She Got Game
We're on top of the Delano hotel in Miami. A spa called agua. Sun deck and low walls, pale blue with white trim. Like sitting
on a solid part of the sky.
It's hot. Too close to the sun. Just had the salt rub. Getting the custom massage and the Mini Peppermint Twist. They soak Ace
bandages in seaweed and hot water and peppermint essential oil. Wrap you tight from the waist down like you've broken all the
bones in your lower body. Roll you snug in a Mylar blanket. The kind of material those shiny HAPPY BIRTHDAY balloons
are made from. Then you simmer in the hotness. We each end up sitting in a quarter cup of our own minty sweat.
Foxy and I are talking about being female and about just how bananas it is. Foxy, who has been linked to Ja˙-Z, Rayshawn
from Junior M.A.F.I.A., Allen Iverson, Andre Rison, DMX, Master P, and Nas, but who is in fact engaged to Ricardo
"Kurupt" Brown, says that while a lot of times it is all about the hotness, a lot of times it isn't.
Foxy is saying, "I'm talking about love. Love. Love. Everybody wanna talk about why Foxy doesn't show up at a video shoot,
why I'm late to my show, why I won't take my sunglasses off in an interview. 'Cause everything ain't always all right with me.
Okay? Until you've been in love with a nigga, until you've been standing on the edge of a building ready to give it all up for a
nigga-I ride for my niggas-until you've done all that shit, don't talk to me. I tell a muthaf--ka, look: Grow t-tties, get a p---y, get
your heart broke before you talk to me about how I'm acting." Foxy, sweet brown like the best chocolate, leans back in her
lustrous cocoon, face to the heat. "Do that before you talk to me about sh-t."
On the Delano's verandah. Foxy and I have salty breasts peppermint butts ginseng faces. Daisies sit in a tiny vase. Inga
Marchand, a.k.a. Foxy Brown, says she has more than the blaxploitation princess from whom she took her name for an idol.
"Roxanne Shanté!" Foxy almost screams. "She's a pioneer for the type of sh-t I'm doing. I swear by her. She was a b-t-h back
in the day-for having skills. She was stepping out of limos with full-length minks. Diamonds. She was like, I'm that b-t-h. I'm
here, and these are my niggas, and this is how we roll."
Foxy says ride a lot. When she says I ride for my niggas, she means she will go with them wherever whenever for whatever.
She means loyalty.
And she's serious about it. Like she's serious about Ja˙-Z. "That's my Clyde," she says. "I'm his Bonnie. You ever had a nigga
that can't do no wrong in your eyes in any situation? That's who Ja˙ is to me. Our sh-t is unconditional." Ja˙ seems to feel pretty
strongly about Foxy as well. On "Bonnie & Clyde Pt. II," from her new album, tentatively titled Chyna Doll (Violator/Def Jam),
Foxy asks Ja˙, "Would you die for your nigga?" And he answers, chillingly, "I'd hang high from a tree." She says Ja˙ put her on.
She met him when she was like 13 or 14 through her cousin DJ/producer Clark Kent. "Did I think Ja˙ was cute?" She smiles
big. "I wasn't really even looking at him like that. He wasn't even out yet." But then, in 1996, they voiced "Ain't No Nigga" for
Def Jam's The Nutty Professor soundtrack: "No one can f--k you better," Ja˙ rapped, however figuratively, to 16-year-old
Foxy, who gave as good as she got. "Sleeps around but he gives me a lot" is the way she replied.
So just how much does Ja˙ contribute to Foxy Brown? "What made Ja˙ love me is the verse I wrote for `Ain't No Nigga,' "
she says. "I write my songs and have always written my songs. When my schedule is hectic and I'm too busy to go in the studio,
Ja˙ collaborates with me. He catches me when I'm falling. But this is my nine-to-five. This is what I do."
