It's Hard Out Here for a Player

In late 1999, 22-year-old Anthony Vital and James Hawkins were penned up together in the Douglas County Jail. Friends since they'd met as teenagers in Lawrence, both young men were also aspiring hip-hop artists. So when they found themselves locked up together, the two friends pounded out pages of lyrics to stave off boredom.

"We had nothing else to do," Hawkins says. Sometimes he and Vital would write in their cells. Sometimes they'd compose at a large metal table in the jail commons. They'd write alone or together, and then they'd compare notes, combining fragments into full raps.

Vital, who went by "Clacc," was serving 10 days for violating his probation from a 1997 home burglary. Hawkins was also doing time for violating his probation. Both men were Lawrence transplants — Vital was from Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Hawkins was from Los Angeles.

They sounded good together, and Vital got excited. He and Hawkins started dreaming up plans of gathering a posse when they got out. They even knew who they needed to talk to — Hawkins' cousin Richard Thomas and Thomas' buddy Tyrone Spates. And Vital had heard that Lawrence promoter Keith Loneker, then 28, was looking to put together a serious hip-hop outfit. Hawkins knew it was nothing official yet, just talk. But both he and Vital were enthusiastic. "That's what's up. That's what's up," Hawkins told Vital.

Three months later, in February 2000, Vital and Hawkins started working with Loneker, Thomas, Spates and three others, writing and recording furiously. A year passed and then, in the summer of 2001, the seven-member Da Bomb Squad put out its debut, Timz Up! Loneker's label, Lock-N-Load Records, released it. Though Vital was the group's youngest member, Loneker considered him one of the most talented up-and-coming local artists. "Clacc was the best writer in Lawrence," Loneker says.

Vital could flash a quick, easy smile. Friends describe him as shy and soft-spoken. But above all, he was known for a hard-driving commitment to his art. It was difficult to get the seven Da BombSquad members to agree, Hawkins recalls, except on one thing. "Everybody wanted Clacc on their song," he says. Vital's voice, he adds, was smooth as silk: "People was like, 'You got Nelly on your album?'"

The group enjoyed good times. Loneker says the debut "did well for a local release." Da BombSquad took a tour in the fall of 2001, through Colorado ski country. They had sold-out shows at The Granada and at Tremors, and a jampacked gig at Abe & Jake's Landing when they opened for Tech N9ne.

Still, holding a seven-member group together proved impossible. One of the seven left to pursue reggae. Another burned out completely. By 2002, Da BombSquad had downsized to four members: Vital, Hawkins, Thomas and Spates. A year later, the foursome dropped off Loneker's label and signed to Hawkins' imprint, In-The-Middle Entertainment. In 2003, Hawkins and Da BombSquad released I Got Work, and things looked bright for their sophomore album.

Within two years, the record sold 3,000 copies. But it wasn't enough to recoup the group's burgeoning expenses. An ambitious tour schedule that shuttled Da BombSquad from Nebraska to Colorado to Texas sapped the four rappers' profits, leaving little for CD promotion or investment in new equipment. Money grew scarce, and Da BombSquad members had to start paying out-of-pocket for things like lunch on tours. Compounding the problem, Hawkins now straddled two worlds: He maintained his membership in Da BombSquad but also acted as manager of the label. In 2005, during a tour of South Padre Island in Texas, an argument broke out before a show about how much time Da BombSquad members were supposed to devote to hustling CDs on street corners and at gigs. Thomas and Spates thought that kind of promotion was the responsibility of the label. Hawkins fired back that that attitude was the reason for the group's financial woes. Vital tried to stay neutral, but the squabbles took away his enthusiasm. Da BombSquad went ahead and played the show, but things remained unsettled.

By the end of 2005, Thomas says the "inner turmoil" had frozen the group's progress. So Da BombSquad "took a break for a while," he says. Thomas, Hawkins and Spates — tired of the hassles and drama — gradually moved on to solo projects. Though the four always intended to revive the group, that never happened. Vital increasingly found mixing business with art to be a soul-sapping misadventure, and he ceased commercial recording. "Business just took it out of him," Thomas says. "The old Clacc was gone." Though Vital kept penning pages of lyrics on his own, he never recorded a song with Da BombSqaud again.

Then, on October 15, 2006, Vital's bullet-ridden body was found in a field west of Lawrence.

A week later, members of Da BombSquad found themselves gathered together once more, this time at the Warren-McElwain Mortuary. And there, thumping one more time through loud-speakers, they heard Vital's voice, urgent and driving as he rapped his own funeral. The rap was a number he'd authored, and the one his buddies love best, preserved on the group's second record.

The song's title: "Hold On."

On October 14, Vital got a phone call from Major Edwards Jr. Edwards was someone who'd always been on the outside of Da BombSquad's clique. He asked Vital out for drinks and then picked him up in his 1988 maroon Ford Thunderbird a little after 9 p.m.

Vital's wife of four years, Kristie Vital, watched her husband step inside the car.

"I love you," she told her husband from the doorway. "Just be careful. Call me later, OK?"

"OK," he answered "I will."

Kristie had reason to worry about her husband going off with Edwards. In 2005, Edwards was charged with beating three men outside the Lawrence bar Last Call. Those charges are still pending, but court papers filed in August 2006 by James Rumsey, an attorney for Edwards, claimed that Edwards had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was taking legal and illegal drugs to "try to self-medicate."

Thomas says Da BombSquad sometimes hung out with Edwards simply because they'd grown up together and knew each other's families. He suspects that Edwards, who often talked of trying to put out his own rhymes, may have been jealous of the success of Da BombSquad and its former members. "As BombSquad members, everyone pretends they're our friends," Thomas says. "There's jealousy for what we got and what we did musically." Loneker agrees that the Lawrence hip-hop scene is small and the pickings are slim. Consequently, he says, there's a heavy dose of "competitiveness and territorialism."

In the months before Vital's death, Thomas said he'd heard rumors that Edwards was plotting against all of the former members of Da BombSquad. "We were told Major Edwards was plotting to get us all." But nobody thought it was more than talk. "He was supposed to be plotting to get all our asses.... But when we saw him, he was cool. You know, we even smoked a blunt with him."

The week before Edwards arrived to pick up Vital that October night, Kristie says, Edwards had been calling her husband continually, badgering him about a lost cell phone. "I just felt like something wasn't right," 36-year-old Kristie says. Edwards claimed that the phone was buried in the crack between the seats in Vital's '97 Lincoln Continental. Vital checked, but Edwards kept calling. Edwards eventually found the phone in somebody else's vehicle, but the pestering didn't stop. "The next week it was something else he was accusing Anthony of, something like picking up some money when they were hanging out one night," Kristie says.

She told her husband to stay away from Edwards when he was flipping out like that. Vital told her: "It's no big deal. It ain't nothing."

Despite her misgivings about the man, Kristie didn't think much about Vital traipsing off with Edwards. Her husband loved to party — maybe a bit too much, some friends say.

Loneker recalls that Vital once came knocking at five or six in the morning, looking for a place to crash. Loneker — seven years older than Vital — confronted him. Vital just smiled and said, "I know, cuz." He kept going out night after night.

Hawkins, the cellmate whom Vital collaborated with before Da BombSquad was a reality, says Vital would often be the one who wanted to keep partying when everybody was done. Other times, Spates says, Vital would be the voice of reason. "We would be getting high or something, and he would have everybody sitting there ready to put the blunt out, like he'd be saying 'There's demons in y'all!'"