*She is one of the original rap queens from the 90s who you can catch on Love and Hip Hop Family Reunion. Legendary rapper Yo-Yo chops it up with Radio and TV personality Jazmyn ‘Jaz’ Summers in an exclusive interview with EURweb Spotlight.
Tupac was one of her greatest loves.
“We were in love and we loved each other until the day he died, ” she shares with Jaz. “Pac became like a brother to me. We were just two people on the road who found each other, fell in love with each other. We spent many nights on the road together. He wasn’t perfect nor was he trying to be. He wasn’t afraid to talk about his community, about his parents, stuff that people don’t what to hear about, stuff people don’t want to talk about. People don’t want to talk about their truth. That kind of love he had for truth made me love him more. ”
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Was Jada the love of his life as is often rumored? Yo-Yo doesn’t think so.
“Tupac had a love for Jada but he had a love for women. Anyone he dealt with he loved. He had many loves. He loved sincerely and if he gave you a piece of him you would remember, He probably slept with some of friends, but we all love him,” she says.
“He had a rule for me that we couldn’t hang out too much on the road but he would always sneak my sister out, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and she’d be gone, I would beep him and beep her and they wouldn’t answer and I would be like stop taking my sister out. I’m responsible for her.”
Ok, sis that sounds a little sus. But Yo-Yo doesn’t know if they ever slept together.
And as for the sex, Yo-Yo laughs “he was organic, his eggplant wasn’t from the farmers market He was strong in all ways in his life.”
She remembers one time when she and Pac went to Mexico for a show and the promoters tried to kidnap them.
“They locked all of our stuff in the room. My brother had to break us out. They shot at the tour bus. The show never happened They never had the money. They locked me in the dressing room and Tupac and my brother broke me out. He wasn’t afraid.”
Yo-Yo was with him until the end. “He was a rider to the end,” she tells EURweb Spotlight. “He loved his sister unconditionally he loved his family. He was serious about getting it not just for himself but for his community. He had a plan but his plan wasn’t just for him. He had a vision. He was Black power without question. He did not want to die. He didn’t want to die alone.”
Rest in Peace and Power Tupac.
Like Tupac, Yo-Yo shared a love for her community and unlike a lot of today’s female rappers, her rhymes lifted up the dignity of Black women.
In her hit song “You can’t play with my Yo-Yo ” she spits, “it’s me, the brand new intelligent black woman Y-O-Y-O Which is Yo-Yo but I’m not to be played like I was made by Mattel. But this Yo-Yo is made by woman and male. I rhyme about uprising, uplifting the woman”
She is a protege of rapper Ice Cube. Yo-Yo dubbed her crew the IBWC, for the Intelligent Black Woman’s Coalition.
“Coming up as Yo-Yo, as a young artist I came up with Ice Cube and NWA saying a bitch is a bitch but I ain’t the one,” she shares with Jaz. ” I was one of those girls like Queen Latifah. I’d be like ‘who u calling a bitch.”
Yo-Yo tells EURweb.com Spotlight she’s not shading the new female rappers and admires their empowerment.
“When we think about hip hop. When we think about women earning your spot, some of them feel like if you’re gonna use me, I may as well use myself. but it doesn’t have to be all about your sexuality. In my (hip hop) school, in my work with the community, I try to give my kids the challenges of we’re not going to talk about gang banging, we’re not going to talk about money what else can we talk about?  I’ve watched the changes in hip hop come about so long. When you think about 30 years of hip hop What I realize is you get it how you live it. When I came into it we were more worried about what people thought. This generation don’t give a rats’ ass”
Besides her radio show with Loni Love, “Cafe Mocha” and “Love and Hip Hop”, Yo-Yo is running a school of hip hop for young people. It shut down temporarily because of Covid but she is still working with people through her social.
“I’m listening to people’s music, giving people feedback. What I’ve learned as an artist and what they want to see as an industry is who is their authentic self so if you can embody that and spit that out (you can be successful.) I try my best to not get caught up in the lyrics although I hear a little too much of pu**y, pu**y dick, d*ck.”
Yo-Yo says she learned a lot from Ice Cube’s lyricism and his professionalism.
“He (Ice Cube) was always about his business. Ice Cube has had his priorities in check for a long time. He’s a no-nonsense kinda person like even today when we perform together he would say something to me like just make sure you have your lyrics. He’s so matter of fact.” But he could have fun and throw down.
She recalls one time when Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane performed on stage together, “someone poured a champagne bucket of ice on one person. It started on stage and ended up in the hotel with them having to spend $36,000 for a hotel water fight.  Everybody was throwing trash cans of water.  It was crazy. One of our biggest fun days with the biggest penalties.”
Another time she went to perform at a prison where Tupac’s father was arranging for artists to perform and a riot broke out.
” All I know is we heard ‘this is how you do it’ and next thing you know there was a riot. The riot was the craziest ever. I do remember a guy feeling on my bootie…and I was like we’re in a riot really?
She’s a grandmother but still got the beautiful bootie. “I’m still lookin’ back at it,” she spits. “But remember check the booty, yo it’s kinda soft and If you touch, you livin’ in a coffin (word to mother).”
For more Tupac, Ice Cube stories and to hear Yo-Yo spit, watch the video above and please don’t forget to subscribe to my youtube channel.
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Video editing by www.patrickhousefilms.com
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