1 Image by Ryan Robinson
How does a Catholic school girl become a hip-hop star?
Issue #37
In less than a year, Kid Sister goes from working three day jobs to becoming the next big thing
By Amy Schroeder
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 11:06am
Unlike some of her intimidating, battle-hungry, diva-esque contemporaries, Kid Sister aka Melisa Young isn’t your typical rising hip-hop star.
When I arrive to pick her up in front of her modest Northside Chicago apartment at 9 a.m., I’m told she’s running a few minutes late because she needs to poop her dogs. When she comes out, the 28-year-old greets me with a toothy smile and energetic Midwestern spirit.
Wearing gray sweatpants and flip-flops, she’s toting a couple of shopping bags full of gear to get her through the day. We’re heading out on an hour drive to the South Side of Chicago, where she grew up, to a roller rink in Markham, Illinois. “It’s surreal,” she says of her recent media attention. “I’m doing the cover of Flaunt, which I know is a fancy magazine, but I will eat chicken wings before the shoot.”
It’s mid June, and no one in the press has heard the entirety of her debut album, Dream Date (Fool’s Gold/Downtown), but everyone already knows she’s the next big thing in music. In 2007, America got a taste of the Chicago MC when her “Pro Nails” video got MTV airplay. A collaboration with Kanye West and her boyfriend DJ A-Trak, the rap song is about getting a flashy manicure and features the catchy chorus “toes done up, with her finger nails matchin.” The song became an instant hit, thanks to the 1980s-esque good-times hip-hop vibe she exudes in spite of the fact that, not too long ago, she depended on three jobs to pay the bills.
Though she’s had an interest in music since childhood, Kid Sister hasn’t been a musician for very long. Her first performance was at a small Chicago venue called the Hideout as part of a DJ party called Life During Wartime about two years ago. Her younger brother, Josh Young aka DJ J2K (who’s since risen to fame as one-half of the DJ duo Flosstradamus), encouraged her to make her debut as an MC. “It feels like just a minute ago, but it was two years ago. I dressed up like Salt-n-Pepa. I didn’t feel scared — it was Halloween, and everyone was drunk and having a good time. I didn’t know anything about performing.”
Along for the ride is Kid Sister’s friend-slash-assistant, Samantha, who describes Dream Date as “dance music for girls.” Kid Sister quips, “It’s also music for people who work at currency exchanges, Lens Crafters, in malls, and law firms. It’s not only for girls.”
When she’s not steering me in the right direction and politely warning me about the highway’s aggressive drivers, Kid Sister talks excitedly about the opportunities she’s been afforded with her recent success. She and Samantha, who met as co-workers at Chicago’s Little Threads children’s clothing store, gab about attending the premiere of the Sex And the City Movie in New York. “It’s not a world I’m used to being in. I’m used to dirty parties with stinky boys and taking a water bottle and sprinkling it on the crowd. But it was definitely like stop, turn, pose,” Kid Sister says. “The movie was so exactly what I needed as PMSed as I was. If I could have gone to that movie in sweatpants and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, I totally would have. It’s such a girly-fun movie, in the same league as When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless In Seattle.”
Tomorrow, she’s flying back to New York to perform at the Andrew W.K.–hosted Central Park SummerStage with Vampire Weekend and Born Ruffians. After that she’s headed to Los Angeles for the 2008 BET Awards, because she’s been nominated for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist alongside Missy Elliott, Eve, Lil Mama, and Trina. “Who’s out there with no album and one big single and gets nominated for this?” Kid Sister says with disbelief. “I feel like I’ve already won something.”
When we arrive at the rink right on schedule, Kid Sister’s a whirl of energy, introducing herself to the photo-shoot crew and talking giddily with Venus Zine’s publisher about their rivaling high schools. In person, she’s as quick-witted as her music, entertaining everyone with jokes and stories. As she’s auditioning outfits from a rack of colorful dresses, she’s abuzz about the Markham Roller Rink regulars — 50-somethings who likely spend as many afternoons as possible here, twirling and perfecting their backward moves. “I’m not as good as they are,” she says, appearing a bit nervous about having to balance herself in pair of skates.