A lot of people don't know that Inga Marchand was signed to Capitol Records as Big Shorty. Soon thereafter she changed her
name to AKA and was eventually dropped from the label. Then Red Hot Lover Tone brought her to Puffy Combs, who turned
her down. But the Fox was determined.
Chris Lighty, CEO of Violator Records, also manages Noreaga, Cam'ron, Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, Mobb Deep,
and Total. Lighty says he was probably the first, aside from Ja˙-Z, to give Foxy a shot. "She didn't even have a real demo," he
says.
As the story goes, Tone and Steve "the Commissioner" Stoute from Trackmasters Entertainment were in Chung King studios in
1995 with L.L. Cool J. Lighty was there too. He says Foxy "had been bugging me to put her on a record. And Tone had been
trying to get me to sign her. We all agreed to put her on [the remix to `I Shot Ya' (Def Jam, 1995)] without telling L.L."
The night before she recorded her verse, Foxy left the studio "early" because it was three in the morning and she had a big test
the next day. "She was caring about school a lot at that time," says Stoute. "Myself, I was just thinking about the money."
"I was the new b-t-h," says Foxy. "They had me in there with L.L., Keith Murray, Prodigy, and Fat Joe. I was like, Y'all got
me rhyming against some dope-ass MCs. And you know what? I can do this sh-t."
"Foxy wrote her rhyme right then," says Violator's Eric Nicks. It went a little something like this: "Four carats / Of ice rocks /
P---y banging like Versace... / I'm sexing raw dog without protection / Disease-infested"
"Everybody ran out of the room screaming like that sh-t was the bomb," she says. "I knew right then it was going to be on for
me. I was a female truly rhyming with some real niggas."
Judith Marchand says she didn't know about her daughter's talent until Inga turned 16. "Only after every record company head
was expressing interest in her did I become aware," says the Ill Mama. "Something that stays with me: I was at a studio. On the
other side of the door they were playing a Foxy track. I heard them screaming. A guy ran out and said, `She is the 50 Foot
Woman. She's going to be the Whitney Houston of rap.' " Even if she wasn't doing the remix of "I Will Always Love You,"
Foxy's a pretty, profane, sexual girl with skills-do the math.
"It was the craziest bidding war," Foxy recalls. "Puffy, Russell [Simmons], Sylvia [Rhone], Andre Harrell. I narrowed it down
to Bad Boy and Def Jam. Russell had longevity."
"Foxy likes to win," Eric Nicks says. "She spazzes out when something's off. It's got to be the right beat, the right lyric, the right
stylist. Everything has to be win win win, or she's not doing it."
Back when Foxy was in junior high and Kimberly Jones, a.k.a. Lil' Kim, was in high school, they were friends living in
Brooklyn. They used to stay on the phone until six in the morning, planning how they were gonna tear sh-t down. Who would
get on first? Which b-t-h was baddest?
"We always had a pact," Foxy says. Each agreed to help the other. Back then, both were under Lance "Un" Rivera's
management. "But then Kim went with Big, and I went with Ja˙. She paid her dues."
"Kim called me one day," says Foxy. "It was like four in the morning, and I had to go to school the next day, and she was like,
`You know AZ?' I was like, The rapper? The one that gets with Nas? She was like, `Yo, I got him on the other line, he wants
you to rap for him.' I was scared. I just started busting for him. He was like, `Yo, give me your number.' " When she met Nas
and AZ, they all just clicked. "It was like, `This is how we gonna do this. It's gonna be the Firm.' " She says Nas and AZ are
her fam. She rides for them. They ended up recording 1997's The Firm-The Album.
Lighty says, "If you listen to Foxy's Ill Na Na [Def Jam, 1996] and Kim's Hard Core [Undeas/Atlantic, 1996], Kim was more
underground. We took Foxy straight to the clubs." He slows down for a second. "Kim had Biggie, though. There was a lot of
power on that side. Fortunately, we were able to keep up."
