Controversy surrounding “On the Come Up”

Controversy surrounding “On the Come Up” turns Brianna’s song into a public explanation for a school protest, with critics emphasizing its violent imagery and alleged influence on students while overlooking the conditions they protested. The resulting backlash puts her under scrutiny as a young Black girl rapper, even as the song’s reception draws attention to racialized school security, gendered expectations in music, and the gap between artistic expression and the identities others assign to its maker.

Origins and Public Framing

The controversy is rooted in a conflict over how Brianna is treated at Midtown. During a school security screening, the metal detector does not beep, yet Long blocks her from going through and orders her back; Tate justifies the order by saying Long gave it. The confrontation escalates, and the two guards restrain her while Malik records. This experience makes the later focus on her lyrics inseparable from the school’s own treatment of her: her song becomes a public concern, while the conduct that helped shape her distrust of authority risks falling out of view.

The school’s security debate also carries a comparison with Garden Heights High. Brianna’s mother explains that she and Brianna’s father had promised never to send Brianna and Trey there, describing it as a school with actual police serving as security and as a place treated like a prison. She argues that Midtown gives Brianna a better chance, even after Brianna challenges that assurance in light of her experience with its guards. Later, students discussing the possibility that the guards will return fear that the school may follow the Garden High model and station armed police at its doors. Shana connects this prospect to the parents who accepted the claim that Brianna was a drug dealer; Malik likewise predicts that the school now sees the students as threats. The controversy therefore develops amid a dispute over whether security means protection or an intensified presumption of danger.

Song, Broadcast, and Petition

A television report introduces the song to a wider audience by identifying it as the work of local rapper Bri and showing her Dat Cloud page. The report describes “On the Come Up” as violent, says it attacks law enforcement, and calls it a hit among young listeners. It then plays selected, censored excerpts rather than the entire song. The editing makes the lyrics available as evidence against Brianna while separating them from the fuller work and the circumstances in which it was written and performed.

The report links the song to a school uprising and says several students were arrested, while the security guards were hospitalized and expected to recover. Students have been sent home as school officials consider what to do next. When Brianna’s mother switches off the television and asks whether Brianna was involved, the question points to the personal consequences of the public framing: the broadcast has turned Brianna’s music into a reason to suspect her, even within her family’s conversation.

The backlash also takes the form of a petition to remove the song from Dat Cloud. During an interview on Hot 105, Hype tells listeners that some people believe the track led to a riot at a local school and that others call it anti-police. He asks Brianna whether its violent lyrics encouraged students to act violently. His framing puts her in the position of answering for the protest through her art, rather than beginning with what the students were protesting.

Brianna’s Response and the Gendered Double Standard

Brianna rejects the idea that a song caused the students to act. She argues that they were already upset about other things and that people are using her as a convenient excuse instead of asking about the real problems. When Hype asks who she means, she points to the news and to the author of the petition, who wrote an article about her as the villain without asking why the students protested in the first place. The disagreement is not simply over whether the lyrics sound violent; it is over which facts are treated as causes and whose account of the school’s conflict receives attention.

Hype presses the lyrics’ references to being armed and to being “lawless” if a police officer approaches. Brianna denies that she insinuated she would kill police officers and challenges the unequal attention given to her age and gender. She asks whether Hype was similarly disturbed when her father rapped about such subjects at sixteen. He admits he was not. Brianna identifies the distinction: the issue is not merely that a sixteen-year-old raps about violence, but that a sixteen-year-old girl does. The exchange exposes how the same subject matter can be treated differently depending on who performs it.

That double standard echoes the gendered demands Brianna has faced as an aspiring rapper. When a man at a recording session questions whether a girl can rap and mocks the prospect of nursery rhymes, Brianna recalls Aunt Pooh’s warning that she would have to do twice the work for half the respect, remain cutthroat, and avoid showing weakness. Brianna answers the mockery with a pointed insult, and some of the men respond with laughter and approval. The moment shows her navigating a male-dominated environment by meeting its challenge directly, while the later public scrutiny of “On the Come Up” shows how readily her assertiveness can be turned into a reason to police her expression.

Institutional Consequences and Wider Meaning

The controversy feeds back into the school’s security response. Shana tells Brianna that the superintendent has agreed to meet with the student coalition after school, partly because he has spoken with Brianna. She says he has also seen Brianna’s music video and that it has given him a new perspective on the incident with Long and Tate. The video thus complicates the story attached to the song: rather than serving only as supposed evidence of danger, Brianna’s work can help school leadership reconsider what happened to her.

The coalition plans to take a petition to the meeting asking the superintendent to remove armed police officers as school security. This petition shifts the argument from whether Brianna’s lyrics should remain online to what measures the school should adopt and whom those measures may endanger. The contrast is stark: one petition seeks to suppress the song by making it responsible for the protest, while the students’ petition asks the school to reconsider the presence of armed officers. In the broader narrative, the controversy reveals how a young Black girl’s art can be treated as both a threat and a public argument, while the institutional conditions that provoked student anger remain contested.