4. Omar
Omar
Rashid's studio was on the third floor of a converted warehouse in Bushwick, above a screen-printing shop and a yoga place that never seemed to have any students.
The building had no elevator, no security, and a front door that didn't lock properly.
I'd told him three times to move somewhere with better access control.
He'd told me three times to stop being paranoid.
I took the stairs and knocked on the studio door. Music was playing on the other side, something with a heavy bass line and Rashid's voice layered over it, running the same four bars on repeat. He was in editing mode.
"It's me," I called through the door.
The music stopped. Locks clicked. Rashid opened the door in a white t-shirt, grey sweats, headphones around his neck, and a grin that made him look about fifteen years old.
"Big bro!" He pulled me in for a half-hug, one arm around my shoulder, the other still holding his phone. "What you doing all the way out in Bushwick?"
"Checking on you."
"You mean checking up on me." He walked back to the mixing desk where his producer, a quiet man named Tre who wore the same black hoodie every time I'd ever seen him, was adjusting something on the board. "Tre, you remember my brother Omar."
Tre nodded at me without looking up from the screen. "What's good."
"What's good, Tre."
The studio was small. Soundproofing on the walls, a vocal booth in the corner with the light off, two monitors showing waveforms I didn't understand.
Rashid had his notebook open on the desk, pages covered in his handwriting, lyrics crossed out and rewritten and crossed out again.
A half-eaten sandwich was sitting on top of an amplifier.
"You eating?" I asked, nodding at the sandwich.
"That's from yesterday."
"Rashid."
"I been working, O. You know how it is when I get in the zone. Eating's secondary." He dropped into the chair beside Tre and spun it to face me. "So what's really going on? You don't come to Bushwick unless something's up."
"Can't a brother just visit?"
"Kadeem visits. You show up." He raised an eyebrow. "There's a difference."
He wasn't wrong. Kadeem came to the studio to be supportive, to listen to tracks, to ask about the business side. I came when something was on my mind and I needed to see Rashid's face while I figured out how to say it.
"How's the music going?" I asked instead.
"Fire." Rashid turned back to the monitors and pulled up a track. "Listen to this. Tre laid this beat down yesterday and I been writing to it all morning. It's different from the usual stuff, more personal. Less hype, more... I don't know. Real."
He hit play. The beat filled the small room, something slower than his usual style, a piano loop underneath a drum pattern that had space in it.
Rashid's voice came in on the second bar, raw, unfiltered, talking about growing up in Bed-Stuy with a father who disappeared and a name that opened doors he didn't always want to walk through.
I listened to the whole track without interrupting. When it finished Rashid was looking at me with his chin in his hand, waiting.
"That's good," I told him. "That's really good."
"Yeah?" His face lit up. Twenty-five years old and he still needed his big brother's approval. That hit me somewhere I didn't expect.
"The verse about Pops," I said carefully. "You sure you wanna put that out there?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because it's personal. And once it's out, people are gonna ask questions you might not wanna answer."
Rashid leaned back in his chair. "People already ask questions, O. Every interview, every show, somebody wants to know about the Baptiste name. About Pops. About what Kadeem does. I been dodging that shit for years. Maybe it's time I stop dodging and start telling my own version."
"There's a difference between telling your version and putting your family's business in a track."
"I ain't putting family business out there. I'm putting my feelings out there. There's a difference." He paused. "You and Kadeem been keeping me at arm's length since the Flatbush thing. Like one fuckup means I'm benched forever."
"That wasn't one fuckup, RB. You shot up a building with civilians on the next block. Kadeem had to clean that up for three weeks."
"I know what I did. I also know I was right about who was in that building."
"Being right doesn't mean being reckless.
" I looked at him across the studio. He'd been spiraling since Pops disappeared, drinking more, fighting more, picking battles he couldn't win.
Kadeem had pulled him back from the operational side after the Flatbush incident, told him to focus on the music, give himself space to breathe.
Rashid had taken it as exile. "You got something, Rashid.
Something real. The music, the talent, the future.
Use this time to build that. The other stuff ain't going anywhere. "
Rashid was quiet for a moment. Tre kept his eyes on the monitors, pretending to work, giving us space.
"I don't want a way out," Rashid said quietly. "I want to be part of it. Part of the family. All of it. The music is mine, yeah. But so is the Baptiste name. So is Pops. So is whatever happened to him." He looked at me. "You find anything new?"
"Devon's working on some things."
"That's what you said last time."
