Photo courtesy of Emilia A. Ottoo
Emilia A. Ottoo, also known as EMMA LEE M.C., is an entertainer, athlete, activist, and now an author. Her new book “Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind: Notes from a Hip-Hop Unicorn & Suicide Survivor” chronicle the trauma and triumphs in her life that acted as catalysts for her strength and desire to help those who feel helpless.
Don’t get it twisted though, the book is not calamitous. As the title states, EMMA LEE M.C. is indeed a Hip-Hip Unicorn. Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind is also very much humorous and without a doubt, Hip-Hop.
EMMA LEE M.C. spoke to The Real Hip-Hop about her upcoming project titled Chocolate Bars, fear, femininity, experiencing the afterlife, and her new book, Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind.
TRHH: Explain the title of your new book, Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind.
EMMA LEE M.C.: Yes. It’s so funny because someone recently was telling me “Yeah, I’ve already lost my mind and it’s actually not that bad” and we had a whole conversation about that. The title and the premise of the book is based on two main inspirations, one, to you obviously, the DMX Party Up song inspiration and he being just such a motivating example in my life, not just as a Hip-Hop artist but as a person to go forward in life with what is unique about myself. I didn’t have to rap like other people rapped, didn’t have to have mannerisms or an appearance or an image like other people, and then also I think a lot of women, especially in our field can relate to this, but it’s universal too, this conditioning about taking up space. Not standing out too much, you wanna blend in, you wanna keep your head down, you just wanna get by. This notion that that’s the only way to quote UN quote “make it.” Which is also in an interesting full circle part of the reason why people lose their minds, because this constant assimilation with lives that we are told we’re supposed to live, and how things are supposed to be, and who we’re supposed to aspire to be.
DMX kind of broke the mold for that in a lot of ways and I just wanted to honor him in that way. Also, that song is so powerful. People who have no interest in Hip-Hop whatsoever they know that song. I quote it in public, people finish the lyric! You don’t even have to say the whole thing. But yet people don’t put respect on his name like that a lot or people kind of trivialize or minimize his contribution to Hip-Hop. And also, skate over the fact of how mental health was a topic that has been touched on throughout Hip-Hop history, but it’s like we kind of collectively just have a hush like a silence on that topic. He certainly wasn’t the first, there were people talking about it before, but to me he was one of the first to talk about the dark side of life, internal struggles, and identity issues and kind of like battling with yourself constantly.
Routinely he talked about this, routinely he was kind of looking in the mirror in public and I found that very powerful. I’ve always been drawn to deep, gripping, powerful writing. Even he as a performer it just came from a place that you could tell this was someone who had a soul, someone who had a point of view, someone who was unafraid of putting that out and even wearing his heart on his sleeve. I wanted to honor that in that spirit because I felt like in my life I was having that struggle a lot but was unable to express it or just wasn’t satisfied with the doses in which I was expressing it. I wanted to scream and yell and bark the way he did but in my own way.
So, there’s that and then as readers will find I literally had been admitted into a psychiatric ward where when you become a mental patient you are treated as though you have lost your mind. And you are treated in a lot of cases without dignity, and without agency. You are not seen as someone who can be responsible for themselves or could even carry a civil conversation. People don’t want to be even near you to a certain degree and that’s very jarring because there’s actually a lot of very civil, understanding, intelligent, otherwise coherent people in some of the lowest places in our society and in the outskirts like a psychiatric ward that are just in bad situations, or the systems in place to move us through them are not really designed to help us be healthy or live corrective or constructive lives.
I recognize that not just in that acute situation but in almost every field I’ve been in — in education, and religion, and the job market, and the corporate structure, there are just so many things, tangible and intangible, that are almost designed to break you mentally so that you can move into a mold. It doesn’t have to be that way, so, the title is a reclaim of “I’m not going to let myself be broken by these things and I’m going to reclaim my life and set it as I see fit.” We call people survivors because not everyone makes it, and so there’s a lot of people who have faced this same battle in so many different ways, but they’re not here to tell that story, or they’re not here to aspire, or achieve, or accomplish anything more. So, it’s also a reclaim for those spirits that inspire me as well.
TRHH: In the book you touch on the rape situation and you go into detail about being hospitalized after trying to commit suicide. These are deeply personal and traumatic things. Why was now the time to share that and why in book form?
