Session 316: Celebrating the Legacy of Black Women In Hip Hop

Published Jul 19, 2023, 7:00 AM

The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of hip hop, a genre that has transcended time, age, and language barriers. As we celebrate some of our favorite artists – from the Lauryns, to the Missys, to the Cardis – we also want to spend some time highlighting the Black women executives who work behind the scenes, changing the game one move at a time. 

Joining us for today’s conversation is Tracey Waples, a former senior music executive who has architected the sale of over 100 million albums and the success of a host of major stars. Her resume includes names like Rihanna, Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Method Man, and more. In 2014, she founded the music consulting firm DNA Creative and continues to mentor young women in music. During our conversation we discussed how she kicked off and navigated her career in the music industry, reconciling with hip-hop’s complicated relationship to sexism and misogyny, and the importance of including women’s stories and contributions in the history of hip-hop. 

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Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Doctor Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for Session three sixteen of the Therapy from Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our conversation after a word from our sponsors. Twenty twenty three marks the fiftieth anniversary of hip hop, a genre that has transcended time, age, and language barriers. As we celebrate some of our favorite artists, from the Laurens to the Missy's to the Cortis, we also want to spend some time highlighting the black women executives who work behind the scenes, changing the game one move at a time. Joining us for today's conversation is Tracy Waples a former senior music executive who has architected the sale of over one hundred million albums and the success of a host of major stores. Her resume includes names like Rihanna, jay Z, Mariah Carey, method Man, and Moore. In twenty fourteen, she found the music consulting firm DNA Creative and continues to mentor young women in music. In our conversation, Tracy and I discussed how she kicked off and navigated her career in the music industry, reconciling with hip hop's complicated relationship to sexism and misogyny, and the importance of including women's stories and contributions in the history of hip hop. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share it with us on social media using the hashtag TVG in session, or join us over in the sister circles Let's talk more about the episode. You can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today, Tracy, Thank.

You for having me. Doctor Jod is an absolute pleasure to be on this Therapy for Black Girls podcast.

Yes, I'm very excited to chat with you as we sawlebrate fifty years of hip hop and you have definitely been a force in the industry. So I'm very excited we can celebrate this with you.

Thank you. It is definitely a milestone. And I turned fifty last year, so it's like I'm growing up with hip hop in that respect for sure.

I love that. I love that. So you have worked with some incredibly big names. You've worked with jay Z, Kanye Wes, Rihanna, But I want us to go back to young Tracy mean tap into her for a little bit. So you had dropped out of Hostra. How did your entertainment career actually begin?

So I dropped out of Hostra because I couldn't afford it anymore. Actually, I was putting myself through school and pretty much learned early on the sort of personality type I was going to be, which was fully committed to one thing and not really feeling confident that I'd be able to like split the difference and give two things, meaning having to work and pursue an education the same level frankly of commitment. And so I had reached out to a good friend, a dear friend would become a family friend, of ours, Andre Herrel, who was definitely my music business mentor, again such a close friend to me and my family. And when I met him when I was even younger than college years, he was like, you should be in the record business, and I was like, what are you crazy? Like I have to pursue my education like my parents aren't having it. And fast forward to I ended up calling him and saying, remember what you said to me when I was in my teenage years. I was like, well, I'm calling to cash in on that because I explained to him what my family was going through and what I was going through and finance wise, and he understood. He adored me, he adored my family, and so I think there was a sense of urgency in him to help find a solution for me. And I also think he was happy to know that I was ready to do it, even though I, honestly, Doctor Jorge, I didn't give it much thought. It was just a job to me. To be honest with.

You, What do you think he saw on you, Ben.

I think fearlessness and being bold. Even the way I met him, I was really underage in a nightclub that I know business being in, and I saw him holding court, if you will, and I just belined over there to ask him, like I literally said, what is your name and what do you do? And he was tickled by it. You know, he wasn't offended. I was fifteen, j justhy my sixteenth birthday and I'm sure I looked all of twelve. And he was like, what is your name and what do you do? And how did you get here? And how are you getting home? And I think again, he wasn't offended. I think he saw something in me which was youth, fearlessness, and interestingly enough, he also saw something that should be protected right even as a young person meeting for the first time, because he asked me how I got there and I said, oh, my dad dropped me off in the city to meet up with friends. And he said, well, how are you going to get home? And I said, I'm going to call my dad and He's like, I'm going to bring you home and he did, and he met my parents that night, like in the wee hours of the morning. And I think the second part of what he saw in me was the stability of family life. My parents and my siblings. We were living in the suburbs, and I think Andre took a liking to the level of structure, and also he got to talking with my dad and started to see what he perceived I think as this upper middle class family that had grounding and rearing and Andre was super educated. My dad was super educated. I think he appreciated that, and from that day forward he really became like a fixture in our family.

