Sex, Lies and the Dirty (6 page)

Eventually, I brought in Anthony and his best friend, Andy Conlin. I showed them the ropes, taught them how to work the phones, and delegated some of my stuff to them. Having them on freed up a lot of time. Sometimes I’d drive around in my Porsche at night and think about things: about leaving college, the Hey Stroker debacle, about Talent2K and where it was going. Online message boards were firing off about how we were a scam, how the company actually didn’t do anything except cash the checks. For the most part, they weren’t saying anything that wasn’t true. It was starting to look like I was on a sinking ship, but the thing that made me even more nervous was Carlo’s thing for young girls. Any one of these girls could be a cop running a sting operation. He was a sex predator. I was working for a fucking sex predator fat fuck, and he was going to get caught sooner or later. If Carlo got busted, I didn’t put it past him to drag me down too.

That’s when I decided to start my own company.

I named the company CIG after my uncle’s medical practice.

At the time, I had roughly $40,000 saved up because the cost of living in Sun City was cheap. It was all going to be put toward the company, and for the most part, it was established while I was still with Talent2K. Everything had to be done behind Carlo’s back. He’d seen too many fucking
mafia movies to just let me go and do my own thing. I was in the Talent2K “family,” so starting my own company was going to piss him off. I knew that, but I actually wanted to try and go legit. No more scams. No more fucking people over.

The CIG business model was going to be different from what Carlo had been doing. Since the magazine advertisements worked, I kept that part the same. CIG was actually going to be two musical entities under one umbrella: Rap Vibe and Alternative Spin. Naturally, I placed the rap ads in
Vibe
and the alternative rock ads in
Spin
, playing off name recognition.

The main divergence was going to be how CIG approached the music industry. Carlo mailed the proposal packages out to the record labels. That’s what the bands thought, at least. Even if he did mail them out, they probably would have wound up in their junk file. Or the trash.

I wanted to actually get the bands in the same room as the record label people: have them meet, have the acts perform live. It was going to be my own personal Russell Simmons hip-hop summit. In my mind it was a numbers game. If I got the record label people to come out, and if I was able to show them enough acts, one of them was bound to get signed.

So the ads were printed up. I ditched Carlo again, and this time no amount of begging was going to get me back. I even flipped Andy and Anthony. Andy came to CIG directly while Anthony stayed behind as my spy. If Carlo was going to try and fuck me, I at least wanted a little advance warning.

I had my own label, my own business model, and I even had my own team. The only thing that remained was the name. Hooman Karamian was the guy that worked with Carlo Oddo the child fucker. It also didn’t sound right in the hip-hop world.

That’s when I became Corbin Grimes.

Corbin Grimes was actually someone I was friends with over the summer,
and when he found out that I stole his name, he was more than just a little pissed off. So was Carlo. Once he put everything together—that I not only ditched him, but I set up another company behind his back—the guy flipped shit. The thing about Carlo is that he’s not the kind of guy to physically confront anybody. Despite all the mafia movies, I wasn’t worried about a car-bomb strapped to my Porsche or any bullets flying my way. Carlo’s a fat fuck. A statutory rapist coward. He’s the lowest common denominator. He
did the only thing he could do in that situation: talk trash.

So while I was getting things rolling on the CIG front, Carlo hit the message boards saying that Hooman Karamian is Corbin Grimes, and that was followed by a variation of lies: that I was the guy running the Talent2K operation, that he had to fire me, that Corbin Grimes and CIG are just covers for another scam. All those people that he fucked over before Carlo and I even met—my fault. After we met: still my fault. All day and night the fat fuck trashed me online, and this would be my first official encounter with the workings of the Internet and just how much it can affect a reputation.

That part stuck with me.

The first CIG event took place in Chicago in a convention hall
at the Hilton. In order to get the A&R people out to the event, not only did I have to pay for all their travel and hotel, but they wanted a fee for coming out, too. Each one of these guys was costing me around $1,500, but I didn’t care as long as one of my acts got signed. It was still a numbers game in my head. More record label people meant it was more likely one of them would offer a contract. The more acts I could get out, the more likely it was that one of them would be good enough to get signed.

