13. Omar
Omar
I stayed at the back near the exit. Devon was beside me with a beer he wasn't drinking, scanning the room like he did at every public event, cataloging faces.
"He's got a good crowd tonight," Devon noted.
"Venue booked him for two nights after the social media numbers. First one's tonight."
The warm-up finished and the DJ brought the energy down for a second before the lights dropped. The room went dark. Someone near the front screamed Rashid's name. Then the beat dropped, the lights came up blue, and Rashid walked onto the stage.
He was wearing all black, a chain Kadeem had given him for his twenty-first birthday sitting heavy on his chest. He moved to the microphone without rushing, took the stand in both hands, and waited for the room to quiet.
"Brooklyn," he said. "Y'all ready?"
The room erupted.
Rashid opened with the street tracks, the ones with heavy bass and quick bars that made the crowd bounce.
He had a presence on stage that you couldn't teach, a confidence that came from knowing his music was good and being unafraid to prove it in real time.
He moved across the stage with an energy that pulled the crowd forward, their phones raised, recording every second.
The first three songs were a wall of noise.
Rashid fed off the energy, pushing his delivery harder with each track, his voice cutting through the bass, his body moving with the beat so naturally the whole stage felt like it belonged to him.
A woman near the front threw her hands up during the chorus of the third track.
Three more joined her. Within thirty seconds the entire front section was moving together, a mass of bodies responding to Rashid's voice like a single organism.
Between songs he talked to the audience like they were friends in his living room.
He told a story about getting lost in Manhattan as a kid because he'd followed a pigeon into the subway.
"I was eight years old, alone at Times Square, crying my eyes out.
This random auntie found me, bought me a hot dog, then put me on the right train.
" The crowd laughed. He talked about his grandmother's cooking, how she measured ingredients with her hands instead of cups.
He dedicated a song to Ma without saying her name, just called her "the woman who made me.
" The room went quiet before the beat came in.
The newer tracks were different. The ones he'd played for me at the studio, the personal ones about growing up Baptiste, about his father's absence, about the gap between who people expected him to be and who he actually was.
The crowd heard the shift. The phones lowered. People listened instead of recording.
One track hit different from all the rest. Rashid had written it at the studio the week before, the one he'd played for me during my visit.
The lyrics didn't mention Pops by name but they didn't need to.
He rapped about a chair at a kitchen table that stayed empty, about a name that opened doors he never asked to walk through, about the silence in a house where someone used to sing in the mornings.
His voice broke slightly on the second verse, just enough for the room to catch it, and the crowd responded with a silence so complete you could hear the ice shifting in glasses at the bar.
There was a moment during the second-to-last song where Rashid stopped rapping and just looked at the audience.
The beat was still playing, the bass vibrating through the floor, but he was quiet.
His eyes moved across the room, taking in the faces, the raised hands, the people who'd come out on a weeknight to hear him talk about his life over borrowed beats.
Then he came back in on the next bar and the room exploded.
Devon leaned toward me. "Kid's got something special."
"Yeah. He does."
"You ever think about what happens if this actually takes off for him? Record deal, touring, the whole thing?"
"I think about it every day."
"And?"
"And I'm trying to make sure the Baptiste name doesn't follow him into that world the wrong way. He needs to keep his head down, stay out of trouble. After everything that went down last year, Kadeem's barely let him back in the room."
Devon nodded and went back to scanning the room.
The set ended with Rashid's biggest track, the one that had been circulating on social media for months.
The crowd knew every word, rapping along with him, their voices drowning out the speakers.
Rashid let them carry the final verse while he stood at the front of the stage with his arms open, his chain swinging, the blue light making him look like he was already somewhere bigger than this converted auto shop on Myrtle Avenue.
The lights came up. The crowd screamed. Rashid grabbed the microphone.
"Love y'all, Brooklyn. For real. Every single one of you. I'm nothing without this city."
He walked offstage. The house music came up. The crowd started moving toward the bar.
I made my way through the bodies toward the side door that led backstage. Rashid was in the green room, which was really just a storage area with a couch and a mirror. He was toweling off his face, his shirt dark with sweat, his eyes bright with the post-performance high.
"Yo!" He grabbed me when I came through the door. "You were here?"
"I was at the back."
"How was it?"
"You were good. Really good."
"Good? That's all I get?" He grinned. "Deem would've said magnificent or some shit."
"Deem's a better liar than me." I sat down on the arm of the couch. "The new tracks landed. The crowd felt that shit. That one about the empty chair at the kitchen table... people weren't even breathing."
