How Not to Be a Rap Star

McGill liked the song but thought it sounded like a Bay Area track. He asked Mussan whether he was interested in using a Don Vito beat. Mussan jumped on the chance and recorded a new song called "What You Heard."

McGill sent Stelo and Mussan on a tour of urban radio stations. Armed with the two singles, they drove from Kansas City to Wichita, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Houston. At each station, Mussan would walk in and be interviewed on the spot by a program director, who would listen to his tracks and tell him whether he'd consider playing them on the air.

In Houston, Mussan met DJ Chill at KPFT 90.1. Chill loved Mussan's music and played both singles on the air, back-to-back.

"Just to meet DJ Chill and for him to have love for me off the bat like that was big for me because, you know, he's got history behind him," Mussan says. "That was beautiful."

But Mussan returned home to a slap in the face. A concert promoter in Warrensburg told Mussan and Stelo that they'd have to pay $600 to perform as an opening act for a show with Atlanta artist Lil Scrappy ("Money in the Bank"). Stelo convinced Mussan to shell out the money, figuring it was worth it if they could network with Lil Scrappy's management team.

Along with Milk and McGill, who was in town, Stelo and Mussan drove to Warrensburg. They watched rapper after rapper take the stage — acts that hadn't been listed on the promo flier. It started getting late.

"Those people were giving [the promoter] cash right there on the spot to get up onstage," Stelo explains. "The people who were actually supposed to be on the itinerary were getting moved back."

Finally, it got so late that Lil Scrappy's management insisted that the headliner take the stage. After that, the show was over. The promoter promised to refund Mussan's money but never did.

The Lil Scrappy show was the first in a long line of mistakes.

Mussan hopped on part of a tour with T.I. when the rapper's career was at its peak. In a hotel parking lot in Louisville, Kentucky, Mussan caught sight of Jim Jones and up-and-coming rapper Stack Bundles, who were also on the T.I. tour. Mussan was eager to meet Stack Bundles because of his reputation as an underground mixtape hustler who was fiercely loyal to the streets. Stack had deliberately turned his back on the music-industry machine but was coming up in his career anyway.

Stack mentioned going to Kansas City the next day. "Dude, we fucking are KC, bro," Mussan told him. Stelo brokered a deal: They would pay Stack a couple of thousand dollars to record a track with Mussan at Midrange Music.

Accounts differ about what happened next. According to Stelo, Stack was ready to record late at night after his Kansas City show, but Mussan didn't have the cash.

According to Mussan, one of Stelo's partners at the studio ruined the deal.

"He [Stelo's partner] walked up to Stack in front of his manager, in front of Jim Jones, in front of other people in his organization, and was like, 'You supposed to be coming to the studio and doing a track with Paul Mussan later,'" Mussan says. "And Stack kinda backed off like, 'I don't know what you're talking about.' Because people do shit under the table. When you're signed to these record labels, you can't just go around doing what the fuck you want to do, because the record label will want a piece."

The track with Stack Bundles never happened, and there wouldn't be another chance. On June 11, 2007, after a night of partying with friends, Stack was shot and killed outside his house in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens.

"Do you know how much money that track probably would have been worth?" Stelo says. "It would have been one of the last recordings he ever did."

Mussan and Stelo dusted themselves off and went to the BET Awards in Atlanta. They came home and partied at the Emerald House, on Main, on New Year's Eve 2007. Mussan had always dreamed of performing on New Year's Eve.

The party was intense — plenty of liquor, plenty of Ecstasy. The bottle-popping, pill-dropping lifestyle flaunted in music videos was Mussan's reality — a calculated one, he says.

"It's all promotion," he says. "When people actually see you doing shit like that, actually comin' in the club, iced the fuck out, geared up, they're trying to get next to you in the VIP room, roped off, y'all poppin' bottles of champagne — it's promotion. Motherfuckers want to see that, so when we rap about it, they be like, Nah, them niggas really do that."

On Ecstasy, he could drink all night without getting too drunk. The drug also helped him craft his stage persona.

"I can't perform without pills," Mussan says. "That's part of my character. The Paul Mussan character, when he steps on stage, is I'm the shit. You shut the fuck up. You love me, don't you? Yeah, I know you love me. Fuck you."

It's like Slick Rick, he explains. When he saw Slick Rick perform live, Slick Rick told the crowd, "Settle down, peasants." And they went wild. Mussan loved that Slick Rick insulted his fans, and they responded with love.

But Mussan's reputation for "thizzing" was becoming notorious. When other rappers wanted Mussan to drop a verse on their tracks, they asked him to rap about Ecstasy. "I remember I did a show in Wichita," Musan says. "The dude who actually booked my show — I guess he'd heard my music. So he checked me into my hotel, and in the room he just pulls out a bag of pills and throws 'em to me. I'm like, 'How much?' and he's like, 'It's you.'"

Mussan's flashiness was starting to make Stelo nervous. He was worried about someone robbing Mussan. Mussan admits that Stelo warned him to be less accessible to his fans, to cultivate more of a mystique.

The two often drove together to the Lawrence club Last Call. Mussan's friend Hobo Tone would spin Mussan's tracks there. And though they both had girlfriends in KC, Stelo and Mussan had a second motive for going to Lawrence: a pair of female roommates they'd met one night at Last Call.

"We both dead wrong goin' over here," Mussan says now.

Mussan considered his woman friend in Lawrence to be a "little groupie chick," but Stelo fell hard for his — a "real beautiful-ass Italian girl," Stelo calls her. "I was serious about wifing her up," he adds.

Early one morning, Stelo showed up unannounced at her house, planning to take her out to breakfast. But he found Mussan and one of Mussan's friends there. Mussan's friend had been sleeping with Stelo's Lawrence girlfriend.

Stelo was irate and blamed Mussan. But Mussan says it wasn't his fault. "You can't control what anybody does," he says. "They're grown."

It was January 2007, and the NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas was fast approaching. Mussan had bought plane tickets for himself and Stelo to go to Las Vegas to hand out fliers, mix CDs and singles. But Stelo was nowhere to be found and wouldn't answer his phone when Mussan called. "And I paid $800 for his ticket alone," Mussan says.

Mussan asked Milk to join him instead. He says the two tore up the town.

When Mussan returned, he had to track down Stelo through McGill. The two patched things up, or so Mussan thought, and traveled to East St. Louis for a show they'd lined up with the Derrty DJs.

Mussan was doing the show for free, but the Derrty DJs tried to make him feel special by making him the headliner.