Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: Murder ballad

Murder suspect Slinkey might've killed a promising music career. Then again...

By Andrew Kiraly

Alfonso Blake--a suspect in the murder of two women and the attempted murder of a third last week--was captured Saturday in Barstow. The story leading up to the shootings is both brutal and bizarre, a story of ambition, control and apparent rage that ended in the death of topless dancer Sophear Choy, cocktail waitress Van Dine and the wounding of Kim Choy.

It all sounds like fodder for some twisted murder ballad--and it's one that Blake, a.k.a. Slinkey, won't be writing. Indeed, when the double-murder suspect is extradited to Las Vegas, he'll not only face murder charges, but he'll confront the remains of a promising music career that showed every sign of taking off. Talking to associates of Blake--from his promoter to fellow artists in the Vegas music scene--it seems the 33-year-old singer was poised to make a major splash in the R&B scene. With a solid single, "Freak Show," sizzling along West Coast stations last fall and a bankroll that police say came courtesy of a lucrative escort service, Slinkey seemed like an artist on the verge of success--one that would've complemented nicely other R&B success stories that originated from Las Vegas, such as 702.

"With all the money he had behind him, he was gonna go major, he was gonna be a major player," says Eddie Carr, who promotes and manages R&B and rap artists (and adds, interestingly enough, that he's worked with Robert Blake, Phil Spector and Tupac Shakur.) "The album wasn't done, but we needed to get his name out there, so we threw a single out there in November, 'Freak Show,' that was big from Vancouver to San Diego."

While Carr's in a line of business in which he's seen it all, he's still surprised at the charges facing Blake. "If you met this guy, you wouldn't believe he's capable of the stuff [he's charged with], knowing how nice he is. It's always 'yes sir,' 'yes ma'am.' He's clean cut and articulate when he talks. I know he's cash and carry--you know, he's got money lying around, he says he doesn't like paperwork--and that's fine, I told him, as long as the money coming to me is clean."

And money matters in the R&B world. Sure, talent is a must, but in a genre of music where slick image and high production values are the rule, it helps to act like a success in order to become one. Thus it's little surprise that Slinkey, Carr says, sunk about $80,000 of his own money into studio time and a website (www.slinkey.com). According to Carr, he was also scheduled to shoot a video last week.

"You put that much money into it, you're gonna make it on some level," says local rap artist Slick, a.k.a. The Pale Pimp, who says his own album, Explosive, is due out soon. "The market's really saturated right now. Everybody thinks he can rap or he can sing, but Slinkey had some pretty good stuff."

It had all the earmarks of contemporary R&B: heavy production, throbbing bass and that slow-burn, after-hours tempo that conjures the decadent vibe that marks popular R&B music. The best of Slinkey's tunes--his single, "Freak Show," "Your Everything" and "Diggin' the Day"--are built on layered choruses that reinforce the genre's party spirit.

"'Freak Show' was a real tight song. He had a good chance with that," says Markeyz, another local rapper who originally hails from Houston. "There was something extra about him. It was like he had this extra energy that a lot of R&B singers don't have to make it to the next level. I felt he was pretty much on his way. He just had it, trust me. It's hard to put into words.

"And the ladies loved him," Markeyz adds. "That was the thing."

And apparently Slinkey loved the ladies--or at least the money they made for him. Which might be his undoing. According to published reports, the two-time convicted felon was funding his musical aspirations from money he made from an escort service specializing in Asian women. Many of the women lived with him in his home, but, apparently, when three of them tried to move out, the fight that ensued turned into a double murder. The three women were shot in a desert lot in his southwest valley home early Wednesday morning last week.

While it may spell the end of Slinkey's career, it's just a speed bump for Carr, who has other artists, such as Slick a.k.a. The Pale Pimp, to develop. Still, he says, Slinkey's story isn't over yet.

"You think he'd jeopardize his whole career by shooting two girls? He was planning to go into the studio the morning of the shooting," Carr says. "It doesn't make sense. He's a killer singer."