Community Spotlight: An Interview with Mia X

Next in our Community Spotlight series highlighting the 2020 Preservation Hall Foundation Community Engagement Grant awardees: local correspondent Katie Sikora interviews the one and only Mia X, legendary New Orleans rapper and lyricist, entrepreneur and author, community activist and mentor, and dear friend of Preservation Hall.

Interview and photos by Katie Sikora

I’ve read that you were inspired to become a rapper after listening to The Sequence. What was it like to be inspired to enter the industry by women just to be the only woman on No Limit?

I heard Funky Four Plus One More and MC She Rock was a lady. She was with these guys and she shined but then The Sequence was these three girls and they were singing and they were rapping, they were writing, they were composing. They made me feel like I could do it. But prior to No Limit, I did my first record Payback in 1992 and it was big. It was big and it was big for years. So big, C-Murder told Master P, “You need to come and try to get this girl if you want anybody in New Orleans to listen to you.” Because Master P was living in California for so many years, no one really knew him in New Orleans. We didn’t know his music. So he came and told me his plans to make a record label and I believed him. He told the truth. He told me he was going to have the biggest independent label in the world. He had a real strong work ethic and at the time, Profile was looking at me to sign me and my mama’s like, “So you gonna go with that little boy? Nobody even know his records.” Something about what he was saying, I believed it. In 1994, I went to California, we worked on Down South Hustlers, then we had the West Coast Bad Boyz, then we worked on his 99 Ways to Die album. Then he and I recorded “Bout It” and that was the breakthrough hit of his career. That album went double platinum and then I released Good Girl Gone Bad. Master P allowed me to build his entire label. He let me bring the producers, the rappers, he trusted the sound that I told him he needed because No Limit didn’t have that sound prior to me coming. He trusted it. He is really good at putting things together and making it really, really big. P is my brother for like and I will always be thankful because I am a woman and hip-hop was male-dominated and he trusted me. 

What was it like to work at Peaches back in the day?

Girl, I might go back and work there. I might go back. Peaches is family. Peaches was a different kind of record store. Peaches was personal. Each one of us specialized in something: gospel, rap, reggae, R&B, country, rock. So people always had that one-on-one with us. We called Shirani mama. She really is like family to me. She has been in my life since I was 22 years old. I am 51. Peaches is just like the best record store in the world. My children worked at Peaches. My sister worked at Peaches. I worked at Peaches until Unladylike went gold. It’s just the best record store in the world. You come to New Orleans, you better go to Peaches.

Do you remember meeting Master P?

I didn’t meet Master P until Payback was two years old. I didn’t know him. I had never heard of him. But I had this big record and when I met him I was under the hairdryer and I believed him telling me what he was going to do with the label. It was the eye contact. They wasn’t rappers. They was doing something in California. It wasn’t like “Master P is coming to New Orleans!” It was like, “Master P? Who is? What—” and then in California they wear they’re socks up high so they was, “Girl, who is that that you with with the big socks on?” 

What were the early days of performing bounce in New Orleans like?

I am so grateful to say that when T-Tucker and DJ Herv, Devious and DJ Jimmy were there, I was right there. We came out collectively. Silky Slim, MCE, Cash Money, Big Boy. We are the forefathers and mothers of bounce. There was no such thing called bounce until we started doing it. I am happy to say that that subculture in hip-hop, that genre, I am one of the mamas of that. I got a thirty-year-old bounce record. I am very thankful for that. 

How does it feel to be a part of the start of an entire type of music?

I have two platinum albums and a gold album and that’s really, really cool and I am so thankful that the world has shown me love like that. But nothing compares to selling 50,000 records on a little cassette tape when you are at home. Nothing compares to the way bounce music changed the world. Bounce music is that feel good music. It brings everybody together. You just want to move your body. You can hear our second line, our jazz and brass influences, you can hear our tribal influences from the Mardi Gras Indians with the chants we do.

