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How Not to Be a Rap Star

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"Everybody knows the headliner goes on last," Mussan says. "But at this venue, after every person that performed got offstage and left, they took a little piece of the crowd with them." By the time Mussan was set to go on, he says there were only eight people left in the room — and they were mostly staff.

Mussan refused to perform. Stelo felt that Mussan's decision was unprofessional.

Their next stop was Houston, where Stelo, Milk and Mussan had a date with hip-hop history.

Scarface, the iconic rapper whose career began with the Geto Boys, had performed at Last Call months earlier, and Mussan was his opening act. After that show, Scarface told Mussan to call him the next time he was in Houston so they could record a track together. Scarface named a price that was incredibly cheap for a rapper of his status.

Mussan had spent more on shopping sprees.

Once in Houston, Mussan called Scarface and set up a time to meet at the studio. Then Mussan and Milk started spending money.

"We was in this big-ass club. Everybody was in there," Mussan recalls. "I'm sitting at the bar, and I order, like, 15 motherfuckers' drinks. Like, What you want? What you want? What you doing? What you want? You want something? Just the look on their faces was priceless. It's like, Damn, how come I ain't never heard of you before?"

It was fun. But it wasn't smart.

"We spent too much cash," Mussan says. "And when it came time [to record], we were trying to scramble and get money out the ATM, out of my account, out of his [Milk's] account, out the Final Track account, and for some strange fucking reason, our limit was reached."

Losing the track with Scarface hit Stelo hard. Mussan says Stelo was more upset than he and Milk were.

"Now how come Mr. Big Shot Manager didn't have a G to just pull out his pocket and be, like, here?" Mussan asks. "It wasn't no ridiculous shit why we couldn't do it. It was just bad timing. We just fucked up. We miscalculated."

Later, the Kansas City contingent met up with McGill for dinner at Timmy Chan's, a well-known after-hours spot frequented by a who's who of the Houston music scene.

"He [Mussan] was so drunk and thizzing ... he embarrassed me and Terry [McGill] at the restaurant in front of a shitload of people," Stelo says.

The way Mussan remembers it, McGill was partying with him, pouring everyone drinks, and Mussan was making jokes at Stelo's expense, teasing him the way that the entourage usually made fun of one another on the road. But in front of McGill, who'd been Stelo's mentor, Mussan figures it hurt Stelo's feelings.

Back in Kansas City, Stelo again stopped answering Mussan's calls. Mussan's connection to McGill fizzled away.

Regrets started catching up with him.

"I mean, it's like, when you run through $100,000 in less than six months, you gotta kinda step back and figure shit out, get yourself together. Like, what the fuck are we doing?" Mussan says.

He decided it was time to take a break.

Two months ago, Stelo says, Mussan showed up at his house selling bootleg DVDs and apologizing for the women, the alcohol, the pills.

Mussan denies making an apology. Their professional relationship is over. Milk says Stelo quit prematurely, after he'd already been paid. "We had one weak link, and the weak link is gone now," he says of Stelo. "Now we're at a point where just me and Paul handle his management because we don't have a trust issue. We know that we're both out for the interest of Final Track."

For his part, McGill says he would love to work with Mussan again. "Paul's a talented artist. He's a good kid. Like many other artists in this industry, he just got caught up in the fantasy."

Mussan admits that he could be accused of being blinded by the glitz of his image. "I was feelin' myself," Mussan says. "But at the same time, it wasn't like I was caught up in my own hype. I was caught up in the hype they put me in. I mean, if you don't think you're a star, nobody's gonna think you're a star."

Mussan walks through the doors of Chapman Studios in downtown Kansas City wearing a lush, cream-colored hoodie. A thick dude who goes by the name Donta Slusha is eating potato chips in the studio's luxurious kitchen area, all exposed brick, rock counters and glass. Donta Slusha hands Mussan a CD in a plastic sleeve, and Mussan goes to another room, with a wall full of audio equipment, to play the beats.

Lounging around the studio are several other artists, including Big Ben, a rapper, and S.G., a producer. Everyone is here because a formidable Kansas City rapper called the Popper asked them to be guests on his upcoming mixtape.

"Slush, who made these?" Mussan calls out after a few minutes.

"My lil' cousin," Slusha calls back.

"How much he charge?"

"Fifty."

Mussan wanders back in, disc in hand. "I guess I wanna be a rapper again."

Suddenly, the Popper bursts into the room from behind double soundproof doors. "You ready?" he asks Mussan.

Mussan tells the Popper that his verse isn't ready yet.

"He ain't got his verse for me. See how they do me?" the Popper says loudly. He sighs theatrically and goes back through the double doors.

"Is he for real?" Mussan asks, wondering if he has really pissed off their host.

"Nah," Slusha says.

In the recording room, a sound engineer sits behind several monitors and a soundboard covered in knobs. A monitor above the engineer's head shows a live camera feed from the studio's front door in order to see who's coming and going at all times. A glass window separates the recording equipment from the booth. The Popper's allotted studio time ticks down in red LED numbers on a screen.

Big Ben is in the booth, attacking the microphone's pop screen with a barrage of quick-spit lyrics. When he's finished, Mussan is up. The Popper lounges, wide-legged on a black-leather couch, and looks at Mussan expectantly.

Mussan steps into the booth and smoothes a crumpled piece of paper on which he has inked a verse in less than an hour.

The engineer presses "play" on the beat, and Mussan's head starts bobbing. He runs through his sheet of lyrics almost flawlessly on the first take — no stumbles.

The lines are metaphorical, their meaning veiled, but it's clear by the end that Mussan is rapping about being a pimp. By the time he's halfway finished, his audience has grown — everyone in the building has crowded into the studio to hear Mussan's perfect pronunciation.

"I can't rap that clear," the Popper marvels.

Mussan has been in the studio ever since. His new mixtape, KC Landmarks and Final Track Records Present Bad News Volume II, comes out this month, and he'll release a compilation, Two Cities, One State, on Final Track Records shortly after.

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