Dear Pharaoh #9 - Red, Koke, Rocnation, a mystery man and a fuck off Mansion.
Never judge a book by its cover, remain humble and respect everyone.
Dear Pharaoh,
Sometimes it gets to the weekend, projects go into the ‘check up on what the team needs from me cycle’ and I just sit there. Like the larger strategy has been planned and the doers are doing and I’m just in observation mode.
I hate this mode, the way I plan things is to the point I have the contingency upon contingency. I learnt a lot from Batman - the world’s greatest detective to always be over-prepared. I hate it here. But I hate working just to work to be a busy fool even more - I am results-driven - so I get to points where I just reading and research things that in the future I may or may not be able to use - who knows what I may or may not need lol. I am unhappy when I am not working. Working on my craft and projects is fun for me. I don’t just work ‘to keep my mind off things’ like people constantly say to me: “are you working to keep busy so you don’t face reality”, “You work too much, sometimes have fun”, “you blah blah blah” and I just sigh heavily and say, “I enjoy what I do, this is fun for me” and if I am feeling a bit cheeky, I would then say “talking to you, human beings are more hard work for me” lol - end it with a cheeky smile lol. I have literally got to the point that, I had to understand that, people don’t understand that, working is my favourite thing to do. Apart from chilling with you, watching you develop, working is literally fun for me.
But I get it, most people hate what they do, they do it because they have to - they live for the weekend, to do and be what they want to be -I understand that they feel trapped or not free, because at the end of the day, everybody has to work and everybody needs to make money. But people learn very quickly that I don’t care for money, it doesn’t move me. It can not control me. It can not buy me. I have been in some real wealthy places and spoke to some really wealthy people and honestly, there is no real ‘wow’ factor in it for me.
They are just people. Human beings with hopes and dreams, fears and missions - they may or may not want to complete - just like you and me. That’s it. At the end of the day, everybody in the world is just a human being… Treating anybody like they are more than, or less than you makes you lesser than everybody. This is the true nature of what being ‘humble’ means.
A lot of people fake humble, they say the right things to seemingly ‘lessen’ their influence or achievements - so others can speak for them (great tactic by the way) - but their minds are intoxicated with terrible statements and they see people who are not doing as ‘well’ as them - on their spectrum - to be beneath them. Some of these people can hide it well, but just listen, observe, pay good attention to when they speak. Keywords speak more volume than who - in that time - these are ‘acting’ to be.
Remember, I explained about chasing dopamine, delayed gratification and narcissism? - read here: Understanding the dynamics of humans and how to become a MAN - well... If you lock into a person’s ‘energy’ you can feel the real them they are trying to hide behind a screen.
The Japanese have a proverb that says we have three faces:
The first face, you show to the world.
The second face, you show to your close friends and your family.
The third face, you never show anyone.
I love this proverb because it amplifies a lot of things for me - we will dissect this proverb, in another post. It really provided context to my personal discovery.
Anyways… Let me tell you a story!
Ima title it:
Red, Koke, a mystery man and a mansion..?
One time, me and your uncle Redskull was on a road trip, we were on our way to a Mansion that was rented out by RocNation for K Koke - the hottest UK rapper at the time. I forgot the name of the area but it was towards Kent sides. I was driving a brand new Benz, C Class coupe new model, no one (hardly anyone) on the road had it apart from me - your uncle Aaron worked at McLaren, at the time, and you know, conversations happened and I was riding dirty. I hated the car really… It was my first real taste of what people saw as ‘success’, I was making BANK that time with my first digital consultancy, your mother was living with me, and I was working 24/7 on designs and plus some brand management jobs I took on the side. I just met your mother a few months before, this was coming to my 4th year of uni and got a summer job at BestBuy - my commute to BestBuy was two hours each way and I had NO money to get to work. I was jumping trains, stayed at a friend’s house - a few times - who lived locally, eating 99p pack of donuts for breakfast and lunch I was in the trenches mate but that is another story.
