a hell of a lot. Just need a moment to prepare myself.
The first one is from a user called “RudeBoi09.” Great sign. I open it. There’s a link and below that he wrote:
This is bullshit! Don’t let them censor you, Bri!
Huh?
I don’t click the link. What I look like, trusting somebody named RudeBoi? It could be a virus or porn. But the next message from another user has the same link with a comment:
You got them big mad hahahaha!
The third message has the link, too. The fourth and fifth. New texts from Sonny pop up on my screen.
U okay?
Call me.
Love u.
He sent me the link, too. I click it. It takes me to an article on the website of the Clarion, the local newspaper. The title stops my heart.
“On the Come Up” Should Come Down: Local Teen Rapper’s Violent Song Leads to Violence
“What the—” I mutter.
It’s an entire page of some chick named Emily Taylor complaining about my song. Her thirteen-year-old son loves it, she says, but according to her, I “spend the entire track rapping about things that would make any parent hit the Stop button immediately, including boasts about guns and antipolice sentiment.”
The hell is she talking about? There’s not shit in that song that says anything against police. Just ’cause I’m tired of them patrolling my neighborhood like we’re all criminals, I’m in the wrong?
In the middle of the article, she embedded a video from the incident in the Ring parking lot. Emily uses it to describe me as a “gang-affiliated, unruly teen who was recently kicked out of a local establishment.”
Give me five seconds with her and I’ll show her unruly.
She goes on to mention the uprising at Midtown and actually says, “It only makes sense that a song that encourages violence encouraged them to act violently.”
But the end though. The end of the article is the real kicker, because that’s when Emily earns a permanent spot on my shit list.
“I respectfully ask the website Dat Cloud to remove ‘On the Come Up’ from their catalog. It has already caused damage. We cannot allow it to continue. You can add your voice by signing the petition at the link below. We must do more to protect our children.”
Protect our children. I’m definitely not included in that.
Fuck Emily. Yeah, I said it. Fuck her. She doesn’t know a thing about me, yet she wants to use one song to make me into the big bad villain who is influencing her precious son. God forbid he hear about what people like me have to deal with on the daily. It must be nice to panic over some goddamn words, because that’s all they are. Words.
I can’t help it, but I click her profile. I wanna lay eyes on this idiot.
She has several highlight pictures that are supposed to reveal more about her. One is of her, her husband, and her son. A dead deer hangs behind them, and the three of them wear camouflage and hold rifles. And yeah, they’re white.
What really gets me though? The title of her article before this one.
Why You Won’t Take My Guns: Gun Control Has No Place Here
But it’s different when I rap about guns?
I wonder why.
It’s like that crap at Midtown, I swear. White girls don’t get sent to the office for making snide remarks. Hell, I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. They get a warning. But anytime I open my mouth and say something my teachers don’t like, to the office I go.
Apparently words are different when they come out of my mouth. They somehow sound more aggressive, more threatening.
Well, you know what? I’ve got plenty of words for Emily.
I close my door, pull up Instagram on my phone, and immediately go live. Usually only Sonny and Malik will show up. Tonight, about a hundred people are watching me in seconds.
“What’s up, y’all? It’s Bri.”
The comments start immediately.
Your song is
Fuck what they say!
You my new favorite rapper
“Thanks for the support,” I tell them, and a hundred more people are suddenly watching. “As you may know, there’s a petition to get my song taken off Dat Cloud. Besides the fact it’s censorship, it’s stupid as hell.”
Hell yeah, somebody writes.
Fuck censorship!
“That’s right, fuck censorship,” I say, to three hundred viewers. “They don’t get it because it ain’t for them to get. Besides, if I am strapped like backpacks, maybe it’s ’cause I gotta be, bitch. Ain’t my fault if it makes you uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable every goddamn day of my