Bounce really is for the culture. There are different levels of bounce. They had gangsta bounce rappers, they had rappers like myself that brought lyrics and bars into bounce, they have R&B artists such as Miss T come into bounce bringing the harmonies and the melodies. There are so many facets. And then I used to tell my baby 5th Ward Weebie, “Boy, you the reason bounce is fast now.” 5th Ward Weebie and 10th Ward Buck brought a faster cadence to bounce. The bounce we know now. Our bounce was more traditional with a little R&B, Mardi Gras Indians, second line, and go-go influence. And now bounce is really fast, it’s some of the best work-out music in the world. I am more excited about the fact that I wrote a record, it was eight minutes long, I didn’t even know how to write bars and separate them. I just got on that mic and went for what I knew and it worked.

Tell me about New York Inc. and its trajectory on your career.

If it wasn’t for Wop and Mannie and Deeny D, the founders of New York Incorporated, I would not be an MC. I wouldn’t be an MC that y’all know. I was fourteen. We were children. I knew I wanted to rhyme when I was ten years old but I did not rhyme in front of people until I was fourteen. New York Incorporated gave me that opportunity because Mannie and Wop were DJing dances and doing all kind of stuff. To see young kids from your neighborhood doing it and it’s something that you want to do too? If it wasn’t for me saying “Oh Wop and Mannie can I rap?” and them throwing on the T La Rock “It’s Yours” instrumental, I wouldn’t be here. That’s where my confidence was built. My confidence to get on the mic and to get on the stage and do it was built at New York Incorporated.

How long did that group continue on?

It continued on for years and years. I got pregnant in 12th grade so I had to be a mama and I didn’t start full time MCing again until 1991. They were constantly doing every school dance, dances at the Superdome for teens—they don’t do that kind of stuff anymore. They had their hand in anything that had to do with where young people gathered.

I listened to Good Girl Gone Bad over and over again while prepping for this interview…

Whaaaat? I was 24 years old!

I think the overarching thing for me was that your lyrics from then still resonate with so many things we are talking about today in terms of feminism and women’s rights. What do you think about the legacy of your music and your lyrics?

Thank you for saying that because I didn’t really know how it was registering, especially to young people now. If you think about the way music sounds today and how Good Girl Gone Bad sounds, it’s totally different.

Although, some of the songs could totally be out today. [Ghetto] Sarah Lee?

You think Sarah Lee could be played in 2021?

I think so! I was listening to it on repeat.

I wonder about it. You know what the beautiful thing about my legacy is? A lot of my fans name their children Mia and now, I’m meeting 22, 24, 25, 26 year-old Mias. They are coming to my concerts. So you have a 50-55 year-old couple of parents with a 25, 26, 27-year old Mia at my concert. And my little Mias tell me that they like the music. That’s a big thing for me. People tell me that certain songs got them through things. That kind of blows my mind. I just want people to remember that I put a lot of thought into the records that I wrote and a lot of them were reflections of what I was going through or what friends were going through or what was happening in the community. When you’re in your twenties, you try to express things as best as you can. I love that young woman even when she was a ball of confusion.

Do you like bounce now?

I love bounce. I love that each generation has done something else with it. It was me, it was Juicy, it was Silky Slim, Females in Charge, MC E, as far as the women when they started letting us in. And then bounce has opened its doors to the LGBTQ community. Katey Red was the first queen of bounce to come in and Katey Red opened the door for Freedia. I do like bounce. I like bounce because it’s ever-evolving and I like to see the effect that it has on people across the world. I love that.

I was reading The Motherlode by Clover Hope and your profile in it talked a lot about the pressure you felt by the industry to lose weight.

