Adele: The Pop Star Repurposed by the Criminal Underworld

of Adele. And this is because Adele makes great music, Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called the Guns of Tottenham MK. One. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to grenade by Bruno Mars. And why would I play you that specific slice of unrequited love cheese?

getting them, or so he thinks. He's desperate, and he has to move fast before that security guard locks the front door behind him. So he exits the car along with his accomplice sal played by John Because, and they walk inside the bank and Pacino carries a long white box with a bow, and no one knows that inside that box is a rifle. He anxiously looks around and these employees, these tellers, the security guard, the manager, they're all innocent. Pacino's character means them no.

in the Bible, in one form or another. And though we've been told not to be afraid for centuries, we still are you Me Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon and Adele. In twenty eleven, Adele became a once in a generation phenomenon with the release of her sophomore album twenty one. It entered the Billboard Album Chart at number one, where it stayed for twenty four weeks, breaking the record set by Princess Purple Rain some twenty seven years prior. Now.

While the album was at number one, three of its singles, Rolling in the Deep, Set, Fire to the Rain, and Someone Like You simultaneously topped the hot one hundred, the first time that had happened since the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack way back in nineteen seventy seven. The album twenty one has since become the longest charting album by any female artist, break the record held by Carol King's nineteen

seventy one album Tapestry. To date, Adele's twenty one has shipped seventeen million copies, by far the most of any album released this century, and at the time of twenty one's initial release, you could not escape Adele. Her songs were the most requested songs at karaoke bars, they were the most played at funerals if you got scared to get onto a plane. One survey showed that Adele's songs were voted the best to calm your nerves and if

you couldn't sleep. Another survey showed that those same songs could cure insomnia. In Leeds, England, a seven year old girl miraculously woke from a week long coma when Rolling in the Deep came on the radio. Adele's voice is there in life and in death, deep down in her subconscious, which makes sense because Beyonce once told.

twenty somethings. She was seething over a relationship which I quickly deteriorated in to a living hell. She was catching unwanted attention from the pub's bouncers, and now she was running her feet slammed rhythmically on the sidewalk of Tottenham Court Road. She was sure the bouncers were hot on her trail. Any minute, they'd catch up to her and hold her till the cops came. She assaulted a man in front of a crowd, not that the guy wasn't an asshole and didn't have it coming, because.

at your front door, how you gonna come? Adele was going to come with a fist to the face, and somewhren't so lucky like Avril Johnson, sister of reggae star Tippa Irie, who was murdered inside her Brixton home in front of her children same year that Adele and her mother moved to town. The gangs of Adele's childhood would give her the idea for the song title rolling in the Deep. To roll deep, to roll with the crew, with people who have your back and your time of

need was a necessity of London's criminal underworld. Tonight, however, Adele had no crew, just yourself, haul and ass down on London Street in the dark, and she soon realized that no one was chasing her after all, the no bouncers from the pub, no soon to be ex boyfriend. She was the one doing the chasing, although she was

chasing nothing, just the ground beneath her feet. The events of that night became the inspiration for Chasing Pavements, Adele's second single from her debut album nineteen, name for the age she was when she made it. The song was an unexpected success, leading to numerous Grammy nominations and her performance on Saturday Night Line. Only years earlier, Adele had been a student at London's Britz School, the same performing arts high school attended by one of her many inspirations,

Amy Winehouse. From there it was a blur. Her songs went up on MySpace, multiple record labels emailed. A record deal with Excel Records soon followed, and suddenly Adele was doing what she dreamed about doing since she was a kid. But it didn't come easy from the jump. Adele was afraid. For one, she had terrible stage frame. Projectile vomiting prior to a show was not uncommon in Amsterdam. She once tried to escape out of a fire exit just so she could avoid facing the crowd she was to perform

in front of. And as she became more famous, however.

