Two years ago, Scott Storch played me two tracks he was working on at the Hit Factory Criteria
studio in Miami, where, true to the venue’s name, the wunderkind
producer had set up shop and was churning out blockbuster after
blockbuster: "Lean Back," "Baby Boy," "Candy Shop," "Run It." The first
track, featuring singer Mya,
showed off Storch’s complicated pop genius: It was sinuous and sexy and
soulful, driven by the sort of hypnotic, overamped Middle Eastern
filigree that was becoming Storch’s trademark.

The second song was by Brooke Hogan,
the emergent reality TV bimbo who Storch had signed as the first artist
of his Storch Music label. Loud, propulsive, and instantly forgettable,
this song showed off Storch’s mega ambition. The former protégé of Dr.
Dre clearly hoped to do for this blond wrestler’s daughter what his
work on Christina Aguilera’s Stripped album had helped do for that white girl: Give her both hip-hop cred and chart gold.

Back then, as I was profiling Storch for a Miami Herald
article, the Miami Beach multimillionaire was flying high and flashing
ice. What neither of us knew at the time was that the tsunami of hits
he had been riding for two years had peaked: Scott hasn’t had a top 10
hit since then, not with that killer Mya hook, not with Hogan's pop
pandering. He has recently found himself in a heap of trouble, getting
dragged into family court for two custody cases and falling two years
behind in his property taxes.

The story of Storch’s Icarus
fall from the pop stratosphere is compelling enough that two major news
outlets recently asked me to write about it; the article
I reported for AP came out last Friday. Scott wasn’t talking this time.
In fact, he seems to be in semi-hiding, not showing for court dates, no
longer at Hit Factory, not talking to his two sons – though I did get a
couple of reports of him recently sighted at South Beach clubs. He can
leave a waitress a $20 tip, apparently, but can’t pay child support.

I
found Storch both repellent and endearing when I met him in ‘06. The
fame game has definitely gone to his head, bigtime. But behind the aviator sunglasses
and pop-tart arm candy is this geeky music-head, a talented keyboardist
who was an early force in the Roots. “He always knew what he wanted to
be,” Vanessa Bellido, mother of Storch’s 15-year-old son Steven, told
me for the AP story. “He would play the piano unbelievably. He was
determined at 15. He was like, I’m going to make it, I’m going to make
it.”

I’ve watched many talented artists struggle their whole
lives for recognition and survival. But when I’ve come in contact with
those, like Storch, or Kurt Cobain, who seem to have won it all, I’m not sure which group is the winners, and which the losers.