“Pass it to her! Pass it to her!” Brenda chirped, wagging her finger at me like a happy puppy’s tail.
I took the mic and gave that “woo-woo” a special Mariah remix, with all kinds of vocal flourishes, and in the end I took the last “woo” way up into my high register, and the whole crowd broke out in wild claps. That was the day Will Smith and I became friends.
Will and I were both really young, and looked it. Above my signature blown-out bangs, I had gathered the top portion of my unruly, crinkly hair into a yellow scrunchie, hair fanning out of it like a furry fountain, and let water and nature do their own thing with the back half of my ’do. I was wearing a little bubble-gum-pink tank dress I had borrowed from Josefin. Will was tall and lanky, dressed as if he expected a pickup game of hoops could break out at any moment. He was incredibly friendly and funny, as was his charismatic friend, Charlie Mack. Immediately I could tell that he was not only super talented but really bright and laser-focused. I loved “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and was very impressed with what he had accomplished.
Will and I would sometimes hang out at Rascals, below the apartment I shared with Josefin. He was an uncomplicated friend. Both of us were absolutely ambitious and still maintained a childlike wonder and curiosity about the world. Our relationship was always platonic and never got weird.
After he heard me sing, Will believed in my talent. He took me with him to Def Jam Recordings, the hottest new hip-hop label at the time, where he was signed. As we walked down the street on our way to Def Jam, we saw this tall, thin white man approaching us. He stood out because he was kind of dancing and bopping, with headphones on that were blasting music so loud you could hear it: “It takes two to make a thing go right!”
I later found out it was Lyor Cohen, who managed Run-DMC and LL Cool J and signed Eric B. & Rakim and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. It was a curious scene to me: this sinewy grown man, dressed kinda cool, singing aloud, “I wanna rock right now!” I was thinking, How does he even know this song?
The Def Jam offices had a very “downtown” vibe. This was the label of many hot male hip-hop artists, so obviously there were a million girls going in and out. Most people probably just assumed that I was a groupie, strolling in on the arm of the Fresh Prince. Will had never heard my demo; he’d only heard me sing at the concert, but that was enough for him, I guess. Upstairs we found ourselves with a junior executive who wanted me to sing. Once again, I may have looked a little shabby and young, but I was discerning enough to understand: I wasn’t going to sing for this random guy. I was grateful for Will’s confidence, but I had my sights on a major label with a legacy of artists more in alignment with my singer-songwriter ambitions—somewhere huge, like Warner or Columbia Records. That’s where I knew I belonged, and that’s where I believed I was going to be.
My faith and focus were strong, but there was also evidence of my hard work, like a possible deal moving at Atlantic Records. During this time the majors were reaping the benefits of their teen stars—the Tiffanys and Debbie Gibsons of the world. As the story goes, Doug Morris, the head of Atlantic, responded to my demo by saying, “We already have our teen girl,” referring to Gibson.
Clearly, he didn’t really get it. For that matter, most labels didn’t really get me. They really didn’t know where I fit. They didn’t understand my sound; the demo had songs that didn’t fit neatly into an existing genre. Though really young, I was definitely not teen pop. There was a bit of soul, R & B, and gospel infused into my music, and I had a hip-hop sensibility. My demo was more diverse than the music industry at the time.
Then, of course, there was always the blondish biracial elephant in the room. Executives at Motown supposedly reacted to my demo by saying, “Oh, no, we don’t want to deal with a Teena Marie situation again”—meaning they didn’t want to force the general public to grapple with wondering if I was Black or white or what. They didn’t know how to market me. Most record executives just didn’t know how they would work my record. They weren’t sure it could “cross over.” But for the record, Teena Marie never cared about crossing over. And I didn’t want to cross over either.
I wanted to transcend.
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
One night Brenda announced, “I’m going to take you to this party, and you’re going to meet a big record executive, Jerry Greenberg, and it’s going to be great.”
Sure, why not? I thought. I was feeling enough professional confidence to let her drag me to an industry party. I was doing sessions and had a deal brewing at Warners for one of my songs to be used in a movie. I wasn’t too invested in this party being the party. While she had a generous heart, Brenda could also be pretty zany, so I sometimes took a lot of what she said with a grain of salt.
We were going to get dressed at her house in Jersey, since she had all the clothes, makeup, and accessories from being on tour and having some money. She was supposed to pick me up from my apartment. I waited in my cramped vestibule, slumped on the tile floor, for over an hour (mind you, there was no texting back then). Finally, she appeared, revved up, full of energy, and
