The Interscope building's lobby hadn't changed between 2005 and 2024—the same marble floors that would reflect my older self's footsteps now mirrored Rico's anxious pacing as we waited for Jimmy Iovine. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Los Angeles sprawled out like a dream I'd lived twice, palm trees swaying in a wind that carried hints of both past and future.
"Stop looking so calm," Rico muttered, adjusting his tie for the seventh time. "This is Jimmy fucking Iovine. The man who built Dr. Dre."
I smiled, remembering (or anticipating) the charity gala in 2016 where Jimmy and I had spent an hour discussing the future of streaming platforms—a conversation that now felt like a prophecy rather than a memory. "Trust me, Rico. This meeting's already written."
The elevator chimed, and Jimmy emerged exactly as I remembered him: focused intensity wrapped in casual designer wear, BlackBerry in hand. But this time, instead of greeting me as an established producer, he was seeing Marcus Johnson for the first time—or rather, the first time in this timeline.
"That track you did for Beyoncé," he said, bypassing introductions entirely, "how'd you layer those 808s like that? My engineers spent two days trying to reverse engineer it."
In my past life, that technique hadn't been developed until 2013, in a Tokyo studio during a late-night session with a producer who was currently in high school. I gestured toward the conference room. "Maybe we should discuss it sitting down."
The corner office was exactly as it would be in nineteen years—views of Hollywood Hills that cost more than most advances, the same vintage console that would survive three office renovations. Jimmy settled behind his desk, studying me with eyes that had launched a thousand careers.
"You're, what, twenty-one?" he asked, though I knew he'd already memorized my entire biography.
"Old enough to know where music's heading," I replied, thinking of the forty years of experience packed into my young frame. "Young enough to help shape it."
Rico shot me a look—in any other meeting, such boldness would have been suicide. But I remembered this conversation from the future, remembered the contracts it would spawn, the empires it would build. Only this time, we were having it a decade earlier.
Jimmy leaned forward, fingers steepled. "That production style... it's not just ahead of its time. It's like you've seen where music's going and brought it back to now."
The irony almost made me laugh. Instead, I pulled out the USB drive I'd prepared—another anachronism in 2005. "I've got three more tracks. Same innovative approach, different applications." I set it on his desk, knowing each song contained production techniques that wouldn't be invented for years. "The future of music isn't about following trends. It's about creating them."
"Marcus," Rico hissed, but Jimmy was already reaching for the drive.
"You know what the biggest problem in this industry is?" Jimmy asked, turning the USB drive over in his hands. "Everyone's so busy trying to copy what works now, they forget to imagine what could work tomorrow." He looked up at me, and for a moment, I saw the man who would shape the next two decades of music. "But you're not doing that, are you? You're not copying anything. You're showing us something we haven't heard yet."
*If you only knew*, I thought. Out loud, I said, "Sometimes the future needs a little push to arrive on schedule."
The Los Angeles sun painted long shadows across the office floor, and somewhere in the distance, I could hear the faint pulse of music that hadn't been written yet. Jimmy plugged in the USB drive, and the room filled with sounds that wouldn't exist for years—except they did now, here, in this rewritten present.
Rico had stopped fidgeting, his expression shifting from anxiety to awe as Jimmy nodded along to beats that defied current production logic. Through the window, I could see a billboard for an album that, in my previous timeline, had defined 2007's sound. Now, in 2005, we were about to make it obsolete before it even released.
"I'm going to make you an offer," Jimmy said finally, closing the laptop. "But first, tell me something: what do you see when you look at where music's heading?"
I met his gaze, twenty years of future knowledge burning behind my eyes. "I see a revolution," I said softly. "And it starts right here, in this room."
The words hung in the air like smoke signals to a future that was rapidly rewriting itself. Outside, Los Angeles continued its eternal dance of dreams and destiny, unaware that in this moment, in this office, the entire trajectory of popular music was about to change.
Again.