So once you started working in the entertainment business, what do you think your early goals were once you figured out like, okay, this is something that I could do, What were some of your early goals and motivation?

Well, for starters, not to mess it up, right. I was very aware, very quickly on what sort of opportunity that this was, because again, upon meeting Andre, we didn't know sort of what level of fame or prestige he had in the business. He was just like a good man first getting somebody's daughter home, right, But it became very apparent of how serious he was in the music business as a fixture and as an executive. And so knowing that one he believed in me enough to recommend me and get me an opportunity, so I didn't want to mess that up, And two I didn't want to mess up the opportunity to be able to start making money to help offset some of the financial hardships my family was going through.

Got it. So what do you feel like has sustained your career in the business.

I think that same sort of fearless attitude, dude. I think the committing to something. I think going all in, And most importantly, once I sort of got the rhythm of what I was called to do, I think that I took on that mantle as a responsibility of other people's lives. Like even though the artists that I worked with, we were peers essentially, right, young black starting out on these new endeavors. Again, I was nineteen, so that's still teenager, and so were the artists that I was being entrusted to work with. And I took that really seriously. I think those are the three things that were motivating me, Like, you can't mess this up, Like the opportunity because Andre put you in place. Your family isn't a place where they need help, and other people are like entrusting you with their children, so you have to man up and grow up and try to be as mature as one could be at that age.

So you worked with both Rihanna and Methimn very early in their career is can you tell us how you were introduced to them and what role you played in their careers in very early days.

Yes, so method Man, which came before Rihanna. I had found out about him, because interestingly enough, I was on a tour bus with three or four actually def jam acts, three of which we broke that year Onyx, Redman and Boss and Nikki d was on there too, and we were on the Chronic tour. So we were on a tour bus. And I say that because contrary to I think this belief that there was always this immense amount of beef and static between the East Coast and the West Coast, we were extended family in the early nineties in very many ways, and doctor Dre even inviting us to go on tour with them is an example of that. And one night, everybody on the bus was pretty much sleeping except myself, frederal Star from Onyx, and the bus driver pretty much. And I was sitting closer to the bus driver in the front and Freddie was in the back and he had a light on and I don't know if it came from a phone or maybe it's a little overhead flashlight, but he had this light on so I could spot him in the back. But what caught my attention was what he was listening to. I could hear it over and over and over again on repeat, and it was just an instrumental with no lyrics, and it was so infectious that it got me up out of my seat and I walked back there and I was like, what are you listening to? What is that? Who made that? What is that? And he was tickled by just how excited I was, and he was like, Oh, it's my man's in them. And they're this hip hop group out of Staten Island called wool Tang Clan. And I was like, what are they Chinese? Are they Asian? And he's like no, no, and he's like it's so many of them, they're my dudes. And I was like Staten Island, huh and he was like, yea stat n Island. And at that moment, Doctor Joy I made it about face and walked back to my seat, and all I could think about was how was I going to get back to New York first thing smoking in the morning, and I was like, oh, we have an emergency travel phone. Number for deaf jam. I'm going to call them get a flight because I have to get to Staten Island.

Wow, so you sought them out.

