No One Can Stop You On The Come Up, Dreamer

~On the Come Up~
By Angie Thomas
Amazon ~ Powell's

Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.

On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’s homage to hip-hop, the art that sparked her passion for storytelling and continues to inspire her to this day. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working-class black families.


After reading The Hate U Give, I knew I had to come back for more of Thomas's powerful stories. While not as familiar with hip-hop or rap music, I knew I had to at least give it a shot. This is my third time reading about the black experience—I'm sure there are better terms for it, but I like it better than Black Lives Matter, which some people are tagging these books despite them having little-to-nothing to do with the movement—and the third time I am in awe of how little I know about the world around me.

Thomas's second book also takes place in The Hate U Give's neighborhood of Garden Heights. (Still not sure which city/state Garden Heights is a part of—I assumed California, but if it gets cold in the winter, maybe not? Thomas's next book, Concrete Rose, will be a prequel focussing on Starr's father, Mavrick, so perhaps they'll retroactively name these books the Garden Heights Chronicles? I'd be down for that.) Time-wise, we're about a year after the shooting of Khalil and the riots. But Bri has other things on her mind: mainly getting her big break in the music business so she can support her hard-times-hit family.

If The Hate U Give was a statement about police brutality and the media, this is a love letter to hip-hop, rap, and lower class families. There's still racial issues, like profiling by campus security, and whether music lyrics can 'provoke' violence just because they came out of a black girl. But the majority of the story is simply your typical downtrodden teen looking for a better life.

Bri, however, would argue that she is anything but typical. The daughter of a local legend, she's trying hard to make a name for herself, but it's hard to feel special when you're attending a school for the artistically elite, and everyone else sees you as your father's shadow. Not to mention how unstable her home life is, what with her mom losing her job and the bills starting to go unpaid, and with her aunt selling drugs for her gang, it's probably only a matter of time before she's lost to the courts or a bullet. And "complicated" only gets even more so when Bri records and releases her first song, which is at once a hit and a controversy due to its intense tone and lyrics (inspired by being inappropriately handled by campus security).

I found the rap aspect instantly engaging. I may not have an overt love for poetry—I hated reading and analyzing it in school—but rap battles are much more easy to follow. Being able to read her raps with the accompanying music/cadence really helped, plus it was neat getting insight on how she composes them. Taking words she hears that impact her, defining them and figuring how they'd best fit into a rhyme. Whether you love music, poetry, or just wordsmithing, I think most readers and writers can appreciate the craft that Thomas displays through Bri's perspective.

Whereas my last two books focused a lot on radical goings on, it was nice to get back into somewhat normal YA trappings. Bri is outspoken, impulsive, and proud. She tries to help out, but too often her acting with the best intentions still results in unforeseen negative consequences. Like with her music, she wants to break out and get a record deal, not only for herself, but to help out her financially strapped family, yet her heat-of-the-moment lyrics end up causing not just an instant hit, but tension at school and with the neighborhood gangs. Still, I have to admire Bri for her confidence and ballsiness—despite it being grounds for labeling her "aggressive":

“Aggressive” is used to describe me a lot. It’s supposed to mean threatening, but I’ve never threatened anybody. I just say stuff that my teachers don’t like. All of them except Mrs. Murray, who happens to be my only black teacher. There was the time in history class during Black History Month. I asked Mr. Kincaid why we don’t ever talk about black people before slavery. His pale cheeks reddened. [15%]

White girls don’t get sent to the office for making snide remarks. Hell, I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. They get a warning. But anytime I open my mouth and say something my teachers don’t like, to the office I go. Apparently words are different when they come out of my mouth. They somehow sound more aggressive, more threatening. [55%]

That's the other thing about YA fiction: the adults don't always know how to act around youth. Bri is expected to be grown up in a lot of ways, yet her mom and aunt often still treat her as a kid who doesn't need to know. When her mom loses her job, it's not something Bri needs to worry about. When her aunt goes out to "do [gang/drug] business", Bri doesn't get to ask questions. It's something that might annoy newcomers to the YA genre, but was comfortingly familiar for me after the lack of adult participation in SLAY, and the surprisingly open discourse in The Hate U Give.

That isn't to say that this story is any less needed in the discourse of today. As I've mentioned, Bri has a violent experience with her school's security team early on in the book, an event that serves as a catalyst for most of the rest of the story. So from the outset, this book spotlights racial profiling, excessive force from 'law' enforcement, and double-standards in punishment. It also focuses on some issues lower-income communities deal with such as gang culture, drug dealing, recovering from addiction, financial instability, and government assistance (or lack thereof). There's a general sense of helplessness that results in people either making do or praying for a miracle to get them out—or on the come up, as Bri and her aunt put it.

But at the same time, there are those who want to fight for change. After the security guards are reinstated without punishment for Bri's assault, other students start reciting her lyrics in protest. When the protest catches media attention, some of her classmates ask her to come forward with her story, allow footage to be released to give the school's parents and supervisors a clearer picture of what truly happened. Bri is understandably reluctant to come forward, not because of any unwanted publicity or fear, but because she doesn't want to become another statistic, another forgotten victim of the system, part of another story she didn't have a say in. It's through the journey she takes in the book (which I don't want to spoil) that she's able to find her voice, quite literally, and slowly work toward and inspire change.

Ultimately, On the Come Up may not hit as hard as its predecessor in the areas that spark media attention, but it's still powerful in its own right. Race issues are still prevalent, but class struggles seem to be at the forefront of this one, and boy do people not want to talk about poverty in America. Bri may also polarize readers as she doesn't hesitate to speak her mind, never pulling punches or practicing code-switching around her white classmates/teachers, but I found that more endearing than off-putting. There's definitely a message or two to be taken from this story, and I made plenty of highlights that I thought illustrated them, but it's also simple in its exploration of a young girl's growing up. So if you're looking for a well-written YA book, one that features music and lyrics, that has a strong female lead, that emphasizes the importance of family, but also has insight on our current issues in America, then please check out On the Come Up.