I wasn’t a complete stranger to reality TV; I just felt like there was a right way to do it. When La La and Melo got married, they documented all the planning, the buildup to the wedding, and the ceremony for a show on VH1. It did so well that she ended up getting a spin-off that followed her family after they left Denver and got settled in New York. The show focused on her career, being a mom, and how the rest of her friends and family fit into all that. I filmed a few episodes with her as a guest, and it was dope to see how she worked with the team to figure out what to share and if it made sense. She didn’t have to deal with other entertainers or athletes that she didn’t know as part of the cast, which was the recipe for chaos on other shows. Having control over the storyline, who was involved, and whatever the final output looked like was the most important thing for me. If I could do reality like that, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  Years before Mona asked me about Love & Hip Hop, a friend of mine got me a meeting with Tracey Edmonds, the amazing television producer behind the Soul Food series and the limited reality series documenting Lil’ Kim’s time before she turned herself in to prison. I took a meeting with her in Los Angeles, and she said she was willing to produce a fun, lighthearted show about me, my family, and my life in Miami. We wanted to play on the theme of Glamorest Life but in a down-to-earth, humorous way. She got a pilot green-lit for us and flew into Miami to shoot it.

  The entire cast had been handpicked by me, including my cousin Joy and a much younger cousin that I hadn’t known as long. Bobby is my cousin on my biological father’s side, so he was a stranger to me for a good chunk of his life. He literally made his way through the crowd at one of my shows, yelling about us being cousins, and I haven’t been able to get rid of him since then. He was made to be on TV because everything about his personality is over-the-top and larger than life. I thought it would be dope to have him on the show because I had reconnected with my biological father for the first time in my life during this time, and if I was going to address any of that on the show, Bobby would be a great point of reference. Laura and some of my other friends were going to round it out as part of a rotating cast.

  When I saw the first cut of the sizzle reel, I absolutely hated it. It didn’t accurately represent me or a glamorous lifestyle at all. It looked more like a circus. The outfits weren’t fitting, the glam was not glamming, and the vibes were not vibing. It was the first time most of my friends and family had ever done television. They were so awkward on camera and didn’t bring the energy you need for good TV. The show was my idea, not theirs, and their indifference came across onscreen. Once something is recorded, it lives forever, and I didn’t want any of us to be immortalized like that. I was so hurt and disappointed, because I love Tracey and I would have loved to make a show with her. But I wanted to pull the plug on it immediately. I wasn’t ready yet. The reality train would have to go on without me for a little bit longer.

  The decision to finally join Love & Hip Hop: Miami was bigger than me. Everything had changed—the music game, the journalism industry, marketing strategies, and the definition of celebrity—except TV. Reality television was only getting more popular in 2016, even if it was ratchet. Social media was an invaluable tool to accelerate the growth. Storylines were teased online and then fleshed out on the show. Love & Hip Hop, specifically, was really helping new artists grow their audiences and break into the industry. I was passionate about Rockstarr Music Group and realized the show might be the best way for me to help my artists get the exposure they needed. I had other people around me who could benefit from that bag, too. I’d heard that Trick wasn’t really busy with any big projects at the time. My cousin Joy, who had married Trick years earlier, was ready to work. My crazy-ass cousin Bobby was still wild, but he also wanted to do music. It was a business opportunity that would help so many people other than me, and that’s all I cared about. OG hip-hop fans and artists used to think being on reality television was something that made you soft or less serious as an artist. But at the end of the day, most of the cast members on all these shows are working just as hard as everybody else. That’s the side of my career I wanted to show, and that’s what finally brought me to the table.

  Even Missy was surprised when I first told her I was going to do it. She didn’t think it was a good idea, because she knows my personality. I have a long fuse, but once I reach my wits’ end, all bets are off. She’s seen it with her own eyes. She didn’t want me on national TV blacking out and popping off. I was quick to tell her that I had no plans of moving like some of the people she saw on other episodes of the show in other cities. I had a long conversation with Mona to make sure we avoided that. The first thing we agreed on was that no one was going to be throwing any drinks or punches at me. We couldn’t even play like that. I was also up-front about not wanting to focus on my personal, romantic relationships. I had been in enough high-profile situations to know that too much exposure on your relationship ultimately damages it. Love is complicated enough on its own, between individuals. You never know why two people are in love, what their history is, or what they’re struggling with. You damn sure can’t decide whether it’s right for them, so inviting in all the unnecessary opinions that everyone seems to have is pointless. In that arena, a private life is a happier life. Everything going on with my crew, my music, and the label was more than enough drama to give viewers a good show. Mona and the rest of the team respected those wishes, and we moved on from there. Missy still threatened to call Mona and pull the plug if she saw anything crazy.

