You can't play with my yo-yo.
Yo, yo, yo, don't try to play me out.
Don't try to play me out.
♪ music playing ♪
At a time when hypermasculine energy
was dominating hip-hop, YoYo stepped up to the mic
and represented for the ladies in a major way.
Now, at age 48,
she uses music to teach at-risk students
through YoYo's School of Hip Hop.
What was it about that era, the '90s,
that made hip-hop kind of be that vehicle,
that voice, for a generation to express itself?
Oh, God, I cannot stop thinking
about the days I laid in my bunk bed
listening to L.L. Cool J's “When I'm alone in my room...
♪ sometimes I stare at the wall ♪
♪ and in the back of my mind, ♪ ♪ I hear my conscience call. ♪
Oh! So in love with music.
So in love with L.L. Cool J.
So in love with hip-hop.
Hearing Roxanne Shante battle the UTFO crew
and hearing how powerful she was,
just responding, it was like, What?
I need to come out with something.
And so I started my journey.
You always had a way
to infuse positive messages into your music.
Is that something that was very intentional?
It is a part of my personality.
There was not a lot of women who had a comeback,
matter-of-fact kind of attitude.
And the music that I was writing
was saying just that.
It was intentional when I got my first deal.
Ice Cube and I got together.
Speaking of Ice Cube,
the back and forth, "It's a Man's World."
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit
about the creative process leading into that,
“It's a man's world,
but check the girl with the MAC-11 187”
Ice Cube, oh, God, I just love him so much
because Cube was known for setting the tone,
creating the concept and giving you vision,
which I admired about him.
And I think, when we started writing,
I was afraid to tell him
the kind of respect I wanted from him,
knowing him as a member of NWA.
But I knew that music was so male-dominated,
I really didn't know how to say to him,
"Yo, I don't want you calling me no [expletive],
I don't want you talking to me crazy."
But Cube always respected me.
For sure.
The video, "I Wanna Be Down,"
the remix, it was such a moment.
Classic.
♪ He was born 20 years ago, ♪ ♪ just a pimp toes ♪
♪ every day, new clothes, ♪ ♪ look at the cut cool toes, ♪
You, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Brandy,
one of the things that really stood out to me
is that I don't see a lot of music that's intergenerational.
To me, that was such a special moment,
because Brandy was just coming into her career
with these legends on there.
It was hard to bridge that gap.
This generation, they're very fearless.
They have a lot to say.
People ask me all the time,
“Why are you doing ‘Love & Hip Hop Hollywood?’”
All I've been doing is eating, sleeping and living music.
How else would this generation get to know me
if I don't insert myself in it?
I know you went back to school
at 30, which I find inspiring.
The first day on campus for me
was, oh, God, it was a humbling experience.
I remember walking with my head down,
not wanting to look up,
because I would hear so many times
people ridicule artists for having a job.
“Oh, they work here.”
So I didn't know how they would take me being a student.
It took me day by day until, “Oh, you're YoYo.
Oh, I love that you're going back to school.
Oh, wow.”
I had a professor, Dr. Yasin, take a liking to me,
and gave me wings to fly.
Did you know that you wanted
to go back to music at some point?
I had lied so much in the beginning,
telling people, “Yo, I got music coming.
I'm working on something. It's coming, it's coming.”
Nothing was coming; I wasn't working on anything.
So when I went to school,
it was the first time I felt comfortable saying,
“I’m not going music anymore.”
And that took a lot out of me,
just to even say it,
but it calmed a lot of my butterflies.
Eventually, you started
YoYo's Hip Hop School.
What was going through your mind
in terms of what you wanted to contribute
to society, post-music?
Giving back saved my life.
Giving the advice, information, resources,
relationships that I feel like I didn't have.
I wanted to create a place
where people can come and learn how to make beats,
learn how to write rhymes.
We came up with a curriculum.
And I said, “Well, listen,
I mean, if we have this many kids
signing up for beat production,
how can we equate that to engineering?
How can we equate that to mathematics?”
And I didn't realize
how many kids wanted to learn how to write lyrics,
and how many kids couldn't write a paragraph.
Now we teach kids
how to turn sentences into paragraphs
and paragraphs into essays.
I think it's important
for artists like yourselves to use the power of hip-hop
to go back into our communities,
because it is such a powerful tool.
It really is.
If you make it in hip-hop, you can make it anywhere.
That's amazing.
Speaking of still being in hip-hop,
last year you toured with Rakim and Eric B.
Oh, my God.
Tell me about that.
Such a blessing.
I mean, East Coast and West Coast
beefed for so long.
Look at Tupac and Biggie.
Look at people saying where hip-hop comes from.
How in the hell did Eric B. and Rakim
come to the West Coast and grab Yo-Yo?
That's a good feeling,
when you've grown up in this music industry.
I could be jaded on so many sides.
I could have so many ill feelings about this industry.
Yet, took a lickin' and kept on kickin'.
What would be some of the things
that you would like to pass on
to a younger self or to someone in the game now?
Say it out loud.
The more you lie to yourself,
the harder it is for you to just discover the truth.
You're just holding yourself back.
Be honest with yourself.
And I teach the kids that at my school.
I tell them, I say,
"If you're going to do something,
what are you going to do?"
♪ ♪
You're not going to pretend to do it.
You're not going to say you did it and you didn’t do it.
You're going to really do it.
It wasn’t long enough,
but thank you for being so graceful.
Thank you, thank you!
Thank you.
Make sure you subscribe to AARP
and follow your girl YoYo.
♪ ♪