I did. I did just off of an instrumental. I didn't even hear any raps. I just was like, I have to get back to New York to start really doing better due diligence than I could being disconnected on the road. Because again, unlike today, we just didn't have the luxury of like tapping into laptops and dialing up social media to see if anybody's posting about these Wu Tang people. It was literally an analog life, doctor Joy. It was like, you know, hitting out the mud and the grit and grinding and having the like physically scout artists and that was a huge part of what an R was. Back then. It was artist and repertoire, but you were like scouting for talent. I got myself together and made a couple of calls. I literally left on a flight I think at six in the morning. I think by the time they came down and did lobby call, I wasn't part of the role call. They were like, where's Tracy. You know, I was already back in the City trying to figure out how to get access to the guys into the group, and then with Rihanna it was very different and unique in the situation. So my method Man experience was what I call my deaf Jam one point zero experience, and my Rianna experience is what I call my def Jam two point oho experience, which was easily a gap of probably like fifteen years even more maybe. And so at this particular time, I had went over to deaf Jam two point zero with a small group that was centered around Jay Z becoming president, and la Reid was already there as the chairman, and so bringing over J meant bringing over a few other executives that had been working with J my self included. And now I'm not doing A and R anymore, so I guess I should say that for the record. Also now I'm being brought in to head up the marketing department at def Jam two point zero. And I think Jay Brown was connected to Rihanna's then lawyer, a gentleman named Scott Felcher, who as an A and R person I had also known in that capacity from my history in the music business. So I think Scott had good prowess and felt like, this is a solid team to introduce an artist, of which obviously everybody in her camp believed in a great deal. But also there's that youth factor again, right like she was literally fifteen about to turn sixteen, and so they brought her into the office. Scott did, along with the manager at the time who I'd known from Columbia named Mark, and they had done a showcase with the guys that I wasn't in Jay's office for and then jay Z said to Jay Brown, my nickname was Wop back then, and he was like, somebody go get Wop, somebody go get Wap, bring Wop in here. And so she ended up pretty much having to perform all over again from the top. And Doctor Joy not only did it not phase her, I think it phased me. Her performance was so intense and her commitment to what she was doing was so intense. I don't think I'd ever seen an artist that young like that. And prior to Rihanna, the only other female artist that I had worked that had that same sort of intensity to how much they were committed was Mariah Carey, and I knew immediately she was gonna be big like thatiately it didn't looked like a superstar at all. She was naturally stunning. I mean, she was tall and lanky, and she had these piercing green eyes, but she hadn't been through any sort of tuning and retooling in terms of image and stuff like that. So you're seeing someone at sort of their most raws moments when they can be pretty vulnerable. But she was tiger focused and strong and smart. Smart in the sense that she had just obviously had to showcase for everyone else in the room. She was smart enough to realize that if I was brought into this room and she has to redo this for me, then she knew she had to sell me. She did not take her eyes off of me. There was very many other people in the room. She was so locked in, and I was like, oh, this is it. We can't let her leave. And they ended up doing the deal. Kept everyone in the office who was centered around this deal, the lawyers till four o'clock in the morning to get it done. Wow, like you just knew it when you saw it. And again, it's interesting when it comes to I think superstar talent and just signing artists or any superstar talent of any kind, even in sports now with metrics and analytics and all of these things, I think people sometimes stray away from, like those gut tests. It's like the eye test, the gut tests. There are certain sort of intangibles and nuanced things and things that computers they can't spit that information out to you. You have to be in there in those moments. It's an energy and it's palpable, like you know, you just you can't avoid how intense it is. And again for someone to be as young as she was and have that, it was like it was a no brainer for our group to be honest with you.

Yeah, so La La Anthony actually portrayed your character or you were portrayed on Wu Tang, an American saga show. How authentic do you feel like that portrayal was?

To be quite honest with you, it was really authentic. I give Lala a great deal of credit because we hadn't really talked that much before she did it, but we knew each other. We knew each other from her days as a VJ at MTV for TROL and so she would see me in my work mode and just being busy and orchestrating and wrangling and doing those sorts of things or communicating with producers in a certain way. So she knew me and had seen me in real time in that way, but not a great deal. So for her to have delivered on those things so incredibly, I was like, oh girl, you really did that. That's amazing. I think the only thing that they didn't get with too much accuracy is the fact that back then I wasn't corporatized yet, Like I was still super young, living the culture every day, dressing that same way, which I think was a lot of my appeal to the artists that we were interested in signing and working with because it was more relatable. And even though I had to be the business person in the room, I think that people knew that I cared about their lives and their livelihoods, being one of them in that way. And so that was the only thing that they didn't nail too much, because I definitely wasn't wearing like blazers or anything like that.

So what was it like for you to see your career portrayed on TV in that way?

