 1992. I wasn’t nervous until I looked into the room and saw that it was huge and every seat was filled. Spike Lee was front and center, and somewhere in the back were the disheveled head and crooked glasses of Robert Christgau, one of the greatest rock critics of all time. Now I’m nervous. Once I started speaking, though, my fears dissipated. Christgau wrote about the panel in his weekly column in The Village Voice and alluded to me being smart. That was a huge boost of confidence for me.
One of the fixtures of the New Music Seminar was Dave Klein (rest in peace), a.k.a. Funkenklein, a big, blond midwestern boy who loved hip-hop to the core. We met in 1988 and he introduced me to a bunch of people in the industry, including the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, and Queen Latifah. One night at Hotel Amazon, one of the moving clubs located in the Lower East Side, Dave introduced me to Q-Tip. We had all heard his verse on the Jungle Brothers’ single “Black Is Black” and were curious to meet the body attached to this incredibly unique voice. We walked into a section of the club that was empty, and there was Tip alone in a hallway, sitting backward on a chair. Dave said, “Don’t look into his eyes or you’ll fall in love.” As we neared, I understood the warning: Tip’s baby browns reflected a soulful melancholy and could lead a responsible woman to make all sorts of irresponsible decisions, but what I remember most were his shoulders, which seemed to go on forever.
“Tip, this is Sophie,” Dave said.
Tip looked up with a slight smile.
“Hey, Sophie, nice to meet you.”
He shook my hand and his hands were big and strong.
“Nice to meet you too.”
I looked straight into his eyes. And there, but for the grace of God, I didn’t fall in love, but we became great friends.
Dave contributed to The Bomb, a monthly hip-hop magazine that everyone in the industry read. He wrote a quasi gossip column, “Gangsta Limpin’,” so named because Dave wore a leg brace after he’d had an operation for spinal cancer. The column was funny, irreverent, and blunt. I laughed plenty at his thinly veiled takedowns. Good thing we were so close he’d never write about me!
Like Dave, Michael Ostin continued to bring me into his circle. In 1989, while I was working for Paul Simon, he introduced me to Russ Titelman, who, in addition to working with Paul, had made records with greats such as Nancy Sinatra, George Harrison, Brian Wilson, and Chaka Khan. Russ recommended that I interview for an assistant job at the newly formed Alternative Music Department at Atlantic Records, which was being run by Peter Koepke. It would be a dream to work at a record company, because this was the central nervous system of the music industry; it was where the songs became hits and the artists became stars. I got the job and was one of two assistants covering a staff of five. I worked my ass off and liked the roster well enough, but hip-hop was my passion.
Fortuitously, right down the hall from us was the Urban Department, headed by the formidable Sylvia Rhone, who would become the first female CEO and chair of a record company. Sylvia was a marvel to behold: Wharton grad, beautiful, impeccably dressed. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. I dreamt of running a department one day, maybe even a whole label. Only in retrospect, having navigated the business that is strangled by patriarchy and racism, do I realize the enormity of the fact that she was a woman of color, a black woman, to be specific.
I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Sylvia and her team. She knew I was a huge hip-hop fan, and I managed to convince her to let me promote her hip-hop records to the smallest college radio stations across the country. Peter let me do it because I got all the rest of my work as an assistant done. Because I was promoting some of her records, Sylvia was gracious enough to invite me to her weekly marketing meetings, which were attended by representatives from departments outside of hers, like sales, art, and video. These meetings were no joke. Everyone was held accountable for their respective piece. An album release is like a machine: all the parts have to be working well and in sync for it to have the best shot at success. One small piece out of place could set the whole project out of whack, and Sylvia, as the head of the department, was the engine. I studied attentively as Sylvia ran shit, unflappable and confident in body-hugging Alaïa knit dresses. She knew the business inside and out and took no prisoners.
During one particular meeting, she sat at the head of the long conference room table and went around the room, asking each person where they were with their efforts. When she got to Rachel, a middle-aged white woman who was the head of the art department, she asked, “Rachel, is the album art done?”
“No, Sylvia, it ain’t done,” Rachel answered.
Sylvia turned her head sharply toward Rachel. The room, already quiet in deference to Sylvia, became deathly silent. “Pardon me?” Sylvia said pointedly, her eyes laser-focused on the woman. You could almost feel the collective cringe.
