Da baddest, p.7
Da Baddest, page 7
On the day of the exam, I walked into the small room with a group of people from different racial backgrounds and generations. I was definitely one of the youngest people there. I grabbed my seat, waited for the test to start, and put all those hours of preparation to work. It only took a few days to find out, via automated phone call, that I’d passed on the first try. Nessa beamed from ear to ear and gave me the biggest hug when I told her. I think both of us were relieved that I was picking myself up out of my despair and making progress in life. I had to schedule a date for my state board exam next. There were a few weeks between the two exams, so I went back to work at the club in the meantime, but I made a promise to myself that if I got certified to do real estate, I was quitting. I was actually able to enjoy those last few weeks because I knew my time was coming to an end. I tried to make as much money as I could before I was out for good. The state board test was longer and more intense than the certification exam. I wasn’t nearly as sure about my performance when it was done. I said a silent prayer that everything would work out. In the few weeks it took to receive my results in the mail, I started to doubt myself. But I had no reason to: I passed my state boards. I never went back to the club.
I finalized my application to become a registered real estate agent and received my license in the mail. From start to finish, the entire process took me about three months, but I was ready to start building my empire immediately. I applied for jobs at several real estate agencies to get my foot in the door. I was offered an entry-level position at a brokerage called E. R. Homeland Realty, which meant I’d be supporting other more established agents until I had clients and listings of my own. My first month was spent handling administrative tasks like printing and organizing listings, making phone calls to potential buyers and sellers, and sitting in on meetings to learn the ropes.
My colleagues respected my hustle and eagerness, and when a young family expressed interest in one of the properties we represented, they trusted me to take care of them. I was so excited. I read and reread the listing details so I’d know everything about the house. On the day of the showing, I put extra effort into my outfit. I wanted the clients to respect that I was professional and put together. My dress was formfitting but not too tight, and my heels were cute but sensible. I’d recently had a fresh Dominican blowout, so my hair was silky and bouncy. I swept my lids with a little bit of eyeshadow and applied a fresh coat of lip gloss before I left. The couple showed up with their baby, excited to add buying a house to their list of firsts together. It was the first place they were looking at together as a family. As we walked through the house, I guided them through the experience as if they already lived there, calling out the best features and how they might use them in their everyday life. They didn’t have many questions, but the ones they did have I was on top of. They loved the house, and I just knew I killed it. There was a good possibility that I was about to earn my first commission as a real estate agent. I wasn’t standing on a stepping stone anymore; I was on my path. But I was about to hit a fork in the road.
Chapter 10
By the time I got my real estate license, Trick’s first album, Based on a True Story, was out and charting on Billboard. Slip-N-Slide was on the map, and I was so happy to see Ted’s vision thriving. They’d accepted the torch passed by Luke, using the music industry to represent Miami. Still, when Trick initially asked me to come to the studio and jump on a record he was working on, I said no. I wasn’t trying to be a rapper and was sure he could find somebody else to do it. I brushed him off, hoping he wouldn’t bring it up again. But in true Trick fashion, he persisted. It ain’t that serious, Trina. I just need you to talk some shit on this record! I could never catch a break with him.
The night I went to the studio to record just so happened to be the same day that I finally did my first showing as a real estate agent. I was still riding that high and daydreaming about the future of my career when I rolled up to the small home studio. Pinkey, Angie, and our other two friends, Tika and Michelle, met me there. Slip-N-Slide’s in-house producer, Funk Boogie, was waiting for us. It was a tiny room with a couch, a chair, and some mixing equipment stuffed in, and the booth was pretty much a closet with a mic and some soundproofing. It was exactly the kind of “creative” atmosphere you would expect from local rappers. It’s funny how guys who walk around with thousands of dollars in their pockets can spend so much time in a janky spot to make their music. But that’s how it was with street guys. They made money in rough places—like projects or raggedy studios—so that they could afford all the nice vibes later.
The song was called “Nann,” and Trick had already laid his verse and the hook, and Funk invited me to step into the booth to hear it. My friends and I locked eyes in disbelief as it blasted through the speakers and the words sank in. All of us were used to dating aggressive street guys, and we grew up on 2 Live Crew. The lyrics weren’t shocking because they were vulgar. Trick was prone to saying off-the-wall stuff all the time, and his music was always hard-core, so that wasn’t surprising, either. It was the duality of him addressing a woman he wants to get with but spitting all of his raw street shit in the process. The song was already filled with so much audacity. What the hell did Trick want me to do with it?! Funk saw me struggling with what to do next and suggested I just lay down my version of the hook, which said, “You don’t know nann ho” instead of “nann nigga.” It took a couple of takes for me to get comfortable and perfect my delivery. We recorded a few layers, and by the time we were done, Trick walked in with a couple of other guys from the label.
We had a good laugh sharing our honest first reactions to “Nann” with him. That’s when he explained that he needed me to talk my shit on a verse but from a female perspective. For the first time, I understood my assignment. “Nann” was a combative battle-of-the-sexes type of song that could appeal to a wider audience because it offered different perspectives. It was cocky, in-your-face, bold as hell but somehow still flirty. (That might seem like a contradiction, but it’s an approach that Florida guys have down pat.) Trick’s lyrics were a challenge, and after I heard his verse, I used the same approach I did when guys like him tried to holla at me on the street: Whatever you do, I can do better.
