In Control

Song Ya didn't let Daniel's praise go to his head this time. He calmly weighed Daniel's bottom line and ultimately decided to get back on board with him.

The entertainment industry still held on to plenty of old rules. Just as singers had managers, record companies had their own system for handling their signed artists. Whoever had an artist under their wing got a share of the profits from that artist's records. Of course, the details varied from company to company, but the general idea was the same. Daniel had made his bottom line crystal clear: Mira's mother had to transfer Mira to his roster. As a partner of SBK, the people at Joe Music weren't bound by those rules, but since Daniel had arranged the deal, they were expected to support him as well.

Old Joe was easy to handle. Tony could smooth things over with Little Lowry and Pablo, too. When there were no conflicting interests, talking up "family" and "brotherhood" among Black people could still be pretty effective.

That left Mira's mother to win over. If Song Ya couldn't tempt her into switching sides, there'd be no chance of Mira singing FXXXYOU...

After all, the most important deadline hanging over Song Ya was the date Michelle had given him. Getting the single released as soon as possible was his top priority.

He and Hayden stayed in New York to sort out the copyright issues. (These details wouldn't be repeated in later chapters.) With the limited legal and accounting assistance BMI offered its members, he signed a single-production contract with SBK. Though he wasn't an SBK employee, he officially became the producer of FXXXYOU, earning about three percent of its royalties. Combined with the six percent each for the lyrics and composition, that gave him fifteen percent in total.

After spending about a week taking care of everything, Song Ya changed into a new outfit and officially got to work.

Hayden was already waiting in SBK's recording studio. When he saw Song Ya, he immediately buttered him up. "You look sharp today. Finally done with secondhand clothes?"

"Do I? Thanks. This is New York. I don't want people laughing at me."

Song Ya ran a hand over his mustard-brown denim jacket. It had flashy fringe across the chest and from the elbows to the cuffs. Underneath, he wore a black T-shirt with the Japanese characters for "courage" on the front—there hadn't been any shirts with the simplified Chinese characters—and ordinary blue jeans and classic Converse sneakers below. The whole outfit had cost just over a hundred dollars. He'd copied the look from the original music video he'd seen at the Thrift Shop in his mind. Since his inspiration came from the future, and the future was bound to be fashionable, this outfit had to work.

Hayden ushered him into the studio. It wasn't much bigger than the one at Joe Music, and its layout was identical, but the equipment was far more advanced. It was certainly more than capable of handling the auditions for the label's current crop of singers.

"Come on, let me introduce everyone. This is Lisa."

A young white woman stood in the control room. She was reasonably pretty and wore a standard office suit. Clutching a thick stack of documents, she could only nod and smile. "Hi, APLUS. I'm Lisa. I'll be handling all the paperwork and coordination during production of the single."

"And this is Isco..."

A young white man with a rock-star look sat at the mixing console. He tossed his long hair and turned to look at Song Ya, then pushed off against the floor with his feet and rolled his office chair over to him. He held out his hand without changing his expression.

"Hello." Song Ya smiled and shook his hand.

Isco rolled back to the mixing console.

"And in there is our keyboardist, Delay..."

The white man in the recording booth was wearing headphones and playing the backing track for FXXXYOU. He gave Song Ya a friendly smile.

Song Ya waved to him. "So, what's the plan for today?" he asked Lisa.

"Today is the first round of auditions. Here's the list." Lisa pulled a document from the stack in her arms and handed it to Song Ya.

"This many people?" The list ran to three pages. Song Ya counted more than seventy names, but couldn't find Mira Jovovich anywhere...

"What's going on?" Whether Song Ya wanted to get with Mira or persuade her mother to switch sides, he first needed to put pressure on them. Putting Mira in a fiercely competitive first round of auditions had been the plan he and Hayden had agreed on from the start.

Hayden tilted his head, indicating they should talk outside. Song Ya followed him to a quiet spot. "Mira's mother pulled some strings and moved her to the second round," Hayden reported. He named the executive competing with Daniel for the general manager position.

"Daniel's only a vice president, and the office politics at SBK are more complicated than we thought. By the time the list reached me, it had already changed a lot. Mira wasn't the only one..." Hayden went back to Lisa and asked for another copy. "Take a look at the second-round list."

