The Billboard article appeared exactly three days after our studio session, its headline screaming across my MacBook screen in that particular shade of industry validation: "BEYONCÉ AND UNKNOWN PRODUCER MARCUS JOHNSON SET TO REVOLUTIONIZE R&B SOUND." I sat in my childhood bedroom—still unchanged from its 2004 transformation—and felt the peculiar vertigo of seeing history rewrite itself before my eyes.
In my previous life, this moment had never existed. The article that had launched my career had come six years later, with different words, different predictions, different dreams. Now, as I scrolled through the journalist's breathless predictions about "the future of music production" and "unprecedented sonic landscapes," I couldn't help but smile at the irony of their accuracy.
My BlackBerry buzzed—still strange to hold after years of smartphones that hadn't been invented yet. Rico's message flashed across the tiny screen: "Turn on MTV. Now."
The ancient television in the corner of my room hummed to life, its cathode-ray glow painting shadows on posters of artists who were still in their prime. And there it was: our track, premiering in a segment about "The Next Wave of Music Production." The host—who I remembered meeting at an awards show in 2018—was dissecting the very elements I'd borrowed from that future.
*Innovative layering techniques...*
*Groundbreaking spatial audio design...*
*Revolutionary approach to vocal processing...*
My phone buzzed again, this time with a text from Beyoncé:
"They're calling it 'future music.' You knew they would, didn't you?"
I stared at the message, remembering conversations we'd had (would have?) in recording studios yet to be built, about the very sound we'd just introduced to the world a decade early. The temptation to respond with "I know because I was there" was almost overwhelming.
Instead, I typed: "Sometimes you just have to trust where the music wants to go."
Through my bedroom window, I could see the Bronx stirring to life in the early morning sun. A newspaper vendor on the corner was setting up his stand, headlines about the music industry's "new direction" already visible from three stories up. In my previous timeline, that same vendor had sold papers until 2012, when digital media finally claimed his corner. I wondered if this change—this early revolution in sound—would alter his future too.
Maria's voice carried up from downstairs, the smell of café con leche drifting with it. "Mijo! Rico's on the landline. Something about Jimmy Iovine?"
I closed my eyes, letting the weight of the moment settle. In my first life, I hadn't met Jimmy until 2011. Now, barely into 2005, the dominoes were falling faster than even I had anticipated. Each change rippled outward, touching lives and careers and futures I couldn't possibly predict.
The MTV host was still talking, her voice carrying that breathless tone of discovery: "Sources say this could change the entire trajectory of modern R&B production..."
She had no idea how right she was. Or rather, how right she would have been, in a future that now only existed in my memories.
I picked up the landline, its spiral cord a relic of a past that was somehow my present again. "Rico? Yeah, I'm watching it now." I paused, listening to his excited chatter about meetings and contracts and possibilities. "No, I'm not surprised. Sometimes you just know when something's going to change everything."
Through the window, I watched as the newspaper vendor sold his first copy of the day, the headline about our track catching the morning light. In both my lifetimes, I'd learned that sometimes the biggest changes come not from the grand gestures, but from the quiet moments—a melody that arrives before its time, a sound that beckons from the future, a truth hidden in plain sight.
The MTV segment ended, but the revolution was just beginning. Again.