I mean it was super super super humbling, very surprising, if I'm being one hundred percent honest, because there's so many instances where a plethora of women, myself included, like our story don't get told. We aren't really recognized for our contributions like that. And it's interesting because it's never bothered me. For me, it started to bother me as hip hop is turning fifty. For all the droves of other women that I've worked with, I always say, I really believe that I belonged to this unsung group of sheroes and that we were like our own sort of sorority in a way. And hopefully, God willing, some of the things that I am embarking on right now will help turn the spotlight around on that.

Can you tell us who some of those other people are?

Oh? My god? Yes. So. One of the very first women that I connected with in the music business is a woman named Kim Lumpkin, who is a very dear sister friend of mine to this day. We work together in Eddief's basement. This is back in the Heavy d and the Boys days and the Pete Rock and Cel Smooth days, and he had a house in New Jersey and that was the first job that Andre put me in. Actually, and Kim is an incredible woman and we're still very close to this day, she manages a series of great producers from Rodney Jerkins to q Tip to salam Remi. And there was a woman named Angela Thomas who was an executive at Columbia actually, and in my early days at Deaf Jam, walking into her office and she was responsible for our Deaf Jam as a label, because a lot of times labels at our boutique have joint ventures with bigger corporations and at the time, it wasn't even Sony back then, it was CBS. And I just remember like walking into her office and just seeing how busy she was and just all of the things that she was doing and had her hands in. And I owe a great debt of gratitude to her because when I was working at Eddiev's house before I even made it to Deaf Jam, she allowed me to come to her apartment and literally I asked her so many questions. She answered everything, and she was like giving me marketing plans and things that I could review. And I talked to her so much to the point where I sat on the end of her bed till she got in her pajamas and fell asleep, and she just engaged me the entire time. I had never worked in the business before, and you know, she was an exemplary executive throughout her tenure in the business. And then fast forward to the other companies that I worked at. Whether it was Bad Boy, which was also a boutique company, and though it was Puffy's company, the truth is the majority of the company was being run by women. Kim Lumpkin ended up being at Bad Boy with me again. My dear friend Ronda Cowan, who was a first friend that I made at def Jam one point zero, ended up being with me a Bad Boy again. Gwen Niles Bad Boy, Francesca Spiro, God rest her soul. She's passed on. But there's so many women that were running things. And then you had the hip hop scene in Atlanta and Falana Williams and I ended up being able to work together, and there's just so many Lisa Cambridge, I mean, I could go on, and Maria Davis, who is just an exemplary woman who was around in our early days in hip hop and was really like the first big club promoter that gave jay Z his breakout start at Mad Wednesdays, which was a club night she was promoting in New York City and she went on and she's an AIDS advocate now and I recently did a panel with her on spirituality and hip hop for Martin Luther King Junior Weekend in Charlotte, and I was so pleased to be reunited with her. And Denise Brown, who's an incredible attorney, lives right across the street for me now, and she started a prayer line on Sundays every first Sunday of the month, so we do that now. And it's just such a blessing to still have the relationships with these women and have really thirty years in some cases thirty plus year friendships, and to have matured with each other and gone through things. And even if you don't go through things by working at the same companies, you're going through things as the business of hip hop is evolving, right, because what started out is something in street corners and parks and neighborhoods is a multi billion dollar business.

And so many of you were on the ground floor a bit.

Yeah, and women, we were the engine and still are in very many ways, because again, you know, there's a music side to it, and then there's a humanity and a human side to it. So your level of support and pouring into these young black men whether they're going to become mature black business owners, and understanding what sort of feet is in front of you in order to do that, because we're all starting out sort of in these white corporate structures and not really being prepared for all those twists and turns. You know, you end up really relying on women pouring into you and building you up when the world is trying to tear you down. So it's a lot of wear and tear, I think personally and being committed to that. It takes valiant efforts to do that, and I think that's every black woman's story. I don't think that's specific to the music business.

More from our conversation after the break, so we've already talked about hip hop celebrating fifty years this year. What is one of the most profound ways you've seen the genre grow during this time.

I think just all of the touch points. I don't think there's anything that exists in any crevice of the entire world that hip hop hasn't touched. I mean, it's one of those things where and I say this in my book which I'm writing right now, that for me, hip hop was like big tech before big tech. Right, it's a communication tool, it's a language tool. It reaches everybody from eight to eighty. It's like there are definitely Apple products, and hip hop was its own technology in that way, it crossed language barriers, ethnicities. I mean, there are people that don't even speak good English that could wrap a jay Z verse in Saudi Arabia today, Sometimes I turn on the news or I have done this before and seen the local meteorologists rapping Biggie lyrics while he's delivering the weather report. What else is doing that? I don't know. I can't think of anything you.