Kim and Foxy are not really friends now. "It didn't have to do with Kim and I personally," Foxy says. "It was the people
around us." Foxy says they were supposed to cut a song more than a year ago called "Thelma & Louise."
"At the time we were supposed to record, we weren't speaking," says Foxy. "Un came to me and said, `I know you and
Shorty ain't on the best of terms right now, but....' And at first I wasn't really with it. The day after, Kim called me. But when
you have two women who once were friends, who now have bitter feelings toward each other and are getting fed bull from
every angle, the conversation was useless."
Foxy says after 30 minutes of going over who said what, "I was talking to a dial tone." She decided to go to the studio and
record her verse anyway. Then Foxy, Un, and Lighty waited several hours for Kim. "Shorty never showed," Foxy says. (Kim
declined to be interviewed for this piece.)
Rivera, who calls Foxy chipper and energetic, says he's still trying to make "Thelma & Louise" happen. And Foxy says she still
has mad love for Kim. When a gunman broke into Foxy's house this past July, it was the scariest moment of her life. "Kim was
the first one concerned," Foxy says. "I appreciated that."
Foxy's eating key lime pie and talking about the forthcoming Oliver Stone film, tentatively titled The League (Warner Bros.,
1999). She's reading for a part, and if she gets it, Foxy'll portray the football hero's girl. "I respect Faith," Foxy says, a little out
of nowhere. "When you're the wife, you needn't worry. Anyone can be a girlfriend or a baby's momma. But there's only one
wife."
Foxy's engaged to Kurupt, a label-owning West Coast-by-way-of-Philadelphia all-star who's down with Snoop Dogg. (His
double album, Kuruption, was released this past October.) Her platinum engagement ring is wide and jammed with diamonds.
The couple haven't set a date yet. Foxy says if it was up to Kurupt, she'd already be married. "You know what?" she adds,
"We really love each other, but right now, what's really important to me is focusing on my album and getting my career straight."
Her career: Foxy knows that because she sells sex (and she will tell you that, straight out), that when a female is sexual, the
impulse to stigmatize her is pretty automatic. "Harlots or Heroines?" was the question posed in a 1997 cover story in The
Source about Foxy and Kim. "I remember this one article a girl wrote," Foxy says, "she titled it, `Black Girl Lost.' " Foxy hated
that. "I'm not lost," she says. "My grown ass? I know what the f--k I'm doing."
"Inga has childlike qualities and womanlike qualities," says Judy Marchand. "I've taken heat from a lot of people about her
image. I've had to defend her and myself. I'm not going to let anyone take advantage of her. I will fight for her tooth and nail. I
have her back. Inga is my little girl."
Joe Sherman, Foxy's bodyguard, is six foot six inches. Three hundred and 40 pounds. Very nice guy. He says to me one day in
the lobby of Miami's Tides Hotel, like it's a secret, "I've thought about it. If someone ever took a shot at her, would I jump in
front of her and take the bullet? I've thought about it, and I would. Because I've lived. She hasn't. She thinks she has."
Foxy's got on dark gray Iceberg hot pants, a matching Band-Aid of a top. Gucci slides. Platinum Rolex. "In the beginning,"
Foxy says, "I was in Chanel, Prada, and Gucci all the time. But now my mom comanages me, I'm learning to spend wisely. You
can be made today and broke tomorrow. I'm not trying to be broke." She owns a house in New Jersey and is about to buy a
brownstone in Brooklyn.
"She's supposed to be this extreme b-t-h," says Lighty. "But we're all rude; we all wake up on the wrong side of the bed.
People harp on it because she's female."
On her fierce new album, Foxy remade Howard Johnson's 1982 smash "So Fine" (A&M) with Next singing the hook. "If we
skip Prada / You gets nada" is what she says on the song.
I ask if she could ever date a guy with no money. "The brother with no money is gonna spend time," she says. "The guy with
money is gonna be like, `I just gave you a thousand dollars to go shopping. What the f--k is you calling me for?' Then I'm sitting
around with a bunch of gifts and the nigga's long gone. I don't like that. You ain't got to buy me. I have my own."
