Larger Than Lyfe (4 page)

Ricky got up from the table.

“You’d better handle my shit, Key! Then take yourself over to Raffinity or Cartier, pick yourself out something nice, charge it to my account, and forget this little discussion that you initiated today…for your own good. The only way that you’ll terminate your obligations to The Consortium is in a body bag.”

Ricky signaled the sheriff’s officer and was escorted out to a holding room to await the arrival of his attorney and the D.A.

K
eshari arrived at her Century City offices following her visit with Ricky and told her assistant to hold all of her calls. She definitely needed some time to regroup after what she’d just done.

Shutting herself away in her huge, plush inner sanctum, Keshari sat at her desk and stared pensively out her thirtieth-story window at the expanse of Century City and the surrounding West Los Angeles area. She shook her head and laughed to herself at the irony of it all. Richard Tresvant had killed people and had ordered people killed without losing a night’s sleep…and would probably at
tempt to kill her, whether she liked facing that reality or not, but if she had it to do all over again, she would have told Ricky the very same thing that she’d just told him that day. She wanted OUT…out of The Consortium, out of the life, out of the game.

The
SOURCE
magazine did a cover story on Keshari Mitchell at the beginning of her career, titled “The Greatest of All Time?” In a black, pinstriped Armani suit and red Everlast boxing gloves, the new kid on the block in the music industry was stunning.

Five years later, Keshari Mitchell was thirty years old and Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment, which she founded, was a $300 million entertainment company…no longer merely a record label…specializing in hip-hop and boasting representation of a steadily building
list of certified platinum artists. Young, beautiful, gifted and Black, Keshari had appeared on the scene out of nowhere and, in a very short time, had become an indomitable force. Her goal from the very beginning was to take the art form of hip-hop that she loved so much and turn it into a mega financial enterprise that was owned and controlled by the very same people who wrote, produced, performed, originated, and developed it—Black folks; and she built from the ground up the first major record label in history solely owned and controlled by an African-American WOMAN.

Most record labels are owned by stockholders and controlled by a board of directors. Keshari Mitchell was the “stockholder” and “board of directors” for Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment. Not since Berry Gordy and Motown had anyone done what Keshari Mitchell did. When Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment’s debut artist’s CD hit record stores, the entire music industry could only stand back and watch in collective daze and amazement as Keshari Mitchell and her very appropriately named record label made their meteoric rise to the top. Within weeks, her debut artist’s CD, Rasheed the Refugee’s
Land of the Lost
, was certified platinum. Weeks later, the label’s second hip-hop artist, T.E.N., dropped his album and immediately went platinum. The woman had the Midas touch.

Keshari was a perfectionist and a workaholic who went from twelve-to fourteen-to eighteen-hour days in her never-ending quest to be the best in the business. Contract negotiations, album release deadlines, artist promotion, concert tour schedules, and meetings with a host of attorneys and accountants to discuss, allocate, and grow more legal money than she’d ever anticipated dealing with over an entire lifetime were only the beginning of her rigorous day-to-day activities. Publishing rights, ownership issues, artist management, music production, public relations, flights
back and forth to cities all over the country for business meetings as many as ten times in a single month, all while sheltering her intensely private personal life from the vulture-like scrutiny of the media were whole other feats onto themselves. But Keshari was not averse to the challenge of such immense responsibility. Larger Than Lyfe had been a huge dream for her for as long as she could remember and she couldn’t think of a better feeling than going to work every day and seeing the tangible results of her dream. She was what success stories were all about. She was a lit
tle girl from South Central Los Angeles who’d become the New Millennium version of the “American Dream.”

For a moment, Keshari’s contemplative, green eyes took in and savored the magnificent, 180-degree view that her office’s ceiling-to-floor windows afforded her. The mazes of glass and concrete buildings surrounding her and the Downtown Los Angeles skyline in the distance were marvels that never ceased to amaze her. Millions and millions of dollars exchanged hands daily, hourly, in all of these tall buildings and she was a part of it all. The next moment, Keshari’s gaze grew grave. For the past few weeks, she had been closely examining EVERYTHING about her life and wanting to extricate herse
lf from the worst parts of it. When her mind drifted in this way, her thoughts always turned to her mother and she was consumed by the intense mix of emotions she always felt when she thought of her—love, hate, and wondering what her life might be like if her mother was still alive.

