Chapter 25
Chapter 25
A message arrived from the Bloods’ side along with two demos.
...They want me to choose?
I stared blankly at the screen.
Why were they doing this to me?
But when I thought it over carefully, ASD—that is, me—was, from the Bloods’ perspective, a newly discovered rookie composer.
We had formed a relationship through the sale of the beats, and asking for feedback as an extension of that relationship was actually a natural progression.
And besides, I’m anonymous.
They had no idea that ASD was Shotgun.
Unlike when I worked with the Crips, the threat to my life was zero.
This feels so comfortable.
It was a completely different kind of peace from the way I had to force feedback out through stiff vocal cords in front of gangsters.
Here, I just had to hide behind a monitor and type on a keyboard.
Hell, should I take a nap before I start?
Nothing was chasing me, so I was even starting to slack off.
Anyway, I put in my earphones.
B.I.G’s demo first.
Oh, this is good.
B.I.G’s voice clung tightly to the difficult beat.
His delivery as he stepped over the kicks was strong, and his breath control was good too.
Next, Slipknot.
Slipknot took a completely different approach from B.I.G.
Instead of charging straight through the beat’s difficult structure, he deliberately inserted his voice at the moments when the beat wavered, creating collisions on purpose.
That friction actually produced a sharp kind of pleasure.
This is good too.
Both of them had done well.
I had felt it during the previous diss battle too, but in terms of pure rapping ability, the Blood-affiliated rappers were better.
Honestly, this was a matter of taste.
Neither side was so objectively better that I could make a clean cut. It was a question of direction.
But before I choose.
There were a few disappointing points in both versions.
A few places that snagged in the ear.
I should send feedback on those first, then choose.
The problem was—
How do I even express that feeling in writing?
Even before, when Michael Wayne had asked me for the reason, all I had been able to say was FEEL.
But conveying it through text rather than speech was even harder.
Putting it into words?
...Let’s just type something.
Tap-tap-tap—
Will they understand this? Lil D understood right away.
The feedback for Slipknot’s version ended up similar.
If an expert saw it, they would probably clutch the back of their neck and collapse, wondering what kind of nonsense this was.
But what was I supposed to do?
All I had was feeling.
While I was typing up that abstract feedback, my phone vibrated.
It was a message from my manager(?) Jamal saying he had arrived downstairs.
“?!”
I jumped to my feet.
My appointment with Big Joe!
Today was the day I was supposed to meet Big Joe at HOOVER SOUND.
After Professor Marshall had sent the recommendation letter, this was finally the day I was going to bring up the proposal of becoming a legal apprentice in front of Big Joe.
I snatched up my sunglasses in a panic and ran for the front door.
Big Joe took out a stack of documents from his desk drawer and looked at them.
Corporate registration papers.
He tapped the first page, where the label name was printed.
[LK Records]
Little K.
Taken from his brother’s name.
His brother, who had been shot at twenty-two and collapsed on asphalt.
“...”
For a long while, he stared at the two letters LK written on the papers.
An independent label for discovering artists as brilliant as his brother.
That was the picture Big Joe had drawn.
And its first project would be Lil D’s full-length album.
He closed the documents and was just about to put a cigar to his lips when—
Knock, knock.
“Come in.”
The door opened.
Shotgun stood there in sunglasses.
His mouth looked set even more stiffly than usual.
“Sit.”
Shotgun lowered himself into the chair across from him.
Silence fell.
After a moment—
“...I’m a second-year law student.”
“I know.”
“?!!”
Big Joe opened a lower desk drawer and pulled something out.
Thunk.
He placed a single book on the desk.
...!
CRIMINAL LAW.
The UCLA Law School logo was stamped on the cover, and beneath it Park Geon’s name was written in large letters.
“It was the night I had you driven home after the listening party. This had fallen into the back seat.”
At that moment, Shotgun’s eyes behind the sunglasses started shaking rapidly.
That night flashed back into his mind.
After the listening party, he had hurried out of the car in a frenzy because he needed the bathroom so badly.
He had been drunk, desperate, and in the middle of all that, one of the books must have fallen.
I’m screwed. No, maybe this is actually better? At least I’m the one bringing it up first.
He was so badly flustered that every carefully prepared sentence in his head evaporated.
So what came out instead was—
“...As a legal apprentice, I would like to handle legal advisory work for four years.”
That was not what he had planned to say.
The front and back were both cut off.
His nerves had hit the limit, his mind had gone blank, and he had blurted it out like some hyper-masculine idiot...
Legal advisory work?
Big Joe’s brow lifted.
He could not see the eyes behind the sunglasses, but the straight mouth remained unmoving.
Big Joe knew that expression well.
It had been the same expression when he turned down four thousand dollars, and the same expression when he spat out ART in front of Leonard.
A legal apprentice, huh.
A guy who, in front of a gang boss, revealed that he was a law student, then took it a step further and demanded to be made a legal apprentice.
If he had been an ordinary law student?
He would have panicked first and started trembling.
He would have tried to hide it.
