Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (11 page)

I was petrified the first time I showed up at the studio. The soundproofed room was painted in an amber tone, and it was much larger than any studio I’d ever seen. The floors were made of hardwood. In one corner sat a piano and a set of drums; in another area, there was a huge vocal booth—more like its own room than a booth. I walked over to the booth and put on my headphones. A producer played a track for me. The second time he played it, he asked me to sing along. I did.

Right away, I felt like I’d failed. It was clear that the producers wanted me to sing like Midnight Star’s lead vocalist, Belinda Lipscomb—but her voice was much higher than mine. “Try it this way,” said Bo Watson, one of the members of Midnight Star. He was trying to get me to mimic Belinda’s vibrato. But I couldn’t make myself sound like her. It took me the whole two weeks to master just a couple of songs—and there was absolutely no magic. By the end of my time there, I had just one thought:
Kenny and L.A. are going to drop me
.

I returned to Maryland feeling deflated. The depression didn’t have much time to settle in because I had two weeks to pack up my whole life and get to Atlanta, which is where Kenny and L.A. were based. I guess I hadn’t completely blown it in Ohio, because Kenny and L.A. still wanted me to come down and begin recording. Before I said good-bye to my classmates (I’d completed up to my junior year at Bowie State) and headed off to a whole new life, I wanted to change my look. I let a local hairstylist cut my shoulder-length hair into a short style. I just wanted a whole new look to go along with the brand-new life I was beginning. My Honda had died, so my father arranged to get me a Mercedes 190—the car had belonged to my manager, and Dad asked him if I could just take over the payments. My Honda had been $185 a month, and the Mercedes would be like $199.

A friend and I stuffed the Benz with my belongings and made the trip down to Atlanta together. As we slowly backed out of the driveway, the frame dropped a bit with the weight of everything I owned. My hometown—the place where my dream began—grew smaller in the distance with each passing mile. We made our way onto I-85 South and settled in for the ten-hour journey to Georgia. I used my Motorola flip phone to check in with my parents, which I did just about every hour. “Where are you now?” my dad would ask with a touch of panic in his voice. I’m sure he and Mommy were just concerned about my safety on the road. By this time, Mom had started to chill out a little and settle into the idea that I was moving forward. We didn’t really talk about the episode, but I could just tell things had simmered down. In spite of the fact that she didn’t agree with my choice to take the solo deal, she was still a good mom—and that meant she was nervous about seeing me drive off onto the interstate and begin a big adventure on my own.

I showed up in Atlanta with $300 to my name and plenty of student loan debt. Since I hadn’t yet nailed down an apartment, I moved into one of those extended-stay places in Buckhead on Piedmont Road. A woman named Connie from the record company had explained to me that I could move into an apartment that would be paid for out of my artist budget. I didn’t quite realize it then, but that meant I was essentially paying for the place myself. Let me explain.

I signed on with LaFace Records as a “singer/songwriter”—which meant I would be paid to perform and write music. L.A. and Kenny were to receive 50 percent of my songwriting royalties through their company, Jay Bird Alley Publishing. In the music business, the record company determines an overall budget for an artist’s project—and mine was about $100,000. Of that $100,000, I received a signing bonus of $30,000 that I used to pay off my student loans. That up-front money is like a loan that the record company gives you—but that loan has to be paid back with any profits that you eventually earn.

Here’s the part that a lot of people don’t understand: A singer’s signing bonus, all of her personal expenses, and all of the costs of making the album are deducted from the overall project budget. So if the budget is $100K, and your total expenses add up to $99,000, you’re left with a $1,000 paycheck. In short, it might’ve seemed like the record company was covering my rent—but it was being deducted from the budget. That’s why just about every performer starts out in the hole. It’s a standard contract that most new artists sign.

A few hours after my friend got me settled into my place and flew back to Severn, L.A. dropped by. “You’re here!” he said. “How was the trip?”

“It was fine,” I said.

“Let’s go over to the studio,” he said.

“Now?” I responded. I glanced down at my Levi’s and neon-yellow sweatshirt—the one with African kids dancing on the front. “Can I change?” I said.