Driving up through the countryside, your uncle Red and I was blasting GOOD Kid, M.A.A.D City - Kendrick Lamar - breaking down the intricacies of the storyline, bar structure and beats. It was a hot summer’s day, the wind was blowing through the car and your uncle occasionally lent outside the window and made some ‘woo noises. Red and I had a special relationship. A lot of the nights I didn’t sleep we would be chilling in the car with our laptops, he will show me his beats - he is a music producer - and I would show him my designs, and when the sun would rise, we would literally start our days… The satnav took us past some old school slavery looking ass church place and then 10 minutes later we were driving through a national park. Red and I looked at each other and said “you think we going the right way?” And I made a joke that he was going to “sacrifice me” - you haven’t met him yet but your uncle Red is white.
We got to a fork in the road and it said the name of the place we had on text, so we turned left and drove. The driveway was at least 3 miles long. We drove up to a beautiful Mansion. The catering team was already outside in white tents, soft gravel ground and the colour of the building was like an off-white.
Red was like “look at this place!” One thing I loved about Red was, that he is a real honest guy like he would express real feelings and excitement and we would nerd out about certain things. I remained composed, the most Red probably got out of me, at that moment, was “Dope”…
We got to the front door and walked inside. Two statues greeted us. One of Julius Caesar and the other Alexander the Great. We looked up in the hallway and the ceiling had a beautiful stylisation to it. You see, my main trade at the time was architectural visualisation, so when I looked at places all I saw was the layout, the flow of the rooms, details in the walls and doors and structural design. Everything to me firstly appeared as ‘wireframe’ topology lines… There was a floor above, and it was just nice. I locked back into reality and heard the music playing. We saw the Filming crews - gave a little head nod - saw clothes and a stylist - said hello - and walked straight through to the Mandem and spotted K Koke.
Greeted man with all the “what’s good bro” and all them things there, then I went up and greeted K Koke “Love bro” - one-arm hug and you know - “what’s good?”… I always enjoyed seeing the smile on Koke’s face. There was something about him, something that I just liked. K Koke is from Stone bridge - North West - and Bridge is and/or was a rough place. There are a couple of ends in London where mandem really do put in work and Koke and the mandem came from one of those places. I liked Koke… not because he was famous - the first UK rapper signed to RocNation, Jay-Z’s label - he would tell you, I didn’t give a shit that he was famous. In fact, the way we used to talk, I didn’t gas him up like what others tried to do, I was just real and told him when a beat was dead or when a bar didn’t flow, etc. I just felt like he just knew… I liked Koke because I liked his energy… I saw this kindness in him… Like certain man do what they have to do to get out, and other man love the bravado and the thrill of being on the roads. I felt like Koke was the former - he did want he had to do. Ironically, he just came off a murder charge lol. Anyways, Koke was doing his thing, in and out the room to film scenes, dressed mad sharp - with the mandem - and I was genuinely happy for him. The song he was filming featured Bridget Kelly - she was signed to RocNation too and she had a real powerful voice. I’ll be honest… She gave me the eye - You will know what the eye is when you get to a certain age - she gave me the eye and in my mind, I said “Nope, Dante, keep away” - Dante is/was my rapper/social media name. I had a few aliases, I really kept my personal life, work-life and entertainment life deeply separated, if you knew you knew but you didn’t really know you know? - I kept away because ‘prevention is better than cure’ and your mother’s everything to me.
Anyways, see K koke’s video here:
The song’s essence was about where he came from and what he is doing ‘now’ - at that time - with the mandem, in new spaces, and the track really embodies what I felt and saw in Koke. It was a real ‘come up’ story track. He had his anticipated album coming: ‘I ain’t perfect’ and his fan base was just diehard.
