BEFORE becoming one of the most promising female emcees to ever emerge out of Brooklyn, rapper Lola Brooke was born Shyniece Thomas on February 1st sometime in the mid-to-late 90s and raised around Tompkins Avenue in the neighborhood known as Bed-Stuy. As you can tell from that quote, her childhood was far from easy, but that never prevented Lola from believing she was meant to accomplish something special. Everyday she’d wake up with a feeling deep inside of herself like she was meant to do something spectacular with her life. The question was, what was that something supposed to be? Throughout her childhood she was unsure, but that never stopped her from working towards it. Starting at around eight-years-old, Lola began using words as an outlet to express herself creatively. With her father having never had much of a presence in her life, her mom sent her to spend a summer in Birmingham, Alabama at her grandmother’s house. That’s where Lola came across a music video for the rap duo Kris Kross and instantly fell in love with hip-hop. While watching that video, Lola turned to her grandma and told her point-blank that one day, she was going to become a rapper herself. But a lot would happen between that realization and the fulfillment of her dreams. With how uncomfortable she was discussing the difficult emotions she was experiencing, Lola begged her mom to bring her home a bunch of journals from the 99-cent store and began chronicling her feelings as often as possible