Q: Were these experiences the basis for some of the songs on the album?Ī: Yes. We were in danger a few times, like this one time a bunch of guys were banging at the door to this room we’d rented, screaming they wanted to rape us. Selling weed in the park was OK, but selling cocaine was dangerous because we’d do it in this hotel.
We’d live on corn chips that cost a quarter.Ī: We’d sell dope sometimes. We’d sleep at a bus stop across from this doughnut shop. We had to sneak into a hotel that had a community bathroom to take showers. We were hanging on the streets, drinking beer and trying to get into the rap business. We tried to get a job, but it never worked out. I was with Dee (Irene Moore, a friend from college who also raps on the album). I was living on the street about two years in the tough gang sections of town-Compton, Inglewood, places like that. Q: Did it turn out to be the promised land?Ī: Not right away. That’s one big reason I decided to go to California-to the source, to the promised land of gangsta rap. They looked at it as strictly West Coast s. People were listening to it, but you couldn’t get signed in New York to a record deal doing gangsta rap. But gangsta rap wasn’t accepted anywhere but California at the time. That’s when the real me got out of the cage.Ī: I started liking it when I was a teen-ager in Detroit, long before I came to L.A. I didn’t start living till I got out of that proper s. I had this wild thing in me that drove me to rap. I went to ballet classes, went to college (Oakland Community College near Detroit) for a while-did all that proper stuff. Q: Were you raised in the kind of gang areas you rap about on the album?Ī: No, I had a very proper upbringing. Most of the stuff women do is too weak for me.
Good gangsta rap makes me feel like I just parachuted out of a plane.Ī: N.W.A. Gangsta rap really gets your blood rushing. That stuff those other female rappers do is too weak and whiny for men.Ī: It raises all sorts of questions if you’re one of those people who lives among all that s-with the bullets and the dope and the poverty. This rap business is about appealing to the men. I rap like men do, which comes from hanging out with men when I came to L.A. Some people say they thought I was a man, which might make it easier for them to accept what I say. Q: Do you think part of your success is due to the fact that some fans thought you were a male when they first heard the record?Ī: That’s true to some extent. That’s why I’m as bad as any of these male gangsta rappers. But my heart, soul and everything else is in my raps. Some female rappers try to talk tough, but they sound silly. I talk from a woman’s point of view, but I talk hard and tough.Īnd I’m convincing. Question: Why do you think you’ve succeeded where other female rappers have failed?Īnswer: I’m the first female gangsta to do stuff men can relate to.
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