Erica Kennedy
BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
- Title: Bling
- Description:
In the world of hip-hop Lamont Jackson is a major player. He's CEO of Triple Large Entertainment and he's won his considerable reputation by signing some of the most successful and controversial young rappers in the business. But now he needs to find an R 'n' B crossover artist to prove to himself and his paymasters that he should succeed his mentor, Irv Greene, as head of Augusta Music. He thinks he's found it with half-Haitian, half-Italian Marie-Jean Castiglione. Stunningly beautiful, with a voice to match, Lamont intends to mould his discovery into the perfect ghetto fabulous superstar. Before long Mimi, as she's now to be known, is seduced by the clothes, the fame, the sophisticated lifestyle she could only dream of as a naive young girl growing up in Toledo. But as her career gathers momentum, she finds herself losing control of her life. From the Publisher SHE'S FOUND FAME AND FORTUNE, BUT COULD SHE LOSE HERSELF? About the Author Erica Kennedy is thirty and grew up around New York's hip-hop glitterati. She has written about this world for US, Vibe, and In Style magazines. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpted from Bling by Erica Kennedy. Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 1 Excuse Me Miss "’CAUSE WE AIN’T NOBODY," LaToya said. Lakeesha turned from peering out the window of the Chesterfield Hotel, annoyed because her question—"Why they got us staying in this bum-ass hotel?"—had been a rhetorical one. There was no view. Just another hotel across Thirty-Seventh Street. And from what little she could see, the rooms over there were nicer. "I know," Keesha said. "But still...we didn’t even get a limo from the airport." "We didn’t need a limo," Mimi said, busily straightening up. "They sent a car and it was fine." "Why are you cleaning up Kenny’s room?" Keesha said, stretching out on the perfectly made bed. "Because I already finished with ours," Mimi said. "I can’t just sit around, doing nothing, waiting for the phone to ring. It’s driving me crazy." They were sharing the adjoining room but they were camped out here because their manager, Kenny Hill, would get the call—at the hotel since his cell-phone service had been interrupted for nonpayment —and they wanted to be there when he did. "Let’s eat," Keesha said. "That’ll give us something to do." She picked up the room service menu. "We can order food, right?" She frowned over at Toya. "They pay for that?" Last night after their audition at the Triple Large offices they had gone to Planet Hollywood on Broadway for dinner, hoping to spot some celebrities, unaware that it was a tourist trap populated by autograph-seekers like themselves where no celebrity would ever be caught dead. "I don’t know," Toya said wearily. Keesha was always looking for a free meal, literally and figuratively, and it got under Toya’s skin that she was so simpleminded. "You need to ask Kenny." "Where’s he at anyway?" Keesha said. She twirled one of her long microbraids. "It don’t take that long to buy a pack of Newports." Mimi didn’t care about the low-budget accommodations or that there had been no limo yesterday. Keesha thought this whole trip was going to be like an episode of Making the Band—she was obsessed with that show! Kenny did nothing to dissuade her from thinking it was going to be limos, parties, and Cristal bottles popping, but why on earth would anyone do that for them? They were nobodies. But they had come here to change that. They’d all met at Performing Arts School of Toledo. They joked they were like TLC, whose CrazySexyCool album was one of their all-time favorites. Keesha, big-boned and equipped with a razorsharp tongue, was the crazy component. Toya, a round-faced girl with a heart-warming smile and a degree of self-assurance that belied her years, was the cool. And Mimi . . . well, she wasn’t wild like Keesha and she didn’t possess Toya’s innate confidence, so sometimes she felt she got the sexy slot by default. No doubt, Mimi was pretty. Since she was a baby everyone had remarked on it. But in her usual baggy gear, sexy she was not. Tight jeans and midriff-baring tops invited attention, and as a biracial girl in a predominantly black school, she already stood out enough. All she’d ever wanted was to blend in. Her mother, Angela, was Italian, and Mimi couldn’t remember her Haitian father. Jacques Bertrand had run out on Angela a year after their only child was born, and the annual birthday cards that had arrived (late) with no return address stopped arriving all together after Mimi’s eighth birthday. She kept the details of her home life to herself as she did most things, managing to pull straight As while dodging the taunts of "white girl" and "high-yellow heifer." As if she thought she was better than the other girls. Just like many of them, she was raised by an overworked single mother, she rode the bus to school from the bad side of town, and the clothes over which they ran a disapproving "you think you cute" eye were paid for by the after-school jobs she’d been juggling since she was fourteen. She never made her looks an issue, they did. Toya, however, was different. She made that clear only two months into freshman year, when Nichelle Griffin had stormed over to Mimi in the cafeteria and began to lay into her for coming on to her boyfriend (even though it had been Nichelle’s wannabe teenage lothario who had been coming on to a completely uninterested Mimi for months). Toya, who Mimi knew only casually, had calmly looked over her shoulder from the next table and said, "You just mad because you wish you had that long hair. Go get yourself a weave and shut the hell up." Keesha, always spoiling for a fight of any kind, had jumped up to enter the fray but Nichelle had slunk away before she could. Toya, Keesha, and Mimi had been friends ever since. Later that year, their group was formed. They named it Heartsong. They debated endlessly about what kinds of songs they should sing, what kind of group they wanted to be. Keesha and Toya were into hip-hop. Mimi’s tastes fell more on the soul side. She idolized those female artists whose songs stirred something inside her more than an urge to dance. Her mother had harbored dreams of being a singer way back when and music was the only constant in their unstable lives. From Aretha to Alanis Morissette, Sarah Vaughan to Sarah McLachlan, Mimi would close her eyes and try to mimic their every inflection, pretending she was them, not a girl from Toledo who wouldn’t recognize her own father if she passed him on the street. That was how she got through performing onstage. She became someone else—whoever’s song she was belting out. She was pretending to be Beyoncé on the night they met Kenny at a local talent show; Heartsong had just won the top prize and three hundred dollars for their rousing rendition of "Bills, Bills, Bills," the Destiny’s Child hit.
