Morning leaked through the studio blinds like liquid gold, catching dust motes that danced above the mixing console where I'd spent the night. The contract with Atlantic sat in my lawyer's office downtown, but its implications hummed through the air like a subsonic frequency. Three weeks had passed since the signing, and already the industry's gravitational fields were shifting.
I pulled up the new track on Pro Tools – prehistoric by my standards, though cutting edge for 2006. My fingers moved across the interface with muscle memory acquired in a future that was increasingly feeling like a half-remembered dream.
*Digital dreams in analog days
Ones and zeros write tomorrow's ways
While vinyl souls spin backwards through time
Searching for a truth they'll never find
(But the future's already in the groove)*
The monitor speakers pulsed with a bass line that wouldn't exist for another five years – a synthesis of trap music's foundation with harmonic structures I'd learned from studying Brazilian jazz in 2019. I was walking a tightrope, introducing elements from the future slowly enough to seem innovative rather than impossible.
My RAZR phone buzzed: Rico.
"Turn on MTV News," he said without preamble. I reached for the remote, and Carson Daly's face filled the flat screen – another anachronism I'd insisted on installing despite its outrageous 2006 price tag.
"...industry insiders are calling it the 'Johnson Sound,'" Carson was saying, while a clip of my latest track played beneath his voice. "Atlantic Records' newest signing is being hailed as the future of production. Sources say the seventeen-year-old producer from the Bronx is already fielding calls from..."
I muted the TV, watching Carson's lips move silently. In my previous timeline, this moment had come four years later, and by then, the innovation wave I'd hoped to ride had already crested. Now, I was ahead of the curve I'd once chased.
"The phones are burning up," Rico continued. "Timbaland's people called. Pharrell wants a meeting. And Marcus..." He paused, his voice dropping to a whisper heavy with zeros, "Jay-Z's office reached out."
My hand froze on the mixing board's fader. Jay-Z. Which meant Beyoncé was now in play, years ahead of schedule. The timeline was accelerating, compressing decades of industry evolution into months.
"Tell them I'm in the studio," I said, watching the wavelengths dance on my screen like prophecies written in electricity. "Tell them the sound isn't ready yet."
"Ready? Marcus, people are offering American Idol money for beats that don't even exist yet. What are you waiting for?"
*For time to catch up with memory*, I thought, but said instead, "For the right moment. Trust me, Rico. This isn't about money."
Through the studio window, I could see Ma in the garden she'd planted when we bought the brownstone – her first act of permanence after a lifetime of renting. She was wearing her new gardening clothes, designer labels incongruous with the dirt under her fingernails. Success wrapped around her like a shawl, but couldn't quite hide the posture built by decades of struggle.
The track played on, its rhythms echoing from a future that only I remembered. On the muted TV, Carson had moved on to other news, but the lower third still scrolled my name like a stock ticker of destiny. My phone buzzed again – messages from producers and artists, each one a thread in the tapestry of an industry I was carefully reweaving.
I turned back to Pro Tools, to the familiar interface that felt simultaneously ancient and immediate. The next evolution was already coded in my memory – streaming platforms, blockchain contracts, AI collaborations – but 2006 wasn't ready for those revelations. Not yet.
*Every revolution has its rhythm
Every future finds its form
In the space between what is
And what's waiting to be born
(Time is just another instrument to play)*
The new lyrics flowed into the project file, carrying echoes of a revolution that hadn't happened yet. Outside, the city was waking up to a sound it hadn't known it was waiting for. And somewhere, in a studio I remembered from another life, Beyoncé was probably listening to the tracks that would lead her to me.
I adjusted the mix, pulling the future down to a frequency the present could handle. The timeline was a symphony, and I was its conductor, orchestrating each innovation with the precision of someone who had already heard the entire piece played through to its end.
Ma looked up from her garden and waved. I waved back, remembering how in another life, I'd lost these years to blind ambition and uncertainty. The sun caught her smile, and for a moment, time itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting to hear what tomorrow's music would sound like today.
I turned up the monitors and let the future play.