Funk played the track from the top again, and I used Trick’s verse as a road map, listening line by line to think of rebuttals to his bars. If he could spend money, so could I. If he was nasty, so was I. If he could “run through [my] whole lil’ crew,” then I could “fuck ’bout five or six best friends.” Pinkey, Angie, Tika, and Michelle made sure their pagers were off, and they found open seats on the couch and the floor to wait quietly while I rapped into the mic. Between recordings, I bounced ideas off of them. To be clear, a lot of what I said on “Nann” are things I would never do in real life—at least not all of them—but we playfully let ourselves imagine some of the most foul-mouthed rebuttals. I put so much heart into it because I was having a good time. I felt like I had something to prove, and my girls were right there, gassing me up. You’d never know from my sharp, serious tone how much I laughed through my “Nann” verse.
It was two in the morning by the time my verse was finally arranged, recorded with the ad-libs, and layered as Funk saw fit. I couldn’t lie—I was hella impressed with the final product. Trick and the guys were in love with the song and amped up on a hundred as we played it back. They were bouncing around and bopping their heads and singing the words loudly. All my girls rapped over my verse. Trick was so geeked by my verse he kept yelling, “Trina, you the baddest bitch out here!” He called Ted and convinced him to get out of bed and come listen to the finished song. Hearing my part, Ted looked at me with these wide eyes and then started hooting and hollering with everybody else. There was no denying that “Nann” was a hit, and even though I had a blast making it, I saw it as a win for Slip-N-Slide, not me.
The next day I went to get a pedicure from my friend B. He was a gay guy and the only person I trusted with my nails. I liked going to see him later in the evening as his last appointment so that we could catch up alone. We had deep, satisfying conversations about everything as he worked on my toes, and this day was no different. “I gotta tell you what I did,” I blurted out as soon as I was in the chair.
“Bitch, what?!” He could tell by my tone I had some real tea to spill, and he couldn’t wait to sip it.
When I told him that I’d recorded a whole verse on one of Trick Daddy’s songs, he couldn’t believe it. He knew that I hung out with rappers, but he didn’t think I’d ever be one. I felt comfortable playing the tape so he could hear the song. When he heard my verse, he went crazy just like Trick, Ted, and the rest of the guys in the studio had. “The girls are going to live for it, and the gays are going to eat it up!” The excitement was just running through his body. He told me I should think about rapping more often and follow the success of “Nann” wherever it took me. He wouldn’t let me accept that this was a one-time experience I could just forget about. He was the first person outside of the industry to think I was onto something big.
“I can’t do that. People are going to think I’m a freak! I’m trying to get into real estate!” The way I looked at it, the music industry was part of my social life, not my professional one. Just like partying and doing ratchet shit with my friends, hanging around rappers, and dropping explicit verses was something I did for fun. That’s who I was when I wasn’t pursuing my real dreams. But my friend / nail tech would not take that as an answer. He saw something in my future I wasn’t ready to accept. I left his shop still afraid of what my mother would say if she heard it, how my family would react, and how my new real estate colleagues might look at me. There was a tiny part of me that saw exactly what my friend saw—a banger that the girls (and the gays) were going to love. But what did that have to do with me?
“Nann” was released in 1998. The club DJs put it in rotation immediately, and it generated buzz all over the South. It was hard to get radio play because the lyrics weren’t kid friendly, but an edited version was on its way. It was the last song Trick recorded for his second album and the obvious lead single, so Ted started working to get national radio play and shop the album around to major labels. As soon as it came out, “Nann” was the only song you heard in Miami. It was playing at the block parties, in car stereos, at the football games, and at the bars. You couldn’t escape it. Only a few people knew that I was the female voice on the track, so I got to enjoy the fanfare in relative peace for a while.
Trick had a show booked in the city a couple of weeks later, and I rolled with him to support. The bottles were popping in VIP. All the fly girls were out and dressed to the nines. There were real moneymakers and hustlers in the building letting themselves have a good time for a few hours. I watched Trick do his thing from backstage and saw the crowd get hyped as soon as they heard the bass drop at the beginning of “Nann.” The transition interlude, where I’m flat out rejecting him, came on and I felt someone pushing me onstage. I didn’t know who it was; I just heard them yelling at me, “Go! Go! Gooo!”
I frantically tried to resist being put on the stage, but I was in view of the audience, with a mic forced into my hand, before I could do anything. There were at least a few hundred people staring at me, already hyped. My verse started, and I couldn’t bring myself to rap the words in public. I was absolutely frozen with fear.
“You don’t know nann ho
Done been the places I been
Who could spend the grands that I spend…”
I closed my eyes and silently prayed that the moment would be over. I stood completely still, not uttering a word. But a chorus of women’s voices were singing at the top of their lungs in unison:
“Fuck ’bout five or six best friends
You don’t know nann ho”
They recited the whole verse, word for word, with pride. Every bar got them more geeked as they went along.
