I always want to know about the lives of rappers. Just what are they like. So I read hip hop “news” websites, which make their lives sound so stressful. Bow Wow’s life especially:
- “Rapper Takes Bow Wow’s Twitter Hostage, ‘You Want Page Back, I Want 10K'”
- “Bow Wow On Short Leash For Big Money Problem”
- “French Porn Star Sues Bow Wow, Claims Rapper Stole Her Moves”
None of this reveals what they actually do or think, though. There is no Neil Young’s “Waging Heavy Peace” for rap yet. No “Life” by Keith Richards. What a vile book that was. A breathless account of the drugs he took and the lengths he went to get them. Keith treats it like it’s the Odyssey. And would you believe it, he’s Keith Richardsy about everything, even his newborn son’s death! (Never knew the bugger).
But I imagine it’s fun for people who grew up with the Rolling Stones, and I want ones for rappers. And we aren’t quite there, but there are a few weird options while we wait. I just read “Wretched, Pitiful, Poor, Blind, and Naked” by “No Malice” of Clipse (formerly “Malice,” real name Gene Thornton).
It is a bizarre book.
It’s supposed to be an inspirational book about his rap career and how he was led astray and how he embraced God. That’s the template. But it’s actually about the two times in his life he was afraid he had AIDS, but it turned out that he didn’t have AIDS. I think the book might be his way of admitting that he has AIDS. I don’t know why it says Audio Movie on that cover.
I think this because everything about AIDS in it is super weird. So, in 1996, Malice of the Clipse thinks he has AIDS. He he has all the symptoms, including loose stool and “reluctance to get tested.” He has no idea how he got it: “Now seeing how I was happily married and faithful, I was at a total loss when trying to reconcile where this disease may have come from. I never once considered my wife being unfaithful.” He thinks maybe it was barbers clippers.
He gets so depressed that he can’t leave his bed. His doctor gives him a stool hardening medication. He goes to the library, “on one of my better days, when I could muster up the strength to climb out of bed from my depression,” so he can read books on HIV and “be my own doctor…That’s when I’d come to find that the medication proscribed for many HIV patients was the same stool-hardening medication prescribed to me. I immediately became more depressed than I was originally, and could hardly stand.”
He calls Pharrell to break the news. Pharrell says, “Gene, you’re just like me…too analytical. You over think everything. Chill out, you gonna be fine. We’re gonna get this deal, crush the game, and get this money!”
“Oh, how I wanted to believe him,” Malice writes, “but this time ‘Magnum the Verb Lord’ was wrong.” Wait, what?
Then he and his wife Tonya tell his parents that he’s scared he has AIDS.
“‘Ma..dad…’ I said hesitantly, ‘What is it?’ my mom asked. Tonya took over the conversation and said: ‘Mookie thinks he has AIDS.’ My mom casually said, ‘Well if this is what God has for us to deal with, then we deal with it.’ My dad said: ‘You ain’t got AIDS; don’t you know everyone goes through this kind of thing at some point, and if so we just deal with it.’ Instantly, 850 decillion trillion tons of weight off my back.” So: he doesn’t have AIDS but if he has AIDS his parents are okay with that, but his dad agrees: he doesn’t have AIDS.
Eventually he takes a test and he doesn’t have AIDS. Clipse blow up. Still no AIDS because he doesn’t have sex with groupies: “This part was pretty easy for me. I was happily married, and many times i served as the voice of reason for my crew.” But he does worries about it from time to time. At one point he think his HIV-positive half-brother Bup has given it to him out of jealousy:
“As we approach my friend’s front door, I, in a brotherly manner, put my arm around Bup. He then smacks my hand off of him. Even though this left me dumbfounded, I figured he just didn’t want any sympathy, I overlook it thinking: that’s his right to feel that way.
Then, we enter the house and take a seat. After a minute or two of my buddy’s hospitality, I look at my hand and notice I was bleeding. I rush to the sink and pour the first thing I could find over the wound, which was a soda. Did he just prick me? Naw, he wouldn’t do that to me. I’m his ‘brother’ OR was I his ‘half-brother’ who just got a record deal, and jealousy just reared its ugly head?”
This worry passes but a few years later his “symptoms” return and he is again convinced that he has AIDS. He wonders if he got it from having unprotected sex with groupies. That’s somewhat unexpected, when in the span of two pages the book goes from “I never strayed” to “I was a womanizer like Tony Soprano…I began to think all women were promiscuous…I even began to question my own wife, simply because she was of the species.”
Another reason he thinks he has AIDS is because a friend tells him that “some girl you messed with said you gave her AIDS and she’s dying right now. She also said she has a brother that is going to put a hit out on you.”
“I frantically tried to make sense out of this accusation by saying, ‘If this were true, this rumor would have spread like wildfire, especially seeing how I’m Malice of the Clipse. The streets would have quickly propelled this info! Now somehow i find a way to subdue this vicious rumor in my mind and go on to do the Herndon show, which was awesome! Afterwards, we have an after party in D.C. at club Love where I passed out and had to be wheel-chaired and loaded in my car; subsequently blocking Jay-Z and entourage from exiting the building. This still remains a mystery to me because I only had 2 shots of Patron and a Chardonnay.”
But he gets tested again and he doesn’t have AIDS. He confesses his infidelities to his wife and she forgives him. He still feels a little weird, but then he wakes up at 4 in the morning and realizes he needs to go to the willow tree where he proposed to his wife:
“Knowing I must do something, I decide to get dressed and go to the tree. Tonya awake and says: “Where are you going?” in a ‘nagging’ wife’ tone. Since she has never nagged me, I looked at this as if Satan was speaking through her, aware that I was on the right path, and he was trying to foil God’s plan. “Good Morning, baby.” I say angrily, giving off the hint this is how one should properly greet their spouse when waking.
When he gets there: “I touch the tree, kiss the tree, even tasted and savored the bark that stuck to my lips.”
After he leaves: “I decided to stop at Hallmark to get Tonya a nice card.” A little while later the book ends.