Talked about already being at some just very defining labels like def jam and bad boy. How do you feel like those experiences have shaped you?

That's a good question. Well, I think they've amplified something that was already innate to me, which is that black people are important to me. Black people having success and not being perceived as dead or in jail by the time you're thirty, particularly black men. I think I've always been motivated to defy those sorts of statements that have been societal norms, if you will, which are horrible, but we have to live with our reality, and I think working at those companies and being able to nurture and foster something that was for us by us a very foobu approach, if you will. I don't think there's been anything more meaningful to me other than obviously my brother and sister in law having children and stuff like that. But that has never sort of fallen soft on me, knowing that one it's a privilege too, it's a responsibility. And three I think I was just always mission oriented and working at labels like that just amplified those sort of virtues, if you will. One because the leadership right puff is young, he's black, jay Z young Black LA started when he was younger and black and knowing that there are opportunities for us to bring other young black people along and into this frame and not just on the mic or in front of the camera, but for me personally, it was the whole I think language and love language for me of being an executive and being respected even though we're not paid and respected the same way as our peers. We're in the rooms and you have to deal with us, and we're not ignorant, and we do have business acumen and decorum, and there's nothing that we can't do.

So you talked a lot about how women really were the engine in many of these labels, but you know, you've also shared how many of their stories have not gotten the same shine as men. And when you think about hip hop, I think, even still today, it feels like a very male dominated genre. Talk to me a little bit about what that was like working as a black woman in the entertainment industry and maybe how you've seen women kind of grow in the genre of hip hop.

I think it's so weird because I say this statement, and really I've never really worked in any other industry, but I've certainly have had access to other industries and access to other Black women in them. I think our plight is our plight, and it's sad. It's a universal sort of plight that goes beyond the borders of vocation or industry. And I hate that I'm even doubling down on this statement, but it's true. It's like we are always thought about last, and I don't think that working in hip hop and committing yourself and pouring into black men to help them become the best that they can be at what they're doing, and knowing that you're playing an important role on that journey. Is probably equally as similar to me watching like my mom and my aunt and my grandmother sort of rally around my dad. And I think there's this innate thing with black women where we are nurturers and we almost find that it's our role to support these black men in their endeavors and to make sure that they don't fall victim to these stigmas that are always put on them. And as a result of that, I think we get lost in the shuffle. I think we kind of allow ourselves to take the back seat for that reason and work really hard at sort of propping them up in that way. And I think it's awful that once they are empowered in a certain way, I think I'd like to see more of the generosity of that come back to women's stories being told. Right If we're still sort of knocking on those doors and they're not opening for us, then at least a lot of the men that we helped power or be the engine behind at these smaller companies back in the day would leverage and use their power bases to open that up a little bit more so women's stories can be told and to make sure of that. I think it's great when people acknowledge people, even like with what Riza did for me, huge, right, huge, to even not write me out of the story and incorporate me into the story. And so now I don't have to maybe wait around for a guy to do the next step. Hopefully I can leverage that in a way to do some things and open some doors and bring some other women with me. I mean, I'm certainly going to do that. And I think that the more and more we stay unified, because there's power in numbers, right. I think sometimes we get caught up waiting a little bit like hoping and expecting these guys to do for us what we did for them, and then that doesn't come about, and it leaves some people bitter and understand that, but you got to kind of let go of that and know that you know our work was not in vain. God certainly knows what we did for his male children. And I think our rewards are in us not letting go of that same sort of fearless, bold spirit and not taking no for an answer when we were supporting them for ourselves. And it's hard, doctor Joy. Sometimes it's just hard to be your own warrior, your own shier princess. You know, you have to remember you still have those inate qualities and to do them for yourselves and for some of your fellow sisters.

I'm curious to hear what it has been like with some of the lyrics. It feels like there's a very complicated history, you know, with hip hop and some of the sexism and misogyny. What was it like for you as a black woman executive who's also a fan of the genre, but also you know, understanding like, okay, what kinds of things are selling? How did you navigate that?

