Latto (born Alyssa Michelle Stephens) is an American rapper.
She is best known for her song “Big Energy,” which won Song of the Year at the 2022 BET Awards.
Latto and Nicki Minaj got into it after a report claimed “Super Freaky Girl” wasn’t hip-hop enough for the Grammys.
A bitter back and forth broke out between Nicki Minaj and Latte October 13, after The Hollywood Reporter claiming that The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, will not consider Nicki’s song “Super Freak Girl” for rap categories, and will instead consider it a pop song. “I have no problem getting out of the RAP category as long as we are ALL treated FAIRLY,” Nicki, 39, tweeted in response to the report. “Whether [‘Super Freaky Girl’] 2B left the RAP, so the same [Latto’s Song] “Great energy! ANY1 who says diff is simply a Nicki hater or troll.
Damn I can’t win for losing…all these awards/names I can’t even celebrate
Latto, 23, apparently responded to Nicki by dragging her into this conversation by Tweeter, “Damn, I can’t win for losing…all these awards/names I can’t even celebrate.” (Earlier today, Latto earned multiple nominations for the 2022 American Music Awards.) Apparently, the two tried to chat privately, but the fight went public. Nicki called Latto “Karen” in a now-deleted tweet, Latto said Nicki was “literally older than my mom [and] try to be a bully. The public fight continued to get messy, with the Barbz getting involved and the DMs split. Ultimately, Nicki deleted most of her comments.
So who is the rapper who is the new public enemy #1 for Barbz everywhere? Here’s what you need to know about Latto.
(Gregory Pace/Shutterstock)
Latto is a rapper
Latto was born on December 22, 1998 in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She started rapping at the age of ten, according to all music. She released a handful of mixtapes in the second half of the 2010s, before releasing her debut studio album, Queen of the Soufin 2020. In March 2022, she is released 777his second studio album.
“I wanted to solidify myself and know where I fit in the industry,” Latto said. Complex on 777. “This is just the first introduction. ‘Big Energy’ is the pop sound of this project. I have an R&B sound. I have the rap trap sound. I have some rhythm stuff I did with Pharrell, just different swaggy stuff.
She won The rap game
At 16, she joined the Queen Latifah/Jermaine Dupri –produced a Lifetime reality TV show, The rap game. The boot camp style show pitted the rappers against each other and Latto, under her name “Miss Mulatto”, won the contest. Jermaine Dupri offered her a recording contract on his label So So Def Records, but she turned it down, saying it wasn’t enough money (h/t Vlad TV).
She identifies as biracial
When Latto started rapping, she was called “Miss Mulatto”, turning the ugly racist term into a source of pride (journalist Nadra Kareem Nittle wrote about the term’s ugly roots in an article for Thought Co.)
“I’m passionate about my running,” Latto, then 15, said per DX hip hop. “I am Miss Mulatto. The term mulatto is technically a racial slur. It means someone who is half black and half white. So it’s, like, controversial. I took that negativity from the word mulatto, and now…everyone calls me Miss Mulatto. Why should I choose one or the other? I am both. That’s what I want to do.
(Brandon Nagy/Shutterstock)
“My mother was pregnant with me when she was 15. She went to a majority white school, so of course she was 15, pregnant with a black man, it was just too much for them to handle,” the Latto teenager added. “So many people doubt you…oh, she can’t do that, she’s a female dog, oh, she can’t do that.” I have to show that this is what I worked for. I’m ready for that. Let’s go.”
She adopted the name Latto in 2021
She eventually changed her stage name to Latto in 2021. “You know you might know your intentions, but they’re strangers who don’t know you, never even met you in person,” he said. she declared in a hot freestyle maintenance (h/t Billboard). “So you have to listen to yourself, and if you know that’s not your intentions, and that’s how it’s perceived, it’s like, why not make a change or modify it? For me, it was the name. So now I’m like, ‘OK, my intentions were never to glorify being a mulatto.’ So if that’s how it’s perceived and people think I’m saying, ‘Oh, I’m better because I’m mulatto’ or ‘My personality trait is mulatto’…then I have to change that.”
Latto explained how ‘female rappers have it harder’
In March 2022, Latto opened up about some of the struggles she’s faced in her career. “I’m finishing my album right now, and it’s been hard dealing with these men, you know what I mean? They don’t know how to keep doing business,” she said in an interview with big boy television, by Complex. “I’m just keeping 100. It’s a feature of my album that was hard to erase, and they like trying to let me go because I won’t respond to a DM.”
(John Nacion/NurPhoto/Shutterstock)
“My intentions weren’t, like, to make it a whole thing,” she later said The breakfast club on comments. “I was just looking at it like, like, I’m a new rapper in the game. I wish someone could give me some insight into how these things really go. You hear, like, ‘Oh, female rappers have it harder.’ But I wanted to give a little insight into what specifically makes it harder for a female rapper. I didn’t want it to distract from the music or anything, so I kinda wish I hadn’t said that.
“A lot of times we’re bullied behind closed doors by these companies or male artists or male producers or billion dollar companies and labels that go against you,” she later explained in a Complex interview. “They can decide your creativity, which I think is very lame and unfair. But I think my little voice can have an impact and maybe encourage other people to talk about what they’re going through too, because I’m not the only woman going through these things, but we’re told to. silence.
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