He would have denied it, dodged it, and tried to keep his distance.
But this guy—
he was the one revealing it himself.
And then he was going one step further and offering a contract.
That nerve is unbelievable. It wasn’t just music. This is just the bastard’s whole lifestyle.
But Big Joe was not an ordinary person either.
How many years had he rolled through the streets?
There was no way he would simply accept a proposal like that without testing it.
“A legal apprentice out of nowhere. I have to admit, it’s a little unexpected.”
“If you establish the label, you’ll need legal advisory work.”
Shotgun’s low voice continued.
“Corporate registration, artist contracts, music distribution, copyright management, royalty settlement. All of those are areas that require legal review.”
“...”
“If you hand it off to an outside law firm, that’s hundreds or thousands of dollars per matter. Just to review a single contract. But if you keep a legal apprentice in-house, the cost drops sharply.”
Big Joe crossed his arms.
“You know most companies don’t use legal apprentices, right?”
“I know. That’s why I’ll speak based on what I’ve already done. The police stop. I halted the search based on the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. That was handled on the spot, with no prior preparation. There was no time to call a law firm and bring in an attorney.”
At the time, it had been fairly impressive.
The corner of Big Joe’s mouth had twitched upward.
“I’m already inside. Right beside you.”
A laugh rose inside Big Joe.
With nerve like this...
What would it look like if he really handled advisory work with that attitude?
Shotgun negotiating contract terms for LK Records with that low voice and that blank expression.
And besides, until now Big Joe had held back out of pride, but this would give him a justification too.
“Then I’ve got a proposal from my side as well.”
He grinned.
“When LK Records is established, how about signing on as an exclusive producer for four years?”
“...?”
“Four years of apprenticeship, four years of contract. Clean, right? After four years, it’ll be your choice. Whether you go become a lawyer or stay with music. I won’t interfere.”
It was a proposal Park Geon had not expected.
His brain began calculating rapidly.
A four-year exclusive contract meant being tied to the Crips gang for four years.
But if he thought about it the other way—
It means I can stably complete the four years of apprenticeship.
The core of California’s Law Reader Program was four years of legal apprenticeship.
No other place would take on a legal apprentice.
Professor Marshall had said as much, and that was the reality.
More importantly, once the apprenticeship period ended and he passed the bar exam, he would become a licensed attorney.
And then, just as Big Joe had said, he would finally have a justification for getting out of the gang world.
By the time his thoughts reached that point—
“...Deal.”
“Deal.”
Big Joe held out his hand.
Park Geon’s palm was slick with sweat, but there was no avoiding the handshake.
Grip—
Big Joe’s hand was solid.
Park Geon’s hand, perhaps because of the tension, was gripping back just as hard.
After the handshake ended, Big Joe put a cigar to his lips and exhaled smoke.
“Then, to celebrate the deal going through, there’s someone I want to introduce you to.”
Introduce me?
To who?
I narrowed down the possibilities in my head.
A newly recruited rapper?
An outside investor?
Or... another gang?
By the way, what’s Lil D up to these days?
He had been postponing the album work lately.
He kept repeating that he still needed more time.
Did he develop some kind of obsession?
Or maybe a slump?
Lil D did not seem like the kind of guy to fall into a slump.
Maybe something had triggered it.
Well, if all that extra time ends up improving the album quality, then it’s a good thing. I should just focus on what I need to do.
The equipment at HOOVER SOUND was far better than what I had at home.
Even the audio interface was professional grade.
So if I’m working here as a legal apprentice, that means I can use all this gear whenever I want.
There was still work I could do even without Lil D.
Organizing beat presets, planning the album track order, setting up EQ before mastering.
I put on the headphones and opened FL Studio.
When I opened the folder for Lil D’s album, a whole row of in-progress files spilled out.
Should I pull the reverb back a little more in this section?
As soon as my hands started moving, my mind cleared.
When I sat in front of music, the gang, the bar exam, the Bloods—everything was pushed into the background.
It was the only time I became completely pure.
After some time had passed—
Creeeak—
At the sound of the door opening, I turned my head reflexively.
Big Joe walked in first.
And beside him—
“!”
A huge Black man with his dreadlocks tied back.
He had his sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead, and his eyes carried both laziness and weight at the same time.
DJ Cabin?!
The reason I had started making music.
And now that person was standing right in front of me.
A living legend was right here.
Th-this is insane.
Cabin walked into the studio, looking around as he did.
He tapped one of the monitor speakers, ran a finger across the mixer’s fader, picked up one of the headphones hanging on the wall, then set it back down.
“Ayyy! This smell, it’s still the same. Cheap soundproofing material.”
“What do you mean cheap?”
Cabin smacked the mixing desk with his palm.
Then he started walking toward me.
“Yo.”
He followed it with a fist bump.
I can’t believe I’m fist-bumping DJ Cabin right now.
It did not feel real.
If the version of me who used to replay Cabin’s remixes over and over on SoundCloud could see this moment, he would probably faint.