Because the photo session hogs most of our time, I decide to reduce the interview minutes slated on camera for venuszine.com. Assuming that the roller rink was Kid Sister’s childhood hangout, I prep her with the list of questions I’m about to ask her for our video. “No! I didn’t actually skate here as a kid,” she says. “My mom wouldn’t let me. I went to Catholic school, and this area was considered too ghetto.”
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Our six-hour session comes to an end when the clock strikes 3 p.m., and it’s time to drive back to Kid Sister’s apartment because she has two more interviews to conduct this afternoon.
“So how does a Catholic school girl become a hip-hop star?” I ask, handing her a tape recorder as we load into the car. Distracted by the rural street that leads to her grandmother’s old house, Kid Sister starts pointing out childhood hot spots. “From when I was a little girl until I was 18, she looked after me. It’s back there on one of those dirt roads,” she reminisces. “I was a Catholic schoolgirl, and then I went to public school, and that’s when I got turned out. Public school turned me out. Absolutely.”
A couple of miles later, she points to a strip-mall clothing store. “This is where I got my first Fila jersey, at Fresh Wear,” she says. “It looks so different.” The daughter of an African American truck driver dad and an Irish-American mother, Kid Sister’s parents transferred her and her brother to Orchard Hill — what she describes as an alternative, hippie-commune farm school. “It was a really racially mixed school; whereas, the Catholic schools are Polish,” she says. “I’d been around all these white girls, and it was sort of a racist school. At the new school, I befriended all these other biracial girls. I was a pretty good girl, and they weren’t that bad, but by comparison they were really bad. I was about 12 or 13 at the time.”
Venus Zine: How’d you get “turned out” at the new school?
Kid Sister: These girls were like, “Melisa, we should go to this club, Jubilation.” You had to have an ID stating that you were at least 15 to get in, and I wasn’t old enough yet. I had a fake ID saying that I was a sophomore in high school. Girl did not look like me — it was a Mexican girl — but these people wanted to take your money, so they let the ID slide.
We went to Jubilation all the time, and it was my first experience hearing real house or ghetto house. It opened my eyes to this whole subgenre of dance music. So that’s how someone like me becomes interested in the kind of music I’m interested in. I make rap you can dance to, and that’s the kind of music I loved when I was little.
When I was really young, I listened to nothing but classical music. My mom was in marching bands and played clarinet and flute, and my dad played drums in this Talking Heads cover band. Yeah, it’s kind of random — black guy, playing drums in a Talking Heads cover band.
After that, I got a lot more into gangster rap because when I was about 13, that’s was when “Doggy Style” and The Chronic came out.
High school was the first public school I went to. I didn’t even curse — well, I didn’t say the F-word until high school because I was very, “You should be ashamed of yourself for saying that, where’s the humanity?” I was always the modesty police with my friends — that’s just how I was raised.
High school turned me out — not sexually but culturally. High school was so different. It was probably, 80%, 70% white when I got there, but by the time I graduated, it was like 85% black, because white flight was happening really hot in the area at that time. Those suburbs and our neighbors were so scared that all these black people were going to come in and bring the property values down.
How did that make you feel?
Angry. I called one of the local real-estate agents and pretended to be a reporter from the high school newspaper and grilled her about it. I was like, “Why are you doing this?”
She said, “I don’t have time for this.” I said, “We have time for it, so you should make time.” Even Dateline did a special about our township and how quickly it was flipping. That’s how big of a deal it was. They were like, “On location in Matteson, Illinois,” because in Markham, that already happened many years ago. Markham was all black by the time I was a baby. It had flipped sometime in the ’60s or ’70s because Markham used to be all white too. But by that time, all the white people had moved south.
Because that’s what they do, they move south. They started here in the Southside, and black people came up in a great migration in the early 20th century. They came up looking for work, and the white people trickled down. They trickled down from Markham to Richton Park, where I grew up and went to high school, and when we moved in, they were trickling down again. It’s kind of fucked up. It’s a little bit crazy, my experiences growing up there.
I got angry, but at the same time, all my friends were mixed from Orchard Hill. When I got to Richton, I wasn’t really friends with any whites — I was cool with white people — but my best girlfriends were all black. And I really felt I discovered that side in high school.
When I went to Richton, all my friends were black, because I was more black-identified. My brother chose the opposite experience, and he’s more white-identified. He’s trying to find the other side now. I look back at my high school years like, “It was so fun. I’m going to my reunion in July,” and he’s like, “Fuck that.”
