Finding Sexy Sweat

Reggie Payne was rushed by ambulance to Sutter Medical Center, four miles north from the family’s home in Sacramento. This was February 25, 2020. He arrived at the hospital at 8:22 p.m., and was wheeled into the emergency room—clinging to life.

At around 10 p.m., Reggie could no longer breathe on his own. He was intubated.

Reggie’s family raced to the hospital and arrived to find him in an emergency room cubicle &...

On the evening of February 25, 2020, Harriett Jefferson became alarmed as her son, Reggie Payne, lapsed into a bad diabetic reaction. He hadn’t eaten all day and had sat through four hours of dialysis. Now, he was acting strange. Wobbling back and forth. Speaking incoherently. Harriett was growing increasingly concerned. She needed help. So, she did what a lot of people in her situation would: She dialed 911.

Just four months...

In 2019, Reggie and his sister Janine went to a high school reunion. It was going great...until it wasn't. Janine had to pull him off the dance floor when she started to see the paranoia and aggression signaling a bipolar episode. 

That’s how it was with Reggie: a few hours of him being happy, calm, collected – followed by a steep slide into paranoia and distrust. That’s when Dark Reggie would emerge. And inc...

Reggie's time as a sports editor at the Grambling student newspaper suggested he had it all in front of him. He was a gifted rider with a ton of talent and street smarts. But after a violent encounter at the school, Reggie got on a bus, which was a two-day ride home, and something in his head snapped. 

When he got to Oakland, his family met him at the bus station. And the person who walked off the bus left them stunned.

See omn...

In 1989, Reggie Payne became a local hero when he overcame the hardships of Oakland’s 69 Village to attend Grambling State University. Yet college life some 3,000 miles away is anything but easy. While he dives into journalism as an editor at the student newspaper, Reggie becomes a first-time father and endures an alleged beatdown via a fleet of Tiger football players that changes his outlook—and messes with his mind.

Se...

In 1971, Harriet Jefferson gives birth to her first child, a baby boy. Reggie Damone Payne is born in San Leandro, just south of Oakland, the oldest of four children. 

Reggie Payne's biological father was out of the picture and Harriet moved in with her future husband, Rufus Jefferson, shortly after her son was born. That created a close lifetime relationship Reggie had with his mother and stepfather of growing up in Oakland's...

In the summer of 1993, Rick Jervis and Jeff Pearlman—two college journalists at the time—arrived in Nashville for a summer internship at the daily newspaper, The Tennessean. It was a dream come true, and to their surprise and delight, they were accompanied by an aspiring Oakland rapper/Grambling student named Reggie Payne. His hip-hop moniker: Sexy Sweat. Over the next eight weeks, the young men developed a bond that, R...