Meanwhile, the thought of rapping about giving head and selling tail so explicitly made me bashful. I had assumed that was true for other girls, too, but I was wrong. They felt no shame. As soon as my part was over, I damn near ran off the stage. I’m pretty sure I cursed out the first person I saw from Trick’s team. How dare they set me up like that. But hearing the crowd’s reaction to my verse definitely shifted my mindset. There was obviously something about the raunchiness that women were identifying with. These women—women from my city—were clearly hungry for music and artists that represented that part of them. They wanted an anthem that was freaky and uninhibited, too. That’s what artists like Trick Daddy, Uncle Luke, and pretty much every other male rapper offered men. That night at the show, I realized I could give that gift to women.
I’ve exuded bad-bitch energy since I was a teenager. That’s why Trick knew to call me, out of all the girls he knew, to lay the verse. With this one part of a song, I could transfer that energy and give other ladies permission to channel it for themselves.
Within a week of that performance, Ted gently suggested that I sign with Slip-N-Slide and make an album of my own. As far as I was concerned, he was out of his mind for even considering something like that. Nessa didn’t even know that I’d done the verse, and I dreaded her response to me talking crazy. There was no way I was going to make a career out of it, and I told Ted as much. But I couldn’t use that excuse for very long.
“What is wrong with your mouth?!” Nessa demanded to know. The question wasn’t rhetorical.
Before I told on myself, I asked her what she was talking about. She had finally heard “Nann.” Thankfully, it was the edited radio version, but my mother wasn’t a fool. She could easily read between the lines. I tried to downplay the whole situation like it was just an inside joke that went too far among my friends. I did my best to convince her that I would never in a million years repeat those things, or write more songs like it, or perform in front of thousands of people. She rolled her eyes and accepted that answer. Nessa didn’t know that Ted was actively trying to get me to sign a record deal where I would get paid to do all the things I told her I had no intention of doing. She also didn’t know what it felt like hearing all those women react to my verse the first time I was onstage when it played.
As “Nann” kept growing, the hard work Ted was putting into promotion for Trick’s album was paying off. The buzz generated from the song helped land Slip-N-Slide a major distribution deal with Atlantic that put them on the national stage. Ted wasn’t taking my no for an answer about signing with the label. Trick was booking more and more shows, and the team at the label wanted me to try hitting the stage again. He was scheduled to perform in Tallahassee at Florida A&M University’s homecoming. Feeling a little more confident and prepared, I agreed. I had time to pick an outfit and have my mom do my hair. I even worked with backup dancers to liven up the stage. We were booked at a club called the Moon, and it was a way bigger crowd than the club where I froze up.
As soon as the beat dropped for “Nann,” the place went wild. I kept my eyes open and said all the words this time. I fed off the crowd’s energy. Once footage from that performance got back to the label, Ted upped the pressure to get me to sign with Slip-N-Slide. He knew I had something to offer the music industry, but now Atlantic Records did, too. Reps from both teams called me multiple times, asking me to reconsider a record deal. Ted demanded that I come meet with him in his office as soon as we got back to the city. With the Atlantic deal in place and the song gaining nationwide traction, the circumstances were different. I could no longer brush Slip-N-Slide off, because everyone on the label was my friend. They were backed by a major label now, with international reach.
In the days leading up to the meeting with Ted, I thought seriously about my future. I still wanted to be successful off the strength of my own hard work and name. I’d dedicated so much time and effort to get my real estate license, but I had a long road ahead until I reached true financial independence with it. Back then, the music industry wasn’t nearly as saturated as it is today. If you knew the right people, blew up in your city, and got the right opportunity, you could make some life-changing bread. The deal Ted was offering would definitely give me a good head start. When I looked at it from this perspective, I saw that I wasn’t being pulled away from my dreams; I was being offered an alternative route to get there. I couldn’t deny the love and excitement that fans had for “Nann,” and I knew we had enough momentum to make it work. The icing on the cake was that I wasn’t putting my future in the hands of some stranger who rode in on a dark horse, promising me the world. Ted and Trick were like family to me, and I trusted them. I invited Ted over to Nessa’s before the meeting because I’d made up my mind.
By the time I signed my record deal with Slip-N-Slide, the offense Nessa took to my “Nann” verse had worn off. Even she had to admit the song was catchy. Plus, she and Ted had a good face-to-face conversation about how this deal would affect me. I didn’t know anything about the music industry, and my mom was aware of my naïveté, but she trusted Ted had my back. Like me, she was also reassured by Slip-N-Slide’s new ties to Atlantic as a professional, reputable company. Putting my name on that dotted line came with a $250,000 advance. It was the most money I had ever received at one time. Just a year earlier, I was dancing at a strip club, hoping to make $10,000 a month; now I was looking at six figures after a few hours of work on one song. It was surreal. We had a celebratory dinner, and I handed the check right over to Nessa. She put part of it away for savings and used another portion to invest and help me build a safety net. I’m forever grateful I had her in my corner.
