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Rebounding

More than two years after NBA star Shaquille O'Neal was a no-show for a much-hyped charity event, entrepreneur Darryl Madison is still trying to win back his credibility.

By SHERRI DAY
Published June 7, 2005

[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]

Darryl Madison walks off the stage at the Sun Dome after interviewing artists performing before the recent Ludacris concert. He shot the footage for his Hip Hop 411 TV show. Madison was recently vindicated in a lawsuit against NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, who admitted that he was indeed supposed to attend the charity basketball weekend. The admission, however, came too late to help Madison much in the court of public opinion.

	[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
	Darryl Madison

TAMPA - Oh, to be anybody but Darryl Madison.

Madison was the promoter behind the 2002 Celebrity Basketball weekend, a Tampa charity fundraiser that was supposed to feature then-Los Angeles Laker Shaquille O'Neal.

The event, in Madison's words, would bring "the NBA to Tampa Bay." He planned a $250-a-ticket basketball clinic and autograph session with O'Neal at the Sun Dome and a $150-a-plate charity dinner to benefit literacy. The festivities would end with a basketball game featuring O'Neal and other NBA stars, including then-Orlando Magic player Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter, who played for the Toronto Raptors.

The much-hyped O'Neal was a no-show.

The basketball star eventually acknowledged that he had been under contract to attend but had fallen ill. He turned over medical records to prove it.

But that wasn't until much later. When O'Neal didn't show up, Madison, who had marketed the event to parents, children and business people in the bay area, was left to face an angry public.

News stories kept coming, compounding his misery.

"Charities pick up tab for Friday's fundraiser," Tampa Tribune, Aug. 20, 2002.

"Deal to bring Shaq to Tampa was far from a sure thing," St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 21, 2002.

It didn't help that Madison had been accused of not delivering before. As founder of a computer consulting company, his handling of a state contract cost him a high-profile Tallahassee job and resulted in a forgery charge. It all made for another headline: "Shaq promoter in thicket of failed deals," St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 5, 2002.

Friends and fellow Republicans quit speaking to him. His business crumbled. He couldn't pay bills. His Shaq troubles turned up in his teenage son's current events class. Last fall, people wouldn't even trust Madison to help get out the vote.

Battling depression, he retreated into his Carrollwood home for months.

He describes that period as the most embarrassing of his life. Engage him in a conversation about his past, and his brown eyes flame with anger. His voice rises, full of the pain of public ridicule he received more than two years ago.

By his definition, he is a man wronged and grossly misunderstood - well-intentioned, but badly burned by the fickle nature of celebrities.

"My close friends and business partners knew of all the work that I put into it," Madison said. "It wasn't what the papers made it out to be. For the past two years, I've been fighting to restore my credibility."

His detractors say he would be wise to stay out of the limelight. But Madison is dreaming big again.

This time, he has wrapped his hopes around would-be hip-hop stars. He wants to turn the Tampa Bay area into an incubator for regional hip-hop talent. Madison mentors aspiring rappers, organizes industry workshops and tells the artists' stories on Hip Hop 411 TV, a reality television program that airs weekly on WTOG-Ch. 44, a UPN affiliate. He buys the air time and helps pay for it by selling commercials.

Madison and two business partners, his former wife and an Orlando chiropractor, founded Hip Hop 411 TV in January 2004.

"We have to give these kids an outlet to be able to speak and learn something," Madison said. "We want to put Tampa on the map."

For him, it's another new start.

"The bottom line is, I'm still here," he said. "And I'm not going anywhere."

***

A native of Brooklyn, Madison, 49, has always had big ideas.

As an undergraduate at New York City's Fordham University, he helped start the local chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically black public service fraternity. While working as a computer consultant on Wall Street, he dreamed of a career in film, picturing himself as a young Spike Lee. A movie career eluded him, but Madison helped write storyboards for some of hip-hop's early music videos, including Whodini's One Love and Oran Juice Jones' The Rain. Nearly 20 years later, producers remember him well.

When Madison moved his young family to Tampa in 1987, he used his computer skills to pay the bills, working for several companies, including a local bank. But he and a partner also brought their filmmaking aspirations with them. Their company, Historical Truth Productions, was supposed to be a film factory for African-American-themed stories. It folded in 1992 after Madison sued Sony Pictures, alleging copyright infringement over a script that he and his partner wrote. Historical Truth Productions lost the case and closed its doors without making a single film.

Madison's experiences in business left him bitter. He had come to think of corporate America as vicious and racist. He says he clashed with employers over his entrepreneurial goals and his habit of speaking his mind.

Again and again, he found trouble. In 1992, he pleaded no contest to a felony bad check charge and was placed on probation for a year and a half. Ten years later, he pleaded guilty to forgery for signing a business partner's name to a loan application without consent. He was fined $418 and given three years' probation, state records show. The Florida Human Relations Commission cut ties with Madison's technology company after investigators found out he had improperly used their contract as collateral for loans.

Next, he created an entertainment venture, Paramount Celebrity Management, and launched the basketball weekend. It started small. But Madison's vision grew until the weekend included a golf tournament at Saddlebrook Resort, a banquet to benefit Tampa Bay Reads, a youth basketball clinic and a celebrity basketball game.

At the literacy banquet, Gov. Jeb Bush sat at the dais, along with corporate executives and local politicians. Everyone, including Madison, wondered what was keeping O'Neal. A singing group performed. The governor addressed the crowd, and Madison sweated backstage. He was on the phone with O'Neal's lawyer, demanding to know when the superstar would arrive. When it was clear that O'Neal would not show, Madison told the crowd. He said he didn't know why. It was the first of the weekend's hollow explanations for the star's absence.