"Because Devon's still working on them."
"O." Rashid leaned forward. "You can talk to me. I ain't gonna fall apart."
I looked at my little brother. He had Pops' eyes. Same shape, same intensity, same way of looking at you that made you feel like he could see past whatever you were showing him to what was underneath.
"When there's something solid, you'll be the first to know," I said. "That's a promise."
"Aight." He didn't push it. He knew how I operated well enough to know that when I said I'd tell him, I'd tell him. "You wanna hear the second track? Tre just finished the mix."
"Play it."
He hit play. The studio filled with music again. I sat in the spare chair and listened to my little brother rap about Brooklyn streets, family loyalty, the weight of a name you didn't choose. He sounded like Pops when he talked about things that mattered.
The second track was harder than the first. More drums, more aggression, Rashid's voice cutting through the bass with a delivery that sounded like he was arguing with someone who wasn't in the room.
The lyrics were about the Flatbush incident without naming it directly.
About doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
About a family that asked you to sit down when all you wanted to do was stand up.
"That one's raw," I told him when it finished.
"Too raw?"
"For the album? Maybe. For you? Nah. That's real."
"Tre thinks I should save it. Put it out as a single later, when people know me better."
"Tre's smart." I looked at the producer, who was adjusting levels on his board without reacting to the compliment. "What else you got?"
Rashid pulled up a third track. This one was different again, something with a R&B hook underneath the rap verses, a melody that stuck in your head after three bars.
He rapped about a girl who left, about watching her car disappear down a Brooklyn street, about calling a number that stopped working.
The details were fiction but the feeling underneath them was real.
Rashid had been through his own version of loss and he was turning every piece of it into music.
"That hook is good," I said.
"Tre's girl sang it. She came in last week and laid it down in one take. I almost cried, O. It was that good."
"Don't tell her that. She'll charge you more."
Rashid laughed, a real laugh that filled the small studio and made Tre look up from his board for the first time. "You sound like Kadeem now. Everything's a negotiation with y'all."
"Everything is a negotiation. That's not cynicism, that's business."
"See, that's your problem. You think everything's business. Some things are just... music, O. Some things are just art."
"And some things are both. Get a lawyer before you sign anything. I'll say it until you hear me."
Tre looked over at me at one point during the next playback. Our eyes met for a second. He'd been Rashid's producer for two years. He knew the family, knew the dynamics, knew when to stay quiet and when to nod. He nodded now, barely perceptible. Rashid was talented. Rashid was special.
The track ended. Rashid was already pulling up the next one.
"You eating dinner at Ma's tonight?" I asked.
"Depends. She making oxtail?"
"When is she not making oxtail?"
Rashid grinned. "Then yeah. I'll be there."
"She been asking about you," I added. "Says you don't come by enough."
"I was there last week."
"And she'll say the same thing next week. You know how Ma is."
"Ma thinks if she doesn't see you every forty-eight hours you've been kidnapped." Rashid shook his head. "Tell her I'm coming. Tell her to make extra rice cos Tre's coming too."
Tre looked up. "I am?"
"You are. Ma's oxtail will change your life, bro. Trust me."
"I'm vegetarian."
Rashid stared at him. "Since when?"
"Since always, Rashi. You've known me two years."
"How did I not know that?"
"Because you don't listen to anything that ain't a beat."
Rashid grinned. "Man, you been eating pussy that hard, guess I forgot."
Tre shook his head but he was laughing. "I'm done with both of y'all."
I stayed for another hour. Listened to four more tracks, gave notes on two of them, told Tre the mixing on the third was off balance.
Rashid argued with me about it because Rashid argued about everything when it came to his music.
That was good. That was the fire that would make him successful if the streets didn't get to him first.
I left the studio and took the stairs down to the street. The sun was going down over Bushwick, the light turning gold on the warehouse walls. My phone buzzed. Devon, with an update on the financial trail.
I read it in the car, replied with three words, and drove back to Bed-Stuy.
Rashid's voice was still in my head. I don't want a way out. I want to be part of it. He sounded like Pops when he said that too. Pops had never wanted a way out either. And look where that got him.
But the verse about the empty chair was there too.
The silence where singing used to be. Rashid had turned absence into something beautiful and that was the difference between us.
I turned absence into violence. Rashid turned it into art.
Pops would've been proud of that. Would've sat in the front row at every show and told everyone within earshot that's my youngest boy up there.
I held the wheel tighter and drove.