The critics were the best though.
They were the ones who never failed to teach me a lesson. They showed up at every show just to slam my words, my lyrics, and how I performed them. They ripped my shit to shreds, not giving a fuck that I spent hours bleeding over the pages—literally. My songs got written with black eyes and busted knuckles, in the middle of the night when my demons were awake, my thoughts were too loud, and the bottle of pills on the dresser became more and more appealing.
It was when the hours seemed to drag on and fucking on that TheColt wrote his life, got his aggression out, and talked through the shit in his head.
Only for my work to get chewed up and spit out by people who didn’t know shit about fuck.
But I was an easy target, and that wasn’t news to anyone.
Once I fixed the Bluetooth, I pressed play on “Chernobyl” by Oliver Francis and lit my cigarette, getting comfortable in my seat. We had a long drive from Orange County back to Silas’ place in the hills.
“Can you roll a blunt?” I asked Pharaoh, pointing to the glove compartment.
I needed it.
A show and shoot in one night weren’t uncommon, though the normalcy didn’t make it any easier. Especially since I was just featured on this song and it wasn’t a video for me. I had no creative control, just had to do whatever Silas’ director told me to do, but when he’d mentioned the setting being a party at his house, I held in my bitching. I could get down with a party. In fact, the louder the better.
Anything to drown out the asshole from tonight. I couldn’t get his awful fucking voice out of my head. “He won’t be able to get any further than he is right now. Give it a few years, he’ll give up and kill himself, no way he’ll survive all this.”
I tried so hard not to laugh, almost as hard as I tried not to slam my fist in his face.
The best part was his stupid ass wasn’t even the only problem tonight. My actual fans were nearly as bad. It’s funny how they paid all this money to see their favorite artists perform live—they showed up wanting merchandise, claiming they love you more than anyone else, they’d kill for just one night with you—except if you don’t get on stage and perform exactly like the monkey they expected you to be, then you’re the dirt under their entitled feet.
If they actually took the time to listen to the music, they’d hear, see, feel that I was fucking drowning.
But that wasn’t why people listened to music, they didn’t actually give a shit about the voice behind the sound or what it took to create the track. Not unless the voice was rich as fuck, hot as hell, and willing to follow every industry rule down to the lies. I didn’t fuck around like that.
That was where I differed from other entertainers.
I vowed early on in my career that the musicians I spent my time with would hustle just as hard as me, they’d write their own shit, even write for other, more mainstream artists. They wouldn’t phone it in just to save face. I didn’t expect to find the group I found though.
The guys and I were tight—our love and dedication to our individual craft was what bonded us all together. Each of them, no matter what type of artist they were, used music as the outlet that it was intended to be—an expression, a different way of telling a story, or for some of us…a diary of sorts. But there were other artists who didn’t think like that—people who coasted through their fame as songs written by someone else were handed to them on a silver fucking platter.
Silas Madigan wasn’t one of those artists. He was a close friend of mine, and saying yes to a feature on his latest track was a no-brainer, even better when it ended up being a solid fucking hit.
Taking a drag of my cigarette, I turned onto the 405, and was once again hit with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I was no longer in love with LA, done chasing the dream, now that I had seemed to have failed. The people were awful, the food was only good if it cost over a hundred dollars a plate—which was fine, I was good for it, but really?
Los Angeles was where I worked. Between club appearances, the label being in North Hollywood, doing impromptu shows, networking events, movie premieres, on top of owning a house in the Hills myself, the city was my playground. My place of work was fucking beautiful on the outside, but most of us knew how rotten it all was in the middle. It was especially obvious at night, when everything slowed down and the haunted souls of Sunset Boulevard came out to play. That was when us locals looked past the silhouetted palm trees, the deep purple skyline, and saw the truth.
“Here,” Pharaoh said through the smoke he held in his lungs, extending the freshly lit blunt in my direction. I threw the remainder of the cigarette out the window in favor of grabbing it, immediately sticking it between my lips and looking over my shoulder to make sure the next lane was clear to move. The asshole in front of me was driving too slowly—this was already going to be a late night, the sooner we got started the better. Pharaoh spoke up as he scrolled through his social media, “You brought a change of clothes, right?”
I glanced down at my outfit and blew out smoke. “Fuck, we should have gone to the buses. It’s all in my trailer.”
My best friend and drummer shook his head. “You never learn. You change like four times a day. You need to start bringing your shit into venues with you. Or leave a bag in the trunk, dude.”
“You make me sound like a fucking diva.” I rolled my eyes, seeing his stupid grin from the corner of my eye. “I would have brought a bag inside, but I’m protesting. Hendrix has been up my ass about wardrobe. Says I have a brand.”
“A fuckin’ brand.” He chuckled sarcastically, as if he couldn’t believe it. He ran a hand down his face, asking, “How in the hell did we manage to get here, bro?”
I had no idea, but it wasn’t something I was particularly fond of. Who gave a flying shit what I wore on stage? Hendrix, the label, my agent. Even Holly was on my ass more than I’d like.
I didn’t reply to Phar, angry all over again that my life had been turned into packed days full of press and perfection.
Fame offered me an outlet, but that outlet came with shit like branding, a mostly demanding and entitled fanbase, television interviews, and a highly anticipated tour coming up in a handful of months that I wasn’t even close to ready for.
Thing was, I was missing the one thing every person dealing with the power of fame desperately needed…someone to actually listen.
If I didn’t want to be alone, if I wanted someone outside of my group to hang out with, I could have it in ten minutes or less, but none of it was real. None of it was from the soul, no real connections were being made. Everyone wanted something from each other, a way to further our careers.
All that plus the industry bunnies? I was done. Quickly approaching my limit.
My phone rang in the center console, cutting off errant thoughts. My assistant’s pretty face popped up on my screen, so I kept her connected via Bluetooth and answered the call from the steering wheel. “What’s up, Holly?”
“Hey,” she answered, sounding a little out of breath. “Are you on your way?”
Holly was hired by my label and had been my assistant for just under six months. At first, I bitched about the prospect of an assistant, not liking the idea of someone all up in my space, but Hendrix, my manager, insisted that my schedule was going to fill up with the new album set to drop next year on top of the European leg of my Uninvited tour, and because of it, things would start to fall through the cracks.