Even without O'Neal, Madison has never accepted that the weekend was a flop. He notes the governor's presence. Retired Harlem Globetrotter Fred "Curly" Neal played golf with local business owners. Former Bucs cheerleaders led girls in a cheerleading camp at the Sun Dome while hoopsters practiced on the court.

Still, with no headliner, Paramount Celebrity Management was dealt a death blow.

Madison and O'Neal filed lawsuits against each other. The two sides settled in December, with O'Neal issuing a statement saying he had agreed to participate in the event but was unable to attend because he was seriously ill.

***

Hip Hop 411 TV is supposed to be Madison's phoenix.

He started the company a year and a half ago, after his ex-wife asked him to help launch his son's fledgling rap career. As Madison gained exposure for his son, dozens of would-be performers came forward seeking help. With $75,000 in seed money - from his ex-wife Mireille T. Madison, Orlando chiropractor E. Dietrich Dragton and his own savings - Madison launched Hip Hop 411 TV.

In his West Tampa office above Mireille's beauty salon, he wheels and deals. He manages a small staff of mostly college students and aspiring hip-hop stars, who schedule events, answer telephones and serve as producers and on-air personalities.

In the program's 10 months on air, Madison has broadcast rap concerts, dance clubs, music festivals, award shows and celebrity appearances. In February, he staged Off da Bench, a concert at a Tampa club that featured largely unknown bay area music artists. The concert drew about 2,000 people.

Madison beams when he speaks of the event's success, proof that he can pull off a big show.

There have been other victories.

According to UPN, Madison's television show has about 30,000 households in its midnight Sunday time slot.

Madison said he and his investors don't yet make enough money to draw salaries. His side ventures - mainly a tax accounting business that he runs from January to April - investments and his wife's salary help to keep his family afloat.

He recently maneuvered his 15-person camera crew and entourage past security at the Sun Dome to film the Ludacris rap concert in April.

It was, of course, the site of the basketball clinic and cheerleading camp, and Madison's presence got attention.

"From the nature of how that event went, I was surprised to see him here in the building," said Clark Brooks, the Sun Dome's area operations coordinator. "I would have been embarrassed."

Madison shrugs off skeptics. He's already looking beyond his weekly television show to a hip-hop magazine, hip-hop beauty pageants and a hip-hop fashion show.

***

Madison has spent the last 21/2 years trying to prove he's not a swindler or a crook.

Few people seem to be paying attention.

Madison says one potential investor in Hip Hop 411 TV, a Tampa Bay Buccaneer, backed off when he heard Madison was the force behind it.

Then, in December, when he and O'Neal settled dueling lawsuits, it was barely reported in the news.

Mike Suarez, former president of Tampa Bay Reads, still seethes. Instead of benefitting from the banquet, the literacy group wound up footing the bill when low attendance did not cover costs.

"Whether or not he had been vindicated in his mind by a settlement has nothing to do with the way he conducted himself at the time that we asked questions," Suarez said.

Pull up a chair, and Madison will attempt to explain everything. To the accusation of forgery, he says his business partner was out of town and had authorized him to sign a loan application in his absence. But it was the business partner, Robert Little, who called police. Little said he had quit Provider Technologies four months before Madison applied for the loan.

Madison says he was innocent but pleaded guilty on the advice of his lawyer, who told him the case would be difficult to beat given all of the scrutiny he faced for the basketball tournament.

The bad check charge, Madison says, was a misunderstanding, particularly because he says he never received the merchandise for which he wrote the check. He now wishes he had hired a lawyer to argue his case. He fumes that a decades-old charge continues to haunt him.

Mostly, though, he blames his problems on a society that he deems hostile to progressive black men.

"When African-American men do something on a scale that's big, it's still the good ol' boy network," Madison said. "It's a modern-day lynching. They didn't hang me out on a tree, but they put my name out there and hung me and tried to destroy my credibility."

Some are willing to overlook his troubles and latch on to his good intentions.

"He's a creative genius," said Vernon Lee, 33, producer for Hip Hop 411 TV. "This is basically his vision. He always sees the bigger picture than everyone around him."

His wife, ex-wife and mother speak of him in glowing terms. He once saved people from a burning car, they note, and a Tampa Fire Rescue certificate hangs on his office wall. He speaks Swahili. He has a third-degree black belt in jujitsu. He opened his house to a newly released convict who had no place to go.

"In time, the more Darryl does, the less people are going to think badly of him," said his wife, Aurienta. "He's a hard worker. He's just going to have to work his butt off to prove it to some people."

Madison may already be working too hard.

In February, he spent three days in Town 'N Country Hospital for severe heart spasms. A heart attack is not the end he would pen for himself, so he has promised to slow down, eat healthier, exercise and delegate more.

For his family's sake. And for his own.

After all, his legacy is at stake.

"This is Darryl's opportunity for validation and vindication," said Dragton, Madison's business partner. "This is a redemption story. It's got all the bits and pieces. It doesn't get any sweeter than this."

-- Information from Times files was used in this report. Sherri Day can be reached at 813 226-3405 or sday@sptimes.com

HIP-HOP ON THE AIR

Darryl Madison's show, Hip Hop 411 TV, airs Sundays at midnight on WTOG-Ch. 44.

[Last modified June 6, 2005, 13:43:04]