Lola Brooke became a master multitasker to break into rap.
Now shes the new livest one from Bedford-Stuyvesant.
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Lola Brooke is tryna dust my ass on a go-kart track.
Weve pulled up to Jersey Citys RPM Raceway on a gray afternoon in May.
), geeked to go at it.
Theres a kind of knowing written on her face.
She flashes that same knowing smirk, and my grin turns into a hung jaw.
The gator doesnt sleep; it stews.
The performance couldve easily just feltcute: Here stands a shorty tryna spit like the big girls.
But her cavernous voice never shrinks into itself; you could practically hear her diaphragm expanding and collapsing.
In March, she released aremix with Latto and Yung Miamithat drove the song up theBillboardHot 100.
Latto recently asked me, Girl, you dont get tired of the music?
And I was like, This song been out almost two years, and it just popped.
I cant get tired of it.
I dont have space to be tired of it.
Im just tired of not having more music to work with.
Lola Brooke Shyniece Thomas grew up in Bed-Stuy an only child raised by her mother.
She returned to Bed-Stuy and pressed her mom to buy her notebooks.
I loved high school.
I was friends with everybody.
You had people that had felonies on their records.
Or they won a murder case or just came home, she says.
She was never nervous about it because theyd built a community of care and protection.
Sometimes shed have to work in a basement lunchroom No Wi-Fi, no service, nothing alone.
You never treat people like shit, she says.
I have authority to make them feel like Im bigger than them.
But they felt like, You took care of me before, Ill take care of you.
Just that fast, I bumped into the real job music.
Team 80 put her in contact with in-house producer Reefa while she was still working at the shelter.
I watch the clock all day in studio, she recalls.
Im like,Okay, its 12 oclock.
Studio, home, shower, no sleep, back to work, leave work.
And I couldnt really focus.
She wouldnt leave, he tells me with a chuckle over the phone.
Shed stay there all night and out-beat everybody else.
While everybody else is asleep, she still wants to record.
One time, I went to the studio with my cousin Bunky, she says.
I made him pay for the session.
He looked at me and said, I knew you was gon do that, she remembers.
I used to do little slick things like that and just time myself.
Eventually, she got her moms blessing to quit the shelter and go all in onrap.
I was young, she says.
The pocket and the energy and the cadence was there.
It was too much opinions.
It was like, Okay, she could rap, but how shes gonna be marketable?
How shes gon sell records?
Reefa remembers those moments well.
She was still tryna find herself and know what she wanted to do.
The new music Brooke is cookin up deepens the bad bitchery.
Not everything is boisterous.
And shes got songs reflecting on the occupational hazards of the rap game.
She had a photo shoot the next day, but fuck it, you only live once.
This is how she lets loose.
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