When did you start making your own music?
I had the thought to start a band in college at University of Illinois, but I never did it because college is hard, OK? [laughs] It took me so long to write bullshit essays because I just bullshitted my life away, so it took me five and a half years to finish school. I knew I wanted to do something with music. In college I didn’t have the time, but after that, I felt like I needed to get a job because that’s what you do. I have a degree from Columbia College [in Chicago].
I had worked two summers in a row shooting independent features and thought that it was really fun, but that was when I was in college and had no worries. So in the real world, I was like, “So, can I just go to New York with no money and just hope I get hired on a movie?” Some people can do that, but I was like, “no.” I didn’t have any friends in New York; I had an ex-boyfriend.
I guess the next logical step is to get job at a desk with benefits. It’s what artists do. But I don’t know Access, girl, I don’t know Powerpoint, I don’t know Excel, even though it’s apparently easy. I guess I just didn’t want to. Anyway, my bills came, so I figured I should learn it, but I still never did.
I had three jobs after college — I worked at the Borders Café and a couple other shitty jobs. I actually worked at the Hyatt, which was pretty fun.
After I graduated, I got a job at Little Threads, a children’s clothing store. I worked at the Wild Hare, which is a reggae bar in Wrigleyville. I also worked a short stint at the [Chicago rock club] Metro as a cocktail waitress. I was bad — I was like, “Get out of my way!”
How many hours a week were you working three jobs?
Fifty? 60? I worked concurrently at the baby store, the reggae bar, and Bath & Body Works. I had no time to myself. I was unkempt, nasty, and smelled all the time. I didn’t have time to shower in the mornings — I had to wake up at 7 a.m., and I wanted to get every bit of sleep I could. I wouldn’t take showers for three days. You do what you gotta do.
Were you thinking about making music at that time?
It was a big factor in spurring me to get into music. My brother was doing music, touring, going all over. I met [Kanye] West doing a show with my brother, and he’s like, “Check out this mixtape,” and he gave me the M.I.A. tape. And I was like “Whoa! You can actually do this if you’re a woman?”
Men have been DJing for years and watching and studying DMC tapes. When I met West and saw that M.I.A. and other females were doing that and starting to make money, tour, and have fun at their job, I was like, what the hell, I should be having fun.
I wrote a song that was really lame, and Josh was like, “Keep writing, keep writing.” So I wrote another song — I wrote it to the J-beat, you know that song with Missy Elliott and Nelly Furtado, and it was like “de da da ba da ching ching!” I wrote a three-verse rap song to that beat.
My brother made me a mixtape of all this instrumentals to write to. He was like, “Here, you can put it on my iPod Shuffle.” I finally made enough money to buy an iPod Shuffle, so I could listen to it while I biked to my three jobs. I started writing songs, and my brother said, “This is good.”
How did things take off after your first performance?
I was working 50 to 60 hours a week just to make the bills. I was on public aid. I applied for fucking free heat, and I got it because I wasn’t making enough money. They gave me $350, and I was like, “Yes! Give me that stipend and if you have more left, give it to me too.”
Things were so serious for so long, and that’s why I got into music. I was really just addicted to having fun.
After my second show with Flosstradamus, Alex [Epton] from Spank Rock, who makes the beats was like, “Hey, I hear you’re a rapper, want some beats?” I was like, “Really, it’s that easy?” Thom Yorke is hitting him up for beats and Björk wants beats from him, but he didn’t always used to be so in demand. He said he wanted to work together and Josh was like, “You want to do a song?” and I was like, “Sure.”
I jumped on a couch with a beer in my other hand doing “Let Me Bang.” [Music publicist] Kathryn Frazier was there and said, “You’re good. I want to work with you,” so she became my publicist. I had two shows before that — I had two songs.
Everything has been going kind of like that. Not that everything has been falling into my lap, but a little bit of effort gets a huge return. I am so happy that it worked out. What else am I supposed to do? Sell lotion until I am old and gray? Man, Bath & Body Works got so old so quick. It was like, “Do you want to try out new fragrance Japanese Cherry Blossom? It smells like ass.”
There’s a misconception that you knew Kanye West from your childhood, but you actually just met him two years ago?
