False Black had spent years introducing everybody else.
One night he got tired of it.
He locked the DJ cage, turned off the house lights and recorded an album after The Nest closed.
He called it Fear of a False Black.
The record attacked everybody: record labels, town officials, fake revolutionaries, celebrity rappers, corporate sponsors and artists who discovered principles only after the royalty check cleared.
Dewdrop heard the first single and stared at him.
“You trying to get banned?”
“I’m trying to get heard.”
“You can do both.”
False released it independently.
Within forty-eight hours, Hood County could talk about nothing else.
That was exactly when Councilbug Preston Vale arrived from Capital City.
Vale was Gilden’s political infiltrator. He had perfect teeth, perfect antennae and a plan for everything Hood County had never asked him to fix.
At a rally outside the warehouse district, he announced the Bug Rights Abroad Initiative.
“Hood County,” Vale declared, “has a moral responsibility to help oppressed bugs beyond our borders.”
The program would use a portion of the county’s dormant gold reserves as foreign aid.
The crowd applauded the phrase bug rights.
Almost nobody asked why gold that had supposedly been worthless for decades had suddenly become useful.
False Black did.
He said it on the radio.
He said it at The Nest.
Then he said it on the remix.
Gilden watched from the lab.
“That one is becoming irritating.”
Jocko cut himself a piece of cheese.
“Artists often are.”
“Perhaps he requires management.”
“Or perhaps,” Jocko said, “you could try listening.”
Gilden slowly turned his head.
Jocko returned to his cheese.