The first led to the fear that she would never be able to sing again, but the second that had her fearing for her own life. Albat made it look easy, sitting there in his brown college boy jacket, getting comfortable in the black leather chair, beginning to understand the true nature of his character, Michael Corleone. He wasn't a loud mouth or a hothead like his brother's Sonny played by Jimmy Kahn, and he wasn't as transparent as the Corleone's

family attorney Tom Hagen played by Robert Duval. But as Cohn and Duval paced the dimly lit room, mahogany tables, hardwood floors, and arguing about what to do with this dirty cop McCluskey, protector of the narcotics man who had put their pops in the hospital, Paccino was slowly methodically turning. He was the dark horse, the silent type, the one

you never saw coming. Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone was getting ready to push past his own fears such as what would happen to him if he joined the family business, how would change him? And what would he have to do? And there was only one way to find out, only one way through. Fear was not an option. Fear was the mind killer. From a couch across the room facing the television set, Adele leaned in the pivotal scene from one of her favorite films, The Godfather, played out on

the screen. But Sheino was so good, so tough. He was our guy, and the way he was able to subtly show how his character conquered his fears was truly inspiring. These crime films that Adele loved, the crime films that were universally loved. They served more than one purpose. They were a source of comfort when Adele wanted to curl up and shout out the world and escape into great storytelling.

And that's something we can all relate to. But there was something else as well these movies, especially when it came to scenes like this. These films, these performances, could give you the strength and the tools to overpower fear before the world, with its teeth and its insatiable appetite, overpowered you. July twenty third, twenty eleven, Andrew Marris, Amy Winehouse's bodyguard, checked in on his employer at around ten in the morning. He found her laying on her bed,

unconscious at her home in Camden, North London. She'd been up late the night before drinking, and it wasn't unusual for Amy to be passed out till midday, so Mars let her sleep it off. Five hours later.

from misadventure caused by high alcohol consumption. But misadventure wasn't the only.

It all played out in slow motion in the pages of the press and in posts on social media, like a car wreck that everyone pumped the brakes to watch as they passed by. If the public hadn't been given such intimate, always on access to every single choice, Amy Winehouse made every mistake. If there wasn't this collective need to watch a celebrity struggle and to comment on it, to share it, to retweet it, well, it begged the

question would Amy still be alive? It was impossible for Adele not to imagine that she was next, That fame and fate were nothing but a pattern in search of the next tragic figure to fit their mold. Paris, the massive world tour for twenty one had just begune when Adele felt something in her throat pop. She ended the show that night more than a little concerned. She'd been singing for nearly a decade since she was fourteen years

old and had never experienced anything like this before. She hopped the plane to London, where the next day her doctor told her it was a cute laryngitis and she needed rest. Two weeks later she resumed the tour, which eventually made its way to the United States. And then it happened again, only this time it wasn't laryngitis. This time a blood vessel on her vocal cord burst. She gave it another couple of weeks and let the hemorrhage heal, and then went back at it.

wasn't listening to what was being said about her online. Instead, she was listening to the advice of other singers who had gone through similar problems, veterans like Roger Daltrey, Stephen Tyler, and Elton John, even younger singers like John Mayer, all of whom had undergone cutting edge throat surgery to salvage

their voices and keep their jobs and so. On November three, twenty eleven, coincidentally, the same week the twenty one returned to the number one spot on the Billboard album chart, Adele canceled all performances and went under the knife at mass General Hospital in Boston.

of self doubt melted away. Months later, on February twelve, twenty twelve, when Adele made her long away to return to performing at the fifty fourth Annual Grammy Awards ceremony.

was upstaged that night by tragedy. The price of fame, which Amy Weinhouse had so sorely paid the previous year, was now hanging over the Staples Center like a ghost. The Beverly Hilton Hotel Sweet four thirty four, the portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando hanging on the walls, surveyed the room in silence. Trays of uneaten food, opened bottles of champagne, the remaining contents now warm and flat.