I met him through my boyfriend, DJ A-Trak. I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed from that, but I’ve seen some pretty mean things about me like, “She slept her way to the top.” I’m like, “No I didn’t!” Did Justice sleep their way to the top? Did Daft Punk sleep their way to the top?
My whole vision is to bring together these two separate worlds. I’m biracial. I’ve been trying to do that my whole life. Why do you think I went to the Sex And the City premier with my hair in a curly Afro and like chunking up the goose? But I want to see that on the red carpet. I want to see people actin’ silly and not taking themselves too seriously. I want to see people I would be friends with represent in that context, so I try to be that person.
It’s good to see good things happen to good people.
Thanks. I had to struggle for a minute. My parents have always been very working-class, blue-collar, suburban, so it feels really great. It’s like, “Wow, I can do this, and make money off of it, and people are into it? You, you like me, you really like me?”
It seems like everyone likes you.
No one hates on me, but really, there’s nothing to hate on. I make fun, feel-good, danceable rap music and if you don’t like it, that’s cool. I feel like there’s a lot of stuff I don’t like so I am not going to be like, “If you don’t like it, fuck you.” If you like it, that’s cool too.
I’m just a perfectionist. I’m like every lash has to be perfect. Every nail has to be perfect, it has to hang perfect. I’m obsessive a little bit.
But I think every artist has something weird about them — R. Kelly is a pedophile. Every artist is crazy in some way. For me, my crazy comes out in that I’m an unbridled control freak, obsessive compulsive. Whenever I get super wrapped up in something I get a little crazy. That’s the way it goes with artists.
It’s so weird to talk about myself in that way — I am an artist. I am a Bath & Body Works worker — that is what I am.
How does being a perfectionist work in the studio?
I like working with [the engineer] because our ears are different. He’s like “You know exactly what you want and how to arrange it.” I’ve been in choirs since I was 6 years old, so I’m really particular about how things should sound and how things should be on my range.
How do you feel about the return of the old-school feel-good hip-hop vibe?
Hip-hop turned pop, and pop was already so formulaic that hip-hop just fell into that. It’s kind of like hip-hop fell into the wrong crowd, like how kids can fall into the wrong crowd and you’ve just got to reel them back in, send them to juvie for a couple years. Just like anything, it has to hit rock bottom before it gets better. I think it’s building itself back up. Hip-hop’s kind of ready to make the turnaround.
Do you have Catholic guilt?
I feel like everyone who is Catholic just assumes that. I am guilty about everything all the time, and my boyfriend is Jewish, and he’s like, “who are you kidding? We invented guilt.”
Where do you think you’ll be a year from now?
I really couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell you a year ago that I expected to be here. I just hope I can continue doing this. I just hope I don’t have to work at Bath & Body Works again.
Your parents got divorced recently?
Three years ago. The way it happened was so bogus that I don’t even want to talk about it. But that’s what parents are there for, to be annoying. Well, I don’t know. Dysfunctional parents are there for that. Functioning parents are there to be supportive and awesome but having weirdo parents gives you more character.
What are your songs about?
One of my songs tells a story — I think it’s going to be my next single — it’s called “Life On TV.” It’s about how it’s such a trip being on TV now. MTV wants to give me my own show.
Other songs are about how I have my own style, so don’t hate. There are a lot of rappers, particularly girl rappers and rappers in the indie market who are like, “Fuck all of y’all.”
I think it’s important that we support each other. There aren’t a lot of us in general, between indie and mainstream, there really aren’t that many female rappers.
What do you think about the onslaught of female-on-female MC beefs and battles? Like, Lil Kim vs. Remy Ma?
Look at how many years that hasn’t worked. Lil Kim saying, “Bitches suck cock just to get to the top, I put a 100% in every line I drop.” I’m like, “OK, and?”
In the indie market and mainstream, when girls hate my response, not just hate on me but hate in general, my response is, “So?” If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
I hate to be cheesy, but cheesy is kind of my thing. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m a cheesy Catholic girl.
How do you feel right now?
I hope to just be positive. I don’t expect anything. I expect not to get anything, and that’s so much more than I could ever dream of. I mean, look at my face. I am flabbergasted. I have no clue how this happened, but I am glad that it did.
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Want more Kid Sister? Check out the behind-the-scenes Venus Zine Fall 2008 issue cover shoot with Kid Sister.
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