She knew that her mother would be immensely proud of her for her tremendous success with her record label. She also knew that it would break her mother’s heart to know of her daughter’s involvement in the very criminal enterprises that destroyed so many lives and so many communities. She must be spinning in her grave right now, Keshari thought, at some of the things that
Keshari had done and had played a part in as a member of The Consortium.

Keshari’s whole life was about to change. Something at the very core of her told her that. She was the only woman who Richard Tresvant had probably ever trusted and, with her visit to him that day and the revelation that she’d made, she had betrayed him. Despite his current troubles, Ricky was not going to just dismiss that and there was no way for Keshari to know what nor when the repercussions would be.

Most gangsters who decided to walk away from the game wound up dead. They were risk factors…very large and very expensive risk factors. Keshari knew this and she was going to have to rely on the entire history of her relationship with Ricky to walk away from the game herself in one piece.

The mechanical buzz of her intercom broke the silence, interrupting her thoughts. Keshari spun around to face the small console on the corner of her glass and chrome desk.

“Andre is here,” Terrence Henderson, her executive assistant, announced.

“Thanks, T,” Keshari answered. “Send him in.”

The intercom clicked off and she was left again in silence. She checked her makeup in the Tiffany compact lying on her desk, touched up her already flawless lips, and then ran a hand through her tousled, shoulder-length curls. She took a deep breath and put her mind fully into the mode of record label executive in preparation for her meeting.

“W
e’ll hold auditions in ten major U.S. cities. Selection of the cities is based upon nationwide record sales from our quarterly reports from SoundScan. Here’
s the current quarterly report. The audition cities will be as follows: Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. I’ve already compiled a potential list of audition venues for each of the ten cities. My team will move to lock down the venues as soon as we receive the green light on this project.

“We’ll conduct auditions in the first city for two days, break, and then hit the next city, selecting ten semi-finalists in each city, hyping the project with a huge media blitz as we go, our camera crew covering the highlights of the auditions. Then we’ll return to L.A. for a mega-event, televised, grand finale competition of all of our semi-finalists.

“TV viewers nationwide will have the opportunity to participate by voting for their favorite performers to determine the ten finalists. An all-star panel of judges will critique and, ultimately, select the grand prize winner. One grand prize winner will receive a one million-dollar recording contract with Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment. Plus, we’ll have the option to sign any or all of the remaining finalists. This will be the new artist recruitment campaign of the millennium!”

Andre DeJesus was director of promotions at Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment. As director of promotions, Andre was responsible for the creation, management and structuring of budgets for such LTL projects as concert tours, national and local promotional contests, new artist publicity campaigns, and many other special projects designed to bring consumer, industry, and media attention to LTL artists and the LTL label. Everything from billboards to listening parties typically had the involvement of Andre and his team, often in conjunction with LTL’s public relations executives, le
gal counsel and the A & R department. Andre had requested a one-on-one meeting with Keshari that day to present her with the details for his latest brainstorm, a nationwide talent search.

“Key, this talent search project is going to launch LTL to a whole new height in the stratosphere. No other record label in the history of the music business has ever done anything like this. You’ve said since LTL’s inception that you wanted to eventually delve into the R & B and jazz genres. This talent search could be the launch pad for you to do exactly that.”

“Yeah, I think you might be onto something,” Keshari mused.

She drummed her fingers on the table while she turned the idea over in her mind a few times. She smiled and Andre knew that he almost had her.

“I’m fully prepared to pitch the project to Stanley Schuller over at MTV. The goal, taking our timeline into consideration, is to secure us a spot for broadcast next fall. MTV will easily hit our targeted demographic.”

“If I do this, I want to do it with Cassandra Harrington. She has a new network, VIBE Network.”

“You know the risks involved in doing a project of this caliber
with a substantially smaller, relatively unknown network. Even with corporate sponsorship, this is out of her league.”

“We’re talking about Cassandra Harrington here, Andre. She’s the most powerful African-American in radio…and she’s diversified into television. This would be a phenomenal opportunity for collaboration between two of the most powerful, Black businesswomen in the country. You and I both are abundantly aware of the history of a very precarious friendship between MTV and hip-hop, particularly TRUE
hip-hop. From its earliest phase up to this very day, MTV has shown consistent reluctance to broadcast our music and, if I proceed with a project of this magnitude, I intend to send a message. We’re goin
g to keep this one BLACK and I want to do it with Cassandra Harrington. Now, let’s get back to the budget for this thing. How much are you talking?”