In the bathroom, prescription bottles of Xanax and muscle relaxes on the counter next to them a spoon for cocaine, and there in the bathtub, submerged under six inches of water, the body a forty eight year old Whitney Houston. Whitney never made it to the Grammys that night. She didn't even make it to the pre party thrown by her mentor arist the Records founder Clive Davis, the day before

the Grammys. It was on that day that a combination of cocaine, prescription drugs, and heart disease contributed to Whitney Houston and sudden death. The Grammy Awards became a more solemn affair. The bright victories were tinted with a touch of darkness, and Adele's incredible performance took on greater meaning. Rolling in the Deep wasn't just a kiss off to an ex. It was a kiss off to the mold, the press, the public. They weren't going to run her into the ground like they did.

She locked herself in her house so that the paparazzi couldn't reach her, and she became her own unreliable narrator. She did this by feeding little lies to those in her inner circle on purpose, in order to see who was talking to the press. It's a gangster move, and the gangster knows that if she tells one person a lie and that lie ends up in the papers, then that gangster knows exactly who betrayed her, And so then

Adele would unceremoniously cut them loose from her life. It wasn't easy watching someone you thought you trusted to go off behind your back like that, but it made it a lot easier to let them go, knowing that by doing so, you added one more additional layer of protection, more protection than Amy Winehouse or Whitney Houston had. But the more those layers of protection were applied, harder it was to be in the outside world the less relatable Adele feared she would become, and that was the fear

that was it. That fear remained after all these years as one of Adele's greatest fears, that she would become unrelatable. The grandiose houses, the multiple awards, the money, the fame. Adele was a long way from the mean streets of Taughtenham, and she knew it. The challenge now was to remain relatable with those streets, with any street anywhere in the world.

And after four years of working on new music, after much anticipation from her fans after the smashing success of twenty one, Adele returned at last with a song that was so authentic and so relatable that it was downright criminal. We'll be right back, We're.

And that door, that door is the only thing separating Tony Montana between life and here and death out there. And so he says, you want to play games, okay. Tony's now facing the door in a battle stance with his knees bent and the fear it's inverted.

De Palma's film Scarface. It was twenty fifteen, and Adele was doing what she did every time she was overwhelmed in what she called a tsunami of emotions. She was binging her favorite crime films, something to soothe the anxiety surrounding the impending release of her third studio album, twenty five. The process to follow up the smash hit twenty one had been a labored one, beset with writer's block and

crushing doubts. Though, when Adele began to collaborate with producer Greg Kursten, known at the time for his work with Sea, Kelly Clarkson and Lily Allen, among others, the creative floodgates opened. Writing the perfect Adell song, however, proved harder.

just forty eight hours. Once again, audiences connected with Adele, and audiences could relate to Adele because she was offering a different side of herself, which in turn gave listeners the opportunity to recognize the same different side in themselves. Hello wasn't just another kiss off to an X or a rally cry to stay strong in the face of great adversity. It was a ballot about forgiveness and about moving on. It was about closure and about growing up.

It was the definition of a universal hit, and it hit everyone everywhere, all at once. November ninth, twenty fifteen, the Iplante Michigan, six point forty pm, the police squad car tore down Railroad Street, coming to a dramatic stop outside an apartment complex in the nine hundred block. Two officers emerged from the car. The pulsing blue lights, illuminating their every movement. As dust crept in. They led with their service weapons, creeping swiftly with purpose, towards the apartment

building's front door. Kidnapping in progress. That was the call they received from dispatch, something about someone being dragged against their will inside. The cops did their sweep, the coast was clear and the door was unlocked, and they were inside there. Halfway up the stairs, two men, arms twisted and bent like a mall pretzel. They wrestled, they struggled,

and then the cops saw it. The purp was pressing the muzzle of a handgun into the other guy's abdomen, and the cops were yelling, now drop it on your knees, I said, on your fucking knees. The purp froze, dropped the piece, and seconds later he was in police custody, riding in the back of the squad car on his way to county jail. Twenty one year old Brian Earl Taylor had multiple felony warrants and was out on parole when he was arrested in charged with unlawful imprisonment and

carrying a concealed weapon. Allegedly, he had been in the process of forcing the other man in the stairwell to take him to his apartment.

