Control, Image, and Fame Theme Analysis

Following Bri's assault by school security guards and the release of her first song, Bri soon finds the effects of her fame spiraling out of control. Though she does what she can to control her image and how others use it, Bri quickly discovers that there are others out there trying to use her image in ways that directly contract what Bri herself wants. Through this tension, On the Come Up argues that fame can have complex consequences, especially within the context of the social media landscape and when combined with racial prejudice and exploitation.

Initially, Bri thinks that recording her first song and experiencing her big break will be simple. She believes that the process will be a matter of getting the opportunity to record her song, attracting the attention of a record label, and signing a contract—which, in her understanding, will then allow her the resources and the freedom to continue writing raps. Bri, in other words, sees fame as a simple if-then state of affairs: if she gets famous, then she'll have the freedom to do everything she wants, from writing and performing the raps she loves to raising her family out of poverty with the money she believes she'll earn.

Bri discovers quickly, however, that there's more to being a rap artist than writing raps, recording them, and performing them live. While Aunt Pooh, Bri's initial manager, suggests that this is all there is to making it in the music world, Bri's introduction to Supreme, Lawless's former manager, shows her that fame is actually a political game full of power plays, compromises, and carefully orchestrated moves designed to shape a star's public image. After Aunt Pooh arranges for Bri to record her first song, Bri runs into Supreme at a food drive, allows him to listen to her song, and later accepts his offer to send the web link to the song around. As Supreme draws Bri closer into his orbit, he slowly reveals what his plan is for Bri if she agrees to hire him and fire Pooh: capitalize on the fact that Bri's song is polarizing and already has white listeners up in arms. More specifically, Supreme plans to exploit Bri's loose associations with police violence and gang activity. Supreme encourages Bri to embrace the public persona of an angry "hood rat," a public identity he insists is compelling for the largest demographic of rap and hip-hop fans: "white kids in the suburbs." With this, Supreme suggests that fame, at least for a black female rapper like Bri, means playing a role that seems exotic and dangerous to white listeners, specifically the parents of those white teens. Controversy and fear, he suggests, are the elements that will bring about Bri's big break.

While Bri isn't upset, per se, about the fame that Supreme correctly predicts she'll experience after the release of her song, she does feel uneasy about the role that Supreme asks her to play. Bri wrote her song to speak out about the violence and prejudice that black people in Garden Heights experience daily, and she intended the song to amplify those often-unheard voices. Bri never meant to scare white parents into making the song attractive to their children by trying to ban it. In the same vein, after the security guards Long and Tate assault Bri, Bri flat-out refuses to become the poster child for the black and Latinx students at Midtown, who see her as a convenient spokesperson and symbol for the prejudice and discrimination they all experience. Even though Bri's best friend, Malik, filmed the entire encounter, leaving no doubt about how the whole thing started, Bri resents being asked to assume the role of the victimized black person in public. She's seen enough evidence to understand that no matter what she said or did, white people online will inevitably think she deserved what happened.

Bri tries over and over again to explain both her song and what happened with Long and Tate—she even allows Malik to use the footage to craft a music video for her song, shedding light on some of the points she was trying to make. However, Bri ultimately finds that her fame runs away with her anyway: the very stereotypes that make her song marketable (according to Supreme's plan) are the exact ones that make her terrifying lived experience a commodity as well. She gets the fame she wanted, but the consequences—that is, the way that her fame is co-opted to supported toxic stereotypes—are much different than she imagined. Being asked to record a ghostwritten song is the final straw for her: it shows her that if she agrees to continue working with Supreme, she'll have to let him define her fame and give up her own idea of what it should mean, an idea that Bri finds demoralizing and, in the end, not worth it.

By rejecting the role that Supreme encourages her to embrace and consequently giving up her chance of getting a record deal, Bri insists on engaging with fame on her own terms. This choice illuminates the novel's larger argument that fame is a serious force that has meaningful consequences. If Bri wants to produce and be famous for the music she believes in and the person she is, rather than letting her work and image perpetuate harmful stereotypes, her only option is to focus on creating work she believes in, putting it out in the world, and focusing on the positive effects that follow.