Yes, she does. But Foxy's a fast girl. A girl who looks at her lips her teeth her waist her ass her legs her breasts and sees that
they are what people, what men, have always responded to. So why not use them, as her old girlfriend Lil' Kim says, to "Get
Money"? Foxy was seven years old when Janet Jackson hit with "Control" and "What Have You Done for me Lately." Five
when Madonna broke it down with "Material Girl." No wonder she's got such fabulous arrogance. No wonder she's so
consumed with consuming. Foxy's the kind of girl who believes that financial independence (and the constant display thereof)
might just bring about emotional independence-but grown as she is, she hasn't hit the big wall yet. The one that's tagged It Isn't
So.
What she does know (and what is true) is attitude is nine tenths of the law, that shock wins, that profanity is the new norm, that
as long as you can pretend to yourself that being a girl with a guy's macho mentality is possible, you can play-and it's fun-but
then you f--k around and like a guy. You hear something massive and embracing in his voice, feel all the things you never felt as
a baby girl in his arms, and then you are-not lost-but mad at him for being stupid and sexist and human. A victim himself of
genes and environment and these wary, changing, sexual times. Mostly you're mad at your life or whatever it is about life in
general that makes you need anything from anyone at any time. So you dis dependence. Claim p---y as power. Go all the fly
places bad girls go. Do a remake of Gwen Guthrie's 1986 "Ain't Nothin' Going on but the Rent."
I have to ask her, though, since it is a federal law, why she isn't rapping about world peace. "To me, that's normal," she says. "I
do things to keep people talking. To bring issues that the average female MC ain't raising. To talk about things average females
talk about. Not even so much about niggas. [Females] been fighting for respect; we've been fighting for equality since back in
the Bessie Smith days. Millie Jackson, all that. It's like, why can you get mad at me and say, `F--k you,' and I can't say, F--k
you? I want to be the type of rapper that stands up for that. You have rappers that stand up more for African-American
culture. You have people that are just into party music, you have rappers who are street. I'm just Foxy."
Brown-skinned b-t-hes in a Hummer!" Foxy's talking about her video for the ridiculously catchy first single, "Hot Spot," from
Chyna Doll. We've limoed over to Bal Harbour Shops, where the people in Gucci know her name, where the people in Prada
parade around her with shoes and purses for fall, where the old ladies in Chanel act snobby toward her until Lighty pulls out his
gold Amex, already smoking from all the action. The ladies-foundation cracking, matte lipstick fading-smile and bring Foxy
what Foxy wants, which is mostly shoes, size six and a half for herself, seven and a half for Judy Marchand, an elementary
school teacher. Her mom divorced early; raised Inga and her brothers Anton and Gavin mostly by herself.
"My mother wasn't strict," Foxy says. "She would leave notes for me and my two brothers. One day I'd have the
dishes&hellipwe'd rotate days. Everything was organized. Wherever we went, we had to call."
"Right now I'm in awe of my daughter," says Mrs. Marchand. "Inga is very bright. She's been in gifted programs since
preschool. She kept you on your toes. She was always reading and talking. We had a special relationship. She's my only
daughter. When she got to be a teenager, we went through changes. She was getting to know herself. I call it her creative
period."
Between Louis Vuitton and Sergio Rossi, I ask what she would tell a girl who said, "Foxy, my man is tripping." "I can't even tell
you 'cause I need all the advice I can get," she says. "But basically, don't chase. Let it go. It'll come back. I got that from my
mother. If that person isn't putting in the time and love and effort he should be, you need to back off for a minute. You need to
be like, Let me step back for a little while. You do you. Come back when you're ready to do me."