"Yeah?" He was pacing now, too wired to sit still, his energy bouncing off the narrow walls. "I wrote that one at like three in the morning. Couldn't sleep, kept thinking about Pops, so I just sat up and put it down in one take. Tre said it was the best thing I'd ever written."
"Tre's right."
Rashid stopped pacing long enough to look at me properly. "Thanks for coming, O. Means a lot."
"Where else am I gonna be?"
A knock on the green room door. Tre stuck his head in. "Yo, Rashid, there's a guy out here says he's from a label. Wants to talk to you about your catalog. You want me to let him in or tell him to bounce?"
Rashid looked at me. I shrugged. "Get his card. Talk to him. Don't sign anything without a lawyer."
"You sound like Pops."
"That's cos Pops was smart about this stuff."
Rashid left the green room with Tre. I stayed on the arm of the couch, listening to the muffled crowd noise through the wall.
The sweat from Rashid's towel was still wet on the couch cushion.
His set list was written on a piece of paper taped to the mirror, tracks crossed out and reordered in his handwriting, the margins filled with notes only he could read.
My phone buzzed. Devon.
Need to talk. Spotted someone in the crowd tonight. Third row, left side. Kyran.
I stared at the message.
You sure?
Positive. He was watching Rashid the whole set. Didn't cheer, didn't move, just stood there with his arms crossed staring at the stage. Left before the lights came up.
Kyran at Rashid's show. Standing in the crowd, watching, not participating. Making his presence known without doing anything that could be called a threat. That was a message. I know where your brother performs and I can get this close whenever I want.
I put my phone in my pocket and went to find Rashid.
He was in the hallway talking to the label guy, a man in a fitted jacket and glasses who was handing over a business card with both hands.
Rashid took it, shook the man's hand, asked three follow-up questions about the meeting process that sounded like he'd been rehearsing them, and thanked him. The guy walked away looking impressed.
Rashid turned to me holding up the card. "Atlantic Records. A&R department. He wants a meeting next week."
"Good. Get a lawyer first."
"O, did you hear what I said? Atlantic Records. The label. Wants a meeting. With me."
"I heard you. Get a lawyer first."
He laughed, shaking his head. "You're impossible."
"I'm your brother. There's a difference." I put my hand on his shoulder. "I'm proud of you, Rashid. For real. That set was something else."
His face softened. The performer dropped away for a second. Just my little brother, standing in a hallway with a business card in his hand.
"Thanks, O."
"Now go home. Get some rest. Call that lawyer tomorrow."
I left the venue through the side door. Devon was waiting by my car, his phone in his hand, the photos already pulled up.
"Show me," I said.
He turned the screen toward me. Three photos, taken from the back of the venue during the set.
The first showed Kyran standing in the third row, arms folded, face neutral, his eyes fixed on the stage.
He was wearing a dark jacket, hood down, nothing that would stand out in a crowd.
The second photo showed his two companions at the bar, both of them positioned with clear sight lines to the exits.
The third was Kyran leaving through the front door during the last track, his back to the camera, his two men following.
"He wasn't trying to hide," Devon noted. "He was scoping. Getting a read on the venue, the layout, Rashid's routine."
"You think he's planning something?"
"I think a man doesn't bring two people to a rap show and position them at the exits unless he's thinking about more than the music."
That sat heavy. Kyran was sizing up Rashid's world, learning where he performed, how he moved, when he was exposed. That was reconnaissance. That was a man building toward something.
"Put coverage on Rashid's studio, his apartment, and this venue for every show going forward. If Kyran shows up again, I want to know before he walks through the door. Photos of everyone he brings with him. Names, addresses, known affiliates."
"On it," Devon replied.
I got in the car. The parking lot was emptying out, the crowd spilling onto Myrtle Avenue in clusters, talking about the show, replaying their favorite tracks on their phones.
Rashid's voice was coming from half a dozen speakers on the sidewalk, his bars mixing together into a chorus nobody had written.
The engine was running. Atlantic Records wanted a meeting with my little brother. A legitimate shot at the future Pops had wanted for his youngest son. A future that was possible only if Kyran stayed away from Rashid and the Baptiste name didn't follow him into the industry.
Meanwhile, Kyran was showing up at Rashid's performances with two men at the bar and his arms folded, making sure we knew he was watching.
The two things couldn't coexist. Rashid couldn't have his music career if people from the streets kept showing up at his venues with grudges and threats. That was my problem to solve and I was going to solve it.
I turned the key and pulled out of the lot.
The city was quiet, the streets emptying out, the lights of Brooklyn passing through the windshield.
Tomorrow I'd deal with Kyran. Tonight I'd let Rashid have his victory, his Atlantic Records business card, his forty-five minutes on a stage where nobody could touch him.