“It ain’t done yet,” Rachel repeated.
“You mean ‘it isn’t done yet,’” Sylvia corrected her.
I was astonished and inspired by Sylvia’s commitment to calling out the bullshit, and I hoped that I would behave with such courage and candor should I ever sit at the head of a table. In one meeting we were discussing the latest Everything but the Girl single “Missing.” I thought it could go on urban radio but kept my mouth shut. I didn’t think I deserved to be heard and I was too scared to look like a fool. The very next week, Sylvia announced that they were taking the single to urban radio. I learned then that I had to trust my instincts and lose my fear around embarrassing myself.
Working at a major label was professionally rewarding, but I wasn’t making a lot of money as an assistant. I was never one for the paper chase, but I did want to be comfortable. I had two roommates in a tiny studio apartment and was still feeling the squeeze. I called Sonya in a panic because I was feeling broke. I told her I was considering looking for another job. She said, “Soph, don’t ever do something for fear of not making money. Money will always come to you. Is anyone going to die?”
“What? No!”
“Then don’t worry, it’ll all be fine.”
Distilling everything down to life or death, though it may sound dramatic, helped me put things in perspective. Heesok responded differently when I called him in a state of alarm: “Sophia, we are all the authors of our own stories, and I just don’t understand why you choose to write yours as a C-grade melodrama.” Fortunately, soon enough, my money concerns would abate.
In 1991, Peter left to head London Records, and Mark Fotiadis, my direct boss, was promoted to head of the department. He made me head of marketing, which was controversial, because I was promoted over more senior people in the department. It was a big leap, one that I understand now I wasn’t qualified to make. However, I was determined to do right by Mark and dove into the deep end of the pool.
Thankfully, I felt really good about the work that I was doing with Sylvia. At one point I created a flyer to send to radio stations to accompany the new single by the artist Kwamé, who was only sixteen at the time. I bought a book about composers and compared him to the prodigies of classical music like Mozart and Chopin. God, that sounds so fucking pretentious now. I sent them to someone in her department for approval. A day or two later I got back to my desk, where she’d left the flyer and a handwritten note that said, Great job, Sophia! I’m sure she doesn’t remember, but her approval meant the world to me.
Just two years out of college, I was the head of marketing in the Alternative Department at Atlantic and working part-time on Sylvia’s rap records. The only thing better would have been focusing solely on hip-hop. No bother, though, because my nights were filled with it. One night at a club, Funkenklein introduced me to Sean Carasov (rest in peace), a.k.a. the Captain, a short Brit with a surly attitude who posed as a misanthrope but had a heart of fucking gold. He did A&R at Jive. (A&R stands for “Artists and Repertoire.” A&R people are the scouts who find the talent, develop them, help them make their albums, and guide them through the label system.) Wow, I thought, dream job. The most coveted position at a record company and the closest parallel to a manager, the A&R person is involved in every aspect of an artist’s career. Arguably, it’s the role most critical to the success of a label because it all starts with the artists. No matter how good the rest of the team is, if you don’t have a strong product, the records don’t sell.
Not long after I met Sean, he told me that he was moving to LA to be the Jive rep on the West Coast, which was a hotbed of talent, including N.W.A., Ice Cube, and Cypress Hill. He suggested that I interview to replace him in New York. He set up a time for me to meet with Barry Weiss, the president of Jive. Barry and I talked for a solid hour and a half about music. He knew more about the alternative world than I did. Later, he told me the moment I walked in the door he was certain I wasn’t the right person for the job, and became convinced that I was when he understood how passionate and knowledgeable I was about hip-hop, as well as how completely immersed I was in the community.
Despite my enormous enthusiasm, I myself wasn’t convinced that I was the right person for the job. How could I, a Korean Canadian French lit major, possibly be the right person to determine what rap artists were worth signing, when my experience was so far removed from theirs? A&R to this day is an insular boys’ club. I’m not just saying that it’s male dominated, I’m talking a Little Rascals “no girls allowed” joint. This meant I was entering a male-monopolized occupation in a genre that was testosterone driven and reigned over largely by men.