  Knowing what could go wrong with reality TV, I considered the risks and did everything in my power to minimize a repeat of my first show. Because Love & Hip Hop is attached to a major cable network, there is more money for better glam, so I don’t worry about my people looking their best. There are a lot of different personalities on the show, and their interactions can get messy. So I put in my contract that I control my set, who I film scenes with, and when. My comfort and safety are always the priority. At the end of the day, if you’re not the one shooting, producing, writing, and editing the show, you don’t have full control over how you’re represented or what ends up in an episode when it airs. Even with my contract and other precautions that I’ve taken, I still sometimes see final scene cuts that I feel misrepresent my opinions and words. A big chunk of what I said might be edited out, and then the whole context is different. That’s just the way it goes, and it’s still a struggle for me to pick my battles about what to let slide and when to put my foot down. This is also why I don’t get too invested in the viewers’ reactions and the online commentary, because I know they’re only getting bits and pieces of situations that are being aired. If I’m bickering with Trick or Bobby onscreen, know that there are so many more conversations that are going to happen about it offscreen, on the phone, in our personal text messages, and at each other’s houses. It takes a lot for me to want to open up to the public about anything. So having to navigate difficult situations on a national platform is really hard. There are definitely scenes on Love & Hip Hop that I wish I could change because I was super pissed, got really out of character, and didn’t show up as my best self. But I don’t regret going on the show, because it has helped the people I wanted to help. And at the end of the day, I will never feel bad about showing people what’s real.

  Chapter 25

  When I started Rockstarr Music Group in 2011, the plan was never to be the next Berry Gordy or take over the whole music industry. I also wasn’t trying to lock artists down and control their whole life. All I wanted to do was offer other people their one shot and run my own business. For a long time, I didn’t have a traditional manager. Instead, I had a handpicked team put in position to hold me down and support RMG. I cleared the roster when I went independent, and everything was on me to handle. I needed someone to help with the day-to-day stuff, someone else to handle touring and logistics, and a mediator for any business that was coming in. It was on me to make final decisions, keep up with progress, and make sure everybody got paid, even if it was out of my own pocket. With my personal energy and my funds on the line, I had to work at my own pace, in an environment I was most comfortable in. I relied on the people I already knew. I could always count on people like Redd, C.O., and KD (someone who went from making flyers for me to promoting hosting gigs and overseeing all of my partnerships). I knew I could trust all of them to have my back and get the job done. We had been in business together long enough for them to understand how the industry works.

  I love bringing people new opportunities, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You can think you know someone and have the best hopes for their success, and they can still let you down. The truth is that some people only see what you can do for them and don’t have a problem biting the hand that feeds them. There was one guy who had worked for Slip-N-Slide for years. He’d touched every one of my albums since Diamond Princess. He was able to soak up a lot of game over the years and had a lot of good ideas. When the label hit a rough patch, he was trying to figure out his next move just like everybody else. He was one of the people I welcomed onto my team when I was independent. He had dreams of doing bigger things in the industry as a manager and executive, and I saw that for him because I knew he was smart. I agreed to let him be my manager, a move that was supposed to help both of our careers. My team was hustling and making shit happen, but maintaining my brand and trying to build a whole business was not a cheap operation. I had already put out a bunch of mixtapes, but I had more music recorded, and I wanted to package and release it the right way. I had to be intentional about my projects if I wanted to build a platform big enough to support my signed artists. The bottom line was that we needed an investment, one bigger than I could have gotten from Slip-N-Slide. I didn’t necessarily need a record deal, but my company did. I was willing to go back in-house if the terms were what I needed them to be, so my new manager and I started shopping around for a deal that would benefit the entire imprint. In a decision I still regret to this day, we signed with Penalty Entertainment in 2015. My goal was to drop my album the following year. I had no clue that it would be another four years of delays and pushbacks before it came out.

  Everything that could have slowed down my last album release happened. When I first signed with them, Penalty had just restructured in a huge partnership with Sony RED, and I wasn’t the only artist that they brought on that year. They were still figuring out who they were prioritizing with resources and energy. Then about a year or so after that, RED was merged under another Sony entity called The Orchard. While the huge label machine was spinning its wheels, I felt like RMG got lost in the shuffle and fell to the bottom of the totem pole. I kept recording and making songs so that the album would feel fresh when it dropped, but we also had to jump through endless hoops to get sample and feature clearances. It was wild how quickly the whole situation started to feel even more stifling than my last deal. This album had taken years to make. It was like a baby that I had raised and prayed for. After all the waiting and making changes, I felt like I finally had a body of work that represented who I was as a woman and as an artist.

  The One came out just over twenty years after I got in the game, and it was supposed to be special. It deserved time and attention that it didn’t receive. I learned that the person I trusted to partner with me in this phase of my career used funds from our advance for his other endeavors. He insists that he upheld his contractual obligations, but the money was gone. This left me with nothing to put toward videos or promo. The album was literally removed from streaming platforms because some of the producers who worked on it hadn’t been paid. I was embarrassed and pissed. There was no excuse for dropping the ball to this magnitude, and my manager didn’t even try to offer one. He went ghost on me after causing one of the biggest letdowns of my career, and he stayed ghost as I experienced one of the biggest heartbreaks and darkest times of my life.

