The Butterfly Effect: Hip-Hop Starlet ScarLip Is Our 2024 Young Icon Cover

Today is one of the better days in the life of ascending rap star ScarLip.

 

A year ago, a photo shoot for her very own magazine cover seemed out of reach by more than 365 days. Although the La Bodega NY Studio, where she’s currently being photographed, stands in the same Bronx borough in which she was born, life is 180 degrees different than the first 22 of ScarLip’s 23 years on Earth.

 

Her hair is different––jet black and laid at the crown before descending into big, bouncy curls that frame her oversized Loewe shades. Paired perfectly with her sheeny coiffure is a lengthy Helen Yarmak mink coat that’s slumped diagonally just enough to offer a peek of ScarLip’s cocoa shoulder.

The mistress of ceremony gives the camera grown woman body and confidence. The entire set––comprised of production crew, glam squad, management and publicity teams along with Cassius editorial staff––morphs into a choir of approval and praise. “Yesss Scar,” someone exclaims from one side of the collective horseshoe surrounding ScarLip. All in attendance are aware that they are witnessing the IRT maturation of the Mecca of Hip-Hop’s next essential voice.

 

Although she was born Sierra Lucas, ScarLip is Alanis Morissette to over 1 million fans and social media followers. She introduced herself in 2019 by deploying an advanced rap cadence to pour her pain into a reflective puddle for the unseen. Songs like “Suicide Awareness,” “Foster Care” and “Therapy”––simultaneous outcries for the writer and promises to listeners that they were not alone––positioned the Sagittarius as a survivor and spokeswoman for colored girls who’ve considered suicide. The anointment, though, was initially missed by the crown bearer.

 

“I was a guardian without even knowing,” says ScarLip via a virtual call the day after the photo shoot. “I was just making music off of my life, speaking my truth. I found out through my fans, [who would say], ‘You’re inspiring us! You’re living for us! You’re winning for us!’”

 

One of those fans happened to be creative mogul Swizz Beatz. The man sonically behind DMX’s “Ruff Ryders Anthem” was so moved by ScarLip’s bars that he began sharing her music with the millions in his social media network. His justification was that the young spitta’s raw transparency was eerily similar to Dark Man X, and he felt she was delivered to him by the late, great Yonkers legend.

 

“I feel like [the comparison is] a heavy jacket to wear,” says ScarLip, who finally met Swizz in the studio in the spring of 2023. “Cause you saying I’m like the female version to X? I appreciate it and [I’m] grateful that a person like Swizz would say that, but inside I’m like, ‘That’s some big shoes to wear!’”

 

The footwear ScarLip currently adorns are emergency red and black Givenchy heels. The designer stilettos speak to her new heights, self-worth and shiny future. Growing up a dark-skinned girl in the BX, she wasn’t afforded many opportunities to feel beautiful––even lesser to feel safe. An absent father put additional pressure on her single mother. Then one day when ScarLip was 12, a driver ran a red light and put her mom in intensive care. The doctors were forced to amputate her leg, but assured her that she would recover. A week later, ScarLip’s mother was dead.

 

To avoid young Sierra and her siblings from being thrown into foster care, her aunt took them in. What would normally be a blessing became a living nightmare for the preteen. She’s spoken often about her aunt’s boyfriend drugging and raping her for years. Also, the time when she was 15, and her older brother solicited her for a money loan: When she refused he punched her in the face so viciously she was left with the permanent scar that inspired her professional moniker. Although the scarification dealt her years of feeling unattractive, compounded by cruel kids who spread rumors that she had herpes, today she has reclaimed her power. “I don’t regret anything no more,” she says. “Today, my name is ScarLip because I turned something bad into a positive.”

Literally adding insult to injury, ScarLip’s aunt decided to allow her nephew (the assaulter) to remain living with her and put her 15-year-old niece (the assaulted) in the foster care system. For much of the following six years, ScarLip and her new anger issues bounced around cyclically to foster homes and detention centers. Some of her caretakers were weird. “She [a caretaker] wouldn’t let us drink soda. We could only drink milk or water. You want me to drink milk with a piece of chicken?!” ScarLip says. Others were just awful human beings. “She [another caretaker] treated her kids good, but never took care of the foster kids. She wouldn’t even change the kid’s diapers. I had to sleep next to pissy kids.”

