Hidden Valley (D. SWING)

VII. Jodeci (and Dalvin)

The sea of bodies within the small house create a musk that floated in the air until the hosts bring out drinks and refreshments to settle the bodily temperatures in the room. I pull my headphones off of my ears, jumping up from around the booth with the microphone attached to my equipment as my brothers, both blood and chosen, run up to the front of the room that I perform my set in. Dalvin jumps from side to side as if his last name is Brown and first is Bobby but regardless, everybody's loving us. We keep hold of everybody's attention.

We're the shit if you want to keep it simply said. I guarantee the four of us can do it better than half of the stiff punks they drag up on the Soul Train stage. We've got it like that naturally because we're stars.

"You guys ever thought about doing anything like that professionally," says a tall, thin unnatural blonde. Her smile as wide as can be, she stares back at the four of us with her doe-eyes full of adoration. "I'd definitely buy your record."

Manifesting a vision that I know we can attain in the near future, K-Ci waves off the girl's words. "Oh, don't sweat it, baby. We signed!"

"Oh, really? To who?"

"Uptown MCA," I spit out without a second thought. Her excitement becomes a stare of awe. She sees literal stars in her eyes and it's written all over her face. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Y'know, they got people signed to them like Heavy D or that group, Guy. You know Guy, right?" Rapidly shaking her head up and down, she grins as she brings her drink to her lips only to not drink from it. "Yeah, we signed to them."

I lift my hat, airing the tightly compressed follicles under it that I call my hair, and drop it back on my head. This time, it's facing backwards. "Well, what's your name? Have you been on anybody's stuff? I want to buy your records."

My head tilts inward to close space between us as I repeat her question back to her. "What's our name?" She eagerly nods, awaiting the answer, finally drinking from her cup. "Oh, we can't really say that just yet. It violates the contract, you know? Uptown— You see, Uptown MCA, they just wanna' kinda' keep it all under wraps until our big single drops. So we can't tell you that yet but we'll be out real, real soon and you'll see!"

"I hope so... You guys are great."

To be honest, I don't even know who the girl is but she really got me to thinking. We're too well put together to not have a name. It don't make no sense. All this time, whenever we did something, we just got refered to by our regular names. Joel Hailey and Don DeGrate Jr. or The Hailey Brothers and the DeGrate Brothers, for the few times Dalvin wound up tagging along. We need something that's just for us. We need something that has us written all over it and when you say it, you know exactly who everybody is taking about.

Sitting in the front grass of the Hailey residence, a notch past drunk, the four of laugh and joke loudly— but not too loud, being that it is four o'clock in the morning.

I turn to my three counterparts. "Aye, I was thinkin'... After that girl at the party asked what our name was... We ain't really got no name, man. We gotta' get a name."

"What about," K-Ci sprawls his hands out with the intent of using the thin air we breathe in, in favor of his visual demonstration, "The Brothers." I can only smack my lips at the corny suggestion. I'm not wasting my breath on an insult. I know he can do better than that. "What's wrong with that, man? We brothers! You got Dalvin and I got Joe!"