EMMA LEE M.C.: That’s a very good question. No one so far has brought up the rape, so, I just needed a pause before I answered that. But I appreciate that because I was kind of bracing for that. Honestly, the entire book I was in prayer and God told me it’s time to write. To simply answer the question, God said it’s time to write. I had been a writer all my life really and figured out one day I would write books but didn’t have a plan. I just always knew writing was in me. I always had a stack of notebooks and figured something was in there. At that at that point in time I was at a very low, low and I was actually coming out of my wrestling injury where I had been concussed and had a severe skull injury and didn’t even know if I was gonna be able to walk again, or dance, or perform, or anything. I didn’t have support medically or from my family and friends. I was really just healing alone and just wondering what was gonna happen, and in those prayers is when God told me “It’s time to write. You have a a book in what you’ve already written, so just go back in there and see what’s there.”
But that question of life was so acute in those moments and I did write about this in the book, because the question of life and truly living had had been so acutely put back in my face with the “will I ever walk again now?” or “will I even be able to go to the bathroom by myself now?” What pulled me through that period also was remembering pulling through the suicide, and pulling through the psych ward, and what it took in me to not only get back to a stasis where I could be like “Okay, now we’ve got to get back to the starting line so that we can get out of here and then live a new life,” but getting back to a place psychologically where I have to have my wits about me because I still have to talk to doctors and deal with an institution that is not letting me go. They have my birth right of freedom in their hands and it shouldn’t be like that, but that’s what it is right now and so we have to get out of that, and we have to do that intelligently. So, I have to separate where I am emotionally and psychologically to where I want to be and what that takes.
To answer your question, God told me it’s time to write and that helped give me a new reason to live, get on my feet, and make sense of what the rest of my life is going to be, or at least get to get it out. In book form, that’s a very interesting question. I don’t know, this is my best guess, I think I did it that way because I felt like no one would listen if I did tell them. I’ve known a lot of people and I know a lot of people love and care about me. I performed for a lot of people who find me very positive, and are very grateful that I have performed, and have a delight in what I bring to the stage or even in a conversation, and say many great things about me, even behind my back. But as far as a circle, or a nucleus, or a network of people that I have constructive positive and emotional support day in, day out, or weekend, or season out, no, that has not been my life. I’m not surrounded by a whole bunch of friends. There’s some times I even go to talk about something traumatic and it’s like that triggers other people to tell me about their traumatic things and it seems like they need me more than I need them, or something just always happens that just lets me know this is not the healing space for me. Also, so many people have gone through these same things you also learn that not everyone is strong enough to even have that conversation to receive it. They wouldn’t even know what to say to you.
I think I wrote it so that I could get it out for the first time because I had maybe about three people that I had told unsuccessfully about the rape and then I said I’m just never going to tell anybody again. I felt like I needed to say it out loud because I had still been in denial about it, and that’s part of the issue for a lot of people. We blame ourselves and/or we convince ourselves that it didn’t happen, or it’s a result of some flaw in us that just perpetuates ongoingly. So, I wanted to get it out to straighten itself out for myself psychologically, but then also because I felt like the things that have happened to me have never really gotten, in my opinion, a fair shake, for lack of better words. They’ve never really gotten a just due in conversation with others or a safe space, even in spaces that were meant to be safe, they never really got that. As much as I love and appreciate my parents their best wasn’t able to accommodate what I truly needed as a child going through certain things. It felt to me that the next safest place other than prayer was just on paper.
TRHH: This is more of a personal question, well, not a personal question, but a selfish question. The person in the book named Ray that called you during this ordeal; how did he know that you needed help?
EMMA LEE M.C.: Sure. You know, I don’t know. I think I was probably showing signs of deepening depression and maybe I didn’t realize how deep I was showing it. That might have been a destiny thing too, because even I was surprised. Thank you for picking up on these minute details of the writing. When I got that call from him the next morning and he said “We all thought you needed help and we wanted to get that for you,” I actually was very taken aback by that statement, I just didn’t have time to even be stuck on that because of what followed and me having to leave the apartment immediately to escape being forcibly taken to a ward, or a holding cell, or wherever they put you. Because also that performance family had been the closest thing I knew to a stable, positive, healthy family over several years. But still they had never had any inkling.
There was no intervention vibes in that family [laughs]. For me, for me. We had had it for other people because being a community program, being in Harlem, being a youth to adult program, we definitely had our share of crises, absolutely. One or two in prison, one or two here, one or two there, sure. But I had never really been in crisis to that extent and then I was one of the youth leaders, so, I don’t know if maybe also being a youth leader made my kind of self-repression stand out a little bit more to those people. I had definitely started slowly not wanting to be so celebratory, not wanting to hang out with people, I guess maybe that triggered a red flag, but to this day I don’t know what made him say “something’s not right.” And then to make whatever call, because that sounds like they had not a meeting but like a “yeah, there has been something off and everybody agreed,” and that just took me aback because, I had never been privy to be a topic of conversation like that. That must have been a destiny thing as well.
