Rebirth 1991: Keep the Fame, I'll Take the Royalties

The Grammy Extortion

The rhythmic, teeth-rattling vibration of industrial sanding equipment formed the current soundtrack to the Sovereign Media headquarters. The massive warehouse on Sunset Boulevard was slowly being purged of its toxic 1970s interior, but the air remained a thick, chalky white.

Elias van Kempen sat at a folding card table that currently served as the executive desk of his empire, reviewing a stack of construction invoices.

Suddenly, a loud, mechanical screech pierced through the noise of the power tools.

Paul Rudd scrambled over a pile of discarded two-by-fours, clutching a single sheet of thermal paper that had just crawled out of their newly installed, painfully slow fax machine. Paul was hyperventilating, his Anti-Awkwardness Sunglasses askew.

”Elias!” Paul shrieked, waving the paper wildly. ”They did it! Tommy Mottola actually did it! We’re dead!”

Elias didn’t look up from his ledger. He calmly used a silver pen to cross out a forty-dollar charge for premium drill bits, mentally calculating the saved capital.

”Explain the fatality, Paul,” Elias murmured smoothly.

Paul slapped the fax onto the table, coughing violently into his sleeve.

”It’s from NARAS,” Paul gasped. ”The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The Grammy Nominating Committee! The Old Guard! They just sent a formal notice. ’Creep’ has been officially disqualified from all award consideration for the upcoming cycle.”

Elias paused. He finally looked up, his dark eyes analyzing the thermal paper.

”The grounds for disqualification?” Elias asked, his tone devoid of panic.

”Technicality,” Paul groaned, rubbing his temples in sheer despair. ”They classified it as a ’Commercial Jingle’. Because you used the mall retail sync loophole to get it popular before the radio push, they’re claiming it violates the sanctity of a pure musical release. Tommy Mottola must have called every single crusty old man on that committee. They are erasing us from the industry, Elias! We’ll never get prestige without the Grammys!”

Elias picked up the fax, his Photographic Memory instantly capturing every word, every signature, and the specific letterhead.

He didn’t see an insurmountable institutional blockade. He saw an equation.

”Tommy Mottola is fighting a war of attrition,” Elias stated, his baritone voice a low, lethal hum that carried effortlessly over the construction noise. ”He knows he cannot beat the retail volume, so he is attacking the brand prestige. He believes that by weaponizing an ancient, self-righteous institution, he can delegitimize our asset.”

”And it’s working!” Paul cried. ”These guys are the gods of music! You can’t just bully the Grammys, Elias! You can’t buy them!”

”Of course I can’t buy them, Paul. A non-profit cultural institution of this magnitude is unacquirable,” Elias smiled, a chilling, deeply shameless expression spreading across his face. ”But the men who run it are highly acquirable. Check the calendar. The senior committee is holding their quarterly mixer this afternoon.”

”Elias, no! We can’t just walk in there!”

”I am not walking in, Paul,” Elias corrected, standing up and brushing a thin layer of drywall dust off his vintage leather jacket. ”I am infiltrating. Prepare the Honda Civic.”

An hour later, Elias stood across the street from the legendary Beverly Hills Hotel, known affectionately as the ”Pink Palace.” The circular driveway was choked with Rolls-Royces and stretch limousines.

Inside the Polo Lounge, the most exclusive, fiercely guarded room in the hotel, the senior members of the Grammy Nominating Committee were currently drinking fifty-dollar scotches and smoking Cuban cigars. These were men in their sixties and seventies, former producers and label founders who acted as the gatekeepers of musical prestige.

Elias didn’t try to walk through the front door. He didn’t have an invitation, and his Poverty Aesthetic—while intimidating to young brokers—would simply flag him as a trespassing teenager to the hotel’s elite security.

Instead, he walked down the side alley toward the service entrance.

He found a man in a crisp white chef’s coat, smoking a cigarette near the loading dock. It was the catering manager.

Elias approached him, moving with absolute, aristocratic confidence. He didn’t waste time with a pitch. He reached into his pocket and pulled out five crisp hundred-dollar bills. He held them up, letting the California sun catch the green ink.

”I require a waiter’s jacket, a silver tray, and exactly four minutes of uninterrupted access to the Polo Lounge,” Elias demanded smoothly.

The catering manager choked on his cigarette. He looked at the teenager, then at the five hundred dollars. It was a week’s pay for four minutes of work.

Deep in his cerebral cortex, the system recorded the brutal toll.

[DEDUCTING -$500.00 USD FOR TACTICAL INFILTRATION BRIBERY.]

Elias barely registered the phantom pain in his chest. His liquid cash dropped, but the leverage he was about to secure was worth billions.

The manager snatched the cash. Ten minutes later, Elias van Kempen, the ruthless CEO of Sovereign Media, was wearing a slightly oversized white waiter’s jacket, carrying a silver tray with three glasses of sparkling water.

He bypassed the heavy security at the front of the Polo Lounge, slipping through the service doors with the flawless, invisible grace of a ghost.

The room was dark, smelling of expensive leather and aged whiskey.

In the back corner booth, seated around a circular table, were four men. The Old Guard. They were laughing quietly, adjusting their silk ties, looking like men who owned the world.

Elias walked directly toward their table. He didn’t offer them water. He dropped the silver tray onto an empty adjacent table with a loud, metallic clatter that instantly killed their conversation.

