Chapter 263: Is This My Song?

"Link Baker!"

It was past 11 PM, and the Grammy party had ended.

In the parking lot of the Staples Center, Link was about to get into his car when he heard a shout from behind.

He stopped at the back door of the van and looked back to see a crowd of people, including 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, Kanye, Drake, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Eminem, Justin Bieber, Usher, and about twenty others.

In fact, Link was quite envious of them, making music together, drinking together, no matter what they did, there was always a group of people.

"Link, we're not just going to beat you at the Grammys, we're going to beat you on the album charts in March and April, just you wait!" 50 Cent shouted.

"No one can beat me, whether it's boxing or music. If you dare challenge me, all that awaits you is another failure." Link smiled faintly, waved to Eminem, and turned to get into the car.

"Fuck! This kid is too arrogant, I really want to shoot him." 50 Cent said angrily.

"Are you sure?" Eminem took out his phone from his pocket and dialed 911, saying, "Hello, is this the LAPD? I want to report a crime, the famous rapper 50 Cent is planning to assassinate..."

"Holy shit!" 50 Cent thought he was just pretending, but suddenly saw that the call was actually connected, he quickly rushed over, grabbed his phone, hung up, and glared at Eminem, saying,

"Damn it, I was joking, you really called the police?"

Eminem shrugged, grabbed his phone back, and said, "I'm a law-abiding citizen, I can't ignore it when I see a crime about to happen, otherwise I'd become your accomplice."

"Fuck! Em, you bastard must be a spy planted in our camp by Link." 50 Cent cursed.

Eminem shrugged indifferently, he was a white rapper who worked closely with the East Coast rap group, and the two sides had close interests, so he didn't care what 50 Cent said.

"Shut up! Don't talk about Em like that." Beyoncé wrapped her coffee-colored coat around her and glanced at 50 Cent.

"Em is right, dealing with a damn bastard like Link, using physical means to eliminate him is not appropriate, it's best to defeat him where he's most proud, such as boxing, music, defeat him, see him lying on the ground crying, admitting defeat, begging for mercy, and we won't let him go, we'll catch him, continue to torture him, punish him severely, don't you think that's more satisfying?"

Beyoncé clenched her fists, pursed her plump lower lip, her face cold, a flash of crazy pleasure in her eyes.

"Beyoncé is right!" Kanye, Lil Wayne, Drake, and others nodded repeatedly.

"Honey, I'm glad you said that." Jay-Z wrapped his arm around Beyoncé's waist and praised.

"Hey, are you serious, Beyoncé?" Eminem looked at her in surprise and said, "You want Link to lie on the ground crying and begging for mercy? How is that possible, that's the world boxing champion Link Baker, the strongest man in the world."

"I'm speaking metaphorically." Beyoncé rolled her eyes at him and put her hand on Rihanna's shoulder, saying, "Em, I know you have some good feelings for Link, even admire him, but he's our opponent now, the enemy, I hope you can stand on the same front line with us and fight against him together."

"What if I don't agree?" Eminem asked, frowning.

"You're still our friend." Beyoncé said lightly.

"Okay, I understand, goodbye!" Eminem turned and left, cursing "fuck" in the distance, and drove away with a roar.

"Honey, you shouldn't have said that, Em is our friend." Jay-Z frowned.

Beyoncé shook her head, "No matter what, Em is white, he has a good personal relationship with Link, if we want to defeat Link, we must be completely united, with Em in the middle, many things are not convenient to discuss, in addition, we are competing with Link, Em will be in a difficult position in the middle, it's more appropriate this way."

"Beyoncé, you're right." 50 Cent said loudly, "I was just joking about killing Link, and Em was going to call the police, we say anything else, he will definitely snitch."

Other black people also nodded, agreeing with 50 Cent's statement.

Jay-Z thought for a moment and felt that this was not bad either.

"Don't worry, after we defeat Link, I will personally apologize to Em, he will understand us." Beyoncé said lightly.

Jay-Z looked at her flushed face and hugged her, saying, "Honey, I find you seem even more beautiful."

"Hey, Jay, we're all here, don't do this, okay?"

"Save the PDA for home, we don't want to be fed dog food." Kanye, Lil Wayne, and others joked loudly, the scene filled with a cheerful atmosphere.

Beyoncé took the opportunity to push Jay-Z's arm away with a smile, brushed the curls by her ear, and looked up to see Link's van slowly disappearing into the charming night of Los Angeles.

