Use Me Any Way You Wanna

Lyrics

after Tina Turner "I'm Ike Turner, turn up, baby you know I don't play. Now eat the cake, Anna Mae, said, 'eat the cake, Anna Mae!'" - Jay Z 1960. A new sound erupts over East St. Louis like a siren. Anna Mae Bullock's voice is boiling water spilling over every stage. She is one half of what will go down in history as the most explosive R&B duo of all time. The other half she calls her brother, a skinny man with perfect hair and ambitions almost as big as his hands. The King of Kings. He selected Little Ann to be his leading lady out of countless screaming girls. Renames her Tina, gives her his last name. Brother, she calls him. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue is a match made in music. Televisions across America ignite with the hottest act the soul circuit has to offer. Despite the pair's success, producers utter words like solo, diva, starlet. They hang in the air like a haunting refrain. It is the first time Ike Turner makes a fist without a microphone inside it. What do you do when the star you created outshines you? Rip out her vocal cords to string your new guitar with? No. You'd never do that. Take her out to celebrate. Order a cake layered thick as jealousy. Make it something sweet, southern buttercream. Tell the waitress to bring the whole thing at once, insist on cutting it yourself. Say something about saving her the trouble. When Anna Mae tells you she isn't hungry, how can you believe her? The big mouthed bitch devoured every dream you had in one efficient bite. Give her what she wants. Smash the cake in her face like a wedding joke gone wrong until you think she might purge her voice into the shape of an apology on her dinner plate. When the entire diner cowers in the corner, tell it there is nothing to fucking see here. Count how many eyes refuse to leave your body, it's been a while since you were the most important person in the room. On the car ride home, ignore the constant flinch, the way her body stiffens like stage fright. Remember the first song you wrote just for her to sing: You know you love him, you can't understand why he treats you like he do, when he's such a good man. In thirty years you will learn of your induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from a California prison cell. You are not incarcerated for beating Tina Turner. Cocaine ate a hole in your nose but she does not wear a single scar. You make sure every reporter knows this, even when they don't ask The Question. You wear denial like a jail suit, blame the stutter on the nosebleeds, but it doesn't matter if anyone believes you. Some rapper who thinks himself a god will glorify what you did while trying to become one. It will be the first single on his wife's new album, and everyone's favorite to sing along to.