“It’s gotta be something, fam. I’m paying too much money for this studio time for you to be in here playing, True.”

“Don, you know I’ll kick you something for the time.”

“Money ain’t the issue here, dawg. It’s your performance that I’m having a problem with. True, do you know the difference between you and them niggaz?” Don B. asked, motioning toward Lex and Pain, who were getting high and playing with the console. When True didn’t answer, Don B. continued. “They’re street cats trying to be rappers, whereas you’re a rapper still trying to be a street nigga. No disrespect to them cats, but I can’t see them putting out no platinum solo albums. They’re always gonna have the streets, but the crossover appeal ain’t there.”

“All we need is the streets,” True said, as if he knew what the hell he was talking about.

“Wrong. True, believe it or not, we’re gonna see most of our bread off them little white kids in the suburbs than we will from the hood.”

“Don B., that don’t make no sense. The hood has had your back since day one.”

“Oh, I know, and I love the hood for that, but they ain’t who’s going to the record stores buying my shit. You know as well as I do that a nigga in the hood is more likely to spend five dollars on a bootleg than to go into a record store and drop thirteen dollars on a CD, myself included. On the other hand, you’ve got those white kids from suburban America climbing over each other to get to the Virgin Megastore to cop that new Don B. shit.”

True sucked his teeth. “Fuck them crackers. They don’t know nothing about what we do down here.”

“That’s my point, God. The only thing these white kids know about the hood is what they hear on records and what they read in books. Why do you think the major publishing houses are suddenly so interested in the urban-book market? They’re making millions of dollars off a genre that they wouldn’t touch a few years ago. It’s all about marketability.”

“Yo, Don, I ain’t trying to be one of these niggaz out here rocking a shiny suit, you know that ain’t my style,” True said seriously.

“Ain’t nobody asking you to change who you are, True. All I want you to do is realize who you can become. We make good money getting spins on BET, but we’ll make more if we get spins on MTV. To get the type of paper that’s due to us, we gotta put out a superior product. Understand where I’m coming from and do the verse over.”