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Posted on October 2, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

The reporter looked like an extra from a rap video. She looked hot enough to get a three-second scene of her own – quick cuts of face, lips, tits and booty and then she would be consigned to the background for the rest of the three-and-a-half-minute celebration of bling in the thug’s life. So it was unclear to the rapper she was interviewing whether she had tried and failed or thought herself above actually auditioning to be in a hip-hop video. Her Dictaphone was shiny and she looked friendly without giving the impression that she was going to get down on her knees and service him for an exclusive. Not that he had that kind of thought in his mind anyway (Even if I did, I wouldn’t admit to it. Plausible deniability forever!)

With a soft clearing of her throat she said, “Let’s start with why you’re called 1Shot. What’s the story there?”

The man in the bandanna and the hoodie shifted his compact frame so that everybody in the room got a sense of the power that emanated from him even though he was sitting down. He picked at the knee of his left jeans leg so that it didn’t stick under him and then he spoke, in a voice that sounded like expensive car tyres on loose gravel, “In the rap game, most players come armed with lyrical sub-machine guns. It’s a waste and excess. I ain’t about all that. I’m a sniper. I’m here to setup, take aim, spit and leave. I ain’t into any of that rat-a-tat-tat shit, no disrespect to the brothers and sisters who do that but with me, it’s more like Boom! Now you dead motherfucker and I can go eat my hamburger. In life and love and war and business, one shot is all you got.” When he was done talking he didn’t move and his beady eyes drilled into her as if to say, “I know you’re not wearing underwear and even if you are I can make it disappear purely by the power of my thoughts.”(Oh yeah I have you now bitch. That shit will fuck your readers up. It’s ironic I got a white piece of ass to be the first to hear my story. It’s there, I just gotta refine the delivery is all. What you got for me next mama? What you got that I can’t take?)

The hot reporter shifted slightly in her seat and consulted her notepad, “What’s your real name?”

The hot rapper went still, which was not to say that he was moving around a lot before, but the room went silent all the same. He fixed the reporter in his sights like he was taking aim with a muscle car before mowing a medium-sized deer down. He took a deep breath and said, “That’s the information my people gonna use to ward off the sophomore slump. For now, all the record-buying people need to know is this, ‘all you got is 1Shot so take aim ‘cause this is the kill shot.”

The reporter was already squirming in her seat and she wasn’t made more comfortable by the realization that the three behemoths he had introduced as his bodyguards had taken a couple of steps forward when she asked the question about his name. With a small cough she asked, “So tell us a little about the album. I’ve heard it, it’s louder than your average rap record and I remember thinking, the first time I heard it, that ‘this music is scaring me…’ What can the buying public expect?”

(Nice save. Another dumb question out of your ass and my boys would have made sure the world was less one reporter after your skinny white ass was done quitting the business.) He leaned forward and used his hands like he needed sign language to truly get his point across, “See it’s like this, all the music – the beats, the guitars, the chaos and the noise…? That’s the war zone. And my rhymes…? They the bullet that streaks through all of that and brings you face-to-face with the moment of truth. The experience of the audience is that moment after the bullet hits,” he smacked his fist into his free hand, “and the moment before life leaves.” His fingers reached for the sky and she was mesmerized. He brought his hands together like a priest going in for the final prayer and said, “1Shot. One moment. The moment of truth. Everybody else can bring it with that heavy machine gun fire of words, trying to subdue the opposition with speed and volume. I’m the nigger that walks into the room with a single bullet. One bullet is all you need, 1Shot is all you get.”

Even though her Dictaphone was doing a good job of getting down everything the rapper was saying she also felt the need to write down his last few words. When she had dotted her last ‘i’ and crossed her last ‘t’ she looked up and smiled, “Wow thanks. They said I only had ten minutes but this was great. Good luck with your album.” As she got to her feet he sat back in the plush seat in the well-appointed hotel suite, the insides of which he had never seen growing up. With his fingers steepled before his nose he said, “Luck is the bitch that swoops in to take the credit when a brother did everything to prepare himself for success.” She stood there thinking about that for a moment, until one of his bodyguards shifted his weight. She noticed and said, “Oh right. Sorry. I should go. Thank you again…1Shot. It was wonderful to meet you.”

“You take care of yourself now baby girl. The world is a big bad place and looks nothing like this here hotel suite.”

As she stepped out of the hotel and scanned the streets for a cab she said into her phone, “Smart guy, definitely has a brain in his head. The thing that freaked me out though…? His security guys looked like ex-Navy Seals or something. All this talk about war and snipers and stuff…we should check to see if he was in the Armed Forces.” A man in a suit bumped into her and she turned around to protest even though he kept going, “Excuse me! Asshole!” She realised she was still on the phone so she said, “Yeah no, some jerk totally bumped into me.” She listened for a moment as the person on the other end spoke. A cab stopped and she hurried over, “Yeah I can see that. Maybe it’s a marketing angle but you have to admit it’s a good one.” She climbed into the cab and said, “I’m in a cab. Talk to you soon? Okay, bye.”

It wasn’t until an hour later that she realised her Dictaphone hadn’t recorded anything and her writing pad had gone missing. Missing the exclusive cost her the job and the sexy reporter actually appeared in a couple of hip-hop videos before eventually making her mark as a music video director. The record company that gave her her first break said she had a keen eye for interesting details.

No publication featured anything about guns and single shots in their articles about 1Shot. His album opened huge and sold very well. Nowhere, except in the supermarket tabloids, did anything appear about his possibly having been a soldier before he picked up a microphone. The hot ex-reporter became too busy in her new career to wonder about the difference in 1Shot’s public persona and what she had seen in that hotel room.

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