“You’re fine like you are,” he said, smiling. So I grabbed my fake Chanel purse (one that I’d bought at TJ Maxx) and hopped into the passenger seat of L.A.’s black Benz.

The studio was at L.A.’s house. As he drove us there, we chatted. “So what kind of music do you see yourself doing?” he asked, trying to get into my head. “Who do you like?”

“I really love Anita,” I said.

“Do you think you’d get excited if you met Anita right now?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I promise you that a year from now, you’ll be excited but you won’t show it,” he said with a grin. “You’re going to have so many great experiences.” We finally pulled up to the gate of his community and a guard let us in. As we talked, I stared out the window to see row after row of enormous homes with immaculately manicured lawns in his country club. We pulled into his driveway.

When I walked through his front door, my jaw hit the ground. The place must’ve been ten thousand square feet! Stunning oversized artwork lined the walls. A taupe Kreiss sofa sat in the living room. Long, sheer, Mediterranean-style curtains flowed down from their rods and swayed as the breeze blew in. Even the floors were special—pickled hardwood in an off-white color. In college, I had once dated a guy whose place was decorated in a similar way—God only knows where he got the money. I’m grateful that I’d at least had that much exposure, because otherwise, I probably would’ve lost my mind the first time I saw L.A.’s living room. “Come on in,” he told me. “Make yourself at home.”

He first took me into the hair salon—yes, he had one of those in his house, too. L.A. was then married to Pebbles, and she owned the production label Pebbitone. Pebbles, whose own 1987 solo album went platinum, had discovered the R&B group TLC; L.A. and Kenny eventually signed them on to LaFace. When we rounded the corner into the salon, I met Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes from TLC—they weren’t yet famous at the time, but they would be later. Debra Jean “Deah Dame” Hurd (of the group Damian Dame, the first act signed to LaFace) and Marie Davis, a hairstylist with Pebbitone, were both there. So was Pebbles. “Nice to meet you!” said Pebbles. I could hardly believe I was standing in the same room with all these famous people—or that I might be on my way to becoming one of them. Unbelievable.

I was in awe of Pebbles. I’d seen beauty like hers on television, but never in person. She was so well manicured and stylish, and she had the most amazing thick hair. As I stood there in my jeans and ugly sweatshirt and clutched my knockoff handbag, I suddenly felt out of place. After a couple minutes of chatting, L.A. and I left the room. As we exited, I heard Pebbles say, “She’s country—but she’s a cute girl.”

L.A. called his recording studio, which was in his guesthouse, LaCoco. We didn’t do much in the studio that first day. L.A. just played a couple demo tracks he’d been working on for Anita Baker; L.A. and Kenny were in final negotiations with Paramount to produce the soundtrack for the Eddie Murphy movie
Boomerang
. So they wanted to have a few songs ready in case the deal came through. The real recording began a couple days later when I met with Kenny. The plan was for me to record the demo of two songs that Kenny was writing for Anita. Anita would eventually listen to that demo to get a feel for the songs.

L.A. represented the business side of LaFace—and Kenny was the creative force. That’s probably why I was so starstruck the first day we worked together. Back when I heard Kenny’s 1986 record
Lovers
, I went crazy over his voice. I even started trying to yodel the way he did! I thought of myself as the female version of Kenny. I’d often tell my brother, Mikey, “He is going to produce my albums one day”—and here I was, about to live that fantasy.

When I arrived at L.A.’s studio for the second time, Bo Watson (the Midnight Star keyboardist who’d coached me in Dayton) was there. L.A. introduced me to the team in the studio—and I thought the sound engineer looked like John Oates, that curly-haired musician in Hall & Oates. Kenny walked in and greeted me. “Wow, you cut your hair!” he said. “I like it.” I blushed a little.

Kenny had been working on the lyrics for the duet “Give U My Heart.” Bo began playing the melody and Kenny sang along. After a couple verses, he asked me to join in. A few minutes into our duet, the vocal booth began having some technical difficulties and then it actually broke down. “Let’s record it in the bathroom,” said Kenny. “The acoustics are great in there.” So we stepped into the small space, which was all black with granite walls; a shimmering crystal chandelier hung from above. Over the next hour, we recorded the entire song in there.

