Put on Your Crown (12 page)

But when my brother and I rode together, we were perfectly in sync. Around the time we got the bikes, I’d just bought my mother
a house that we could all live in: I would get the top floor, my mother the middle floor, and Winki would be in the basement.
I was on the road a lot, touring for my second album, and I missed my mother and brother. We were all living in separate apartments,
and on the night or two I got to be home, I didn’t always have the time to drive out and see them both. This was my way of
keeping my family close.

I found a contemporary house in a nice, quiet suburban neighborhood, but it was brand new and still raw. We needed flooring,
hardware, lighting, plumbing, everything. Winki knew a thing or two about hardware, so whenever we had free time together,
we’d ride out to Manhattan’s Chinatown and look at all the lighting and plumbing fixture shops, grab something to eat, then
gun it fast and hard on the way back home to New Jersey. They were some of the happiest times in my life.

Redlining down a highway, flying down a mountain, diving out of a plane—these are scary things. But some of the scariest moments
in life have nothing to do with jumping off a cliff. They’re about facing down your demons or having the moral courage to
walk away when you know something’s not right.

When I was a child, my scariest times were when I felt I had to break away from the pack. Mom and Dad warned me there would
be times when I would have to stand alone or fight back, and I dreaded those moments. I stood firm, but inside I was trembling.
Sometimes I had to face down a bully or risk being unpopular with the cool crowd when they were talking about doing drugs
or hanging out in a bad neighborhood late at night.

I didn’t always make the right choices. But my bad decisions were more out of an overwhelming curiosity than fear of what
other people thought of me. I was very young when I’d sneak off to New York City with my brother or a crew of friends. I was
barely into my teens when I started experimenting with drugs and sex. But that ability to stand alone was what stopped me
from taking it so far down the line that I couldn’t come back without some permanent damage. I would try something once, realize
it would
be all too easy to get addicted, and never go there again, despite what all my so-called friends were trying to get
me into. When I realized I was taking something too far, I didn’t have a problem with walking away, despite what everyone
else was doing. I was more afraid of disappointing my parents and letting myself down than losing favor with the cool kids.

Fear of failure was another thing I had to overcome. I was a competitive kid, and I expected to be good at whatever I put
my hand to, but you can’t ace everything. When I was eight, I tried out for the neighborhood kickball team without ever having
played before. I just thought I could do it. I went out there and gave it my all. Somebody kicked the ball at me, and it came
so fast that I thought I would catch it, but it bounced right off my stomach and I didn’t make the catch. I got cut from the
tryouts that day, and I’d never felt more dejected. The walk home wasn’t very long, but it seemed like forever. I came home
crying. My mom made dinner for me, gave me a hug, and told me that she loved me and she was proud of me for trying and doing
my best. She told me it was going to be okay,
and she was right. Rejection didn’t break me. It just made me that much more
determined to succeed. Learning this lesson so young was a blessing, because it’s something you can apply at any stage of
your life. You can’t excel at anything in life without a few failures under your belt. Embrace them, because they will make
you bold.

When you are consumed by a fear of failure, it’s almost a foregone conclusion. I learned that lesson as a junior in high school
when I took a public speaking class. I had to learn a section of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I didn’t study
it as much as I could have, and I didn’t sleep well the night before, because I was so worried I’d bomb. The next day we had
to go up against another school, and I had to get up in front of this class full of unfamiliar faces and a few I did know
from the neighborhood. Of course, I butchered my speech. I tried to be passionate about it, but I went completely blank at
times. I got through it, but I missed key lines. My palms were sweating, my throat was dry, and I stumbled over the words.
I was terrified I was going to blow it, which I proceeded to do when I got up there. But something else happened.
I survived
. No matter how bad you think it is, it really isn’t. You live through it and you learn from it.

