Six years after Da Brat came out publicly in 2020 — a move that felt both terrifying and inevitable — the Grammy-nominated, Chicago-born rapper and her wife, entrepreneur Jesseca “Judy” Harris-Dupart, are ready to tell their story. And they’re not holding back.
Their new memoir, “The Way Love Goes: A Guide to Building a ‘Beaurtiful’ and Everlasting Relationship,” out today, opens with a bold declaration about love being “quite the motherfucker,” and the honesty only deepens from there. This is a love story with all the messy, beautiful, complicated parts included: the baggage Da Brat initially hid, the therapeutic arguments over whose memory of events was correct, and yes, even a clogged toilet that taught them about vulnerability (more on that later).
For Da Brat, who spent the ’90s and early aughts as a Midwestern hip-hop pioneer while keeping her personal life private, falling for Judy — they endearingly call each other “beaurtiful” — meant more than finding love. It meant finding freedom. For Judy, whose own openness helped give Da Brat the courage to live out loud, their relationship is proof that being unapologetically yourself is the only way to be. Together, they’re raising a blended family that includes Judy’s three children from previous relationships and their son True Legend, born in 2023.
I spoke with Da Brat and Judy about the chaos of writing their memoir together, what their visibility as a Black queer couple means to them and the advice they’d give to anyone still figuring out how to love without fear.
The opening line of the book is, “Let’s face it, love is quite the motherfucker.” Is love more of a motherfucker than writing a book about love?
Judy: No, writing the book was more of a motherfucker than love! Yeah, that part was an undertaking.
Da Brat: Absolutely.
Tell me about the behind-the-scenes process of writing this book together. How did it start?
Judy: A big part of it we started doing together. We had somebody help us, and so we had to do a lot of interviewing on the phone, and then we realized how much of our story is different, how she sees the story, how I see the story. So then we had to do a lot of interviews separate.
Da Brat: And then when we were doing things together, we were like, “What? It didn’t happen like that. ” And Judy was like, “Yes, it did.” And we had to really remember certain things and rehash old things. It was quite an experience, quite therapeutic.
The book mentions Da Brat’s bad texting habits. Are you a better texter these days?
Judy: She is! Well, texting me back, yes. Now, when it comes to texting in general, she’s way better than I am. And now that you said it, it’s ironic how bad that flipped because I am awful at texting now.
Da Brat: You are! I know you got a lot on your plate and a lot of stuff with the business, but I’ll text you seven messages and be like, “Hey babe, did you see my messages today?”
Judy: I don’t ignore her. I’ll be on Zoom and she’ll be sending me stuff and I see it. And so in my head I responded to it because I saw it. I suck at this.
Da Brat: I’m way better now. Now she’s the worst.
What’s something you learned about the other person’s thoughts on love while writing this book?
Da Brat: I learned that my wife still thinks about certain things that I thought that she may have forgotten about. [Laughs.]
Judy: Well, I mean, if we’re going to write a book, we tellin’ them a story. When we first got together, she just had a whole mess to clean up and she didn’t tell me.
Da Brat: I kept it from her because I had a fear of losing her and I didn’t want to lose her. And sometimes when you tell people, “I got baggage and I got to do this and I got to do that,” they’re like, “Oh, I’m not waiting on you. I’m out of here.” So I just didn’t want to lose her.
The book shifts between Da Brat’s Chicago cadence and Judy’s New Orleans patois. How did you decide which parts of your journey each of you would take the lead on?
Da Brat: We just talked about a lot of the things that stood out to us. She liked to talk about the bad things that I did in the beginning, and we both liked to talk about the moment we found love and the time she first came to see me. And then when it came to more personal things in our stories of the things we went through, that’s when we did the separate stories. And then when we first kissed, we talked about things like that together. But there are some things that I didn’t know about her: some of ’em past relationships. I was like, “Oh my goodness, this is good!” [Laughs.]
I didn’t know that in her past relationship, she said it wasn’t cool for her significant other to be friends with their ex. And I didn’t realize that’s where it came from when she told me that it wasn’t cool to be friends with an ex. I didn’t realize the things she had been through with her ex. And I was like, “Now I get it.”
It’s been six years since you came out publicly, Da Brat. I’ve been a longtime fan since the ‘90s — those Mariah Carey remix days. It’s been wonderful to see someone I grew up with living a happy, open queer life. That visibility would’ve meant a ton to me as a kid. For both of you, how has living openly as a queer couple reshaped your understanding of love and risk?
Da Brat: I just feel 10 times lighter. When you’re in the closet and you’re trying to hide and you’re trying to not let people see this and not let people see that, it’s a weight on your shoulders. But when you can be free and let the world know who you love, screaming it from the mountaintop and holding their hand and kissing them in public and going out to eat and letting people see you smile, it’s liberating. So I love it. I’m so glad I’m out.
Why did coming out feel like a weight off your shoulders?
Da Brat: I didn’t realize it until the weight was actually lifted because at first I was really afraid. I was like, “Oh, god, people are going to really hate me.” Because back in the day, it just wasn’t cool. It wasn’t cool to come out. Remember, Ellen lost everything she had. She lost her TV show. People didn’t like her anymore, but thank god it’s a different world today. And thank god that I had somebody who I felt safe enough to come out, who helped bring me out, to share my love with her with the world.