That's a great question and probably hard for people to tackle. But the truth of the matter is that I wasn't as mature clearly as I am today. So how I view those things today is certainly different than how I viewed them then. I mean, I was all the way in it, so I was reciting them right along with it. They were hitting me in ways that were mind blowing and fascinating and all of those other things. And I think I, like probably many other women, had the same mindset, which is like, well, they're not calling me a B word or I don't carry myself like that, So that doesn't apply to me, and so you sort of like distance yourself or remove yourself from it in that way. And then I think you double down on the distancing and removing yourself with it by saying, I know some chicks like that too, And I think that was probably the rationale back then, and that was I would say, as much of a framework or scope that would even have been considered right. It was so selfish, it was so self involved. Nobody was really thinking about, oh, this could impact our community negatively because we were just young and rebellious, and I don't think we saw the potential damage or potential harm in it. And again because your scope at that point is I know some girls that act just like that, you know what I mean. And that's a very myopic and immature way to look at things. I think now that I'm older, and now that there are younger children in my family, two of which are young ladies, it's like, oh my God, like I don't want them rapping along with this craziness and YadA, YadA, YadA. But I can't be hypocritical in that way, and not because I was involved in executiving and promoting and being behind some of it. But because I was their age and I was singing it too, and I enjoyed it while I was singing along with it. And so if anything, I think for me now at this particular age, I'm always there to be wisdom for someone who's gone through some things. But I won't sit in a seat of scorn or judgment. I just won't do it. And I guess if I had to look back on my life, then I don't have regrets about it at all. I'm definitely like girl, you was a piece of work.

More from our conversation after the break. Unfortunately, we've seen it feels like a disproportionate number of stars we've lost from the hip hop community. So going back to like Biggie and Pack, but even more recently with people like Nipsey Hustle and Pop Smoke, I'm curious if you can share how people behind the scenes, like the executives and people in the offices that we don't see in the videos and stuff, how are they impacted when losses like this happened in the industry.

It's extremely devastating. I mean, there are many of us, myself included, we never really got over Biggie and Pak we're reminded of it all the time, and I think fast forward to what we've seen now. It really bothers me so much because we can't turn a blind eye to knowing that our era, the nineties era, we ushered a lot of this in now we didn't necessarily want it to take up the kind of residency that it did, But I don't know if we ever did a good enough job of curtailing it from getting out of control the way we see it now. And I think again, it's that fine line you have to walk because be a hypocrite. Right, Like what I would have thought and hoped would have happened is once people saw the level of danger, you don't want to perpetuate the stereotype, and you certainly don't want to become the stereotype. And I think there's always been a very fine line with that. But it's also you don't want to censor people who are living through this all the time. And I think what needs to happen is that there needs to be a better degree of balance. There has to be some way where people are letting people know that I don't live this though. I like go home to a nice home and I'm looking to change my life and my lifestyle to evolve away from that, and I think there needs to really be real dialogue about that. I think ignoring it is not going to do anything but allow us to continue to see these things. And I think people need to be mindful also now that we're older in sort of what things are going on in the country, in the world. Right now, we are really in a state of inflation and impoverished situations that we haven't really seen since the eighties. Right It really feels like that in a lot of ways. So I think rather than sitting in our ivory towers where life is good now, there has to be some sort of communication. And back in those days we did see things like that. Sadly, not too long before the East Coast West Coast situation happened, Quincy Jones and Clarence Avon they did bring us into a huge meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in New York and everybody was there. Shat Him and Latifa were there representing Flavor Unit. Puff was in there representing early stage bad Boy sug was there, Death Row I was there as an executive. April Walker was there. Who's another woman that I adore who I came up with in the hip hop business, who is a female designer of men's street wear. And you need governance around some of these things, and sometimes you do need elder statesman leadership. And I would love to see our generation do a better job of becoming that for this generation and bridging that gap by having some of these tough conversations again and just have real talk, right, because you can't come off like you're a get off my lawn or sitting in judgment because we lived it too, and look what happened to us. Now we've seen this to your point, doctor Joy happen at a rate that's even more expedient and a vast more amount of young people being killed like this. And then you have to have like conversations with the managers. And that's what Quincy in them did. There were managers in the room, there were label heads in the room, there were producers in the room, there are artists in the room. Because the community can only heal the community itself. It has to be from the inside out, not any other way around. And sometimes you need leadership and guardrails and experience is the best teacher. I think knowing that we went through it and we didn't get it all the way right. And I think starting the conversation for hitting that note out the gate, I think that can neutralize that energy of a boy here come to old heads trying to tell us what to do and they didn't even do it. No, we owe you an apology. We owe you an apology.

