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Kid Sister: High Gloss :: Hit Kid Sister on her Beeper, she'll be at the BET awards-cursing and doing the Pony

By Daiana Feuer   Photography by Andreas Larsson

06/27/08 :: URB web

Melisa Young says "shit" 23 times, "fuck" 28 times and "fun" 17 times in a 63 minute phone call. She cues up Slick Rick's "Children's Story" within five seconds as the answer to "What is the ultimate sample?" and puts my ear against the speaker. Three dishes she'd take on an island: (1) Chips, guac and salsa, (2) chicken vindaloo (extra hot with naan), and (3) some soul food (macaroni and cheese, crusty on top, with fried chicken, turkey and ham). She got her first acrylic nails, long and candy red, at age 13, but never had a Kid Sister doll.

Sitting at the Dream Hotel in New York City, everything is aquamarine. The bed is a floating platform, flat and rectangular, Asian in vibe, with blue lights underneath. It's an inspiration for her fantasy tour bus, which, like her nails, has to have "a little spank on it." It's got to have pink ground effects. Everything will be pink and purple with sparkles on it. In her words, "a Tokyo Drift-ass tour bus."

Recently, a spotlight follows Young to fashionably abstract hotel rooms with an endless supply of Red Bull. Reverberations of "Hit me on my beeper, beeper, beeper" and "She got her toes done up with her fingernails matchin'" echo from club to red carpet. Electro loving hipsters and mainstream hip-pop charts just can't get enough. Even Mickey D's called for a commercial. "To be thrust into smoke and mirrors and glitz and fancy stuff, it's crazy," Young laughs. "Sushi is supposed to be a treat, not every fucking night!"

Let's go back to Markham, Illinois, and trace our way through the first time the word "fuck" let loose from Melisa Young's glossy lips. It's the early '90s. Along the South Chicago suburb's rough edges, the air smells of nature and weed: fields, trees and kush. It's a nothing-to-do neighborhood where the smart move is to throw out the box that came with your new TV at the park, so no one passing your trash bin gets any ideas.

"Our mom wouldn't let us leave the street and the street was really short," Young recounts. "We dug up worms. We made mud pies. We played in the drainage ditch. We had cable, that's why I was fat."

The Kid Sister story tells the life of a chubby girl turned skinny turned chubby turned skinny turned rapper. A bit like Hairspray, with cursing and ghetto house music replacing '60s soul and pop."I had to get on Jenny Craig because I was a chubbasaurus rex. Little Debbie, that was my girl."

Does the image of mini-Melisa include any wacky, awful injuries, you may wonder? Naturally, that's the next question.

"One time, I forgot my key. There was a picnic table my grandparents bought. It was all rickety and fucked up. I put the picnic table against the house, took one of the long benches that go with the picnic table, stacked that on top of the picnic table, put another bench on top of that and tried to climb on it. I fell from 12 feet up and, I was so fat, I shattered my ankle. Our dog was inside the house and, he was so upset by me screaming, he unlocked the door. My ankle was fucked for five years. I would just twist my ankle around and it was like, crack."

Age: 12. Catholic school choir Kid Sis listens to classical radio, likes Bach. But there's this group called Color Me Badd, they're kinda wild, talking about "Slow Motion" and things they want to do all night. The Sister enters a hippie commune school on the farm. Meets bad girls who get fake IDs and show her a whole new world, starting with a teen dance club called Jubilation.

"That was the first time I heard Percolator. Cashmere sold the mixtape out of the back of his car. Reel 2 Reel was my first show. 'I like to move it, move it.' It was him and two lesbian dancers with dreadlocks. I was fucking shocked. Dancing brings me back to this time that was all about having fun. There's a song, I could play it for you right now, 'She got a big old dookie booty, I got a big old dookie booty.' I grew up with that song. Maybe it's the endorphins. I like shakin' my ass. You know, people get a little buzz when they get to movin'."

Asked how she pulls it off in a dress and high heels, Kid Sister responds with a pregnant pause, as if squeezing my face in her hand to shake it with the following words: "Do you know how many fucking terrifying thoughts go through my head every time I jump in heels? Think about my ankle. Think-a-bout-my-ankle. Every time I jump, I'm like, 'OK, OK, OK, oh my God, picnic table!"

Young fortifies her bones before a show by stretching out with a couple of those energy drinks. "It makes me more spry. Why do coke, when you can get Red Bull for two dollars? And you can mix it with a drink and that gets you fucked up as well. That's my thought on coke and Red Bull."

 CONTINUES

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