CHYNA WHYTE Where are you from? I’m from New Orleans, but my career really popped off in Atlanta. Most people remember you from features on Lil Jon records. How did you hook up with him? I spent like five years working on my demo, and I started mailing it out to different labels in 1998. At the time, Jon was an A&R at So So Def. I guess he was going through tapes and he liked mine. He called me and told me to come to Atlanta. He was working on a group called 4X Family and he wanted me to be in it. I came up to Atlanta, and I’ve been with him ever since. I signed with BME and later, in 2001, we got the deal with TVT. After “Bia Bia,” you kinda disappeared for a while. Where have you been and what have you been doing? Well, I had to do some Fed time. I had been going through the process all throughout “Bia Bia.” Right after the video dropped, I had to turn myself in and go to jail on a gun-related charge. I was locked up for six months and then I was on house arrest for the rest of the year. I came back out in 2002 doing a couple shows, and then I got pregnant. I had to take care of that. I took a little over two years off to deal with that. And I thought about things during that time, I started to see things in a different light.
Do you feel like you missed out on the buzz created by “Bia Bia”? Not really, because I have an understanding of how things work. I felt like I had to go through that. Even though I was out there and it seemed like things were blowing up, I feel like my time is right now. Everything’s going smooth. I had to go through what I went through. I was doing a lot of destructive stuff and I was heading in the wrong direction. I had to take a minute off to slow down, but all that is done with now. I’m not tryin’ to do no more dirt, man. I don’t feel like I missed nothing. I feel like the time is now. I’m 100 times better now, you know? I’ve got my own label, my own management company, my own artist. Everything’s falling into place, and now that Jon is who he is in the game, it’s even easier. When “Bia Bia” first was blowing up he had a real hard time getting on the radio and on BET, even though the song was hot in the streets. He had to fight to get crunk music out there, so it’s so much easier now that everything’s in place. It seems like a lot of women’s careers are halted by pregnancy. I mean, I was happy being pregnant. I love being a mother. But this is my first child, and I’m seeing that children do change your life and it does slow things down as far as your career. I used to be able to just get up and go, but now I’m looking for a babysitter. And you don’t want just any kind of babysitter. You’re worried that something’s gonna happen to your child. You’ve got to be a mother, you’ve gotta be home. Not only do you have to be in the studio, writing rhymes, on the road, hitting clubs, being seen – you’ve also gotta be home, cleaning, cooking, being there for your child, taking your baby to the doctor if she’s sick, going to the emergency room and being there all night. It’s a whole ‘nother level. It comes with the territory. When you came out, you really had a different look. You weren’t the typical Lil Kim/Foxy Brown type female rapper with a sexy look and sexy lyrics. You were more thugged out. I’m just doing me, that’s me. That’s how I like to rock. I like being sexy sometimes and I like being a woman, but that’s just how I rock. I like big jeans and Polos. I can’t do nothing but be me.... Visit www.ozonemag.com to read the rest of this interview in the February 2006 edition. - Julia Beverly (Photo: Tshombe Roberts) OZONE
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