I came in fat. I came into the industry fat. That’s what I was representing. I started gaining weight in 1992. My grandmother told me but I couldn’t really see it. I had never really eaten fast food but being on the road, that’s all there is. I had done press, done the show, done all these different things and now it’s 10 o’clock and the only thing open is something fast. But it never stopped guys from liking me, or flirting with me, or telling me that they thought I was attractive, beautiful, whatever so I was ok with it. But I moved to California and everybody is thin in California. I didn’t see too many big people, especially in the industry. There used to be whispers like, “Hey, I think she’s really pretty and I think we could do so much with her if she lost weight.” I have to give credit to master P though because he wasn’t never like that. If I was good, he was good. So that was when I embraced and embodied the persona of Biggest Mama. 

I didn’t get a lot of press photos. The ladies that were out when I was out had so much press, so many different photos, so many outfits, so many beautiful looks. I think because people were so concerned with image, they didn’t think that because I have rolls and curves I was worth capturing that for. It was discouraging because here I was selling just as many records as anybody and I had one video for a platinum album. I probably could’ve sold more records if I could’ve been more visible but I didn’t have the look that they were looking for. I’m brown. My hair isn’t wavy and down to my ass unless I sew it in. And then No Limit was this label that put out all this rough and tough music so the people didn’t know what to do with me. As far as marketing and promoting me, I don’t think I got my just due with that. I think my image. I am thankful for the girls that came out after me like my baby Lizzo. They getting the shine that they deserve as beautiful women, as full-figured women, and they being looked at as women. 

You’ve said before that the X in Mia X represent the unknown. Can you elaborate on what that means?

Cause you ain’t never know what you gonna get. I represent every woman. Think of brilliant. Think of crazy. Think of violent. Think of sensitive. Think of strength. Think of softness. But you never know what you gonna get. I don’t know what I’m getting sometimes.

With your connections to hip-hop, bounce, and second line culture, do you think the conversations we are starting to have now about cultural appropriation are a step in the right direction or is it too little too late?

I like to consider myself second generation hip-hop because I was little girl in the 70s when Kool Herc was laying the foundation. But I am from the era where Rick Rubin was producing really great music. Third Base put hip-hop records out in the early 80s. I was from the time of the Beastie Boys. This is the thing about hip-hop: you gotta be dope. They couldn’t get in if they wasn’t dope. Hip-hop has always been a place where all the kids gather. I like to credit hip-hop with building a bridge and blurring the lines because you had to be dope and throughout my thirty years, I’ve seen black kids, white kids, Spanish-speaking kids be a part of the culture. If you not dope, we not gonna buy it. You better be good. Music is one of those things where you could be a card-carrying KKK member and card-carrying Black Panther and like the same record. There won’t be any real infiltrators of hip-hop if they’re not dope.

The only thing I don’t like about music is that I feel like record labels take more time with white artists and educate them so that they’re not broke. I think a lot of times the labels are so eager to put our music out and make all this money for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren and don’t show us nothing. My gripe comes from that. They don’t go the extra mile to give the black children a fair shot in being able to hold on to their money. We haven’t been set up the right way or been given the same tools.

Photo by Katie Sikora

When we shot your portrait, you wanted to have your portrait shot in from of the Municipal Auditorium in Armstrong Park. Why was it important to you to have it taken in that location?

I wanted the shot in front of Municipal Auditorium because I don’t think you understand how long I been wanting them to see it repaired. It’s disheartening. We graduated out of there. We went to so many concerts. There were so many festivals for Black people that were held at the Municipal Auditorium. It’s been a staple for our community. The square itself was where our ancestors congregated. They married there. They gave thanks, praise, and worship there. Some of them are buried there. It’s a sacred ground and when you walk on it, you feel it. And if you don’t feel it, you don’t have a soul. You feel the presence of the ancestors. The Mardi Gras Indian culture was birthed out of there. That’s where a lot of the people that wanted to escape slavery were hidden by the tribes. We have so much culture that come out of that place where the Municipal Auditorium is, I just feel like we want it fixed, we want it up and running. I wanted my portrait there because I hope it will remind people who graduated there, who partied there, who took performance arts classes there what it is and hope that we can get it back. The only stuff that should be there is what is already there because it’s for our community. My baby daddy used to give the $5 concerts there. I was rapping with New York Incorporated and got two D’s on my report card and was punished but snuck out the window so I could go rap at the Municipal Auditorium and my mama came and snatched me out there. I have so many memories there and would like to see it restored and would like the young people of New Orleans to enjoy it the way we did.