I did much better the next time. Taking that class and facing those fears allowed me to be able to get up
in front of an audience
full of people and host the American Music Awards or host a talk show in front of a live audience every day for two seasons,
thinking on my feet and controlling the flow of the conversation. It allows me to speak in a roomful of people and be unafraid
to go into meetings to pitch an idea I believe in. I can go into a room, face high-powered executives, producers, or financiers
who can make it happen, and not be the least bit intimidated. Without that early experience of seriously flubbing my lines
and living through it, I never would have had the confidence I have today. Failure is not the end of the world, but never
even trying is a travesty.

In my sophomore year, when I switched to Irvington High School where my mother taught, I set the bar even higher for myself.
That year they had a big talent show, and even though I didn’t know a lot of people at the school, I really wanted to enter
my name and be a part of it. But just walking out onto that stage, I was so nervous that my hands were shaking. I started
singing “If Only for One Night” by Luther Vandross, and the more I continued to sing, the more comfortable I felt. I glanced
down at the audience and saw something in one person’s eyes and something in another person’s eyes—it was a look that said,
“Wow, she can sing!” That was the spark I needed to start owning that song. I lost myself in it,
and my fears melted away.
I nailed it and got an amazing response from the crowd.

That moment brought me several steps closer to my music career. I started performing with friends, doing beat box in the girls’
restroom at school, rhyming and making beats on the bathroom stall door. I made friends with other kids from around the way
who shared my passion, like my boy DJ Mark and Shakim. Once I discovered hip-hop, there was no turning back.

Facing your fear is the one true path to your future—your destiny. Sometimes we fear the things we desire the most, because
we are so terrified we’ll mess them up. But think of what you’d be missing out on if you didn’t even try.

I have a close friend who has the most brilliant ideas. He comes up with amazing concepts like it’s nothing. He’s so creative
about all kinds of things, whether it’s a merchandising scheme or something related to a film or music project. This guy is
a magnificent master planner, and he’s opened up my mind to endless possibilities. But he’s terrible in meetings. Every time
we get in a room with the money people to make it happen, he
chokes up. He doesn’t say a word, and he freaks. We would literally
be sitting in a conference room with his idea—an idea I wanted him to present himself—and he couldn’t speak, so I had to do
it for him.

Imagine how far my friend could go, and what he could become, if he would just open his mouth and say what he felt and thought.
He’s paralyzed by fear, and it makes me sad. I tried to tell him, “This is your idea, you’ve got to go in and sell it.” This
was his baby, but he couldn’t raise it, or feed it, or do anything with the baby he gave birth to because he couldn’t, or
wouldn’t, bring himself to speak.

I’m glad I bombed more than once because I knew what it was like to fail, and I knew I could survive it, dust myself off,
and get better the next time. That feeling of falling flat on your face is tough to deal with. It’s uncomfortable. It makes
you feel raw, exposed, humiliated. But you’ll live through it and be better with the knowledge you gained from your mistakes.
Even if you are feeling uncertain, you have to front a little bit. Try acting like you’ve got the courage and confidence,
even if you’re nervous, so you can trick yourself into believing it. Make it a mantra. Say those affirmations out loud. When
you wake up and tell yourself today is going to be a good day, you put that in your mind. You put the energy out there.

Of course, it’s natural to have a little bit of fear.
I’m not gonna lie to you—there are a lot of situations that make me
nervous. When I’m preparing for a new movie role and I’m about to share the screen with Oscar-winning actors like Denzel Washington
or Holly Hunter, or any other great actor who’s been doing it far longer than I have, I get intimidated. But it’s a healthy
kind of fear, because it makes you want to do a great job. It doesn’t make me not want to act, it just makes me more aware
of what I’m doing.

I had to face some fear recently when I was filming
Just Wright
. My character has a love scene with the character played by Common, and it’s the most intimate I’ve ever had to be on camera.
I did a kissing scene before in
Beauty Shop
. But despite the fact that I got to kiss Djimon Hounsou, a really hot guy, doing it on film feels awkward. It’s not like
I ever saw myself kissing before. I know what it feels like. I know I’m good at it, and I know I feel sexy when I’m kissing,
but I never had to worry about whether or not a camera angle is making me look crazy while I’m doing it.