  Chapter 26

  On any other Thanksgiving, I would have been working and missing out on family dinner. I didn’t feel like it in 2015, and I decided to go home instead. I went straight to Nessa’s from the airport, expecting to find her in the kitchen, getting a meal ready for the holiday. She was home, but she wasn’t cooking. She looked tired, and she was obviously in pain. I took her to the hospital the same day. I was relieved when the doctor diagnosed her with kidney stones. I didn’t want her in any pain, but at least they knew what was causing the issue and could treat it. She was scheduled for surgery to remove the stones, and that’s when her prognosis went from bad to worse. Doctors removed all of her kidney stones and discovered cancer.

  Her diagnosis came as a huge blow to my family. Cancer had already claimed the life of my aunt Sheila. Nessa was really involved in taking care of her sister, so we had a front-row seat to the damage it can do. I was dreading seeing my mother, my best friend, in that condition. But I tried to push my feelings aside to be there for her. I took a break from touring and doing shows to be home with her. Her comfort and health became the most important things in my life. Eventually, I had to get back to work, and my sister, Laura, stayed by her side. The cancer spread slowly, over the course of several years. One day when I talked to her on the phone, she was so sick that she didn’t even sound like herself. She was superwoman to me, but in that moment, she sounded so weak and fragile. I knew that her battle was almost done. It just ripped my heart out of my chest. She was the literal center of my world, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than for her to know it. I went to the studio and recorded “Mama” as a tribute to her, this time featuring Kelly Price. I made sure it stayed on the album, and I’m so glad I laid the track while she was still here and able to listen to it. My album came out in June, and my mother transitioned on September 3, 2019.

  Even though I knew it was coming, even though I’d held my mom’s hand through so much of her cancer battle, and got to tell her how much I loved her, I still wasn’t emotionally ready for when she passed away. I couldn’t prepare for her death, because I couldn’t even imagine what the world would be like without her until she was already gone. Nessa was larger than life to me and everybody who knew her because she did so much for her family and her community. For my entire life, she was my rock. She was the foundation that kept me stable, whether I was standing tall or crumbling down. There were so many moments that were so tough that her strength was the only thing that got me through. There was nothing I didn’t trust her with, nothing I couldn’t talk to her about, and nothing I wouldn’t have done for her. When I had to face the reality that she wasn’t here anymore, it was like the ground had been pulled from underneath me. It was like I was free-falling with no parachute and nothing to grab on to. There were some days when the grief was so strong it felt like I couldn’t breathe. It’s the kind of pain I wouldn’t wish on anybody.

  When Hollywood passed away, I remember being surrounded by my mom, my sister, and my aunts. We would all gather around at my mom’s house or her hair salon, and people knew that they could find me there in those first few days after it happened. These were the women I respected the most and considered to be top tier. A lot of people were coming by to see me. I was so checked out that I barely remember their faces or who they were. But the memory that has remained etched in my brain from that difficult time is one of my aunts telling every friend who stopped by the same thing. I heard her say it over and over again, and she was so adamant about it: “Don’t come around here with that pity party. Don’t come around here with that. Anything that is going to bring her down or make her feel worse, don’t bring it around here.” I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time. I thought she just didn’t want to see me cry. When Nessa passed away, I think I finally got it. When you are experiencing a loss on that level, there’s nothing anyone can do to make you feel better or worse. All they can do is help make sure you have the space to deal with it. That’s why so many people bring food, clean up, or donate things in a time of loss. It’s relieving the burdens in the physical world because there is nothing that can be done about those emotional wounds. My aunt was telling my friends to make themselves useful instead of offering sympathies.

  We made sure Nessa’s homegoing was a full-on bash. She was the “hostess with the mostest” during her time on Earth, so we threw her a celebration of life that was just as fun and energetic. We filled the venue with decorations and balloons in her favorite color, orange. We had a live band and dancers to keep everyone on their feet and to recognize my mom’s dance abilities. We had the rest of our lives to mourn and grieve her. On the day of her service, we partied.

  There was a void left in my life that was impossible to fill when Nessa was gone, and I had to figure out how to get up and keep going. The death of a loved one is such a humbling experience because you are dealing with this massive, life-changing event, and the world just keeps moving and going on. There are still thousands of cars on the highway and thousands of planes in the sky filled with people who don’t have a clue what you’re going through. You can be up all night on a Tuesday, rolling around on the floor and crying because of the grief… and the next morning the sun will still come up, and it will still be Wednesday, and you still have to make sure you move your car so it doesn’t get towed, or put your trash out so it can get picked up. You might need three days or three weeks to get control of your feelings, but during that time, life is still going on. In your moment of loss, nothing stops. And that time always comes after all of the arrangements have been made and handled, and all the hoopla of funerals or celebrations of life dies down, when people stop coming by and the calls get less frequent. They go back to living their life and you’re still living in the emotional mess that has been left behind. Your person is still gone. Nothing can change or fix that. You just have to keep waking up and figuring out how to make it through each day, day by day. If you’re lucky, the people around you can help make that part a little easier, but the emotional impact is always there. This is what it was like for me in the aftermath of Nessa’s passing. It’s still like that. I sometimes still cry just thinking about how much I miss my mom. There is no such thing as “feeling better” about it. I’ve learned to deal with and live with that pain. I had to get up and go to work just a couple of weeks later because the cameras were back on. Every day, I put one foot in front of the other and kept pushing.

 

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