“Where would I be without you… I only think about you… I know you’re tired of bein’ lonely… So babygirl… Put It On Me… Yeah… Yeah”. Ahhh…. Ja Rule in the late 90s and early 2000’s holds such a stronghold in my memory. Every single time I hear “Put It On Me” or “Mesmerize” or “I’m Real” or “Always on Time”… Man… it brings me back to middle school dance parties where my signature move was to wait for the Ja Rule verses to come on and I would hit em with a flawless… word for word… lyrical masterpiece of the verse that was blaring over the speakers. Now… I am sure this all sounded much better in my head than it actually did in person so thankfully the music was loud enough where my audience most likely could just see by my lip movement that I knew the words as opposed to actually hearing my voice… but I’ll choose to remember me killin it none the less. So… when I sat down in the TV room on Thursday night and saw that some of the guys in there were watching the “Murder INC” documentary… I immediately tuned in.
Murder INC is the record label run by Irv Gotti that produced all of the bangers listed above… plus many, many more. Irv produced so many hit songs in the late 90s and early 2000s from Ja Rule… Ashanti and other artists that every other minute while watching the doc… another song would pop up that would flood my brain with memories. Once again… the power of music… I have always been captivated by these melodic treats but since I have “been down”… the love affair has been real. The documentary chronicled the origins of the record label… the good times… the ‘not so good times’ when the life style…drugs…”beef” between artists or legal issues made it difficult to focus on the craft. But it also showed the perseverance which led to more recent endeavors outside of music that Irv focused his talents toward. He discussed a time about 10 years ago when he was dealing with some legal issues that made headlines and turned the industry against him… as negative headlines tend to do. But instead of hanging his head and feeling sorry for himself when his calls weren’t being answered by the people that he had made millions of dollars with and launched lucrative careers alongside… he pivoted his creative talents. He looked back at his catalog of records and created a television show called “Tales” in which each episode was the narrative story of the track. The show was picked up by BET and he was off to the races on the next chapter of his career. This resilience… this perseverance… it was inspiring to watch.
And then as the documentary was coming to a close… Jay Z was on the screen talking about the unstoppable force that Irv Gotti is and how much he respects his hustle and his talents… the screen fades to black… “In Loving Memory of Irv Gotti 1970 – 2025”. He died last week. I was so confused. First because I hadn’t heard anything on the news or TMZ about his passing followed by being overcome by the feeling of “No… he can’t die now… this is his next act… he is just getting started”. But he did… he is gone and I know it may sound strange but it hit me in a surprising way. It brought me back to the day that Kobe passed away. These individuals… that I do not know and have absolutely zero connection with… passing away eliciting this deep emotion of sadness.
I think the realization that Irv passed away as the documentary ended hit because he had just overcome a rough patch in life… he then sold his catalogue for Fifty Million dollars cash and a Two Hundred Million Dollar line of credit in order to work on other creative projects… he was beginning the next phase. When Kobe passed away… he had recently retired from the game of basketball… he just won an Oscar for a short film that he created… you could see the incredible love that he had for his daughters and his family and the joy that he got out of being able to be with them in a different capacity now that his basketball career was over… and then… gone. Both of these tragic deaths forced me to reflect on my own circumstances. And it scares the absolute sh*t out of me. I spend so much time thinking about the future… about my next act… about myself and my ‘tribe’ surviving this journey of incarceration and making it to the part where I am physically back with my boys and my family and my friends… and the thought of not being alive long enough to experience that… man… it’s heavy.
But it is a reality for so many of us in one way or another. We all have hopes and dreams and aspirations about tomorrow but tomorrow is simply not promised. And no amount of money or fame or accomplishment can keep us on this planet for one day longer than our health allows. We must cherish every single moment that we get… especially when these moments finds us with the ones that we love and above all else… prioritize our health. We spend an insane amount of time on the ‘hustle’… late nights… fast food… drinking… drugs to stay awake and then drugs to go to sleep… work… work… work. And we tell ourselves that we are too busy to slow down but please… slow down. Take care of yourself. Drink water. Wear sunscreen. Hit the gym. Go to sleep. Cook your own food. Socialize. Get outside. Because at the end of the day… nothing else matters.
Times like these re-ignite that fire inside of me to work on myself… mentally – physically – emotionally… every single day so that I am the healthiest version of me that I can possibly be for those two boys out there. Because I will be damned if I let one second of life pass by that I am not becoming a better version of myself for them. So that… at least if I have any say in the matter… when I step past these gates… I will be there… right by their side… every single day until we are just one really old man sitting next to two kinda old men talking about the “old times” we were lucky enough to experience together throughout this life.
Now that… that… is what it’s all about.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Stay Alive!
“The arrival is inevitable: Death.
A unanimous end, a unified destination.
A noun without regard.
Our Eulogy. Written. Lived.
The approach is relative: Life.
A singular procession, our personal journey.
A Verb with regard.
Write It.
LIVE IT.”
- Author Unknown but very much felt.