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Summary
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After Aunt Pooh’s arrest, Jay doesn’t come out of her room for several days. Bri goes to check on her, fearing that she has been using drugs again. Jay assures Bri she’s okay. They plan to go visit Pooh the next day.
Supreme calls and says he’s arranged a meeting with some record execs. He says Bri is very close to getting a contract. On the bus to school, while Bri is deciding what song to record for the meeting, Curtis asks her out. Bri tells him the way he asked wasn’t good enough. Curtis stands on the seats and asks her loud enough for the entire bus to hear. She says yes.
At school, Shana approaches Bri. Malik is nearby, but he ignores Bri. Shana asks Bri to come to a meeting with the superintendent and the student coalition. Bri remembers her appointment with the record execs and tells Shana she can’t go. Shana is disappointed but tells Bri that people on the internet are supportive of her and think DJ Hype was out of line. Bri wishes Malik would talk to her. She worries she has lost him as a friend.
Chapter Thirty
At the Studio, Supreme introduces Bri to James, a white record executive. James refers to Supreme as “Clarence,” and the two apparently have a long history of working together. James makes several insensitive, racist remarks about Lawless that anger Bri. Dee-Nice arrives with some lyrics for a song that he wrote for Bri to perform. Bri objects, insisting that she only performs her own songs, but Supreme and Dee-Nice ignore her. Bri finds the song highly offensive. It further develops her “hood rat” persona, with more references to guns and violence. She worries about the kids in the Garden hearing her rap these lyrics. She gets into a heated argument with Supreme. Removing his sunglasses, Supreme insists that Bri follow in the footsteps of Lawless, who made it big by rapping about the streets and “playing a role.” He says Lawless’s downfall was that he actually started living the role, but Bri doesn’t have to make the same mistake. Bri feels untrue to herself, but she finally relents and records Dee Nice’s song.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jay and Bri go to visit Aunt Pooh in jail. During the visit, Jay finds out about the interview with DJ Hype and about the robbery. Aunt Pooh tells Bri that if she wants revenge on the Crowns who stole her chain, Bri just needs to tell her and that she’ll make it happen. Jay sees that Aunt Pooh is so caught up in the gang feud that she is endangering Bri and herself. Jay refuses to help Aunt Pooh make bail, saying that Aunt Pooh isn’t fighting for herself because she’s too focused on gang life. Aunt Pooh insists she will change, but Jay and Bri don’t know if they can believe her.
When they leave the jail, Jay confronts Bri about all the secrets she has been keeping. Bri confesses that she hired Supreme to be her manager. She also admits that Supreme bought her the real Timbs. Bri tells Jay that she has been doing everything she can to make it in hip hop because she wants to help the family out of their financial problems.
Dr. Cook calls and offers Jay an interview at his office. Jay is hopeful she may soon have a job.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Bri gets a mysterious text from Sonny, telling her to meet him at Oak Park as soon as possible. Bri arrives and both Sonny and Malik are there. Sonny is waiting to meet Rapid in person for the first time. When Rapid is about to arrive, Sonny makes Malik and Bri hide. They are all surprised to discover that Rapid is actually Miles.
While Sonny and Miles are connecting, Bri and Malik talk things through from their hiding spot. She apologizes for abandoning him after the robbery, and he apologizes for kissing her. They emerge from their hiding spot and meet up with Miles and Sonny. Miles talks about how his father, Supreme, forces him to pretend to be straight and play the role of a gangster so he can earn money as a rapper. Miles says that he is going to give up performing as Milez the rapper because he is tired of not being himself.
Analysis
In these chapters, the novel’s central conflict comes to a head, and Bri is faced with a stark choice between embracing the role that society expects of her or remaining true to herself and her values. Bri observes a number of other characters faced with essentially the same choice. Supreme, of course, has always pushed Bri to adopt the role of a hoodlum to further her career, but his behavior around James shows that he himself easily slips in and out of roles, code-switching and playing a stereotypical subservient version of Blackness in order to flatter the white record executive. When Bri pushes back against recording Dee Nice’s lyrics, Supreme asks the exec to give them a moment alone, at which point he removes his sunglasses for the first time in the novel, dropping the role and showing Bri his own true self. With a menacing growl, Supreme tells Bri that music is a business, and she needs to play the role if she wants to get paid. Comparing the record deal to a “robbery,” Supreme argues that the only way to succeed in the music industry is to sell out, conning rich white executives by playing to their blatantly racist, voyeuristic infatuation with street life.
With his shades down, Supreme reveals himself as the main antagonist of the novel. He brags that he was the one who made Lawless famous by convincing him to rap about gang violence and start hanging out with the Garden Disciples to make his music “look authentic.” He implies that Lawless was stupid for actually getting caught up in gang life instead of just playing the role in his music. Bri realizes that Supreme’s influence was directly responsible for her father’s death, and he is leading her down the exact same path. He encourages Bri perform a dangerous, false version of herself for the sake of money, arguing that she does not have to let the role define her, as Lawless did. The revelation that Rapid is actually Supreme’s son Miles (a.k.a. Milez the rapper) shows that Supreme’s depraved philosophy extends to his own family. Although Miles is a gay photographer from the suburbs who hates hip-hop, Supreme forces him to perform in the persona of a straight rapper from the hood. For Supreme, success always involves playing a role that has no connection to one’s personal identity or beliefs.
But the narratives of Lawless, Aunt Pooh, and Miles all illustrate the impossibility of trying to play a role without losing oneself in it. When Lawless started “rolling” with the Garden Disciples to look authentic, he offended the rival Crowns and was gunned down. Aunt Pooh deals with Lawless’s loss by joining the Garden Disciples, a role that she does not want for Bri or anyone else, but one she soon finds she can never escape. Though Pooh clearly loves Bri, she continually fails her and is eventually arrested for dealing drugs. When Bri and Jay visit her in jail, Pooh is still so consumed by the gang feud that Jay realizes that Aunt Pooh is “lost.” Unlike Lawless and Pooh, Miles manages to escape the fate of losing himself by rejecting the false street persona cultivated for him by his father. By deciding to give up a rap career that he realizes “isn’t really mine,” Miles chooses authenticity, and his own happiness, over money and fame. At this point in the novel, it remains to be seen whether Bri will make the same choice.