Besides the female singer Daniel favored and the three candidates already chosen to make up the numbers, five names had been added below in different handwriting. Mira Jovovich was among them.

"FXXX!" The good mood Song Ya had arrived with vanished. "Damn office politics."

"Can't be helped. Big companies like this are full of office politics," Hayden said. "At least it doesn't affect the bigger picture."

"I hate getting dragged into the pointless whirlpool of office politics again." Song Ya rubbed his brow in frustration.

"Again?" Hayden picked up on something odd in his words.

Huh? Why did I say 'again'? Song Ya shook his head. "Just a slip of the tongue. There are way too many people on this first-round list. Is SBK really that influential?"

"This is New York. Ever since Madonna made Warner a fortune, every record company has wanted its own trendy diva. SBK probably had the same idea when it signed Mira two years ago. She's beautiful, a former child star with a certain standing in the fashion world, and she can sing. If not for her bad temper and greedy parents, she'd be a great prospect. There's a serious oversupply of white girls in the market right now. People will fight tooth and nail for any song that suits them."

Hayden tapped the names added to the second-round list. "Your song isn't hard to sing, it touches on equal rights, and a song with women swearing has built-in publicity value... Like I said, this is New York. Once the word gets out, people with connections are bound to spot the opportunity early."

"An oversupply..." Song Ya shook his head with a laugh. "You make it sound like human trafficking."

"You don't know what it's like to have a bunch of unknowns under your management. It really does feel a lot like human trafficking—except you can't sell them," Hayden said with a bitter smile. He knew what he was talking about.

The two of them couldn't think of a good solution, so they returned to the control room.

"Could you make the fourth measure more decisive?" Isco was giving instructions into the microphone.

"Okay, I'll try again." In the recording booth, Delay started playing again.

Song Ya's expression darkened. It was bad enough that Isco ignored him; now he was daring to criticize his song right in front of him.

He went back out and wandered slowly through SBK, trying to calm down.

"Forget it. Your girl's Black; she won't make it past the first round." A man's words caught Song Ya's attention as he passed a secluded spot.

"You idiot! You still haven't heard? The songwriter and producer of this song is APLUS, from Chicago. He's Black! One-drop rule, remember?" a woman retorted. "Your girl's the one who doesn't stand a chance. Look at all the white girls who showed up today."

"What! APLUS is Black!?" The man's voice betrayed his panic.

"You need to update your sources." The woman sounded smug. "A Black man's bound to favor his own people."

Before either manager noticed him, Song Ya turned and walked away.

"Enough! I hate this feeling that nothing is under my control!" He rushed into the studio, dragged Hayden outside, and said in a low voice, "Set up another meeting with Daniel."

"Heh... You're young. Once you've experienced more of how complicated society is, you'll get used to it. Everything's a process of compromise." Hayden just laughed. He'd misunderstood Song Ya's meaning. He flicked the first-round list in his hand. "You're already a big shot to the seventy-plus girls on this list. Pick whoever you like. One word—no, one hint—and I'll do it. I checked the waiting room. Some of the girls who came this morning are just as pretty and well-built as Mira. Why be so inflexible?"

"BULLSHXT!"

Song Ya swore. "A real big shot gets to pick whoever he wants. If you have to settle for someone else, are you really a big shot? Make the call!"

He sent Hayden off to make the call, then dialed Old Joe himself. "Boss, are you out promoting already? Um... Is Eric free? I'd like to borrow him for a while... Okay, thanks, boss."

The next day, Song Ya stood by the door watching Isco leave with a cardboard box. "I'm leaving this place in your hands, Eric," he said.

"Thank you, APLUS. Thank you for giving me this opportunity." Eric was thrilled. He went into the control room and started fiddling with the mixing console.

"The equipment here is new. You know how to use it, right?"

"No problem. It just has a few new features. I'll get used to them quickly."

"Oh, and don't touch any of the girls here without my permission. This is New York, not the South Side of Chicago."

"Understood."

"Good."

After their conversation, Song Ya looked at the list in his hand with satisfaction. Mira's name was back on the first-round audition list. The corner of his mouth lifted into a faint, cold smile.

"Oh, and make sure you watch MTV later," Eric reminded him.

There was a little TV in the control room. Song Ya turned it on right on time and switched to MTV. A familiar tune rang out: his own "Thrift Shop."