Having an opinion was one thing. “Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one,” we used to say, because everyone thought they could do A&R. But A&R required a complex skill set: beyond having an ear for what was good and commercial, it was critical to be good at relationship building, instilling trust in your artists, and advocating for your artists within the label as well as without. There were also A&R people who were creative and actual producers, which I definitely was not. These were guys who could go into the studio with their artists and make records with them, which was incredibly efficient and created a bond that I could never share.
Despite my doubts, I accepted the job, hoping that my love of the culture and tentacles into the community would see me through. It wasn’t easy to tell Mark, who had just fought for my promotion and raise, that I had been offered a job at Jive, but he said, “Sophia, as long as I’ve known you, what gets you excited is hip-hop. So you should go do that job. It’s a fantastic opportunity.”
I was really excited to tell Dave that I’d landed the job. He received the news lukewarmly. Maybe he’s having an off day, I thought. Less than a week later, I was in the office reading The Bomb. As usual, I skipped forward to Dave’s column. My heart sank as I started to read the first paragraph. The column was about unqualified people getting jobs in hip-hop A&R. The industry was tiny. Everyone knew he was referring to me. I was devastated. I never had the nerve to talk to him about it and it didn’t end the friendship, but I was confused and hurt. This was the man who had introduced me to so much of the hip-hop world and wanted me to be a part of it, but he drew the line at me working in it? I was already insecure, never having done A&R, and this jab from a friend who had been so supportive until then knocked me down a notch or two. As if that wasn’t enough, another close industry friend told Sonya, “Sophia better not start fucking rappers or she’ll be done.”
Yes, of course, all good for the men to fuck whomever they want and brag about it, but the second one of us women in the industry fucked someone, word got out and we were labeled. Unfair, but he was right, so I resisted sleeping with artists. Believe me, there were a number I would have slept with if I’d had one of those Men in Black wands that would have erased their memories the second we were done.
Once at Jive, I did the only thing I knew how to do: go hard. Barry Weiss was whip smart and funny as hell, and he ran a tight, nimble ship, which is so important in the music business, because the direction of an album can change at any moment, based on audience response. Barry’s right hand was Ann Carli, a wonderful biracial Japanese American woman who headed Artist Development, unfortunately a relic of labels past. She was amazing with talent, including the staff. When I started at Jive I was making twenty-eight thousand a year. A year later, without me having to ask, Ann had gotten me a promotion and a raise to fifty-two thousand dollars a year.
We had weekly A&R meetings with Clive Calder, the owner of the company, in his cold, sterile, private conference room, going over the artists already signed who were actively recording and reviewing prospective signings. Clive had a killer sound system and he would listen to demo tapes ever so intently, head cocked, right hand pulling softly at his thin blond hair behind his ear. It was a nerve-wracking process. It was like auditioning every single time. I would try not to look at the reactions of everyone else. I kept my head down and waited for the song to end.
By the time an artist got heard in that room, I had already listened to the demo over and over and spoken to them or their reps. I had boxes of demos in padded mailers under my desk. At that time, we went through every single one, even the unsolicited submissions. Some labels don’t do that anymore for fear of litigation—the concern being that an artist will come back and sue, saying the recording company stole their idea for artists signed to the label. When I started at Jive, I would listen to every song all the way through, but that was time-consuming and tedious, because the vast majority of the material was bad. I got to the point where I could listen to a verse and the chorus of the first couple of songs and have a keen sense of whether or not I wanted to sign the artist. It’s certainly possible I overlooked some real talent, but I simply didn’t have time to listen to everything.
At Jive we signed only self-contained artists, meaning they produced their own songs, which was better for Zomba Publishing, also owned by Clive. In hip-hop, the ownership of a song breaks right down the middle: half to the MC, who at that time was presumed to have written their lyrics, and half to the producer, who provided the music. It gets more complicated with sampling, because you have to give music publishing rights to the artist you sample. That portion would typically come out of the producer’s portion.
The other way that we discovered artists was by reading the trades. Barry would put a red check next to the records that were moving units in different regions of the country. I would call the local record stores and ask about the artist and the fan base and if there seemed to be any promise, then get the manager’s contact information. But the best way to find talent was through other talent, be it rappers or producers or DJs, because they were in the streets and the studios. They didn’t just have their fingers on the pulse, they were the pulse.
