So, to start, I dumped half a million dollars into this organization, all my own money. Sold my car, cashed in all my stocks and bonds. I knew there was a need for it, but I wasn't sure how feasible it was, and I wasn't comfortable playing with other people's money. And then I started sort of acting as match-maker between up-and-coming rap artists and very powerful attorneys who could afford to do some pro bono work. That seemed the first piece of the equation that was missing: the average rapper does not have access to Madonna's attorney. This is still a big part of what the Coalition does and it's been very successful. We have about seventy different attorneys working with us now. And these are not kids right out of law school, they are very busy professionals who take one or two extra cases for rappers.

You have to understand that rappers don't really want to be part of the music industry. I'm not exactly sure why, but they are sort of removed from the whole thing. I'm generalizing, of course, but the average rapper really doesn't want to know how the business works--they just want fame and the money and the women. They see a video with Jay-Z driving down the street in a Lexus. They hear Puffy Combs on the radio every three minutes. They have a perception of this great life style where you're famous and everybody loves you and you can fuck any woman and that's what they want.

But it really isn't like that at all. To get to a level of Puffy is so much work. And it's money. You have to have somebody behind you dumping tons of money into your project. And to get that you have to learn how to manipulate the industry. And most rappers don't ever even start to learn--most don't even read their contract. I mean, the average rapper--if I have to lump everybody in a stereotype--the average rapper does not like to read. They don't want to do work that involves anything other than making beats or writing rhymes. So, the business part, they don't care about, especially when they are just starting out.

And this is a terrible thing because, for the most part, the music industry just sees rappers as a "bunch of dumb niggers." You can tell by the deals that they offer. The record companies front-load all their deals, which means they dangle money in your face. They say: "Here's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars" but they don't talk about what you're going to get down the road. Which is usually nothing or less than nothing. They are basically saying: "Okay, these guys are disposable. We'll get them to sign for a BMW or a bunch of sneakers, and a little bit of cash. We'll make a godzillion dollars and when they are not making money any more--fuck 'em."

Just look at the points in some of these contracts. A good deal would be somewhere be between twelve and fifteen points, which means you get twelve or fifteen percent of the net retail selling price--after you pay back your advance--which when you think about it really sucks--but you want to be a star and that's the status quo. But with rappers, I've seen contacts go as low as six points. Ice Cube gave Cam six points and he signed it.

There are just so many problems with these contracts. Like, Naughty By Nature gets eighteen points; Scarface gets thirteen. Why is Scarface at thirteen points and Naughty by Nature at eighteen? I bet if I pull the statistics on the them they sell about the same amount of units. Why is that? It's because Scarface and Naughty By Nature don't talk, but I talk to both of them and then I bring information back to both of them. I tell Scarface that they are getting eighteen. I tell them that he's getting thirteen. That's my job. My job is to educate them. What they do with that information is on them. I can't make them renegotiate their contracts. I can refer them to attorneys and accountants who can. But Scarface never will renegotiate because he feels that Little Jay, his label, is working in his best interest. He doesn't have a clue. He doesn't realize it's about Jay getting rich, not Scarface getting rich. And Scarface doesn't care because whenever he needs money he goes to Jay and gets money, and Jay just gives it to him. Jay gives it to him because its all recoupable. Jay just takes it all back out of Scarface's sales.

So what the Rap Coalition does, essentially, is we try to pull people out of bad deals and introduce people to attorneys and accountants. We've got offices in New York and Chicago and next year, we'll be opening one in Los Angeles. We've had some real successes. I got Twisted a phenomenal contract--fifty points. He owns half his masters, he owns half of everything. And he has complete creative control. They wanted him that badly and it was the price they were willing to pay. So that was great.

We also have a series of educational programs--for rappers and for the public. We work a lot with the Nation of Islam and, you know, when I first went to Farrakhan's house, I was ecstatic. To me, that was a symbol of success that I had achieved a level of recognition of what I do. It's pretty cool to be at a meeting at the minister's house and you're the only white person there, and he points that out. I was there for the Rap Summit. It was fascinating. We discussed that the lyrical content needs to change; that the black-on-black crime that exist in the lyrics is dead, it has to go away now. There has been a movement against that for about two years--a huge backlash against gangsta rap. Of course, it hasn't gone away. It's still there because the buying public buys it. And, sad to say, that's the bottom line.

I have two opinions about the lyrics--a personal opinion and a professional opinion. Professionally, it is my job to support rap artists. Rap artists can do no wrong. When I'm out in public and somebody says, "Twisted's lyrics are wrong because he degrades black women and he talks about black-on-black crime," I will defend him to the umpteenth degree. It's his First Amendment right to express whatever he wants, blah-blah-blah. He's chronicling what he sees in his area of Chicago, and if you don't like his lyrical content, change the problems of the ghetto in Chicago. That's my professional opinion.

But then I have my personal opinion and there I have a problem with Twisted's lyrical content, and he knows it. I've sat down with him and said, "You know what? This shit is dead--you have got a slave mentality. You're a lost soul and it's really pathetic." So that's Wendy's opinion. But I would never voice that publicly. As the Rap Coalition founder, it is my job to protect and support him.

My family doesn't get what I'm doing. I grew up in wealthy, white, Jewish suburban Philadelphia, in a family that wasn't wealthy, wasn't Jewish. My dad worked for the post office and my mother was a home-maker. We lived on, I'm guessing, twenty-five thousand a year. But the neighborhood itself was all wealthy Jewish doctors, lawyers, dentist, psychologists. My parents moved there because the schools were good. I guess they figured we may not have lot of money, but our kids are going to being fucking educated. So I grew up an outsider and I've always been comfortable with being the oddball out. So it's not weird for me to be white girl in a sea of black folk.

My exposure to black people as a kid was one bus load that was bussed in from the poorer area on the edge of Philadelphia to my high school--so my access to people of color was very limited. But growing up in that environment and then working in this one, I've realized that black people are just like me. There are different circumstances and different situations because of the whole oppression thing going on and the whole economic thing going on, but fundamentally folk ain't all that different. And black people are so attractive to me because they have excelled in the face of all this adversity that has been cast upon them for five hundred years. And to me that's so fucking amazing. I mean, to watch a kid in Compton, who lives in a shack that has cold water excel and become the president of a record label like Easy-E--that's damn impressive no matter how you slice it.

My family doesn't understand, though. My father understands more than my mom does. His attitude is do whatever makes you happy. My mom just doesn't get it at all. She accepts me; she's seen the articles in the New York Times and Time magazine. She knows, "Okay, people on the national level have recognized my daughter, so whatever she's doing, she must be pretty good at it." But she doesn't understand why I'm doing it. She does not understand black folk at all. She is a victim of watching the news and thinks that black people are slow and that black men are all criminals. I've tried to educate her on reality and it's just the old dog/new trick. She's like: You're white so why are you doing this?

And you know, that's the first question everyone always asks: "Why is a white person doing this?" And I understand that question. I think there is a problem with a white person running a black organization, but I know my motives and I know my agenda, so if somebody has to do it and it's not a black person, I'm glad it's me. And, on the flip side, there are a lot of places that my skin color gets me into. I mean, someone from Atlantic Records is much more comfortable negotiating a deal with me than they would be with someone who doesn't look like them. That's just a human nature kind of attribute. It's wrong, but it is a reality. You're dealt a certain hand in life and you play that hand.

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