So until he's ready, you toss them t-tties around. Shake that ass. Make that money. Cultivate that brassy soul sister shit
everybody applauds you for. Yes. Foxy Brown is a star. Be nasty. Be classy. Be extravagant. Be everybody's fantasy. Be
Millie, be Pearl, be Whitney, be Diahann, be Janet, be like your girl Kim. Stare down the old rules. Run with the big dogs. Hey,
Soul sister! Be superstrong, supersexy, supertalented, supersatisfied. Be supergirl. Be like Pam "Original Foxy" Grier. Foxy
says Pam and her are buddies. That Pam calls her and tells her when she's doing "well." And tells her when she's f--king up by
like wearing a wrong dress to some event. Or, says Foxy, when she's, like, not handling business. The Tides Hotel looks like a
wedding cake. White with squares of mauve and pale blue. Umbrella'd tables. You can forget how hot it is when you're sitting
in the hotel sipping lemonade made with sparkling water. Ninety-one degrees at 3:15 p.m. Lighty is on the phone again: "Tell
them South Beach is on some art deco shit. The hotels aren't like the usual hotels we stay at. Everything is small." The Violator
crew comes down here to record away from New York and L.A. or Atlanta. Not so many distractions. Foxy says, in L.A.,
there's a celebrity on every corner. It's time to go to the studio. Foxy's hype about it, but resisting. Besides, we want to talk
about guys.
You didn't quite answer me before: Could you date a guy who's not paid?
I'd rather meet someone who's cool and not in the limelight. But when you do it-and I've tried-it doesn't balance out. It's always
like four o'clock in the morning, and I'm getting calls from Russell Simmons and [the guy'll be] waking up like, Niggas is trying
to get some sleep, you know? We can't go to the movies unless it's `Ohmigod, it's Foxy!' People want autographs. He'd
be feeling left out. My first love, Rayshawn, he's a part of Junior M.A.F.I.A., but he's not in the limelight. And for a while we
could keep it together. But then my fame just went. And that kinda messed it up. He was reminding me, 24-7: I was with you
when you didn't have sh-t. And I was like, I'm trying to be with you and you ain't got sh-t. And I'd tell him I'm trying to still get
mine. It didn't work out.
Lauryn Hill said that a guy she was with felt like he never had to tell her she was special, because the whole world was telling
her that every day.
I never had that problem. But I have been in a lot of situations where I felt like I was ridin' for niggas, like no matter what, that's
my nigga, and then they're like `Ahh, yeah, yeah she's my [she shrugs],' and it's like&helliplike sh-t. That hurts. You have
no idea."
I ask Foxy's mom if she'd want a 15-year-old girl to grow up and become Foxy Brown, and she says: "Foxy is Foxy. I'd prefer
someone to wanna be like Inga. I would tell a 15-year-old to be yourself. Foxy Brown's not a bad girl; she really is a good girl.
I thought it was fun and games what she does, but she works hard. She's using the talent she was blessed with. I respect her. I
don't always agree with her-what mother agrees with everything her daughter does?"
I've mostly seen Foxy rocking purple eye shadow, skinny superplucked eyebrows, blue mascara. Flowing black hair down to
the middle of her back. Fly-ass weave-o-rama. Deep dark glossy lipstick. Foxy's a big pop superstar,
baby. Don't sleep. In South Beach, where everyone is at least close to cool and good-looking, brothas stare her down, boys
beg for a snapshot. Girls nervously approach. Graying men verge on cardiac arrest. They stumble, even, trying to get a look at
Foxy Brown. Hot child in the city. Is it bad to be what the brothers call a hoochie mama? Or is the hoochie moment an
awesome one? An instant of true equality between man and woman. Power testing power on a shaky but level field. Love, for
a brief, glittery moment, supreme.
I've seen Foxy, too though-right before a photo shoot-with no makeup, weave in a lopsided ponytail, old jeans short, and a tan
tube top washed too many times. In so many ways, she's a total girl. No doubt. The most beautifullest thing in the world.
Danyel Smith for Vibe (December/January 98-99)