The first group I signed was the Fu-Schnickens, three West Indian MCs out of East Flatbush. Their whole aesthetic revolved around kung fu movies. I had originally met Chip Fu, the leader of the group, through a friend. Once I was at Jive, we met again at a Howard University homecoming, and we exchanged numbers. I listened to the demo and thought his style of rhyming was incredible, and the music was infused with their Caribbean roots. I invited my colleagues to a showcase they were doing at a local club and convinced the team to let me sign them.
We shot the video for their first single, “Ring the Alarm,” on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library. The group rocked orange-dyed karate uniforms and jumped out of a giant Chinese takeout box labeled with their name. It didn’t occur to me that the iconography was clichéd.
Chip and I used to call Janine, a psychic in Woodland Hills whom Sonya had introduced me to. I once asked her if I would be accepted as an Asian woman doing A&R, and she told me I would become extremely powerful. While the Fu-Schnickens were in the studio recording the album, I met the group Das EFX through Parrish Smith, a.k.a. P of the Long Island rap duo EPMD. We all became very close and I wanted desperately to sign them. When I called Janine, I simply spelled out Das EFX and she said, “You won’t get them, but you will go on to even better things.”
She was right: the deal got too rich and they ended up signing with Sylvia Rhone at her newly formed Atlantic imprint East West. Another group I wanted to sign was House of Pain, which I heard via DJ Muggs, DJ and producer for Cypress Hill, whom I had befriended years before. They ended up signing to Tommy Boy, another great small hip-hop label. Both groups went on to sell more than a million albums, but more important was that they had crossover success, having strong showings in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the Holy Grail for pop records.
Once Das EFX went gold, Clive announced at a meeting, “We should just let Sophia sign whatever she wants.” I didn’t exactly have carte blanche, but I did go on to sign Mz. Kilo out of LA and Souls of Mischief and a couple of other members of the Hieroglyphics crew from Oakland. I also worked with KRS-One, A Tribe Called Quest, UGK, E-40, and Too Short.
Now that I was doing A&R as an active member of the industry, our apartment became what Jarobi from A Tribe Called Quest called “Soph’s Home for Wayward Rappers.” Q-Tip would come over to my little studio on Fourteenth and Seventh, and we would watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Midnight Run so many times that we both memorized much of the dialogue. “So here come two words for you,” De Niro says to Charles Grodin. “Shut the fuck up.” We died laughing every time. I also used to crack Tip up by tying my then-waist-length hair into a ponytail above my head and doing a crazy dance. I would two-step way off beat, whipping my ponytail around like a ceiling fan, and then break into any stupid dance just to make him laugh. Some of my favorite moves I bit from the unforgettable dance scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Despite the Lilliputian proportions of the apartment, we entertained constantly. Music was always central to any visits. There was a beatbox under the loft and a rack of cassettes loaded with the latest hip-hop, like Cypress Hill, N.W.A., and Public Enemy. In addition to Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest, Fu-Schnickens, and Hieroglyphics were always at my apartment. But my favorite house guest by far was Reggie Noble, a.k.a. Redman.
I met Regman, as I called him, at a Too Short album release party in 1990. He was rocking an oversize North Face down jacket and what he called his “drug dealer bracelet,” and had a tissue hanging out of his nose. I fell in love with him immediately. Who goes out with a tissue hanging out of their nose? REDMAN! He clearly did not give a fuck. He had terrible allergies and was always congested.
He was living on Long Island with Erick Sermon of EPMD and was often in the city late at the studio or doing God knows what. If he didn’t want to drive home, he would just come to Sophie’s. He was more like a boarder than a guest. He would come by my place at all hours of the night and yell up to my window, “Sophie! Open the door, goddamnit!” He ended every sentence with goddamnit. It was hardly the romantic yearning of John Cusack in Say Anything, more like, I need to take a shit! I would open the window and throw the keys down, and he would come upstairs and crawl up into the smaller loft and knock out.