 

Those dysfunctional final years of her youth had one silver lining: They demanded an outlet, which manifested opportunity for her love of writing poetry to naturally transition into emceeing. “My raps wasn’t always good,” she says, crediting her love for ’90s rap to the uncles who were in and out of her life. “I definitely had some corny raps [Laughs]. The more I studied old-school music––Scarface, DMX and them––it just came. But it was always in me.”

 

“As a Black woman I have the right to not keep being triggered by my past.”

 

While most of ScarLip’s professional peers kept viewers distracted from their ghostwriters with booty-bouncing, the BX-to-Brooklynite built a steady base with anthemic sustenance. In 2022, she pushed her motivational drill record “Glizzy Gobbler” to virility with a campaign of clever TikTok posts holding up various NYC staple foods like pizza and hot dogs. “I knew I could rap, but I needed to reach people.” Lightning struck again the following year when she dropped the anti-gentrification slapper, “This Is New York,” which became so popular that Snoop Dogg requested a remix (“This Is Cali”). That’s when EPIC Records changed ScarLip’s life with a multimillion-dollar recording contract.

ScarLip is on her final look for the cover story shoot, and the consensus is that it’s the day’s best. Her initial rigidity and apprehension are a memory. With an exaggerated orange fox fur hat that’s complemented by vintage Chanel earrings and a vibrantly patterned Emilio Pucci shirt and skirt set, she is in full bloom. Although currently working the camera lens, the rising star tries even harder to keep her spirit present and eyes forward. Her new two-bedroom apartment is more than a symbol of her new fame and fortune. She finally has the safe space she longed for throughout her childhood. Her favorite room is her writing room––the four walls where she vibes out to Doja Cat and Billie Eilish before grabbing a pen and returning to her lane. When she needs a break from the Big Apple, her first choice is unsurprisingly Los Angeles. “They got palm trees there,” says the new jetsetter about California. “When I’m out there I just be living a dream life.”

It’s the rear view mirror that ScarLip is least interested in eying. Although her professional name stems from her trauma, she intends to afford her demons less airtime. “A lot of the stuff that was weighing me down in the past could be looked up on my Spotify,” she instructs. “As a Black woman I have the right to not keep being triggered by my past.”

 

Do not confuse ScarLip’s disinterest in harping on her misfortune with ignoring her pain. She just prefers to speak about the bad times when it leads to a healthier future. “I’m currently in therapy,” she says. “You know, just healing from everything. It’s an outlet to talk about things I no longer speak about [publicly].”

 

According to the Office of Children and Family Services, there are 6,737 children in NYC’s foster care system. From that total, 3,385 are African American children (2,435 are Hispanic) with 49% being female. While ScarLip exorcises the ghosts of her perilous past, she uses her baritone voice and poetry to lend light and mirror to the 12 and 15-year-old Sierras of today. Last year, she spoke and spit poetry to 150 Los Angeles foster care teens who graduated from high school. Outside of rap, the wordsmith has turned the ugliest parts of her life into her life’s work. She plans to one day be a foster mom and own an assisted living facility. For now, she’s an advocate for those trapped in the bowels of public guardianship, with her own ideas to improve that very system. “They should extend the time [in foster care],” she says, calling for more teen-to-adult development. “Because they age you out at 18 or 21. I’m 23 years old and I still don’t feel like I’m fully the adult that I’m supposed to be.”

 

On set, posing in black knee-high Givenchy boots, ScarLip appears to be standing exactly where she is supposed to be in life. She is a child survivor who is now thriving as an adult personally and professionally. How sweet her future will be depends heavily on her upcoming debut EP, Scars And Stripes, which will be produced entirely by Swizz Beatz. According to Scar, the meaty appetizer to her official studio album is her “from victim to glory” testament and will showcase complexions of her that fans have yet to be acquainted with. For example: “My soft girl era,” she begins, noting songs like “East Side” (her favorite), which explores a rare topic for her: Love. “I’m so hype and aggressive that they never seen this side of me.”

As the shoot wraps, it’s clear that ScarLip is also still learning Sierra. For years, she had to look outside of herself in order to see light. Her beacons were Lauryn Hill and Nicki Minaj. Later, Cardi B was inspiration and assurance that you can be from the bottom and still rise to the top. While she still studies Billboard giants like Beyoncé, Eminem and Post Malone, she is eager to discover her pop star within. For now, little Sierra remains the priority; the healthier she is mentally and emotionally, the more expressive and expansive ScarLip can be musically. “I want [the music industry] to understand that I cannot be put in a box,” she says. “I am not who you envision me to be. You have to expect the unexpected from me. I’m not one way. I am every way.”