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Chapter 18
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On the Come Up, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Individuality
Racism and Prejudice
Trauma, Poverty, and Childhood
Control, Image, and Fame
Summary
Analysis
When Bri gets home, she finds Jay putting away bags of groceries. She puts her backpack with the Timbs in in her room and tries to be excited for herself, but she's nervous to fire Pooh and about what Jay will say. Bri returns to the kitchen and Jay explains that she bought the food with food stamps. She withdrew from school to get them and believes it's worth it. Bri's chest aches, but Jay tells her it's temporary. Jay mentions that she listened to Bri's song and she gets it, which makes Bri feel warm and happy. Bri admits that she understands why Jay is concerned about it. Jay asks Bri to not respond to people, in person or online, or make another scene. She confiscates Bri's phone and sends her to study for the ACT.
Both Bri and Jay are willing to put aside their differences and see the other person's point of view, which offers some hope that they'll be able to come to an agreement about how Bri's career should proceed. Dropping out of school to qualify for food stamps illustrates how dark Bri's family's financial situation is, as quitting school will mean that Jay will have an even harder time getting ahead later—even if food in the short term is extremely and undeniably important.
Themes
Four hours later, Jay brings Bri her phone. Bri deletes texts from Sonny and Malik, since she's still angry with them, and then looks through her Dat Cloud notifications. Several of her messages from strangers include a link, but Bri doesn't click on it until Sonny texts it to her and asks if she's okay. It leads to an article in the local paper calling for "On the Come Up" to be taken off of Dat Cloud, and saying the song led to violence. The author, Emily Taylor, takes offense to the "antipolice sentiment." Taylor embedded videos of Bri in the Ring parking lot and describes Bri as a "gang-affiliated, unruly teen." The article ends with a link to a petition to Dat Cloud, asking the site to take the song down to "protect our children." Bri knows that she's not one of the children Emily Taylor wants to protect.
Supreme is correct; plenty of rap artists (and for that matter, artists in other genres) have been blamed for inciting violence or promoting questionable ideas and values. However, this doesn't make it any less traumatizing for Bri to be attacked like this online and specifically spoken about as though she's out of control and a horrifically stereotypical "ghetto" teen. The fact that Bri finds out about this from followers on Dat Cloud (via Sonny) reminds her that Supreme is right about other things too: no matter how things play out, this is still boosting Bri's fame.
Themes
Bri clicks on Emily Taylor's profile. She finds pictures of Taylor's husband and son. They're white, they hunt, and Bri finds another of Taylor's articles insisting that gun control is wrong. Bri knows that Taylor only takes issue with her rapping about guns because she's black, and she thinks it's like that at school too—white girls who talk back don't get in trouble. Bri closes her door and goes live on Instagram. Within seconds, she has 100 people watching and commenting. When someone comments "fuck censorship," Bri says her song isn't for white people and she's not sorry for making them uncomfortable, since she's uncomfortable all the time. She lifts her middle finger and says it's for people who want to censor her. Bri has 500 viewers when she's done.
Bri will later admit that going live on Instagram was a questionable decision, but it's important to give her credit for speaking the truth about several things. She didn't write the song to appeal to white listeners; she wrote it for people who live in Garden Heights and live through the kind of profiling and violence that she talks about in their daily lives. Because of the prejudice and violence she faces, Bri is uncomfortable all the time.
Themes
