One night there were a few guys hanging around the office waiting for Dave. They kept to themselves and didn’t cause any problems. I was in Jon Shecter’s office and we were just chopping it up and the topic of our discussion turned to guns. Jon said something like, “Oh, I’ll bet there are a few guns in the office right now.” And he nodded towards the outside area where Dave’s friends were waiting. But that was pretty much it.

Once, in my capacity as office errand boy, I was asked by Dave Mays to run up the street to a videotape duplicating service with a VHS tape that he had given to me. He handed me some money and asked me to get about 25 copies made. So I walked up to the spot and waited around while they made the copies. When they were done the sales person asked me to watch one of the tapes on the monitor to make that everything was all right. So I did, and was surprised to see David Mays in a rap video. It was RSO and in the video Dave acted as the groups manager. So I’m like, "oh snap – what’s going on here?" I walk back to the office and the first thing I do is ask Dave about the video. Dave’s like, oh, I thought you knew. Those are my friends from Boston and I’m helping them out. I had no reason to take Dave at anything other than his word, but I did start to ask other people in the office about this group that Dave was befriending.

Derrick Hawes, a childhood friend of Dave’s from DC was the Director of Retail Sales, and as the business side intern I spent a lot of time doing what ever he needed me to do. I really liked Derrick or “Devil” as we called him a lot. I learned many things from him and for a young guy he possessed a level of maturity that was beyond most of us. He’d already finished a stint in the US Navy, was married and had a beautiful daughter. And like most cats from DC, he loved go-go and R&B but really only dealt with Hip Hop when he couldn’t avoid it. He had a much different perspective on things and I really enjoyed the time I would spend with him each morning before the phone started ringing off the hook.

One morning Devil played a cassette for me. It was some smooth R&B, like a mix between Keith Sweat and Frankie Beverly. Shit was really tight and was just as good as anything currently on the radio. So I’m asking for the name of the artist so I can go cop the album and Devil says, nah, that’s my boy from DC, who I’m trying to get hooked up. I ask if Dave is involved in this at all, and Devil shoots me an annoyed look and tells me that Dave has all of the guy’s stuff but has been very slow in shopping it around and setting up any meetings. Continued on page 4 »