What has been your reaction to the City attempting to put City Hall there?

I don’t want it there. It don’t belong there. I don’t think our ancestors want it there either. I don’t think the spirits that still roam there want it there. I don’t want it there. I have some thoughts on where it should go. But not there. Not in the Treme.

How have the last fifteen, sixteen months been for you?

It’s been rough. I lost thirty family and friends to COVID-19. My livelihood was put on hold because I was in the middle of a tour.  My teaching was interrupted because I went from teaching ensemble in the classroom at Loyola University to teaching online. We made the best of it but to be honest, since it’s an ensemble class, we are recording, we are doing live music, we are doing so many things and to do it online was difficult for myself and the students. I like to bring a lot of energy to the class and it was hard. Some of the kids would be in pajamas because they were home. 

Aside from that transition to online teaching and having to step back from your touring and your music, what have you been working on since the shutdown?

Actually, during the pandemic I launched Mama Mia’s Foods. I created a seasoning that I was grinding up myself. I created five rice dinners: Fire Jambalaya, Good Ole’ Dirty Rice, Tasty Brown Rice, Jazzed Up Jasmine Rice, and Wild Yellow Rice. I wanted to add some health properties so I was drying out turmeric and adding my own herbs and spices. I added turmeric to the Jazzed-Up Jasmine and I did a combination of cinnamon and nutmeg in my Tasty Brown Rice because they have anti-inflammatory properties. I took my time figuring out how to make some good things for the people and to keep myself busy and not be depressed because the pandemic was depressing. We suffered so many physical losses and then we had to mourn them from a distance, ten people at a funeral. We were mentally depressed. I know I was. So I had to keep focused and keep my mind channeled on something that was going to benefit other people since we have this virus that’s trying to hurt us. 

And ten people at a funeral in New Orleans…

…when you part of the culture, [it’s tiny]. Most of us are from the culture meaning we were losing our tribes members and members from social aid and pleasure clubs. Usually those would be celebrated in our jazz and African traditions with second lines. There are usually hundreds and thousands of people to celebrate the ones we lost but since that couldn’t happen, it was a mental blow along with the news of the physical deaths. How could we mourn them? How could we celebrate their lives? You had to limit it to immediate family. When a lot of them got sick, they checked into the hospital and you couldn’t see them and we didn’t see them again. It made the whole death process so much harder than it normally is.

Do you feel like you got the closure that you needed?

I don’t. Some people, the last time I seen them they were smiling and waving. Then I couldn’t go see them in the hospital and then they was dead. There were a lot of funerals I couldn’t attend because if you’re a niece or a cousin, they limit it down to spouses, the children, the grandchildren. I didn’t get a lot of closure. It was rough.

Was Mama Mia’s Foods something you had thought about prior to the shutdown or was it truly born of the pandemic?

I want to say it was a creation of the pandemic. We couldn’t really go anywhere. I went to the grocery store one day and the shelves was empty. And I remembered my grandmother telling me when she grew up in the depression, they put rice with everything to stretch it and to fill bellies. Then my other aunt who is Korean said it is the way you cook rice that will not make you fat. Rice is inexpensive and people can feed a whole family. That’s why I came up with the rice dishes. Everybody loves rice. I wanted to do a low-sodium seasoning because when my grandparents lived with me, they were both sick and I had to modify the way I prepared food for them. But because they were both such great cooks, I had to make sure I didn’t modify the flavor. So Mama Mia Foods was born in the pandemic.

Are they out in the world right now?

