Free American Warlord by Johnny Dwyer Page A

to the culture. At first, it was a girlfriend—a schoolteacher who lived in his apartment complex—and, eventually, a child. While living there, he was drawn to some of the island’s spiritual practices. 18 He sought out advice from an Obeah woman, the type of sorceress who could cast spells or read his future. According to Lynn, the fact that her son was not relying on her advice drove Bernice to jealous anger.
    But island life proved small and claustrophobic. Chucky sought an outlet. If he were stuck on the island, he at least could make something of the experience. Just as he had insinuated himself into Liberia’s national preoccupation with politics, he waded into the cultural lifeblood of Trinidad: music.
    It began in his tiny apartment. A cousin from Lithonia, Georgia, had sent Chucky CDs of instrumental music she had composed and then layered over with hip-hop beats. He would flip on a track, set it on repeat for thirty or forty minutes, and, as he explained, allow “the track to speak to me instead of me trying to impose my concept or approach on it.”
    He began filling legal pads with pages and pages of lyrics, gutting the past of images and ideas, giving memories shape and form between drum breaks and oscillating keyboard lines. Months passed. Chucky’s cousin continued to send music. He continued to write. Eventually he decided it was time to put it all down in the studio.
    Eclipse Audio was a small, four-room recording studio run by three friends on Maraval Road, a tidy, shadeless residential street not far from Saint James, Port of Spain’s nightlife strip. The studio’s proprietors, Dion Camacho, Phil Hill, and Sean Poland, were musicians in their late thirties making a living tracking everything from radio jingles to local calypso and Soca legends. Hip-hop wasn’t Eclipse’s particular forte—Dion and Phil played together in a Britpop band—and when Chucky arrived at the studio, his presence immediately raised questions.
    “What is an American dude doing in Trinidad recording rap?” 19 Camacho recalled asking his colleagues.
    Chucky booked a few forty-dollar-an-hour sessions, several hours at a time, always paying in cash. But he remained vague about himself, explaining only that “he had family” in Trinidad and “was down here chilling for a while.”
    Chucky would usually arrive at the studio alone, carrying his lyrics and a few bottles of Guinness. For the most part, Dion and Phil remained downstairs working in the office while Sean Poland, the studio’s engineer, ran the sessions. Poland, a soft-spoken, heavyset Indo-Trinidadian, sat upstairs at the controls in the mixing room, which looked across a narrow hallway into the isolation booth. Chucky handed him a CD that he wanted to lay vocals over, stepped into the booth, and put his headphones on.
    Poland sized Chucky up. He seemed nice, direct, and confident. He always showed up in name-brand shoes and clothes, but didn’t necessarily look or carry himself like a rapper—no bling, no entourage. Chucky gave him the instrumental music for a track he called “Brains.” Poland was not anticipating what came through the speakers the moment he hit “record.” A frenetic, Cypress Hills–esque loop kicked in. Chucky paused a measure, then let loose:
    ATU boy, ATU fought in the
    Streets, where you at man?
    You know
    You gonna make me call your names out
    Beat your brains out
    Bust your fuckin’ ass, got you laid out
    Poland focused on the levels on the board, not giving the lyrics much thought. The initials ATU—which Chucky called out as “Alpha Tango Uniform”—meant nothing to him. If anything, he figured it was Chucky’s clique back in the States. This sort of bravado and bluster went hand in hand with hip-hop. Poland queued up another track, one Chucky called “Beef.” 20 It bumped without instrumentation and a stripped-down, midtempo, four-four beat. Chucky rolled into the verse with a clunky, put-on dance-hall patois, then