For the latest cover of "Billboard," City Girls members JT and Yung Miami detail the highs and lows in their journey to the top of the charts.
It's been a little over a month since the City Girls were reunited following member JT's 16-month stint in prison for credit card fraud, and they're coming back hard for 2020 by covering the latest issue of Billboard Magazine.
Detailing the many trials and tribulations they had to overcome on their way to becoming one of the biggest acts in Hip-Hop and music overall, each member gave an earful of interesting tidbits in this lengthy artist profile on the two young rap stars. Take a look below at some of the highlights:
On Yung(er) Miami's Days Partying At 's House:
Miami was a grade younger, but already popular on Myspace. Growing up in Opa-Locka — one of the most violent areas of Miami-Dade County — her mom’s drug-dealer boyfriend afforded their family a flashy lifestyle. Her mom had grown up with local rap icons Trick Daddy and , the latter of whom is Miami’s godmother; going over to Trick Daddy’s for a pool party was just a regular Saturday. But what most impressed JT was that Miami’s uncle was dating Jacki-O, a local rapper whose best-known song, 2003’s “Nookie,” was a pussy-power anthem with lines like, “Police pull me over, they don’t write no ticket/All between my legs, trying to lick it.”
On JT's Hard Upbringing Right Before She Met Caresha:
She grew up in Liberty City, the neighborhood in which 2016’s Moonlight is set, with a drug-dealer dad who had 16 kids. Her mom was never in the picture. “I was rebellious because I didn’t have my mama around — nobody could tell me what to do,” she says. “When I started hanging out with Caresha, I was pillar to post. I started running away. I didn’t like it at my daddy’s house; I didn’t like it nowhere no more.”
On Their Reckless "Boosting Days" As Teens:
JT started sleeping at Miami’s grandma’s house every night after the girls hit the clubs, “sneaking out, fighting, drinking, being grown — doing stuff we had no business doing,” says Miami. JT had a little hustle selling hygiene products she would steal from drugstores, until business went south after an ill-conceived scuffle with a CVS loss-prevention staffer. “The people inside told me I was going to jail,” recalls JT. “They trying to pull my keys out the car, but you know Altima Coupes got a push start. So I tricked them. I’m like, ‘OK, OK, I’m sorry. Just let me pull in and park my car.’ Rolled my window up, skrrrrrt, pulled off.” She wasn’t caught, but her sister, who was with her, briefly went to jail.
On Their Big Break Joining Quality Control:
It was a friend of P’s in Miami, a waitress at a local club, who pulled out her phone and asked him, “Have you heard these girls?” around the same time “Fuck Dat N—a” was blowing up. P was on the fence, but Coach was hooked — the raunchy, boss-bitch raps reminded him of Miami’s godmother, Trina. “When Trina first came out, she had this confidence about the shit she was talking about — you’re like, ‘Who the fuck is this?!’ ” says Coach. When he played “Fuck Dat N—a” for Habtemariam, she had a different association: the freaky, uptempo party rap of the late ’80s and ’90s known as Miami bass, made famous by Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and 2 Live Crew, the brains behind the first album deemed legally obscene (1989’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be). It was as if, without even trying, the duo had channeled the full timeline of Miami hip-hop history into something that sounded brand new.
Read the full article right now over on Billboard, and peep this funny video of the City Girls interviewing each other to see how well they know the other member: