Free The Plot Against Hip Hop by Nelson George

folks from those tours who they hadn’t thought about in years. While D was a little nostalgic, Woodson seemed to look back at everything as a stepping stone to what he was into now.
    “Best thing that happened to me back then was befriending these two guys who were putting together tour sponsorships for artists. Once the tour was over I ended up getting a marketing job with their company, Sawyer. I stayed there for a year and then got headhunted by these video game dudes and it’s been sweet ever since.”
    “Sawyer, huh? Walter Gibbs did some time there too, didn’t he? Just saw him today at an event my company handled down at Macy’s.”
    Woodson shook his head in admiration. “Yeah, Gibbs. Wow. That dude learned quite a bit at Sawyer. I like my career a lot, but that man has done better than all of us. He got out of hip hop before the market changed.”
    “You ever hear of a marketing survey Gibbs and a writer named Dwayne Robinson worked on for Sawyer? It was a plan for the best ways to exploit the hip hop audience. People called it the Sawyer memorandum.”
    Woodson’s face scrunched up, as if D had just passed gas. “When I was there we did three or four reports like that. JVC commissioned one. Nike had us do one. Some beer company—maybe St. Ides. Remember how foul that shit tasted?”
    “Yeah, it was nasty. Probably the worst malt liquor ever.”
    “And that’s saying a lot.”
    “No doubt. No doubt. So you guys did several reports, but I believe this one was different.”
    “How so?”
    “Dwayne Robinson. The writer I mentioned.”
    “Yes. Robinson. I remember reading his shit. He never really understood what rap was about, did he?”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “It was about paper from day one. All that sociopolitical shit was accidental, or maybe incidental. You feel me? Just like this video game world. It takes a lot of technology to make this stuff. But essentially it’s just a toy. Something to pass the time between living and dying.”
    “That’s it?”
    “That’s it.”
    “Well, Dwayne felt the music was about more than that and he might have even thought the particular Sawyer memorandum I’m talking about was some plan—not just to sell music to the audience, but to manipulate the audience and the artist.”
    Woodson burst out laughing. “This Dwayne dude says all that with a straight face? This ain’t the ’80s. There’s no antinigga machine—with all due respect to Chuck D, there’s no plot to kill us. Bad shit happens to stupid people. Always has. Always will.”
    Both men turned toward a sudden flash of light, followed by the trill of excited girls and the bustle of those who genuflected to celebrity for a living. Kanye was in the building, resplendent in odd Japanese shades and some eclectic ensemble of BAPE and Gucci, with retro British Walkers on his feet. For D this distraction was well timed. Woodson had just insulted his dead friend and made a lot of what he believed in sound silly. Time to end this convo. Don’t even get into the fact that Dwayne was dead. No need to even go there.
    Woodson looked at Kanye and then asked, off-handedly, “You have a copy of the Sawyer memorandum you mentioned?”
    The question surprised D. He shifted his gaze from the rap superstar back to the video game executive, who seemed different now. A bit lean and hungry. A touch anxious around the eyes. It was a look D had seen many times before at clubs just before someone got sucker punched.
    “Yeah, I do,” he said casually.
    “Tell you what …” Woodson reached into his pocket and pulled out his card. “I gotta go talk to Kanye and his people, but send me a copy, okay. I’m sure I’ll get some laughs out of it, like reading ancient hieroglyphics.” He pushed the card into D’s palm. “Get at me about that and I’ll send a messenger over for it. You stay up now, dude.”
    “You do the same.”
    And then Woodson was down the steps and into the crowd of self-important