“’Preciate you, bro,” Malik responded.
“I see you starting to learn.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see what you mean by not leaning too much on the beat. Just let it flow.”
“Right, right. Trust yourself to do what need to be done. It’ll come naturally.”
Just then, my phone lit up on the table with Yana’s name across the screen. I stared at it for a second. “Give me a minute,” I said. I picked it up and stepped away from the board. I walked out into the hallway. The music muffled as the door shut behind me. “Hey,” I answered the phone.
“Hey,” she replied. Her voice was soft and low. Once I realized she wasn’t upset, or it wasn’t anything that immediately alerted me, I leaned with my back against the wall.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Are you busy?”
“I’m at the studio,” I replied, glancing back through the small window in the door. “But I can talk.”
There was a short pause before she began. “I didn’t realize how big your life was,” she said finally.
“Big how?” I asked carefully.
“Like . . . big-big,” she continued. “People at school were talking about the baby stuff again. They said test results said it wasn’t yours. They were just saying how crazy it is that your name trends over stuff like that.”
I ran my thumb across the edge of my phone. I wanted to be the one to break that kind of news to her. I hadn’t even had Kam or my public relations rep put out a statement. The media always found a way, somehow.
“They bothering you?” I asked.
“No,” she said quickly. “Not like that. It’s just weird.”
“Weird how? What you mean?”
“It’s like . . . I thought you were just my dad,” she said. “But other people think they know you.”
I could hear the wind as it blew faintly in the background. A car horn beeped, and then adog barked. It sounded like a normal neighborhood for a girl who deserved a normal life.
“I am just your dad,” I said.
“You’re not though,” she replied gently. “Not to everybody else.”
I looked down the hallway at the framed plaques from albums I’d produced over the years. Some were platinum, and some were double. They used to feel like proof of something. In that moment, they felt like reminders of how loud things had gotten.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “This situation got bigger than I expected.”
“How have you handled all of this over the years? Like, people being all in your business and stuff?” she asked.
That question caught me off guard. I didn’t think I’d ever sat with the weight of what it meant to be a celebrity—definitely not one with a family or a life that felt worth protecting. I thought about it before answering.
“It was just something that came with the life. And I loved that life when I was younger,” I said. “When I was in my twenties. Touring every week. Rapping about stuff I was actually doing.”
“And now?”
“Now . . .” I paused. “I don’t really want to live like that no more,” I said honestly. “I’m not in clubs every night. I’m not chasing the same things. Half the stuff I used to rap about don’t even fit me now.”
She was quiet.
“I been working on shifting that,” I added.
“Shifting it how?”