—

"What did you say?!" In the moving van, Link looked at Graheme in surprise. Just after the party ended, Graheme came up to him and said he had something urgent to discuss with him.

Graheme told him that around January, eight production assistants and sound engineers from Link Music had left.

Link Music was founded less than a year and a half ago and only had 28 musicians under its wing. Losing eight at once was a major blow to Link Music and could even paralyze the recording studio's work.

"Why are you telling me this now? Okay, I understand, I was on tour before, too busy, you didn't want me to be distracted."

"That's not the reason." Graheme adjusted his glasses and said, "Link, mainly because this matter didn't have a big impact, there was no need to tell you before, telling you now is to give you a work report."

"Not a big impact? One-third of our recording studio staff was poached, isn't that a big impact?" Link looked at him doubtfully, seeing the sweat on Graheme's forehead, he took out a wet wipe and handed it to him to wipe.

Graheme took it and thanked him, wiping his sweat while saying, "At the end of 2008, when our company was first established, we were short of people, so the people we recruited were all very ordinary. Before, we only produced your albums, which was barely enough, but now there are more people, the work is getting busier, and employees with low efficiency can't keep up with the pace.

Originally, President Ivanka and I discussed recruiting new people at the beginning of the year.

Now Link Music has become a top music label, many excellent musicians come to submit their resumes, wanting to join us, we don't lack people at all.

After they left, we hired more than a dozen musicians with stronger abilities, so there was almost no impact."

Link twitched the corner of his mouth, it seemed that there was indeed no negative impact, but there were benefits, should he thank those who poached?

"But we can't be careless, someone poaching our company's employees means someone is trying to deal with us, did you find out who did it?"

"Preliminary investigation shows that it's related to SB Projects agency and Epic Records. SB Projects is Justin's agency, and Epic Records has a cooperative relationship with Jay-Z, Kanye, and others. We suspect they are laying the groundwork in advance, trying to destroy Link Music.

However, President Ivanka believes that this matter is also related to Atlantic Records, and even the Big Five record companies. Link Music is now a golden goose, and many people want to swallow us." Graheme said slowly.

Link nodded, feeling a bit helpless.

After becoming a billionaire, he really didn't want to have conflicts with others, and hoped to make money peacefully, but as his business grew, there were too many interests involved, and many things were often beyond his control.

Graheme also told him that many people have been asking about the demos of his third album recently, someone spent a million dollars on the black market to buy the third album's recording tape, trying to destroy the album in this way.

Link frowned, although 50 Cent only mentioned competing with him on the charts today, in fact, the opponents had already made their moves. The situation was more severe than he had expected, and the competition within the music industry was fiercer than imagined.

"Link, there's one more thing." Graheme took out his phone and opened the music player, Justin's voice came from the speakers, it was the song "Baby" that he had been listening to until he almost vomited recently.

"Graheme, do you like this kind of song?" Link picked his ears and looked at him strangely, finding it hard to agree with his taste.

Graheme looked at him even more strangely.

"Link, don't you think this song is familiar?"

"Familiar?"

"Have you forgotten? At the end of 2008, you wrote more than a dozen songs for me to see, one of which is highly similar to this one. I looked at it once, thought the song was too bad, not suitable for you, so I abandoned it."

"What?!"

"I suspect there's an insider who plagiarized this song and sold it to Justin's agency. I thought you had already heard it and were thinking of tactics to deal with Justin, but you seem to have forgotten." Graheme said in surprise.

Link touched his forehead, he had a vague memory.

At the end of 2008, when he and Mandy went to the recording studio for the first time, he did bring a few unfinished songs and asked Graheme to choose a suitable song for his first album, including Justin's two songs "Never Say Never" and "Baby."

Because the first album was an inspirational album, Graheme thought "Never Say Never" was barely suitable and abandoned "Baby."

Although it was abandoned, the score of "Baby" was still in Link Music's music library.

Now Graheme thought that the producers behind Justin had plagiarized the song.

Link asked him what to do in this situation?

Graheme said that he had already reported this matter to Ivanka, and Ivanka said to wait and see, wait until Justin's album is released before saying anything.

Today, he came to Link because Link never mentioned this matter, he wanted to ask Link if he had any plans, so as to avoid any conflicts, but Link had completely forgotten about it.

Link nodded, not saying anything more.

The car drove into the city, after dropping off Graheme, it slowly started again, entering Santa Monica Boulevard, becoming a neon light in this sleepless city.

(End of chapter)