In the following days, Kenny and I worked on additional tracks for Anita Baker—“You Mean the World to Me” and “Another Sad Love Song,” which was the most beautiful melody I’d ever heard. I sang the demo for both of the songs, though we didn’t actually finish “You Mean the World to Me.” I was the best artist Kenny and L.A. could’ve chosen at that time in their careers, because I could be so easily molded. If they told me what to sing, I sang it. I was excited just to be recording a demo for a singer I admired so much—that was my claim to fame. I kept thinking,
I’m the girl who gets to do a demo for Anita Baker
. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t already a star.

Completely surreal—that’s how I’d describe those first weeks in Atlanta. You know that magical feeling you get the first time you go to Disney World at night, and you see the castle all lit up? That’s the feeling I had. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I’d gone from performing in front of my mirror with a ketchup bottle in Severn to singing a duet with a huge star in a blinged-up powder room. If that dream could come true, anything in the world seemed possible.

IN THOSE DAYS
, my whole way of thinking was very green—and it didn’t take L.A. and Kenny long to realize that. “You were in college to be a teacher,” Kenny said to me one afternoon. “How much does a guy have to make for you to date him?”

Without pausing, I declared, “I would’ve been making thirty thousand dollars a year as a teacher—so he would have to make thirty-one thousand dollars.”

They laughed so hard that they almost fell on the floor. “You’re absolutely going to change your mind,” Kenny said once he’d recovered from his outburst. “He’ll need to make more than that!”

Another time, Kenny mentioned the movie
Star Wars
, his favorite film. “You’ve seen it, right?” I hadn’t. So the next week, he pulled out his laser disc (a bigger version of a DVD) and made me sit for six hours and watch the entire trilogy.

Kenny and L.A. became like brothers to me—and I trusted them fully. We’d joke around in the studio, which is where I spent 99 percent of my time.

“Whatcha doin’?” Kenny would call and ask me.

“Not much,” I’d usually say.

“You should come by the studio.”

Even if Kenny and I weren’t working, I’d just go and observe whatever he was doing. I wanted to learn absolutely everything I could about the music business.

Back then, I had a horrible crush on Kenny. There, I said it: I was smitten. That changed in an instant on the day when I met Tracey, his fiancée—I didn’t even know he was engaged! Tracey was stunningly beautiful, and once I realized Kenny was in the trophy business, I knew I had no shot. Not that Kenny was paying me a bit of attention anyway: He has always seen me as a little sister. That’s still true even now.

One day while Kenny and I were in the studio, recording a demo, L.A. swung by. “How many records do you think you’ll sell on your first album?” he asked, smiling.

I pondered that for a moment. “I’ll go double platinum at least,” I said with confidence.

“You think you’ll go double platinum?” he said.

I nodded.

“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “If you go double platinum, I’ll buy you any kind of car you want.”

Without missing a beat, I told him, “I want a Porsche.” He and Kenny exchanged a glance and then chuckled.

I was L.A. and Kenny’s little tagalong. If either of them went out shopping, for instance, I’d be like, “Can I go?” I was curious about everything: how they picked their furniture, how they discerned good quality, and what they considered stylish. I was always respectful about giving them their space, yet I still asked a million questions. Especially around the studio, I was privy to a lot of conversations. “We’ll do four points on this song,” I once heard Kenny say. That’s how I discovered that Kenny and L.A. were five-point producers. Each “point” is equal to about 1 percent of the royalty profits that a producer receives on a song, and those points are usually based on the producer’s experience and notoriety. The number of points is negotiable: If a record sells one hundred thousand copies, for instance, then the producer’s percentage of profits can be bumped up by a half a point or more. It was all a whole new world for me—and like a sponge, I soaked it up.

For a girl who’d just scored a record deal with two of the biggest names in the business, I actually felt very lonely. My friend Kim had stayed in London to take a government job, so we rarely talked. And since I spent so much time in the studio, I didn’t make new friends around Atlanta. You’d think I would’ve been partying all the time, given how strict my upbringing had been. But the opposite was true: I somehow felt that I didn’t deserve to have fun—especially if my sisters couldn’t be there to enjoy it with me. My life was directed by guilt.