TRHH: Another selfish question; you write in Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind about experiencing the afterlife after attempting to take your life; What did it feel like and did you have a sense of the beings there being specific people from your life?
EMMA LEE M.C.: I’ll answer that in reverse. The people there, a few of them I felt like were direct ancestral line — direct lineage. I couldn’t see them. Because I haven’t been around most of my bloodline there’s sometimes where people are my family members and I couldn’t tell. We don’t all have the same traits like that, so, there’s times where I wouldn’t know they were related to me if they were. But I could feel that some of them were like my kin, my ancestors, and that was pretty bugged out. They weren’t saying anything, that’s why I was bugged out. The other ones, it’s like what they call “ascended masters.” That’s what they felt like. They were just there watching — tuning in. They’re living certain afterlife assignments and they’re living out whole other lives, but they have this convene and this ability to just tap in, and know what’s going on, and zero in on any number of lives and kind of impact or influence the synchronicities of things. It was just picking up on that in split seconds, so, that was very interesting. It was very wondrous. I was so curious and I truly did just want to be there. I didn’t even need an assignment, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t even need to know who anybody was, I just really wanted to be there and observe because I was so fascinated.
How it felt, I’ve seen a lot of sitcoms that reenact what heaven is like but there was only one out of all the ones that I’ve ever seen that had one of the things I felt in the moment. Maybe it was The Golden Girls. Sophia got up there and she seen her husband and she was like “I’m so happy to see you, oh my God!” And then she was like “Oh my God, my teeth! They’re real teeth and my arthritis is gone,” and he was like “Yeah, up here all the parts work.” When I was there I didn’t have any physical issues of advanced age like that, but when I was there I felt so light. It’s like I had no stress of carrying the physical body at all — no strain anywhere. I was weightless and it just felt so good. I was so light. That was the overwhelming thing — there was no stress in any part of my body at all. Even when I was worried about what was about to happen to me it still didn’t translate physically. It was amazing.
TRHH: My favorite quote from Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind is “It’s essential to unlearn fears which affect our well-being by facing them or replacing them with new thoughts. Consider the inspirations which enthuse you most about controlling your own destiny.” That one hit me the hardest. I am a person that has lived my entire life by fear due to childhood trauma and did not begin to change that way of living until recent years when I was basically in my 40s. It’s still in me, but not like before. I’m working hard to truly live and enjoy life. Did you always have the ability to unlearn fears or is it something that came to you at some point in life?
EMMA LEE M.C.: I think the word “ability” almost defers to skill set, almost deferring to an acquired habit. I can definitely see points where it was strengthened and improved or went into a different dimension and evolved the whole of me from that moment. When you asked that question my brain started going immediately to me as a small child. It had to be before 7 because I remember facing the supposed fear, the perceived fear of my own physical strength by 7 years of age and kind of shattering that on my own. That’s a whole separate story, but my mother kept telling me that I wasn’t strong enough to lift certain things, and that I’m just a little girl, and it doesn’t work like that. I just was like, she’s fuckin’ crazy, like how you gonna tell me? I was like “I’m telling you I’m physically strong. I could physically lift this,” and she’s like “there’s no possible way you can lift this,” and I ended up lifting something that she told me I couldn’t lift successfully. That kind of broke the mold of and any fear like that and then from there I was fascinated with my physical power and it just grew from there. I was still years from doing the contact sports, but that made it super easy to flow into there because I had already broken that barrier on a very simple level.
Even before that, because I remember seeing a picture of me clutching my mother’s leg. We must have first got here from Uganda and I looked so scared in that picture. I looked scared. We were I think around Rockefeller Center in the daytime and I remember looking at that picture and just wondering what was going through my mind because I just looked so scared. It wasn’t soon after that that I started kind of doing things and exploring the world. I just started breaking those molds right away, so, I felt like it wasn’t just naturally in me like that. I think a great deal of it was, but I think the fact of my parents being the first to face America, and then doing it alone, and then me watching them and realizing like, “Whoa, we’re not really going to do this as a unit are we? We’re going to be three separate people here, that’s kind of crazy.” I think me realizing that early kind of bolstered my desire to get the fear thing sorted out, because it felt like when other kids get scared they have someone to go to, but here I don’t, so, what’s it gonna be? That’s still in contrast to people who are still facing it on a fundamental level in adulthood, yes, it is quite fair to say that I had that inherently very, very early. Earlier than most.