He mentally engaged the loan shark. He needed to crush the room instantly.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: AURA DOMINASI RAPAT SAHAM (BOARDROOM DOMINATION AURA)][COST: -10 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 15 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The air in the Polo Lounge seemed to physically thicken. Elias dropped the waiter’s jacket onto the floor, revealing his scuffed leather jacket underneath. He stood at the edge of their booth, the sheer, suffocating gravity of his aura pressing down on the elderly executives.

”Gentlemen,” Elias murmured, his baritone voice a smooth, velvet hammer.

The men stared at him in pure shock.

One of them, a silver-haired man named Arthur, who had founded three different record labels in the 1970s, slammed his fist on the table.

”What is the meaning of this?!” Arthur hissed, looking around for security. ”Who let this kid in here?! You don’t belong in this room, boy.”

”Kau tidak punya label rekaman tradisional, Nak,” another executive sneered, recognizing Elias from the industry trades. (You don’t have a traditional record label, kid.) ”Institusi ini menjaga kesucian musik. Kami tidak menominasikan lagu yang dijual seperti sosis di mal.” (This institution guards the sanctity of music. We do not nominate songs sold like sausages in a mall.)

Elias didn’t blush. He didn’t back down. He smiled.

It was a smile so deeply shameless, so entirely devoid of human empathy, that the four powerful men instinctively leaned back against the leather booths.

”Kesucian musik?” Elias repeated, letting out a dark, elegant laugh that perfectly mocked their outrage. (The sanctity of music?) ”Itu sangat puitis, Arthur.” (That is very poetic, Arthur.)

Elias placed both hands flat on their table, leaning in, ensuring they couldn’t break eye contact. His Photographic Memory engaged, pulling up a series of financial ledgers he had scanned from the Independent Radio Promoter’s office the day before.

”Firma akuntansiku kebetulan menemukan aliran dana sebesar seratus ribu dolar dari Sony Music ke rekening yayasan amal istrimu,” Elias whispered, the words cutting through the cigar smoke like a scalpel. (My accounting firm happened to find a fund flow of a hundred thousand dollars from Sony Music to your wife’s charitable foundation account,) ”Yang terdaftar sebagai ’biaya konsultasi penemuan bakat’.” (Which is listed as a ’talent discovery consulting fee’.)

Arthur’s face drained of color, turning a sickly shade of gray. He stopped breathing.

Elias didn’t stop. He turned his terrifying gaze to the man sitting next to Arthur.

”And you, Richard,” Elias continued smoothly. ”Fifty thousand dollars, routed through a dummy LLC in Delaware, directly from Tommy Mottola’s discretionary fund. Labeled as ’historical archiving’. You are not the gatekeepers of art. You are tax-evading pensioners operating a high-end protection racket.”

The Old Guard was completely paralyzed. The arrogant bluster was gone. They were staring at a sixteen-year-old boy who had just mathematically dismantled their entire careers in thirty seconds.

Elias straightened up, looking down at the broken men.

”Kembalikan kelayakan laguku di daftar nominasi Grammy,” Elias demanded, his voice dropping into a tone of absolute, sociopathic command. (Restore my song’s eligibility on the Grammy nomination list,) ”Atau IRS akan mempertanyakan bagaimana The Old Guard mendanai rumah liburan mereka di The Hamptons.” (Or the IRS will question how The Old Guard funds their vacation homes in The Hamptons.)

A massive, highly visible sweatdrop rolled down Arthur’s temple, dripping onto his silk tie.

The threat wasn’t physical. It was institutional annihilation. If the IRS audited those ”consultation fees,” they wouldn’t just be kicked off the Grammy board; they would go to federal prison for tax fraud and illegal payola.

The kid had them by the throat, and he was squeezing.

”It... it was a clerical error,” Arthur choked out, his hands trembling as he reached for his whiskey. ”The disqualification notice. We... we misclassified the retail sync license. It’s perfectly eligible. I’ll have the committee draft a retraction this afternoon.”

”I expect it faxed to my office by 3:00 PM,” Elias stated flawlessly. ”And gentlemen. I recommend you find a new hobby. Tommy Mottola’s money is no longer safe.”

Elias turned and walked out of the Polo Lounge, leaving the four most powerful men in the music industry hyperventilating in the dark.

As he stepped out into the California sun, the system erupted.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: THE NON-PROFIT BLACKMAIL HACK EXECUTED FLAWLESSLY!][EVALUATION: YOU INFILTRATED A PRESTIGE GATHERING IN A RENTED WAITER’S JACKET AND WEAPONIZED TAX FRAUD TO EXTORT A CULTURAL INSTITUTION. YOUR SHEER LACK OF DIGNITY IS A MASTERCLASS IN CAPITALISM.][REWARD: +20 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias felt the warm surge of CP, but the daily reality of his empire immediately pulled him back to earth.

[SYSTEM WARNING: DAILY MAINTENANCE FEE DEDUCTION INITIATED.][DEDUCTING -$50.00 USD FROM LIQUID CASH RESERVE.]

Elias checked his balance. $415,022.00. The war with Tommy Mottola was draining his operational funds, but he had just secured the ultimate prize. The Grammys were no longer a weapon against him. They were a hostage.

He walked back to the rattling Honda Civic. Paul was waiting inside, looking terrified.

”Did they arrest you?” Paul whimpered.

”No, Paul,” Elias murmured, sliding into the driver’s seat. ”They surrendered.”