payment page
Summary
Chapter Fourteen
As soon as Christmas break ends, the landlord visits the Jacksons’ apartment and threatens to evict them for missing their rent payment. Jay promises to find the money if the landlord can give them a little more time, and the landlord agrees. Bri starts to suggest pawning Lawless’s chain, but Jay refuses.
Sonny tells Bri that Rapid, the boy he’s been talking to online, has suggested meeting up. Sonny delays the meeting, nervous that Rapid could be a fraud.
Bri hears from Curtis that her song has been getting attention from a Black celebrity gossip blog. The front page of the blog has a story about her song and a link to it. Curtis is excited for Bri, but Malik is ambivalent, still upset that the song is misleading. Bri is the talk of the school. Even Mrs. Murray comments on her song, and Bri is filled with hope about the future.
Chapter Fifteen
Bri gets invited to do another battle at the Ring. On the way there, Aunt Pooh confronts Bri about releasing the song and about wearing Lawless’s chain out in the open, which Aunt Pooh thinks is dangerous. In the parking lot outside the Ring, some Crowns start to threaten Bri, seeing her chain and mentioning the gang references in her song. Aunt Pooh starts to reach for her gun, but security intervenes and all of them are told to leave. Bri is furious that she won’t be allowed to battle. She starts singing the lyrics to “On the Come Up” in the parking lot. The large crowd outside the Ring joins in.
Aunt Pooh and Bri fight because Bri blames Aunt Pooh for ruining her opportunity to battle. Bri refuses to go home with Pooh. Instead, Supreme picks her up with his son Miles in the car. Bri notes that when he is not rapping, Miles talks like a kid from the suburbs. Miles and Bri smooth over any hard feelings from their battle.
To her surprise, Supreme congratulates Bri on the fight outside the Ring, predicting that it will make for good publicity. He encourages Bri to lean into the role of “hoodlum” because that is what white record execs want to sell to white suburban kids. Bri pushes back, saying that’s not how she wants to be seen, but Supreme says it doesn’t matter as long as she’s making money. Supreme questions Aunt Pooh’s ability to manage Bri.
Chapter Sixteen
As Supreme predicts, Bri’s run-in at the Ring boosts her following. People are talking about her, though Bri thinks they’re talking about someone who she really isn’t. Bri is conflicted about dropping Aunt Pooh as her manager, but she is starting to have serious doubts about Pooh’s ability to promote her.
Trey talks to Bri about her song. He says he understands that the song is about people’s perceptions of her as a Black girl, but he still worries that the song will be misconstrued.
On the bus, Bri gets more attention for getting thrown out of the Ring. Curtis protects her when people start asking intrusive questions. Curtis and Bri talk about their mothers, and both of them share their fears of seeing their mothers altered, either by the pain of being imprisoned or from using drugs. They talk about music, too, and the artists they love.
When they get off the bus, Sonny starts to tease Bri for flirting with Curtis. Sonny admits that he ghosted Rapid because he is too concerned about his schoolwork and SATs. Bri recognizes that Sonny is about to have a panic attack because he is putting so much pressure on himself. She helps Sonny avoid the panic attack, but just as they are about to enter the school, Malik informs them that Long and Tate are back.
Analysis
In Part Two, titled “The Golden Age,” Bri begins gets her first taste of fame, along with its benefits and drawbacks, as her song “On the Come Up” goes viral. Lawless’s chain continues to serve as a symbol of his complex legacy, representing Bri’s increasing fame as a rapper while also making her the target of negative attention. Bri wears the chain proudly in public, embracing her connection to Lawless’s fame, but fails to consider that doing so might offend the Crowns, the gang responsible for Lawless’s murder. Aunt Pooh recognizes the inherent danger in wearing the chain, but Bri is too enamored by her growing celebrity to heed Pooh’s warnings. The near-violent encounter with the Crowns outside the Ring proves that Aunt Pooh’s misgivings about the chain, as well as the lyrics to “On the Come Up,” were warranted. But rather than feeling chastened by the encounter with the Crowns, Bri seems to be emboldened, angrily rapping the lyrics to “On the Come Up” and whipping up the crowd outside the Ring.
Even so, Bri seems somewhat conflicted about her behavior outside the Ring. When Supreme praises her violent behavior at the Ring and compliments her as a “ghetto rapper,” Bri tries to push back against this as a mischaracterization of who she is. Supreme, focused entirely on fame and fortune, scoffs at her objections and emphasizes the importance of playing to the stereotypes of the biggest consumers of rap: white kids in the suburbs. For Bri, Supreme’s cynical philosophy is an affront to the sanctity of hip-hop as a medium of authentic self-expression. It is the same shallow approach to hip-hop for which Bri vilified in Milez and his song “Swagerific” in her first battle in the Ring. But now, riding in the car with Miles, she realizes that he is nothing like his stage persona Milez, whose lyrics are carefully crafted to conform to tired but marketable hip-hop tropes. Bri seems tempted by Supreme’s pragmatic views and begins to wonder whether hip-hop fame and authenticity are compatible.
The novel continues to explore the theme of abandonment through Bri’s budding romantic relationship with Curtis, a longtime acquaintance whom she and her close friends previously despised. Bri and Curtis share in common the traumatic experience of having been separated from their mothers. Bri lived with her grandparents for several years while Jay struggled with addiction, while Curtis’s mother has been incarcerated for years. Bri’s own struggle to reestablish her relationship with her mother helps her empathize with Curtis. When Curtis confesses that he has stopped visiting his mother in prison because he doesn’t know how to help her, Bri suggests that Curtis’s mother would just want to see him. Although she knows Jay loves her, Bri rarely confides in Jay. She constantly worries that Jay may start using again, and though she defends Jay against her detractors, like her grandmother, privately she has her own doubts about Jay’s stability as a mother. Bri and Curtis both try to be strong and to take care of their mothers, a reversal of the parent-child relationship. Likewise, they both have trouble letting their guards down and allowing their mothers to take care of them, suggesting the deep level of fracture that the abandonment has caused for them both.