“Big Joe told me about you. Producing, DJing, beatmaking. Damn, you do all of it? Fucking crazy.”
Cabin dragged over a production chair, sat down, and smacked his knee.
“You do all of it too, so don’t overreact.”
“Real recognize real. Real knows real.”
Judging by how casually he dropped formalities in front of Big Joe, the two of them must have been close.
“Wait.”
Cabin took a quick look at the screen I had been working on, and his expression turned interested.
“That EQ setup is kind of unusual. You clear space first for the rapper’s voice to sit on top?”
“...”
“Huh. That’s similar to how I do it.”
Big Joe asked from beside him, “How so?”
“I do it this way too when I lay down a beat. First I make breathing space for the rapper. And wait, look at this track structure. You tucked in an empty bar after the third bar of the verse.”
“...”
“That gives the rapper a choice there, right? He can throw in a freestyle or catch his breath. This is the same kind of thing I used to...”
His words trailed off.
Cabin’s gaze left the monitor and drifted into empty space.
“...Looking at this kid’s work style makes me want to hear it again for the first time in a long while.”
The two men exchanged a strange look.
Then Cabin opened a file on the computer.
And pressed play.
An unfinished track?
You could tell in a single listen that it was unfinished.
Only the broad frame had been laid out.
Could this be Lil K’s last track—the one Big Joe mentioned before?
That had to be it, because the intro was not rap at all.
It was more like wordplay.
A warm-up.
Playful, but carrying the warmth of a living person’s voice.
It was still only an incomplete skeleton, unfinished enough that even traces like that remained intact.
But—
...It’s good.
It was hard to explain.
Even from the bones alone, I could feel where the song wanted to go.
As if I could already see what shape it would take once flesh was put on it.
The song ended.
An unfinished track, barely over a minute long.
“Hey, Big Joe.”
“Yeah.”
“Listening to this makes me want to go somewhere for the first time in a while. You’re probably thinking the same thing, aren’t you?”
“...”
Under the shade, marble gravestones stood in neat rows.
Between them, flag decorations fluttered in the wind.
Keith “Little K” Robinson
1982—2004
Forever in the Beat
Three people stood before the grave.
Big Joe, Cabin, and Shotgun.
Cabin looked down at the gravestone for a long time, then twisted open the cap of the miniature bottle of Hennessy he had brought.
He slowly poured half of it over the marble.
Pour one out.
(Translator’s Note: Pour one out — A memorial gesture associated with street and hip-hop culture in which part of a drink is poured onto the ground or a grave in honor of the dead. The custom is older than hip-hop, but the phrase became especially recognizable through Black American and rap culture.)
A hood way of mourning.
Then he tossed back the other half in a single swallow.
“Yo, K. Thinking of you still makes me laugh. Big Joe, remember this fool? He’d be in the studio recording a verse, and then out of nowhere start making a scene because he was hungry and wanted to order chicken.”
Big Joe let out a long breath through his nose.
“I told him not to lose focus like that.”
“He never listened, not once.”
“Exactly.”
A dry laugh slipped from Big Joe’s mouth.
The kind of laugh where you could not tell whether he was really laughing or not.
Cabin looked down at the gravestone.
“He’d be structuring a track one second, then suddenly talking about basketball, then while talking about basketball he’d suddenly spit a verse. Even I never understood how his head worked.”
“...”
“But the results were always insane.”
The wind brushed through the palm leaves.
The Hennessy poured over the grave slowly dried in the sunlight.
Meanwhile, Park Geon—
...
He did not know what Little K’s face looked like, had only heard his voice for the first time a moment ago, and honestly felt no particular emotion.
He was not the kind of person so sentimental that he would cry at the grave of someone he had never met.
Still—
I’m so fucking tired I could die.
His eyelids had started to feel heavy.
For days now, he had barely slept because he had been so worked up over bringing the legal-advisory proposal to Big Joe.
Fortunately, since he had sunglasses on, it would not show even if he closed his eyes.
But the problem was—
A yawn.
...!
It was rising.
A yawn was forcing its way up.
No, no.
Yawning in front of the deceased?
At the grave of Big Joe’s own older brother?
Big Joe would bury me right beside him with his own hands.
He held it in desperately.
He clamped his mouth shut and tried to swallow the yawn by force.
No.
It would not stop.
It was coming up harder.
“...”
“...”
Cabin and Big Joe both inhaled sharply at the same time.
They had just looked at Shotgun.
Tears were slipping down from beneath his sunglasses.
The tip of his nose had gone red.
His mouth was tightly closed.
His jawline trembled.
Shotgun?
Big Joe could not believe it.
Shotgun was the kind of person who normally showed no emotion at all.
And now that same guy was standing here, in front of the gravestone, with tears flowing from beneath his sunglasses.
“...”
Big Joe stepped toward him without a word.
And the moment his heavy hand settled onto Shotgun’s shoulder—
“Shotgun.”
“...Almost now.”
The words spilled from Shotgun reflexively.
Huh? Almost now?
...Could he possibly be talking about the unfinished track?