So I got all of these people into one room—a convention hall, to be exact, and let the A&R people watch the showcase of rappers and hip-hop artists perform. It was like urban
American Idol
: act after act getting on stage and doing whatever they do. Rapping. Attempting R&B. I was paying more attention to the record label people, their faces, looking for signs of interest. Something telling me that my method worked and that Carlo’s didn’t. It went on for hours: record label reps watching, performers performing, and me, Corbin Grimes, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for one of these A&R people to sign someone (didn’t matter who) so I could finally say that I had done something worthwhile. I wanted the money, but I also wanted to prove Carlo wrong.

He was still on his online rampage about Corbin Grimes, but I didn’t fight back. All I had to do was get one of these acts a record contract and everything he said would be meaningless. Just one. The problem was the talent wasn’t there. That’s what the record label people were telling me. It kind of threw me off because I was still thinking of it as a numbers game, which is partially true. The other part of the equation is that I was pulling
talent from the back of magazine ads (which are pretty much the want ads of the music industry).

Maybe Carlo had it right. Maybe this was the reason why he never actually tried to get any of these people signed or listened to the music. He knew it would be a waste of time. Either that or he tried and failed just like I had. He was still talking trash online, but I gave it another shot. I did the same exact thing in New York and got the same results: no one was good enough. It wasn’t a numbers game. I tried to do something legitimate and lost every penny of the $40,000 that I made scamming.

The scam was where the money was at.

I had to learn that the hard way.

13
Capital Imaging Group.

14
Cigarettes.

15
Retired people that come to Arizona specifically for the warm weather.

Dolce Vendetta

As soon as everyone finds out I’m Nik Richie
is when a new club out of Dallas calls for an event, and they don’t want the
Dirty
celeb thing we’ve been pushing in Vegas. They want me. They want the guy in charge, and they’re willing to pay $15,000 to get me there, flight and hotel included.

“The club is called Dolce Vendetta—it’s brand new,” the booking agent says. “And we want you to be our opening celeb appearance. We’re slotting you ahead of Kim Kardashian.”

I’m a bit standoffish at first because my mind naturally flashes back to Scottsdale, back when random people were getting the shit kicked out of them because they were suspected of being me. Announcing publicly that Nik Richie is going to be at a certain place at a certain time could wind up being a bad move. Granted, I’ve never taken all the threats seriously, but you never know which ones are bullshit and which ones are real until someone is waving a gun in your face. Anyone looking to dish out a little payback could be waiting there for me. All they’d have to do is pay a cover charge.

And the booking agent asks, “So, will you do it?”

The truth is I really don’t have a choice.

We need the money
that
badly.

Nik Richie has never appeared at anything before
, never even been to Dallas, so I decide to try and make a good impression by wearing an off-the-rack suit from Nordstrom (three-piece, gray with a white dress shirt) and black wing tips. I look like a businessman, and therefore am not feeling completely at ease because I usually avoid suits if I can. That, and the paranoia is still buzzing in the back of my head because any one of
these club kids could be a guy I called a “douchetard
¹⁶
” or “tenderfoot
¹⁷
” or something they took offense to. Maybe I called one of their girlfriends a “shim
¹⁸
” or “slug
¹⁹
” or made mention of some physical feature I found disgusting. Someone in this club could be holding a grudge, so as a precaution, I’ve got four of the biggest, blackest security guards in Dallas. I also brought along Nick Gagliano and Ryan Jacque, who are sitting on either side of me in the booth. Drinking. Checking out the crowd, but it’s difficult because this place is a fucking dungeon and the light is mostly focused on the few broke go-go dancers they have up on platforms.

Not long into the event, I get to see how people react to Nik Richie when he’s live and in person. People stare. They take pictures. Some of them do this from a distance, waiting for the security guys to move out of frame before a Blackberry or iPhone fires from the dark. Girls come up to the table—first, confirming that I’m really “the guy” as they say, and this is followed by us shrugging together as a camera phone is held out at arm’s length.

Flash. Thank you. Repeat.

Bottles are delivered, but not the typical Grey Goose and mixer combo. It’s Cristal and Dom and top-shelf stuff that’s considered too expensive for the club to comp us. These high-roller guys at the nearby tables are sending this shit over, giving a nod with a long-distance toast to acknowledge it came from them. More booze comes. Girls come. Hot Dallas girls with those Texas accents so foreign to me they’re almost another language. The security guys are being paid to watch everyone be nice to me at this point. Gags and Ryan are both hitting on girls. We’re drinking, having a good time. The club kind of sucks, but I’m getting paid to be here and the booze is free.