Unruly by Ja Rule Page B

getting.
    â€œOh my God,” she whined, “I’m going to have to take care of this baby all by myself, since you’ll be on the road.” She rolled her eyes and turned her back as she buried her face into the pillow.
    There were a lot of nights like that when we were together but didn’t have much to say. Everything that was happening was too heavy to talk about. We just had to let that shit simmer. Talking too much wasn’t going to help. The baby talk was starting to scare me, too. I didn’t know what to say to her. Was she expecting me to say that I would be there to help with the baby? I couldn’t speak too soon. I didn’t want to make any promises that I couldn’t keep. Shit was popping off for my music. They were planning a tour that I would be on. I would always love the baby and Aisha, forever, but I may not be there to change diapers and shit. I would be out on the road, on stage, signing autographs—where I belonged. I would be being the man that I said I’d be.
    I’m a godsend, the fallen angel and I do sin
    Far from perfection but still considered a gem
    Thank you lord for givin’ me wind beneath my wings
    When the miracle spittin there shall be no witnesses to da pain
    And my ignorance, I charge to da game
    So many love and slain by bullets wit dead aim
    I weathered the change
    I read over the verse one more time. With my verse staring back off the page at me, I wondered why I wrote the word “godsend .” Was I a godsend to anyone? Certainly not my father. Was I a godsend to Moms or had I done nothing but give her problems?
    For Aisha, I was a godsend, maybe. She did say to me that I was the most stability she had ever had. She was for me, too. It was in the back of my tattered notebook that was running out of pages. It would soon be time for a new one or to retire those notebooks altogether. The verse was okay, but I wasn’t feeling it all the way just yet.
    I did have a strange feeling that there was something with me, looking over me. Maybe God didn’t forget us, after all. Maybe it was Kristen. I could feel it. Kristen’s spirit was giving me wind beneath my wings. I smoked a little more trying to figure it out. A title for this joint finally came to me. “We Here Now.” I didn’t want to write it down, just yet. I wasn’t fully ready to commit to anything.
    Â 
    IN ALL OF THE EXCITEMENT of having a video and a pocketful of drugs to sell, in the blink of an eye, Black got caught out there, and because he had some drug-related priors, he was arrested and ended up doing time.
    The dream was dead before it started. The Cash Money Click project was on hold.
    From Steve Gottlieb’s perspective, five years was a long time for a label to stick to a commitment to a trio with one-third of its members in a cell. He said, “I can’t make videos with just the two of you.”
    DJ Irv was finally getting some recognition as Mic Geronimo’s producer. Suddenly, his presence grew and being known as simply DJ Irv was not enough. Jay-Z gave him the nickname Gotti after John Gotti of the infamous Gambino mafia crime family in Brooklyn. Jay-Z was always on that gangster shit. Gotti liked the name because it symbolized a “Boss” and that is who he wanted to be in the rap game. DJ Irv became Irv Gotti.
    In the meantime, Gotti had already started scheming and planning a solo project for me, despite the entanglement with TVT. Steve Gottlieb, who was once our savior, quickly turned into an enemy. Our frustration with the situation was so bad that I started drinking and smoking more than ever. The realization that I would be stuck a hustler for the rest of my life came into full view. There was seemingly nowhere I could go, musically. I had gotten a record deal but couldn’t record.
    I thought about running up in Steve Gottlieb’s office with some guns, which would have been easy to pull off. I had heard a