The morning sun had turned brutal by the time I emerged from Rico's studio, casting Manhattan's silhouette into sharp relief against a crystalline October sky. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, but my mind was electric with possibilities—the kind that only came from straddling two decades at once. My phone buzzed with a text from Jay: *Yo, Warren's people sent the paperwork. This real?*
Real. The word meant something different when you'd lived the same years twice. I stopped at Carmen's Bodega—still here in 2004, not yet replaced by the artisanal coffee shop it would become—and bought a coffee that cost less than a third of what it would in 2024.
The store radio was playing Destiny's Child's "Lose My Breath," and the synchronicity made me smile. I'd been in the room when Beyoncé had reminisced about recording this track, but that conversation wouldn't happen for another eighteen years. Or maybe it would never happen now—butterfly effects were funny that way.
*Ring ring*
Rico's call interrupted my temporal vertigo. "You need to get back here," he said without preamble. "Remember that beat you were working on? The one with the weird time signature?"
"Which one?" In the past twelve hours, I'd laid down the foundations of three different tracks that wouldn't exist for years.
"The one that sounds like tomorrow," he said, and I could hear the strain in his voice. "BET is here. Like, right now. Warren sent them."
My coffee cup froze halfway to my lips. BET hadn't been part of the original timeline—not for years. Another ripple, another change. I thought of the track Rico meant, the one that in my first life had defined the summer of 2026:
*Verse 1:
History's got a funny way
Of changing when you ain't looking
Every beat, every day
Rewrites the path we're booking
These streets remember futures
That ain't happened yet
Every rhythm features
Promises we can't forget*
"I'll be there in ten," I said, already turning back toward the studio. "Don't play them anything else."
The Bronx morning swirled around me as I walked—bodega cats sunning themselves on stoops that would soon be renovated out of existence, kids practicing dance moves that wouldn't go viral for another decade, car stereos bumping beats that I remembered helping produce in a future that was already changing.
My notebook felt heavy in my backpack, filled with lyrics and arrangements that spanned twenty years of music history—some of it lived, some of it only remembered, all of it in flux. I pulled it out, adding another entry:
*October 15, 2004: BET involvement accelerated by 17 years. Potential impact on:
- Jay's trajectory
- Label dynamics
- B's crossover timeline
- Industry restructuring*
Below it, I sketched out the chorus that had been building in my mind since Rico's call:
*Chorus:
Time ain't nothing but a rhythm
That we're learning how to play
Every moment's got a system
Every beat shows us the way
And though the future's always changing
Like a melody unbound
All these moments we're arranging
Gonna bring it all around*
I reached the studio just as a sleek black SUV pulled up—twenty years of industry experience told me it was BET executives before the doors even opened. Rico was waiting outside, bouncing on his heels like a prizefighter before a match.
"Marcus," he grabbed my arm. "What's happening? First Warren, now this? It's like... it's like the whole industry suddenly woke up."
I watched the executives approach, remembering how this scene had played out differently—would have played out differently—in 2021. "Maybe it was sleeping too long," I said. "Maybe it needed someone to change the rhythm."
The executives introduced themselves—names I knew from future boardrooms, faces two decades younger than my memory painted them. We rode the elevator in silence, but I could feel the weight of anticipation, the pressure of timelines converging.
In the studio, I cued up the track:
*Bridge:
They say timing is everything
But what if time ain't real?
Every track we're mastering
Is teaching us to feel
The rhythm of tomorrow
In the beats of yesterday
Till every joy and sorrow
Finds its proper place to play*
The music filled the room—future and past colliding in a symphony of possibility. I watched their faces, seeing the moment they recognized something revolutionary, something that shouldn't exist yet but somehow did.
"This is..." The senior exec paused, searching for words. "This is not like anything we've heard."
"That's the point," I said quietly, thinking of all the changes yet to come. "The future doesn't have to sound like the past."
Rico shot me another look—he'd been doing that more often lately, like he was trying to solve a puzzle with pieces from different boxes. I turned back to the console, adding layers to a track that had once been—would have been—might still be—the soundtrack to a future I was carefully dismantling and rebuilding.
Outside, the Bronx kept playing its endless symphony, unaware that its rhythms were being rewritten, one beat at a time. And somewhere out there, Beyoncé was rehearsing with Destiny's Child, not yet knowing that every track I laid down was another step toward her—across time, across chance, across change.
Until yesterday finally caught up with tomorrow.
Until the music finally brought us home.
The executives were talking numbers now, making plans for appearances and promotions that had never existed in my original timeline. I let Rico handle the details while I added one final verse to my notebook:
*Outro:
Let the music be our compass
Through these shifting waves of time
Every change becomes a promise
Every beat, a new design
For the love that waits tomorrow
In a future yet unknown
Is worth all these borrowed sorrows
Worth the weight of seeds we've sown*
The future was changing, note by note, beat by beat. And this time, we'd get the rhythm right.