It’s not supposed to be like this, you know. As I’m watching the Al Jazeera clips this weekend with Amir Junaid Muhadith wax poetic, beard, kufi and robes in place, I’m thinking how much of an actual superstar he really is, is supposed to be. Chauncey Hawkins that is, the man I know as Loon. Out of almost everyone I represented in the music industry, Loon was probably the most natural, the most likely to succeed, as they say. The only thing making sense is that he is actually on national television. Not that converting to Islam is anything out of the ordinary for rap artists. Just the whole thing playing out like a scene from a bad movie. Then I start playing the movie back from the beginning.
I met Loon back in 1995. I was representing Lindsey Williams. Lindsay worked at the now defunct EMI Records. Was responsible for signing the new agey, quasi political, folksy feel-good rap group Arrested Development. Before then, he worked in the trenches at Rush Management, side by side with Lyor Cohen. Spent a lot of time on the road with the likes of Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick. Lindsey had some great stories, especially how Rick and Kane were like best friends that always stayed in beef, how Kane had to snuff Rick in the jaw once, just to put him in his place. So Lindsey, whose grandmother is also the Sylvia of Harlem’s famed tourist food spot Sylvia’s, calls me one day. Says he’s managing a two man group named Crime Family, and how they just got small offer from Tommy Boy Records. He needed someone to close the deal quick and cheap. He brought the group to my office so we could meet before any bread-breaking. Loon and Nitti. Just two younger cats from Uptown. Didn’t get to really hear how they sounded, what they were about, I was just trying to do Lindsey a solid, that and pay my bills. Since I had just done a deal with Penalty Records for CNN (Capone & Noriega) and Penalty was a label run under Tommy Boy, me and the lawyers sealed the Crime Fam deal quickly. Contracts signed, hands shook, checks cashed, we kept it moving, and that was the last time I heard from Crime Fam.
A year later or so, Tommy Boy started changing their roster, experimenting with the direction they were taking, had even done a deal with self help guru Deepak Chopra. They were scaling back from their involvement with rap music, with Hip Hop. Timing was off and Crime Fam never had a chance. They were dropped before the ink on the contract had a chance to dry. Then, if I remember correctly, Nitti got popped and was doing a short stint in jail for something. Loon called me. Said he needed my representation. I took a meeting with him. At the time, he was putting his demo tape together and was getting mad beats from a famed Harlem DJ whose very name I can’t remember as I’m writing this. I wanna say it was DJ Doo Wop. Some street cats were investing money into Loon, and they wanted me to shop for a new deal. No lie, Loon’s demo was dope. The word play, how he crafted songs that were delivered like it was effortless, but flowed, almost in a conversational style. Beat selection was on point too. Should have been easy getting that deal except for one big problem, Loon’s voice, nasal, lazy sounding, sounded too much like Ma$e’s, the new rapper who started to pop behind a single “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” featuring none other than Sean “Puffy” Combs. It didn’t matter that he could rap way better than Ma$e, everyone was going the compare the two, and Ma$e had the upper hand, being that he came out first. Still, something told me to stick with him. Loon started stopping by my office, more frequently, almost on the daily. Had one disgusting habit though. Whenever we met, he’d pull my waste paper basket from the side of my desk and would casually spit in it. The longer our meetings, the more he would spit. Used to piss me off, especially since I used to warn him not to do that shit and how he would ignore me and continue spitting, like he had a problem with his spituitary glands and what not. Him leaving me with a basket filled with his saliva close to my desk. Still, Loon was extremely talented. The more he stopped by, the more he shared about his history, his background. The more I learned, the more fascinated I became. Chauncey Hawkins was most definitely a one of a kind kind of dude.