Yes. I have teamwhipdempots.com and that’s where you can get the rice dishes and I am currently having the seasonings mass produced. I used to do it myself. After they are finished bottling them, they will be in some of our local markets. I’m really happy. I grew up in a family that cooked and ran our house like a speakeasy. The cooking was in my blood.

You just put out “Vaxx That Thang Up” with Juvenile and Mannie Fresh. Can you talk about that collaboration? When was the last time you had recorded anything with those guys?

I hadn’t. That’s what makes it so special. The collaboration of myself, Mannie, who is one of my favorite producers, and Juvenile, who is one of my favorite artists, was the first time. Mannie Fresh and DJ Wop were my very first DJs in 1984. I went on to work with No Limit in 1994 and Mannie is one of the founders of Cash Money Records and we hadn’t had an opportunity to collaborate since New York Incorporated, since the start of our professional careers. Well, I was at the studio laying a verse for Teedra Moses and my phone was blowing up. When I got out of the studio, Wop was like, “Mannie’s calling you, he wants you to come to the studio and do something.” So we went around the corner to the other studio and that’s when I found out that this dating app called BLK—they’re with Match.com—decided that they wanted to do a vaccine campaign in the app. They wanted to do a parody of Back That Ass Up, Back That Thang Up, whatever you want to call it. So the great thing about Mannie Fresh and Juvenile is their sense of humor because they were ok with parodying themselves and they wanted me to do a part on it. I was all for it because I am vaccinated, I’ve been vaccinated since March. I thought the song was cute, I thought it was funny, but then at the same time I thought it had a good message especially coming from three artists that are from New Orleans. We were all personally hit by the pandemic. We all personally know people that died. I knew that the way we were grieving and suffering here, I wanted the people in the city to at least hear it. I never thought it would get like 3 billion, 4 billion impressions and that it would be all over. And I never thought that some people would be angry about it. We have a choice. We have a choice to take the vaccine, we have a choice to join the dating app. We just wanted to put it out there because a lot of people thought that it was just older people or sick people being vaccinated and we wanted younger adults to know that it’s ok to get the vaccine. Do your research, talk to your doctor, that’s what I did. Initially, I didn’t want to get it. I was afraid. I talked to my sister who is an infectious disease specialist, I talked to my primary care physician. My sister laid it all out for me and told me she thought I should definitely get it because I am a hugger and a kisser. I had to do what I needed to do and that was getting the vaccine. 

Are you excited to get back on the road after over a year of not performing live?

Yes! I love to see the guys. They are my brothers. And it wasn’t just about music and it wasn’t just about talent, we’re family. Myself and 27 of them. Starting next week we are making up the dates that we had. Twenty dates were cancelled once COVID hit. We have to make up those dates plus start the second leg of it. So from July until November, we’ll be back.

Do you have a New Orleans date?

November. We at the Smoothie King Center. I think we with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Three 6 Mafia. And we gotta pull out all of the local greats. I was talking to Silk on the phone and was like, “You know Partners-N-Crime got to be on this show. They got the best songs in the world.” And now Hasizzle has “Getcha Sum”. Hasizzle has so many great records that people don’t even know about. He about of that fast bounce clique too.

Is there anything else that you’d like to say?

I’d really like to shout out Preservation Hall because not only did I lose my main source of income due to the pandemic, I was separated from my friends and my money was tight like everybody else’s. Nobody gave me grant because they figured I am Mighty Mia X not thinking about how those medical bills kicked my ass. But Preservation Hall an $1000 grant and I was so thankful. I was taking out my money to buy fruit and vegetable boxes and delivering them to our elderly and those with compromised immune systems. I partnered with Top Box and used my money and it was doing. I was able to take a month with my bills thanks to that grant. When nobody thought about me, they did. I am forever grateful. I can’t wait until we can parade again.

For more information on the PHF Community Engagement Grant and its outstanding 2020 awardees, read more HERE and explore more of the Community Spotlight profiles by local correspondents at Salon726.com.