Now multiply that anxiety by a factor of a hundred. I’d heard other actors talk about doing love scenes and how embarrassing
it can be with all those people in the room—the director, the cameraman, the lighting guys, the grips. I knew I’d have to
be vulnerable and expose some sides of myself, both emotionally and physically.
I had to put all of this private stuff on-screen,
with no idea how I looked. But you know something? I got through it, and the end product was as tasteful as I’d hoped it would
be. Despite my jitters, I had to get into that moment and that character and push through my inhibitions. It’s the only way
you can grow as an actor and a human being.

I was even more intimidated when I had to do a scene with a group of women who were not professional actors. These were real
women who were HIV-positive, playing themselves in a scene for an HBO movie called
Life Support
. It was based on the true story of writer/director Nelson George’s sister Ana, a wife and mother who overcame her addiction
to crack to become a peer counselor for an AIDS outreach program in Brooklyn. Looking at the real Ana walking down Flatbush
Avenue was almost like looking at a mirror image of myself, we’re so similar. We’re both Pisces. We’re both headstrong. We’re
both curious about life in ways that could get us into trouble.

I grew up around women like Ana, in the same streets at around the same time, and I did some of the same things. I felt like
I could really relate to the characters, to the situations, to a family disrupted by drug addiction. I could relate to all
of that just in my own
family. I could relate to Ana’s sense of wanting to get out there and see what life had to offer, although
we took dramatically different turns. I could relate to her desire for redemption as well, for wanting the second chance to
try to repair those relationships. I’ve had the same thoughts. I’ve said to myself, “Okay, I messed up, but I’m back on track
and I really want to get things back to where they were.”

In the group session scene, I play Ana, opening up about her guilt and her frustration as she tries to reconnect with the
daughter she left in the care of her mother when she was still addicted to crack. I wanted to be respectful of the other women
in the room. They had all kinds of stories, yet they were walking through life, facing this disease. I had to be humble about
it, and respectful, because these women do amazing things in the name of HIV prevention and outreach every day. I didn’t want
this to be a movie that was taking advantage of other people’s stories. They were real women who faced many of the same situations
I lived through. I had to make it real, so I dug deep into my past, from the time I was just Dana, a teenager experimenting
and trying to figure out
who I was. Those were times when I took chances I probably shouldn’t have taken. I took myself back
to those places where things occurred in my life I’m not proud of; where I did things that made me feel dirty and ashamed.
So what came across on the screen was pure, raw emotion. I was living through the pain again. It was like opening up a vein.
And I’d do it all over again.

Making that movie was life-affirming in so many ways. I was so passionate about the subject that the time between reading
the script and shooting the first scene was a month—that’s unheard of! I knew it would be a tough film to make, but it was
a story that had to be told. It made me realize how fortunate I was. While we were shooting, I was walking down some of those
streets thinking, “My God, I could still be here. I could have contracted HIV.” It made me aware of how serious the issue
still is, especially for young black women. I was one of the lucky ones. I made it out of those situations I was putting myself
in when I was fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen years old. I had a newfound respect for the courage of these women who weren’t
so fortunate; who’d lived through the worst but had the strength of character to keep moving forward, living their lives and
helping others.

Being fearless is about so much more than the daredevil stunts I tend to enjoy. My mother is the most courageous person I
know, but she wouldn’t be caught dead on a motorcycle. As a matter of fact, when I was just a baby, a motorbike accident almost
killed her. She was riding on the back of my father’s bike when someone swerved into them. The doctors gave her some experimental
drug to stop the pain from her injuries, and it almost shut her body down. So no, my mother won’t necessarily be joining me
on my first skydive. But every day she teaches me what it means to have the heart of a lioness.