What has self care looked like for you as you have been in the industry, and how has that evolved during your time?

Well, really staying on social media, Like I was so committed and lived so much of my life at a j traveling studios Da da Da, Da da, that I think on the other side of the zeitgeist of my career, self care was really about just detaching, taking time to breathe, read, walk Where I live. I live on the water, and I lived down here for so long, but I was always traveling, never home, always driving to appointments in and out of the city, flying all around. And God's beauty of nature has been sitting in my backyard for all these years, and I just finally started like enjoying it and going for runs and walks and just being reminded that one we're not as important as we think we are because we can't do any of this. We can't create an ocean, we can't create a sky, And I think just getting back to a very granular level of appreciating the most remarkable things that we just take for granted so much, and forgiving my younger self for making the mistakes that I made. You hold yourself to such high standards, and when you fall short, you don't realize that everybody falls short, right, and that being able to free yourself from that. I think people would agree that they probably felt like I was hard on them at many times, just wanting the best for them, one of the best for myself, one of the best for our people, and it's okay, you're gonna make mistakes and you're not gonna get everything right, and if God gives you grace to come back from mistakes, then you have to be able to give yourself the grace.

So you've already kind of started talking about this a lot. But we've seen some new stories being told from women in hip hop right. So we had the on the Record documentary with Drew Dixon detailing, you know, her experiences with sexual assault, and then we saw rap Caviar Presents talking all about the city girls and like their kind of experiences in the field. What stories of women in the industry have not been told yet.

I think that the stories that you know I had mentioned beforehand, which is like the executive prowess of a lot of the women in the music industry, and really the stories of business women. Right there are so many things that business women or women sorry in the business that have done to upgrade things about the business for hip hop artists. I mean, my good friend Ronda that I mentioned earlier, I remember MTV like would it play a jay Z video? And what it meant for her to have to go over there and convince them otherwise, because I mean, again, this is a network that didn't originally play a Michael Jackson video either, So that dialogue continued as it related to hip hop, and I think just breaking down a lot of those barriers and being able to have seats at tables and leverage things and and create a bigger footprint for hip hop as a business had a lot to do with conversations that women were having, because what happens a lot of times at these organizations is that there is a female counterpart that does what you do that is probably a white woman, but she's a woman nonetheless, And I think that there's something to be said about fostering and nurturing those relationships because then you can have someone who might not be a person of color like you, but being a woman and you're a woman. There's an appreciation, I think of what it is that you're up against and what it is that you're trying to do. So it's great to have an advocate within these scenarios. And I think those sorts of stories need to be highlighted because I think people are oftentimes really surprised when they hear about a woman being behind a signing method, man or engineering a hip hop record that went on to be a classic, or managing the producers that produced these classic beats of these classic albums. I think there is so many amazing stories like that, and I think it would encourage women in the business that are maybe looking to get into it and start out, encourage them and create a little bit of a road mapping and a blueprint, because one thing I learned very long ago from doing A and R was that everybody is not intended to grab a mic or be on a video or sing or rap or dance, and there's a whole gene pool and community of opportunities for women behind the scenes, in and around the scenes, and I think there needs to be an elevated discussion around that, more access and more storytelling, for sure.

Can we expect some of that in your book?

Yeah, one hundred percent. One hundred percent.

We'll be on the lookout for when comes out. So I want to wrap up with some rapid fire questions from you because I feel like these will be such great answers. So this is called what are you listening to? Hip hop? Addition, which nineties are two thousands female hip hop artists? Would you like to see release an album this year or next year?

What nineties?

Lauren Hill Ooh, okay, that's a good one. That's a good one. What's a song that brightens up your day?

Sounds of Blackness Optimistic?

Oh, that's one of my favorites too. Do you like the remake with Brandy and I think some other people? Yeah, but the original is a good one too. What's a project that you worked on that you describe as foundational to your career?

Hmmm, I would say Rihanna's first project, Music of the Sun.

Okay, Okay, So what do you feel like makes a hip hop album culturally and artistically significant? And based on your answer to that, what is the greatest hip hop album of all time?