TRHH: In the book you talk about being more into male rap icons because you weren’t yet in touch with your whole self. It made me think of how so many men don’t like women rappers. Famously, the late, great Sean Price said he doesn’t like any women rappers besides MC Lyte. Do you think this is due to men not being in touch with their full selves?
EMMA LEE M.C.: Hmm, good question, it’s very possible. It’s very possible. That is very possible. It’s interesting because a partner I had that was a traditional, masculine, black man with roots in America told me that my relationship with him had put him more in touch with his quote UN quote “feminine energy.” That’s a big thing to admit in this climate. Speaking in spiritual terms, I got exactly what he was meaning. We would have a lot of deeply mental conversations and it just seemed like his point of view, and just to be able to discuss things in a certain way, it seemed like that was like a freedom. I do find that a lot actually, because I associate with men a lot and I don’t know what it is about people who want to tell me stuff, but a lot of times men want to just tell me things about themselves or their experiences.
I find that they open up about things that it’s clear they wouldn’t usually open up about, and I think that is a microcosm of why so many women rappers aren’t as embraced. Because on the ratio of that is I was just tapping into one of Lauryn Hill’s most recent performances and it’s mostly men in the comments like, “Oh, this is why she’s always been the G.O.A.T.! and “Just listen to those lyrics!” They’re gushing. I was just watching a Bahamadia video from ‘96 and people were in the comments like “This is so smooth” and “The way she’s rapping makes me feel like this,” so, I think that’s a very good point. I think you’re on to something.
TRHH: Now that you mentioned Lauryn and Bahamadia, those are two women that don’t flaunt sexuality as much. I think men in general feel weird when women are rapping sexy or about sexual stuff. I could play Lauryn Hill, I’m probably not gonna play Foxy Brown, know what I mean? And it’s not a skill thing, it’s a content or image thing. I don’t know.
EMMA LEE M.C.: Yeah, that’s something to come back to.
TRHH: I understand you have new music with Roccwell dropping soon. Give us some insight into that.
EMMA LEE M.C.: Yes, the album is titled “Chocolate Bars.” I’m so excited. You get the exclusive, Bahamadia is actually a feature on there along with Masta Ace. The Bahamadia single is called “Cravings and Withdrawals.” It’s funny because the Bahamadia video I was just watching was “True Honey Buns (Dat Freak Shit)” and I was just marveling at how our song that we recorded now 20-plus years later sounds like a B-side to that. We didn’t even do that intentionally at all, at all. But it sounds like it’s a B-side to that record. I was just thinking when I perform this live I want to have the show mix play with that, because this is so smooth. It’s just us kicking it and just talking and it’s so spacey and galactic, and jazzy and neo-souly. We hit that, we hit that.
And then the Masta Ace is single is called “Like it’s ’93” and it’s me and Masta Ace playing off of each other as though we’re in a relationship, but Masta Ace is representing Hip-Hop and I’m talking to Hip-Hop similar to how Common spoke on “I Used to Love H.E.R.” but instead my relationship with Hip-Hop, like many others, especially women, is a dysfunctional one. It’s a love and hate and confusing one. It’s a “I want to love you, but do you love me back?” And “What are you doing? What are you doing with yourself? Now that I’m in it why are you treating me like this?” So, I conveyed that by word playing 49 albums that were all released in 1993 and I exclusively speak with those album titles the whole thing, and then Masta Ace gives me his rebuttal as the final verse. I’m super excited!
TRHH: What do you want people to take away from Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind?
EMMA LEE M.C.: I want people to understand as Dr. Kashema Hutchinson so eloquently said the significance of the breaths we take, and how much life matters, how precious life is, and how malleable it is in our own hands. That self-determination is a realer thing than we are condition to believe it is, and that no matter what’s going on in the external world and the worldly world you can utilize your inner powers to live a life you truly want to live at any time, in any place. You can create your reality at will. And Hip-Hop has a whole lot, a whole lot of conscious teachings, and methods of unlearning, and self-determining and creating that we can glean from if we give it more of a chance and more of a respect as a genre, and a culture, and an energy, and a uniter of true things, despite that which seeks to exploit it otherwise.
Purchase: EMMA LEE M.C. – Y’all (NOT) Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind