Our relationship was always platonic and never got weird. After he heard me sing, Will believed in my talent. He took me with him to Def Jam Recordings, the hottest new hip-hop label at the time, where he was signed.
The first time Tommy called, he hung up. But he didn’t give up. He called back and this time left a curt and serious-sounding message: “Tommy Mottola. CBS. Sony Records.” He left a number. “Call me back.
But I was not swept off my feet, and trust and believe me, Tommy Mottola was no Prince Charming.
I became his new star just as he was beginning a huge position at a new label, so he had the influence to clear the runway for my ascension into the sky. He was willing to move heaven and earth to make me successful. I recognized and respected that power.
Underneath the shine, however, I had some inkling that there was a darker energy that came with him – a price to pay for his protection. But at nineteen, I was willing to pay.
I became an expert in sconces – sconces, dahling!
I was spending less and less time at my Chelsea apartment and began spending most nights with him. Soon, I felt pressure from Tommy to give up my place, and against my better instincts, I gave.
Little did I know, giving in to Tommy’s demands would gradually swallow my privacy and begin to erase my identity.
After a childhood of being uprooted and plopped into all kinds of precarious living arrangements, I finally had the chance to build my own, from the foundation. I got excited. I got into it.
I also insisted on paying half of all the costs. I wanted it to be my house.
He was the one who cried during some of our more explosive fights. And I would end up consoling him, completely abandoning my needs, my pain. It was ruthlessly manipulative.
I didn’t know that our dream mansion would come with an unfathomable thirty-million-dollar price tag.
I was into it. After all, I sincerely thought I would be with Tommy forever and that the home we would make together would be just as timeless, everlasting, and spectacular as the music we were creating – behind which, of course, I was also the creative force. And spectacular it was. We even had a ballroom. I was in my early twenties, with my own ballroom!
No matter how prime the real estate, how grandiose the structure, if it’s designed to monitor movement and contain the human spirit, it will serve only to diminish and demoralize those held inside.
My brother was shattered into pieces, scattered to the wind, and our father’s outdated tools of militaristic discipline were inadequate to help him collect himself and prepare him for manhood.
For most of my childhood I was caught between my brother’s fury and my mother’s sad searching.
One of the cops, looking down at me but speaking to another cop beside him, said, “If this kid makes it, it’ll be a miracle.” And that night, I became less of a kid and more of a miracle.
There was a studio with sophisticated recording equipment, but there was also very sophisticated security equipment outfitted throughout the house – listening devices, motion-detecting cameras – recording my every move.
I performed “Emotions” at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Soul Train Music Awards. And here I was again, about to hit another stage, and somehow I had no clue that I was famous.
I was easy to manipulate, but the dynamic of my relationship with Tommy was complex. In many ways, Tommy protected me from my dysfunctional family, but he went to the extreme: he controlled and patrolled me.