Post by dawyked on Nov 29, 2005 23:24:43 GMT 1
:Forte had spent the previous year in fear of that moment. He had been on house arrest, planning his defense and writing and recording, knowing he had to be finished before the trial, knowing he may not get another chance to speak publicly. Where Jigga and Puff responded to their trials by boasting of their innocence on wax, Forte found his mind incredibly focused by the pressure and reinvented his musical voice to accommodate his new mind. On i, John he is primarily a blues singer, working his way through mournfully mellow songs about the pointlessness of celebrity, the pettyness of club life, the juvenile excesses of hiphop, and the new loneliness of his life. “My cigarette smoke has long since dissolved,” he says, “Nothing to hide behind/ No one to give applause/ Now I’m humbled.” He details his new reality, his sense that time is not a friend. “The only thing I’ll ever miss is kisses from Mom,” he says, “I don’t club no more… I smoke a cigarette, drink, then we write a new song so that/ my spirit’s here even if I’m gone.” He closes with a searing ballad in which he faces his family—“even after all of your warnings/ we still managed to meet with harm”—and asks if he will remain part of the family, if they’ll accept him when he returns from his long exile. “Will you still remember us as family?… Will you not place judgement upon us? When we one day join you at the reunion?” Whatever keep it real means to you—repping your hood or wearing your own jewels in the video—nothing is more real than putting your real life all up in in your art the way Pryor, Biggie, and Jigga have. Nothing is more real than the rhyming and singing of the man deathly afraid of what is ahead of him, the John Forte of i John. If ever a piece of art has shown just how the caged bird sings, it is i John.
A life-shatteringly long prison bid is very much like a death: something terrible happens and suddenly someone’s not around anymore and everyone around them struggles to know what to say. But in letters from prison John has refused to cry. In late September he wrote, “I was shown love from the moment I walked in here. Exeter’s “art of diplomacy” course did me well. Hah!… One good thing about Houston is the weather has been decent—from what I can tell. But I am in need of some outdoor time. This detention center is just that—a holding facility where we are detained until we can get to the “joint.” It’s small and repetitious. I am told it gets better than this. Shit, it has to…”
In late October he wrote, “All is well in exile… We… are treated like junior high school science projects… open the cage, and the mouse awakens. Turn off the lights, and the mouse grows weary. Scream about “chow” and the mouse comes running… My “cellie” is a real good guy. He’s recently found Jesus Christ as his lord and savior… He’s trying to get medical treatment for his snoring, but until then I deal with the earth shattering noise… I’ve never had a problem sleeping through din. But reading and writing becomes increasingly difficult when someone snores so loud and awkward it gives you the chills; like when the kids in elementary school would run their nails on the chalkboard! Eeek!!… I’ve met some brilliant minds behind these walls… The best thing I can do now is prepare myself for the long haul. I cannot allow myself to think about the likelihood and chances of coming home on appeal…”
Just before Thanksgiving he was sentenced to 14 years. Federal guidelines mandate he serve at least 85% of his sentence. He won’t drink champagne before 2013.
It would be easier if he was a bad person who’d done numerous crimes, a menace who deserved a long bid. Or someone who had little to offer society. But to think of an artist with something to offer, to think of a boy from the ghetto who made it to the most prestigious prep school in America and then came back to hiphop to share what he’d gleaned, to think of a man who dug his own grave, that is to think of a cry for which there aren’t enough tears.