There was no small talk. No “How was your night?” “How’s work?” Nada. But watching him climb the small ladder and jam into that tiny space was worth being woken up at 3:00 a.m. The opening to the loft was only about four feet by four feet. Reggie is six feet one and, when I met him, kinda chunky, nothing like the lean machine he is now, and he would inevitably be wearing his puffy black North Face. It was like seeing a super fluffy Chow Chow squeeze through a doggy door. At one point I just gave him a set of keys.
During one of his many sojourns at my little pad, Redman said, “Sophie, I want to rap in Korean for my first single, ‘Blow Your Mind.’ Can you write it for me?”
“No, but my dad can.”
I was a little embarrassed that I couldn’t do it myself. My dad took on the task with pleasure and spent a lot of time writing something he thought would be suitable. This is what he came up with: “Get out of my way / Who are you? I’m Redman / There’s no one better than me / In this world I am the best Redman, my man.”
One night, we sat on my futon and I taught him the rhymes, word by word. He was so dedicated to getting it right. We ate Ritz crackers and laughed and practiced. Because the futon was low, we sank into it and couldn’t sit up straight. When we were done, he looked down sheepishly at his Champion sweatshirt. It was covered in crumbs. He looked like a little boy.
That moment will stay with me forever because, in addition to our friendship and the laughs we shared, Redman appreciated my culture to the point of wanting to incorporate it authentically into his music. When the single came out, I got a call from Hot 97, the number one hip-hop radio station in the country. They had called Redman’s label, who directed them to me. They didn’t want to play the record because they thought that Redman was faking the Korean, and they found it offensive. I assured them that my father had written the lines and told them the meaning.
When I look back at all the guests who crossed my threshold and spent time in that tiny storied apartment, perhaps the most out of place was Chris Lighty, a South Bronx native who had come up carrying legendary Kool DJ Red Alert’s record crates, then went on to work with hip-hop’s biggest stars. He wasn’t just physically big, he also had very imposing energy that barely seemed to be contained in that one room. He rubbed me all sorts of wrong ways when I first encountered him.
“Damn, Soph! What’s that about?” asked Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest as a patent look of disgust passed unwittingly over my face.
“I can’t stand your manager. He’s so arrogant.”
We were in the Jive offices, sitting in a tiny cubicle, when Chris strode by. I found him insufferable. Shaheed is a beautiful, open soul. Born and raised a Muslim, he is far less judgmental than I am and has always wanted his world and those inhabiting it to be at peace.
“He might seem like that, Soph, but he’s a really good guy. You should get to know him.”
Chris had risen quickly because of his business acumen and naked ambition. I’m sure his looks didn’t hurt, either. Chris was tall, broad, and impossibly handsome. He was nicknamed Baby Chris for his freckles and had a smile that could melt a thousand cones. That winning smile, however, didn’t make its appearance very often. The expressions that more commonly graced his grill were indifference, inscrutability, and intimidation. I heeded Shaheed’s advice and braved rough terrain in an effort to get to know Chris and eventually win him over, not a meager challenge. He was more Oscar the Grouch than Mr. Rogers.
Chris was working at Rush Management, whose roster boasted the biggest names in the business—LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, as well as A Tribe Called Quest. I knew that we would continue to cross paths and that it was better to be on his good side than on no side. One day, I coaxed Chris into having lunch with me. I let him choose the restaurant. We ended up at the Shark Bar on the Upper West Side, the legendary soul food spot where the hip-hop elite broke bread. Cornbread and biscuits, to be exact. It was a long, narrow place with a bar downstairs and tables upstairs. When we walked in, the staff recognized Chris immediately. He simply nodded grimly and led me straight upstairs. The waiter had barely set the warm bread basket down on the table before I dove in like a barbarian. I’m sure Chris’s eyebrows were raised in surprise. Look at this little-ass Asian woman jumping on those biscuits like she just got out of Rikers! Once my low blood sugar had been sufficiently raised, we got to talking. Or rather, I got to talking.
Our conversations were incredibly one-sided because I am garrulous and he was, as I told him on numerous occasions, the most laconic person I’d ever met. He did speak at length when I asked him questions about his past, however. And I had a bunch. Why is the crew called the Violators? Because they liked to steal other guys’ women. What did you do before music? Hustled. Where did you grow up? South Bronx. As I pummeled him with questions while shoveling fried chicken into my mouth, he answered calmly, never with his mouth full.
