“You telling me like I don’t know, Jah. I was running these streets since before you were thought about,” Paul reminded him.

“I’ll give you that, bro, but there’s a big difference between running your mouth and busting your gun, ya heard? We gotta do this again sometime, fellas. One.” Jah threw his T-shirt over his shoulder and started for the park exit.

“Yo, y’all niggaz ain’t gonna finish the game?” Larry asked, throwing his hands up.

“You two have fun. Me and my man gotta take care of something,” Jah replied, making his exit.

True stood in the tiny recording booth within the bowels of Big Dawg Studios, glaring at the people sitting on the other side of the soundproof glass. Don B. sat monitoring the instruments while Lex was rolling a blunt. Pain lounged on the love seat playing with a hunting knife. The heat that mixed with the thick veil of smoke within the small chamber stung True’s eyes, but he didn’t need to see the music sheet to know his verses. This was his sixth take.

“Let’s try it one more time,” Don B.’s voice came through the speakers.

True sucked his teeth and lit a clip of haze he had been smoking. “Come on, fam. Why we gotta keep doing this shit?”

“Because it ain’t right yet,” Don B. answered.

“My dude, I’m in here spitting nothing but heat. How we ain’t got it down yet?”

“Because I said we ain’t got it down yet. Do it again, True.”

True and Don B. glared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. True felt he had just wrecked his verse of the latest Bad Blood song, “Never Without My Nine,” but for some reason Don B. kept making him do it again. This frustrated True because he was used to doing his own thing in the studio. When the Asian engineer was behind the boards, he let True and the other members of the group do their thing, but Don B. was a different case. He wanted perfection.

Seeing young True’s reluctance to do the verse over again, Don B. stopped the session. Cutting off the exterior speakers, he stepped into the booth with True. “Yo, what up wit’ you, fam?”

“Ain’t nothing up with me,” True said, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke.

“It gotta be something wrong with you, son. We’ve been in here for hours and you still bullshitting on the verse.”

“Ain’t nobody bullshitting, Don, I think it’s tight.”

Don B. twisted his lips. “You don’t even believe that shit, B. Your voice is mad flat, and I can hear you wheezing. You need to ease up on them cigarettes, yo.”

“Man, it ain’t the cigarettes,” True said.