What did Judy’s openness before you came out teach you about bravery in love?
Da Brat: Man, she didn’t have any boundaries. She didn’t have anything holding her down. Her family, they were not bashing or mean in any way or negative and she just lived her life. When I fell in love with her, I didn’t want to hold it in anymore. I didn’t even care what people had to say anymore. I just wanted the world to know. I mean, she lived so freely. She just did whatever she wanted to do and I wanted to be a part of that. I felt like, because I was still in the closet, I was making her have to mask her love for me. That wasn’t fair.
Da Brat, you kept your personal life deeply private for decades. Looking back, do you see a connection between the creative freedom you had in the booth and the emotional freedom you’ve now found in this relationship?
Da Brat: Yes. I feel like then I still didn’t get to say who I was completely or be who I was or love out loud. But back then, it was more safe to keep it protected, but I would’ve loved to be able to probably express that, but it just wasn’t the time. And I don’t think I’d run into the person who made me want to live out loud and risk it all.
For readers who may still be wrestling with coming out or dating publicly as queer people, what part of your story do you hope gives them courage?
Da Brat: Well, I hope it gives them courage when they hear that when my wife — well, before she wasn’t my wife then — told me how she felt about me, it scared me and it made me nervous. It broke all the rules of me being Da Brat and the swag I had and all that. And it scared me. And I just feel like even if you’re scared or if your nerves are bad when it comes to feeling the way you feel, if you meet somebody who gives you that feeling of nervousness, of butterflies and you know it’s a great feeling that you’ve never had before, I think just go with it, go with it and just love on that person and let them love on you and be happy. You only get one life. And I had never felt that way before in my life. So if you ever get that, people don’t even get that in a lifetime. So if you ever get that and you meet your person, take it and run with it.
As a blended family and a Black queer couple, what legacy of love — beyond your memoir — do you hope your story contributes to cultural conversations around family and authenticity?
Judy: Especially nowadays, I just hope that our story lets people know that they can be themselves, no matter what. Because I know it’s LGBTQIA, but everybody has their own story. Just because you date a woman, it doesn’t mean that one has to look manly, one has to look girly. I just hope that us being ourselves in exactly how we are can tell other people it’s OK to be yourself exactly how you are. And sometimes you might not get the best support. Sometimes you might get the support and it’s OK to actually come out of the closet. It’s OK.
And it’s not as scary as you think once you’ve crossed to the other side because the people that support you will support you. And sometimes that can even mean walking away from family, but you being yourself should be the biggest thing, that should be point number one. I hope that with our relationship —seeing what she did and her courage and how she was fine afterwards — could encourage somebody else to just be themselves.
Da Brat: Some people are not meant to be in your life forever. They’re just meant to be there for a season. And if they don’t love and support you in your happiness, your genuine happiness, then they probably shouldn’t be there.
What’s next for you both, not just in your careers, but in the ongoing chapters of your love story now that your memoir is about to be out in the world?
Judy: My beaurtiful said she wrote a book while she was in prison. [Da Brat wrote it while serving time in prison after a 2008 conviction for aggravated assault stemming from a 2007 nightclub incident.]
Da Brat: I did.
Judy: I told the people of the world that they need to make this a New York Times bestseller so they can get her prison book as book number two.
Da Brat: Yeah, that was an experience. So yeah, that’s interesting. But we just want to continue to be great moms, better moms. We want to get better at everything we do. We thrive to just be the best. We don’t know everything. We just want to continue to grow and learn and support each other and support other people and bless other people as we are blessed. We both love to give. We have big hearts and we love sharing everything. So hopefully people can just pay attention to our story and learn and just want to be better people. The world is kind of a fucked up place right now. So we just want to create a warm space for everybody to just love.
My last question is a bit selfish, but since you’ve clearly learned so much about love that you wrote a book about it — I’m six months into dating someone, so what’s one piece of advice you think every couple should hear around that point in a relationship?
Da Brat: Pace yourself. Everything is going to be amazingly good. Just get to know the person. Do some tests, go through some experiences with them, see what pisses them off. You need to see all sides if you can before you cross the line and do something major with the relationship. Just enjoy every moment of it too. Enjoy every moment and just make sure it’s genuine and just take your time.
Judy: I would say make a mess early. So let me give a little bit of context to that.
Da Brat: Oh, god. [Laughs.]
Judy: We were at my condo at the time and the toilet was clogged from me doing number two and I could not fix it. I could not. I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to plunge it. I didn’t know how to do it. And it was pretty early in our relationship and it was absolutely disgusting and embarrassing to me, but she treated it with so much care and understanding and just broke the ice of anything that made you feel like you had to be a certain kind of way.
Da Brat: She was like, “Oh my god. Don’t go in there.” I’m just like, “Girl, that’s nothing.” I got in there and plunged it and cleaned it out, cleaned it up. “Hey girl, it’s fresh. Go on and do what you got. It’s fixed.”
Judy: So devastating.