“We go live in five, Bri,” Hype says. “Four . . .”
Supreme pats my shoulder and goes into the hall. I slip the headphones on.
Hype puts up three fingers.
Two.
One.
“Welcome back to the Hot Hour,” he says into the mic. “Y’all, I got a very special guest in the house. If you know anything ’bout me, you know one of my favorite rappers of all time is Lawless, rest in peace to my brother. Today, I have the pleasure of having his baby girl in the studio. She’s got one of the hottest songs out at the moment, “On the Come Up,” and it’s got a lot of folks talking. Of course, we had to bring her to the Hot Hour. So, Bri, welcome to the studio.”
He plays an applause track.
“Thanks,” I say into the mic.
“Y’all, I had a chance to hear Bri a while back at the Ring. That was your debut, right?”
“Yep.”
“Y’all, she killed it,” he says. “After the show is over, go on YouTube and pull up that battle. It’ll blow you away. Bri was supposed to return to the Ring, but there was a little mishap a few weeks ago. We’ll get into that later. Right now, let’s talk about this song!” He smacks the table to prove his point. “‘On the Come Up.’ Y’all request it on the show all the time. The kids love it. A lot of us old heads enjoy it. But there’s a petition to get it taken off Dat Cloud because some people say it led to a riot at a local school. Other people say it’s antipolice, blah, blah, blah. As the artist behind the song, what do you have to say?”
Supreme said to say what I feel. Thing is, all I feel is pissed. “Screw them.”
Hype chuckles. “No hesitation at all, huh?”
“Why should I hesitate? They didn’t hesitate to come at me.”
“Okay, okay,” Hype says. “A lot of folks have been focusing on the violent nature of the lyrics. Do you think they encouraged those students at that school to act out violently?”
Is he serious? “Do you think half the songs you play encourage people to act out violently?”
“We’re talking about your song and this situation though.”
“Does it matter?” I say. “They were clearly upset about other stuff. A song didn’t make them do anything. All these people are using me as a cop-out instead of asking what the real problems are.”
“All these people who?” he actually asks.
“Bruh, the news!” I say. “The lady with the petition. She wrote an entire article about me, made me out to be the bad guy, and never wondered why the students were protesting in the first place. Lyrics didn’t force anyone to do anything. The whole protest was about—”
“But c’mon,” Hype cuts me off, “even you gotta admit that some of the lyrics are a bit much, baby girl. You talk about being strapped, you insinuate that you’ll kill cops—”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. “I never insinuated anything about killing no damn cops.”
“‘If a cop come at me, I’ll be lawless’?” he asks instead of says. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
How the hell did he take that as me saying I’ll kill anyone? “Bruh, it means that I’ll be considered unruly, no matter what I do!” Goddamn, I really gotta break this down for him? “‘Like my poppa, fear nada,’ aka his last album, Fear None. ‘Take solace in my hood going hard in my honor’ means if something happens to me, the Garden will have my back. That’s it. I never said anything about killing a cop.”
“Okay, but you can see how some people took that the wrong way, right?”
“Hell no, I don’t.”
“Look, I’m not trying to come at you,” Hype claims. “I love the song. I can’t lie though, knowing that a sixteen-year-old girl is talking about being strapped and stuff like that, it caught me off guard.”
Not that a sixteen-year-old rapped about it. But that a sixteen-year-old girl rapped about it. “Did it catch you off guard when my dad rapped about it at sixteen?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Aw, c’mon, you know why,” Hype says. “It’s different.”
“Different how? I know girls who were strapped at sixteen, seventeen, who had to do foul stuff just to survive.”
And who got taken down by a SWAT team who didn’t give a damn what their gender was.
“It’s just different, li’l momma. I ain’t make the rules,” Hype says. “My thing is, are we really supposed to believe you out here popping