LUCIOUS & COOKIE: TUG OF WAR (REMASTERED)

THE ARCH NEMESIS

I decided to take a chance on Lucious shortly after his wife at the time had been sentenced to a long stint in prison. I heard some of his early work from a couple of mix tapes that my head of A and R at the time tossed my way and from what I heard the kid was talented.

He had his own little label called Empire and was selling tapes out of the trunk of his car when we first met. I went to see him perform at a club down in Philly one night unannounced and sat in the back of the room to observe his style.

As soon as he got on the stage, he had the crowd eating outta the palm of his hand and I knew then that he was going to be big. He could rap and he could sing. He had it all, the looks the ladies drooled over but provoked fear in men, the sound, and that IT factor.

The only thing he was missing was the worldwide exposure to push him over the top. I knew that there'd be boat loads of money to be made off his talent and I wanted in on the ground floor, before somebody else recognized this literal diamond in the rough and snatched him up. Thus, I wasted no time approaching him after the show, he had a few of his friends with him as we discussed a bit of business and within the week, he was in my office signing the contracts.

Four million dollars and another million-dollar signing bonus later, he and Empire were under Creedmoor Records. I will give it to him, Lucious never wavered on his demand to keep control of Empire. Like how Cash Money remained a subsidy of Columbia Records he kept saying, so I agreed.

Although that little move meant that he got more money as the CEO, it didn't matter because it was all under my company, so whatever his little label made.... I got a cut from it all anyway.

Just as I knew he would, as soon as he hit the scene Lucious blew up and turned into my biggest cash cow. I took a personal interest in him because my son had just died earlier that year, so putting all my energy into building him up helped me take my mind off it.

When he dropped his first album, "Paid in Cash", it was a whirl wind catapulting his star to practically rise overnight and it became an instant classic. I convinced him to divorce his jail bird wife after months and months of trying. Even though he never went to visit her while under Creedmoor, it seemed like a really hard decision for him to make, but I eventually got him to understand that being single was better for his image.

After that he immediately went on the road, touring, promoting and just kept on pumping out hits left and right. He was young but he knew about music, yet he didn't know about the business of music, he was super green, didn't have a lawyer to look over his contracts or anything. That's how I was able to swindle the publishing rights of some of his biggest hits, right from under his nose, with no regret.

Hell, I'm a businessman and when I looked at him all I saw were dollar signs.

Pouring myself a fresh drink, my mind continued to swirl with thoughts of the past between myself and one of my label's founding and most prominent artists. Lucious was a gold mine, and I quickly got a return on my initial five-million-dollar investment and then some.

About two years later, after his "homie" Vernon took some law courses or went to law school or something like that, he was infuriated when he found out about his publishing rights and insisted that I let him out of his contract. He said that he'd been reading the credits on his new album and noticed my name in that section, which despite his knowing, I'd done with all my artists.

Lu was irate and screamed about how he couldn't trust me and wanted out of his deal so we could go our separate ways, but little did he know, it didn't work like that. I had his ass in an ironclad contract, and I had no plans of giving up my golden goose anytime soon.