A Hip-Hop Hopeful

Robert Cummins, 29, who calls himself Don Pooh, is a hip-hop manager and--like most--an aspiring entrepreneur, now negotiating to launch his own boutique label. He first met Barzey last year, and was impressed with his flow, or delivery. Quirkily energetic, Barzey flipped manic word associations. "My name is Sunkiss/Hos love the way I tongue-kiss," begins one rapid-fire rhyme. Even more, Cummins was taken by the rapper's cartoon charisma. He eases the vehicle into traffic. "I really felt [Sunkiss] was the next artist to blow," or become a star, he says. It is my third meeting with the two men, and Barzey's spirits have yo-yo'd noticeably. Two weeks previously, he had auditioned for the top executives at Elektra Entertainment. With no backing music or demo tapes, he just spit, or rapped. He took off his shirt. He jumped up on a table. "He blew us away because he was so animated," says Merlin Bobb, senior VP of A&R. "He has a great sense of humor, but he's also saying something." The label immediately offered a substantial deal. Since then, Barzey has surged with elation and anxiety, alternately spiraling in exultation or dread. Today, he says, he wishes he could be invisible. "I'm scared of fame, afraid of drama that can occur because I'm famous. It's scary to walk into a place and have 10 [guys] look at you, and you don't know what they want with you. Do they like you? Do they want to hurt you? Or do they have some beef from a long time ago?"

We are headed toward the South Bronx, to 1060 Sherman Avenue, a squat brick building that looms monumentally in Barzey's life. Though he was raised in Harlem, he spent most of his youth here, and he crackles with nervous anticipation. "When I left this block, I always felt, I ain't never coming back until I'm paid, until I'm doing something. Right now, I'm here for a cause. I'm about to put this place on the map. All the tears, blood, sweat we dripped off our bodies is going to be represented off my rap move."

The building holds a place in Bronx lore. Larry Davis, the drug dealer who achieved notoriety after wounding six cops in a 1986 shoot-out, then beating the charge, lived upstairs. "This building was on 'America's Most Wanted'," says Leon Bishop, 26, a childhood friend of Barzey's, now trying to move his family out. Growing up, he says, he and Barzey used to play kick the can, steal the bacon. Though they didn't attend school (Barzey dropped out before high school, but later earned a GED), they sneaked in for the free lunches. "It was nothing but hip-hop when we were growing up," says Bishop. "Crack selling and hip-hop, nothing but. Bitches, hip-hop and survival." Barzey leads an excited tour of the grounds. This was second base, he gushes; this was where he learned to break-dance, where he threw up his first graffiti mural. He abruptly shifts tone. This was where he and his brother sold crack, from the age of about 12. The name Sunkiss came from a brand of dope they sold. On a bit of dirty sidewalk in front, Barzey looks down. "This was where my brother was killed," shot by a rival dealer.

Mark Pitts, 28, the other figure shaping Sunkiss's career, has a saying about rappers. Most of them, he says with a shrug, "have their own movie that they've been through. I'm not saying all rappers have bad backgrounds, but it's been heard before." Pitts and Cummins first met at Howard University, where they also befriended fellow student Puffy Combs. After college, Pitts eventually managed the Notorious B.I.G., the biggest act on Puffy's label, Bad Boy. Cummins worked for Pitts's management company before striking out on his own. Cummins is the laconic half of the pair, chewing absently on a plastic straw. When he likes something, he says he's feeling it. "I'm feeling Harlem more than the Bronx," he says, before a photo shoot. Pitts is more angular and brusque. "I'm a savage," he says, only half in jest. When he likes something, he says he isn't mad at it. "I'm not mad at the Sylvia situation," he says, at the prospect of signing with Elektra boss Sylvia Rhone.

In 1997, Cummins met a young Brooklyn rapper named Shyne, whose style eerily recalled the late Notorious B.I.G. "I just saw something in him, I saw a star," he recalls. He signed Shyne to an arrangement known as a production deal: Cummins would act as an intermediary, contracting with a major label to finance, manufacture and distribute the recordings he delivered, and paying Shyne from his take. Pitts signed on as manager. With Kenny Meiselas, a high-powered lawyer who represents Puff Daddy, they went looking for a deal.