Page 101 of Sing Your Secrets

Petey, lying next to me, laughs as I hold out my hand, asking for the blunt. “No, bro. ‘Stars should be for inside too’? You’re done.” He snuffs out the tip in our makeshift ashtray—a blue Solo cup.

“You’re not feeling it?” I ask, fighting the urge to laugh at everything I say.

“Oh, I’m feeling it, but you’re on Mars, my friend.”

“Fuck,” I say with a chuckle. “You’re right though.” By some miracle, I’m able to sit up. Rising to my feet, I float over to the bar and pull two room-temperature water bottles from the underneath storage area. “Water?” I hold a bottle out to Petey.

“Please.” He downs half of it in a few glugs. “So, when are you getting your ass back to the studio? Mac’s waiting.”

I snort. “Oh, Petey Pete the Sneak…Mac doesn’t want to work with me. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Petey Pete the Sneak? Shit man—no one’s called me that in half a decade. Reese used to hate that nickname,” he mutters before he finishes the rest of his water and crumples it in his hand. “Do we recycle?”

Who the hell is this guy?Recycles. Humble. Shares his weed. He’s a genuinely friendly guy. They say don’t meet your idols—but fuck, are they wrong.

I snatch up the bottle and throw it in a brown package box. It’s where I’ve been hoarding the plastic and aluminum recycling until our trash service officially starts. “Sorry,” I mumble.

“For what?”

“The nickname, I didn’t mean to offend you—”

“Oh, I’m not offended. Everyone thought sneak meant I was running around on her, but the nickname came from my boys in Atlanta who said I came out of nowhere. I was just this wannabe from little ol’ Denver that no one thought would amount to anything, and somehow my first album upset the whole industry. They called it a sneaky takeover.”

“She didn’t understand?” I ask, taking a sip from my bottle, enjoying the feel of the cool water coating my throat that’s still on fire.

“It’s hard not to be paranoid and jealous when you’re a woman put in that position. And I didn’t give her…” Petey runs his hands over his cornrows and looks at his all-black sneakers with a pause. “Enough attention, I guess.” He shrugs. “There’s a lot of pressure to sell the sex appeal. Single is sexy in hip-hop. Committed relationships only work well for country stars.”

“What? That’s garbage, man. If you’re in love, why hide it?”

“You’ll see,” he singsongs.

“I seriously doubt that. Maybe R&B stars need to look single, but bar managers? We get to be old, bald, beer-bellied, happily married men.”

Petey tsks his tongue. “You’re going to walk away that easy? All because Mac was testing you a little? Come on, man. You have more fight in you than that, don’t you?”

I shake my head and feel the entire room shift. I widen my eyes as if that could help my double vision. “It’s not just Mac…I was in L.A. for a long time and got rejected left and right. I thought it was because I wasn’t getting seen. I didn’t realize it was because I wasn’t any good. I don’t want to settle for singing covers. I wanted to make music…I thought I had something.”

“You do. You have something, Miles. Now you have to go make something great.”

Crumpling my empty water bottle, I toss it behind me and miss the brown box. Grumbling, I retrieve my trash. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Mac’s a little salty about major labels.”

“Yeah…why?”

“Because he used to work for one. They paid him well. He worked with a lot of big names, and he hated his life.”

I blink, trying to focus, but my voice and Petey’s sound like an echo. “Why?”

“Because it was the same antiquated bullshit on repeat—money, pussy, crew love, thug life, West Coast, East Coast. People were pumping out singles left and right, hitting the top of the charts with…garbage. It frustrated him to no end. And not just the music, he hated seeing how the artists were treated. It was more about deadlines and appearances than it was about the music. They built an entire industry off of someone’s image. Music became a byproduct of fame.”

Lifting my heavy eyes, I watch Petey’s lips twitch. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. I signed my life away when I signed with Elite. Mac warned me. He wouldn’t work with a label, ever again. I chose money and fame because I thought it meant security. And for a long time, I had to watch the dough roll in, while my soul seeped out. That’s why I’m back. Seven years, four albums, and I’m done. I’ll never make another album again unless Mac produces it.”

I feel my buzz lessen, chased away by the importance of this conversation. “I always thought the path was make a demo, get a deal, then make an album. The producers who worked on my demo wouldn’t even let me listen to the track until I got to the studio. Then it was just about wrapping up as quickly as possible because the room was booked back-to-back. I’m not used to someone looking at me this closely.”

“Mac is really thorough. A visionary. He sees everything.”

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