Okay? The authenticity of it? I think the authenticity of the narrator or the author of said story, and the ability to tell the story and connect with people who have similar stories or similar things that they're experiencing. So it's authenticity and storytelling.

So based on those qualities, then what would be your choice for greatest hip hop album of all time?

See Doctor Joy? We done hit a cog in the wheel. I can't It's such a difficult thing for me to do. Like, there's so many.

Okay, top three, Doctor Joy, you can't choose. It's like choosing a favorite.

Child that you already know that if you have three kids, you're already out the game trying to figure out, you know, narrowing it down. I will say that albums hip hop albums that impacted me. I mean, obviously I'm gonna echo my very first answer of wanting Laurence Hill to do another album. But the Miseducation of Laurence Hill was everything, everything, everything. I don't think there's any girl that grew up hip hop in the nineties, that would argue that Tripo Quest, the low End Theory, Wu Tang, thirty six Chambers, the Great Adventures of Slickeric. There's so many monumental giant hip hop albums. Speaker Box and A Love Below a Quemini, I mean, both of Outcasts albums are just so signature and so rich. The Far Side had a Dope album. I mean, there's so, so, so, so, so many, and that is the beauty that is hip hop, right because sonically and dynamically they're all very, very different and very nuanced, because they're true to each and every artist who made them and where they came from, whatever sector of the globe that they came from, and you feel that. And even if you didn't grow up in that era in Atlanta, you could listen to those albums and have that experience.

So yeah, Okay, so that was a beautiful list. That was a great list. So who is an artist in the bad Boy family you'd love to work with? Again?

Ooh, that is a good question. I adored working with Faith Evans. I love me some Dune Away, got it.

That's a good choice. And then a bit of a throwback to Love Jones, When did you fall in love with hip hop?

Honestly, as a youngster, I think I must have been maybe eleven or twelve years old, because I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and a neighboring town for us was a town called Angle with New Jersey and the sugar Hill Gang and the sugar Hill Records and the family were neighbors and became family friends of ours. So I remember, I think, going to their studio on West Street in Englewood with my dad, who was going to see mister Robinson. And I remember seeing missus Robinson in a studio room sitting behind a console. And it's not like I was like, Oh, I want to be like her one day. Immediately, I think I was fascinated by seeing this office, this studio local to me in New Jersey in the suburbs, that was behind like Rapper's Delight and the message. And I think what it did say to me is if I wanted to do this, I could do this one day because of her.

I love that. I love that. Thank you for that, Tracy. This has been such an incredible conversation. I know people are going to want to stay connected with you and like pick up their copy of the book once it comes out. Where can we find you online? What is your website? As well as any social media handles you want to share.

So it's interesting. I'm not like personally on social media by choice. But what I did do is I started an Instagram page called Face the Music. So it's face face the thche music mus dot ic right the music, get it, Muse, we're music. They might not tell you that we are, but we are. And that actually is the title of my memoir. It's called face to Music. So I'm trying, doctor Joy.

Yes, you got to give the people somewhere to go.

The marketer in me is like, all right, girl, now you know you're gonna have to get with the times for that aspect of it. But yeah, I just got real low, doctor Joy, after committing almost thirty years to that business, I got real low. But I am very excited about the things that we're doing on our page. And it's a community page, which is amazing because again the best thing about being in hip hop is being a part of the hip hop community.

We would be sure to include that in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today, Tracy.

It is my absolute pleasure. I love what it is you're doing. I think there's nothing more important than therapeutics mental wellness, psychological and emotional health, and strength and stability, and it has to get destigmatized in and around hip hop and music, and there needs to be more people that are incorporating that almost as a prerequisite to staffing and personnel within these labels. These are human beings, they have human frailties, They come with their own traumas, sometimes from childhood, and it cannot be ignored anymore.

Thank you so much for that, Tracy. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, doctor Joy. This has been absolutely one of the highlights for me ever. I love what you're doing so much.

Thank you, Thank you for spending some time with us. I want to thank Tracy once again for joining us for this episode. To learn more about her and the work she's doing. Be sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash Session three sixteen, and be sure to text two of your girls right now and encourage them to check out the episode. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic or just be in community with other sisters, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet designed just for black women. You can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Frida Lucas, Elise Ellis, and Zaria Taylor. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take good care. But what

Therapy for Black Girls

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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