That day, he was sentenced up to seventeen years in prison. It was then that Brian was driven to change. He worked in the prison system's palliative care program, helping other inmates who were sick or dying. He taught himself piano on the prison's keyboard and began to write his own songs, and in the fall of twenty nineteen, after serving a little over seventy years of his sentence, Brian Earl Taylor

was released on parole. It was only then that he revealed to the press when he had heard Hello for the first time and what inspired him to sing it to the judge. He was locked up awaiting trial, sent to solitary after getting into it with another inmate. That's when he heard Adele's voice. He was alone and afraid when Hello wafted in from somewhere, and it was then

that something clicked for Brian Earld Taylor. He could feel the fear that had driven his young criminal life start to fade away, and in its place, something else was taking root. Call it hope, call it wisdom, call it clarity. Whatever it was, Adele could relate. Justin Jackson walked out of prison and into the warm Florida sunshine. After two long years he was a freeman. What was he a changed man? And did he regret the things he'd done? When he came to regret, there was the hole getting caught.

There was just Justin Jackson and over two million dollars worth of Swiss luxury jewelry weighing heavy in his thieving hands from the Florida pawnshop. May have paid pennies on the dollar for the stuff, but when you're talking millions of dollars, that's a lot of fucking pennies. So that question again, Was he a changed man?

that celebrity was Adele. Justin Jackson created an email address that appeared to belong to Adele's manager, Jonathan Dickens. He then began to email the representatives of NBA players, offering tickets to Adele's concerts in exchange for their sneakers, which he said would be donated to a charity auction. Of course, just like there had been no Madonna and no photo shoot, there was no Adele, and there was no charity auction, and there were no concert tickets. But not everyone that

Justin Jackson contacted could easily sniff that out. Paul George, Victor Rolattopo, and Richard Hamilton were among the pro ballplayers who actually sent their sneakers as requested. This mild success made Jackson greedy. He wanted to attend the Rolling Loud Hip hop festival in Miami, where Kendrick Lamar was headlining, but he didn't want to pay for it. Then why should he when he could pretend to be Adele's manager

and get tickets free. When festival organizers received a suspicious email from someone claiming to be Adele's manager, the red flags he immediately went up. They contacted Miami Dade Pde, who in turn contacted the fake Jonathan Dickens Justin Jackson,

posing as the festival's production manager. A meetup was set in downtown Miami, and in May of twenty seventeen, days before the Rolling Loud Festival, Justin Jackson and his wife angel Lee rolled into Bayfront Park thinking they were really pulling it off, only to be immediately arrested and charged with over a dozen felonies, including grand theft, identity theft, and organizing a scheme to defraud. Adele's songs are one of a kind currency, her identity is another kind, and

her manager's identity is yet another. My point is even those in Adele's orbit have value on the black market and Jackson's brazen but ultimately dumb crime was the criminal world's proof of and co sign on Adele's cultural value. Once Hello Hit, Adele was no longer relatable, she was exploitable. Thus the counterfeit Adele was born. But scammers, moles in her inner circle, or felons who sang her songs in court, none of these had anything to do with her divorce

from Simon Kanecki. The two had married shortly after the birth of their son, but the end of that marriage came just a year or so later. There was nothing as dramatic as an Adele lyric that had led them.

son was splitting time between her and Simon. So she did what she always did when fear reared its ugly head. She crawled into her bed and turned on the television. The screen flickered to life. The Sopranos was halfway through an old episode, Season two, Tony and the boys in the back room at the bottom Bank, shooting dirty pool. And there's Big Pussy already a snitch for the Feds, but no one can prove it just yet. Fewer still

want to believe it. Hey, Syl Pussy says to Silvio Docte played with Gusto and Grease by Little Stephen van zand have been gone a long time, let me hear it. Syll's mouth contorts like it's preparing to crush gravel. His head bobs slightly, he gestures sharply with his hand, and he does his best paccino.

survive a tabloid fate of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in This is Disgrace slammed all right, everybody, thanks for checking out this episode on Adele. Listen. Adele's sophomore album twenty one, it sold something like seventeen million copies. Seventeen million, meaning that I don't know everybody's got a copy of this album. But I don't and curious which blockbuster album that are beloved by millions of people that sold you know, tons of records?

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