Black girls Come Up in Hip Hop, Too.
by: Toni A. Wilson, Director of Culture & Narrative Shift (GGE)
On Friday, Paramount+ debuted the new film On the Come Up, based on the best selling Young Adult novel of the same name by Angie Thomas. The film, marking Sanaa Lathan’s directorial debut, follows a 16-year-old girl named Brianna (Bri), aka Lil Law, as she mourns the death of her father, struggles with forgiving her mother for drug addiction and abandoning the family, questions her loyalty to her family, and goes on a mission to actualize her dream to become a rapper, following in her father’s footsteps.
School Pushout & School Violence
Within the first 30 minutes, ‘On the Come Up’ explores the themes of school pushout, “diversity in schools,” and substance abuse. In the opening, we see baby Bri being left alone with her brother due to her mother battling an addiction to heroin. We later learn that although Bri’s mother, Jay, has been clean for 3 years, living at home to rebuild with Bri and her brother, Bri has yet to forgive her mother for leaving them. At school, Bri is selling chocolates and candy to her peers on the school bus and in the halls to make some extra money. When she sells a pack of skittles to her friend, Malik, Bri is quickly scolded by a school security guard (SRO — school resource officer) and slammed to the floor. His knee is pressed into her neck while cuffing her. Later, Bri is in the principal’s office, where her mother joins and stands alongside her in defense. In this scene, we see Bri expressing her frustration and hurt to the principal over the fact that she was slammed to the ground and hurt all because of candy that school guidelines insist on referring to as “contraband.” When she’s found defending herself from her attackers, Bri gives more context on these guards as she details they seem to only have eyes for the Black kids.
Black girls are 6x more likely than their white counterparts to be suspended, 4x more likely to be arrested, and 3x more likely to be restrained. There’s not many mainstream media outlets and pop culture material that references school pushout or the direct impacts the criminalization and adultification of Black girls in schools has on them. Angie Thomas and Sanaa Lathan did a stellar job shining a light on the ways Black girls are susceptible to police and state sanctioned violence. School pushout affects Black girls and gender expansive youth of color in a particular way and those who are disabled, low income, experiencing a history of poverty, abuse, or neglect are disproportionately affected. Bri fits into many of these categories: she is called a “hoodlum,” she and her friends are shuffled through metal detectors because they’re too diverse (read: Black and brown), and she’s suspended for 3 days. Towards the end of the film the audience sees what’s supposed to be a resolve but still feels like an exposed wound when, at the town hall, Bri’s principal claims he’ll look into the matter and investigate the guards who abused her.
Misogynoir, Sexism, and Hip Hop
While trying to make sense of the trauma she just experienced in school, she decides to focus on her rap career and pour her pain into her writing. Now, I’m all for sharing different messages in Hip Hop, especially if it’s a conscious message — because after all, Hip Hop was born out of Black and brown communities rebelling against a system holding them down and keeping them from resources. Hip Hop is one of the original languages of the oppressed. It’s always been political. However, there’s a deep undertone in this movie that Bri’s character possesses where she seemingly views conscious rap to be better than Ratchet/Trap rap. Bri calls out the misogyny in Hip Hop when she reaches the ring and battles her opponent, Miles. She details just how many women and girls are in the room and how they’re largely outnumbered by the men. Although Miles loses the battle to Bri, they bond afterwards about women rappers like Cardi, Nicki, and the prototype Lil Kim.
While Bri makes note of the sexism in Hip Hop, she later unveils in her own raps the misogynoir women rappers experience as we see her only battle with another Black girl. In this battle, Bri makes sure to mention that this other rapper wasn’t as good as her because her hair was fake, her butt was fake, and a number of other things about her that Bri thought to be either materialistic or superficial. As a Hood feminist myself, a term born out of Joan Morgan’s term hip hop feminist, I found this scene particularly cringey and redundant. In a society that uses every chance it gets to remind women that there can only be one and that women who don’t alter their bodies or rap about their bodies are somehow of higher substance or value than those that do — I wish this juxtaposition wasn’t made so obvious in the film. To disrupt white supremacy, patriarchy, and misogynoir we have to dismantle this good Black girl/jezebel Black girl trope. While I think On the Come Up (the book) can easily join the cannon of other hip hop feminist literature like When the Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, The Crunk Feminist Collection, and Check It While I Wreck It, I think the movie could’ve done a better job of holding the truth that much like Black girls, women rappers are not a monolith.
A Hip Hop Coming of Age Tale
On the Come Up is a tremendous coming of age story that many Black girls need to see. Bri is young, stepping into her power, and owning her authentic voice in this film: she is a constant reminder for all Black girls who feel invisible, lost, or not too sure that they indeed have everything they need inside of them to thrive. Bri seeks to honor her father’s legacy — an underground rapper that was murdered — by releasing a hit song and supporting her family all to find out that stardom in Hip Hop often comes with a price.
At the end of the film, during Bri’s final battle, she lays all of her cards on the table. From her mother being a recovering addict to her aunt being shot and her song receiving negative feedback, Bri reminds us to reclaim our narrative. We must tell our stories before anyone else tries to.
Whether you’re a parent, educator, social worker, storyteller, Black girl or all of the above — this movie is for you and your community.
Toni A. Wilson (she/her) is a social worker, cultural critic, fat liberationist, plus size influencer, and Hood BlackFeminist from Brooklyn with roots in Jamaica. She grounds her work at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, body, and culture. Through youth work, media, pop culture, and writing, Toni uses her radical imagination to envision a world where everyone believes in the promise of every Black girl. As GGE’s Director of Culture Shift, she builds strategies, conversations, and cultural moments centering the needs of Black girls & gender expansive youth. Toni is a co-host of Stay In the Sun podcast, freelance writer for The Curvy Fashionista, and can be found @FatBlackLuxury on all platforms.
