Funny and Random – yeah, a little meaningless tale about my life.

Funny thing happened to me this week. On Monday, I received an email from my friend G down in Miami Beach. G is a cool cat whom I have not seen in years – like, 17 years, ya heard? We have reconnected via email over the past year or so, and hopefully we’ll see each other in NY or F-L-A soon enough.

So G emailed “Call me tonight. Important” to both my work and gmail accounts. I was intrigued. I rang him, and it turns out that his mom asked him to help a Moscow journo (who speaks only Russian) interview Scott Storch. He recalled that I emailed him a video clip of Busta Rhymes hanging out with Storch and generally being the immature idiot that Busta is, and he remembered that my email mentioned Storch. He wanted the lowdown on the little dude since G’s not really in the music scene and didn’t know much about him. I filled him in, we had a long catch-up conversation, and that was that.

Last night I got home after dinner with a friend and and received a text message on my mobile: “I’m with Fat Joe…we’re going to interview him too…we don’t know what to ask…need a life line here!” I replied asking whether he could call me, he asked if I was on email, I started to get on and he rang me. Convo was funny: What do I call him? Fat Joe? Joe? Fat? Joe, I suggested – Just ask him. How much money does he have? Does he have more money than Storch? Hell yeah, dogg. Plenty more. A quick history of Fat Joe, some suggested questions, and a promise to email him some more questions with the quickness. According to G, we’ve got some time: “We’re still waiting for Storch to wake up, man. We’ve got at least a half an hour.” Ok, cool. Bear in mind that it’s around 8.30pm at this point, so Wee Man Scotty keeps slightly different hours than many of us. But, you know, good on him or whatever. Mazel tov and all that.

I get the gmail action going and start banging out questions. First directive from G was sort of “dumb it down, these kids are in Moscow” which didn’t sit right with me because most hip-hop fans outside the US know their shit better than the fans in the States, do more graf, still paint whole train cars, know all the lyrics, and generally have more respect for the history of the whole movement. US-based fans want to know where Jim Jones gets his balls waxed or something. I start with a mix of questions to both satisfy G’s request and honor my belief that the Russian readers are savvy. G calls me five minutes later to tell me that the reporter has assured him that, as I guessed, the fans in Moscow know their stuff, so I should feel free to dive a little deeper. No problem. Still have time? No, we’ve got maybe a few minutes, so hurry.

I’m typing like a madman now – what was it like to work with Pun and L, what would the landscape look like if they were still around, how has your style changed since Represent in 1993, questions about the latest record, what’s next for Terror Squad, how much time does he spend in Miami, etc etc. Just thinking of stuff as fast as I can. Meanwhile, G is sending me texts every two minutes: Send whatever you have rt now! And just a simple “nownow”. Funny. I hit send, he does the interview, calls me later to tell me it was all lovely. Mission accomplished.

So I got to ‘ask’ Fat Joe some questions and help out a homie in the process. Not bad for a piece of a night’s work. I’d love to see the final product, although I suppose G would have to translate that too.

To be honest, though, G should have just put me on speaker.