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Shortly after Giovanni gave Adonis the ring, things started going from bad to worse in the record label. Our paperwork wasn't matching up and money was missing. There were charges on our credit cards that weren't accounted for. I was the first one to notice these financial discrepancies because I was the one who went over Adonis's business accounts and the bills.
Adonis hired his cousin Randy to work in the studios and help expand the business into Jamaica. Randy quit within a week, telling Giovanni that he was unhappy with how staff members weren't reporting their sales. Giovanni told Adonis not to worry about any of this. "I'll take care of everything, man," Giovanni promised.
Soon after that, Ellis Garrett asked Adonis to buy him out of his contract, because he felt that he could no longer work with Giovanni. "That nigga has been mismanaging affairs from the start," he said, and told Adonis that Giovanni had destroyed some of his original songs and other works and hadn't paid his bills.
Both studios began to suffer losses. Giovanni fired anyone he didn't like, so employee attrition was steady; the staff had been cut in half and employees continued to complain about the way Giovanni treated everyone. Adonis turned a deaf ear, not wanting to believe that Giovanni would ever do anything to hurt him.
Eventually, the employees started talking to Abraham, who in turn expressed his concerns about Giovanni's business management skills-or lack of them-to Adonis. He tried to laugh this off as well.
"Baby, you know Pops always thinks people are bad," he told me. "You know he don't trust anybody."
By early May of 1996, however, Adonis and I could no longer deny that there were problems in every aspect of the business that involved Giovanni-which was most of them-and in the fan club as well. Certain people had sent in cash or checks to become fan club members, but they had never gotten the T-shirts and other items they were supposed to receive in exchange; they were now writing or calling to complain. Giovanni was even instructing some fans to make checks directly out to him instead of to the fan club.
Abraham started to receive calls from some of Adonis's disappointed, confused fans. On May 9, he called Giovanni into the offices at Q Productions for a private meeting along with Adonis and Angelo to find out what was going on.
Giovanni couldn't explain himself, Adonis told me later. As Abraham questioned him, Giovanni kept repeating, "I don't know, man. I don't know."
Abraham told Giovanni to get the hell off their property and to never step foot on it again, or he'd have him arrested. He also threatened to take him to court for embezzlement.
