On the Come Up

Two weeks after Bri’s song goes viral, Aunt Pooh comes to pick her up for another battle in the Ring. Pooh is still annoyed and “all in her feelings because [Bri] didn’t delete the song like [Pooh] told [her]” (224), and she is unhappy that Bri is wearing the crown pendant. On their way into the Ring, a group of Crowns harasses them for Bri’s lyrics, and she feels like “[she’s] suddenly a steak thrown into a den of hungry lions” (226). A fight almost breaks out, and the bouncer for the Ring sends all of them away because the club “[doesn’t] tolerate that street shit” (227). The crowd rallies behind Bri as she gets into an argument with the bouncer, but she is still denied entry. Pooh, furious with Bri for whipping the crowd into a frenzy and forcing her to get into an altercation with the Crowns, leaves Bri on the side of the road to walk home. Supreme pulls up and offers Bri a ride home, and he tells her that she needs to play the role that the media will portray her as: a stereotype of a Black girl from the hood or a “ghetto rapper” (234). Bri hesitates because she “[doesn’t] want people thinking that’s who [she] [is]” (235), but Supreme reminds her that if she’s getting paid, it doesn’t matter what people think of her. Supreme again causes Bri to question Pooh’s role as her manager.

Videos start to surface of the frenzy outside of the club, and Bri sees people in the media calling her names: “ghetto, ratchet, a hood rat with no home training” (237). Trey prepares for a job interview, and food starts to run out again. Trey confronts Bri, telling her that although her song is good, she is earning a bad reputation, and he “personally think[s] [she] can do something even better” (241) with her life. He respects her dream, but he urges her to be careful and keep a good head on her shoulders. On the bus, Bri and Curtis talk about their families. Curtis opens up about his mother’s incarceration, and Bri tells Curtis about her mother’s past drug addiction. They talk about Bri’s favorite rappers, and their interaction quickly turns to flirting again. Curtis tells Bri that she “look[s] cute every day” (247), and she teases him about fixing his hair. Later, Sonny privately tells Bri that he ghosted his online boyfriend because he is nervous about messing this up and getting too distracted. Bri knows that “nobody’s harder on Sonny than Sonny” (250) when it comes to his grades. As the bus pulls up to the school, the kids discover that the security guards who slammed Bri to the ground have been reinstated.

At the sight of Long and Tate, Curtis yells part of Bri’s song: “Pin me to the ground, boy, you f***ed up!” (253), and the students of Midtown begin to chant the lyrics of “On the Come Up.” What begins as a protest turns into a riot when some students physically attack the security guards. Bri and her friends run away before they can get swept up in the chaos, and they meet at Malik’s house, along with all of the Black and Latinx students from Midtown. Malik and Shana speculate that in light of this incident, life is about to get a lot harder for students of color at Midtown. Curtis remarks that the students were “tired of Long and Tate treating [them] like shit and getting away with it” (258), but Malik snaps that this is the wrong way to bring about change. Shana and Malik begin to pressure Bri again to speak up and let them release the footage of what Long and Tate did to her. Shana insists that “it’s the only way things will change” (259), but Bri explodes in anger, explaining that if that video hits the news, the school will just “explain the shit away” (261) by bringing up every time Bri got in trouble. Bri storms off and goes home. She tries to downplay what happened around her mom. However, when the news reports the incident at the school and reveals the song that the students were shouting and the identity of the songwriter, Jay is shocked and asks, “Brianna. [...] Is that you?” (265). The reporter implies that the song’s violent lyrics incited the riot.