What a lot of people didn’t know about Koke, and/or saw, was when Koke came out of prison - for the murder charge that was dropped - he was just thrown into the fame. No adjustment. Imagine, just as he got signed to the most influential label in the world and was chilling with Ty Ty and JayZ BOOM! He was in prison, behind these little gates... I don’t know what happened - inside - but he came out to a whole different demand for his person - I didn’t know him prior to his signing but Red did. He had writer’s block… he had writer’s block but he did not express to anyone, I clocked it in studio sessions, and so we would just go line for line and rock, to me, his rhyming style was structured with no complications, no-nonsense and his storytelling, wordplay and deliver was top notch. He felt like a DMX to me - I am a BIG DMX fan - but Koke had a swagger that was youthful and just lit. He made the road life, the pain and trauma he felt, feel ‘fun’ - he has this freestyle talking about his ‘Mrs’ that just hypnotises me, wordplay amazing and the ‘Mrs’ he is talking about is not a woman lol. He has this energy that can’t be replicated. I saw why JayZ signed him.
Check the freestyle here:
If you know me, you’ll know I don’t tend to like UK rappers, they don’t respect real lyricism but Koke, he did… I think the reason why I liked Koke was that he reminded me of me, I saw a ‘me’ story but his ‘working’ conditions were much harder.
Anyways, Red and I went downstairs to the basement, it was like a man cave. long ass wall to wall sofa and a massive looking 80’ tv and some mad remote control I’ve never seen before. Now, the mansion was split into 3 sections. The left-wing, the centre and the right-wing. They were filming in the right-wing, we were in the centre/basement but no one was allowed in the left-wing and that was calm.
The basement had a side area and in there was an MMA cage, gym with weights and some artwork and trophies on the walls. We were chilling, talking to Shabs - Rocnation A&R - I knew of him because of your uncle Mesh and a few other mandem. An Olive skinned white guy walks in, quite an athletic build but wasn’t dressed like everyone else. He sat down beside me and said “so I heard there’s a rap singer in the building, I’d like to meet him”. I said, “he is filming at the moment but when he’s free I’ll see to introduce him”. He took to me there and then, and said “you seem like a nice guy, what do you do?” At that time my ‘specialism’ was architectural visualisation and branding, so we had that conversation - I think he was surprised but who knew - he asked me what does an architectural visualisation designer do and I hit him with my elevate pitch - forever ready for these things bruh! He was like “nice” and we got into a deeper conversation, discussing business, conceptualisation and some light philosophy… I said to him “I like you but I noticed you never told me what you do”…
I figured from the way he said “rap singer” that he was the owner of the building and his energy felt like he was a man of influence. He smiled, very charismatically and said “I sit on the board of J.P Morgan”… Now I was studying the investment management world, at the time, because a few of my client’s financial advisors were from Rothchilds and I just needed to understand them and the landscape. I looked at him and said “you look around 38-39 quite young” and he said “how did you guess that? Your correct” and we got int to his story in a banter-like way. He explained how he put in work to work his way up onto the board, didn’t know how he got there but he did and this house was a result of the hard work he has done, he was nonchalant about it but I felt like he appreciated it from where he came from. He Explained some other things, he told me that the mansion was too big for him and his family, so he and his family live/stay in the left-wing and rent out the other spaces in the house because “why not?” The maddest thing is he had to go and I never followed up or even googled his name, and I’m glad I did. It was an interaction that I remember until this day, In fact, that interaction proved to me that people are just people like you and me and he just did what he had to do to get where he got, what he got done.
“If you can talk to anyone, you have superpowers. Most people can't do this. Be the minority.” - A tweet I saw but couldn’t remember the @ name.
I guess the lesson in this one, is to never judge people, you don’t know who they are, what they do and where they have come from. Sometimes just speak to anyone, I’ve had conversations with people that other people ignore - on a day to day, for not looking cool - but most of the time these people are the most interesting ones. Learn their story, understand their person and just explore life through their lens. This will teach you so many things about life and how to truly be a humble man.
You know what’s funny, people look at me and believe - at default - I will be arrogant, vain or a gyalist but as soon as they get to know me they realise that I am actually a cool, down to earth person - maybe that is them projecting? Or distaining what they assume would reject them…? Who knows! But anyway, never judge a book by its cover, always observe and learn to read them.
Now, the trick is to listen, speak when spoken to and say hi/hello and smile at everyone. God gave us two ears and one mouth for a purpose, my son, use it in the ways it was intended to be used, and you will learn some wonderful things.
Love dad x