CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE TEAM BAD ASS COMMUNITY.

Several months ago, right around the time I signed my licensing deal with MTV, I made a fan on Twitter named Connie. Connie is an aspiring singer and full time college student who lives in Scotland. She started following me on Twitter and began listening to my music. She read my bio, she followed my posts, she even started buying my music on iTunes. Then she started talking with other people who were also fans of mine. Those people started following each other on Twitter. Then they started adding each other on Facebook. Connie started working on a fan site for me to help spread the word. Another fan of my music, an awesome graphic designer named Travis, a guy who believes in me so much that he stepped up and offered to do my mixtape cover so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it while dealing with the death of my grandmother, became friends with Connie. Connie told him about the fan site. She told him she was running my official online support team and the hash tag for it would be #TeamNikkiLynette. Travis checked out the site and said “I like it. And you should call it #TeamBadAss.” A couple days later, they informed me that the official team of Nikki Lynette is heretofore entitled “Team Bad Ass.” All I could say was “Wow. Thanx. You guys rock.”

Team Bad Ass has a lot of members. Yes, it is still my official “team” of supporters and fans, but it’s also becoming an avenue for a certain brand of people to show solidarity among one another. We determined everything that it stands for about a month ago, and now, after only a month, it’s slowly becoming a movement that is bigger than me.

Society puts a lot of pressure on people to be.. well… “normal.” But what the hell does that really mean? Who decided what normal was, and why should that apply to me? When I was a teen who hung out with hip hop kids and punk rockers and wore baggy camouflage pants, people called me weird. When I cut out my perm, people called me gay. When I listed to Tori Amos and Fiona Apple, people called me an “oreo.” Needless to say, I stopped giving a shit about what people think a long time ago. Why should I change who I am just to gain acceptance from people who don’t get me in the first place? Is fitting in REALLY that important?

In this day and age, people just don’t want to be labeled anymore. Is my friend Theresa less black because she loves Paramore? Is my friend Jesse less white because he raps? Is my friend Connie less respectable because she shaved one side of her head? And the bigger question in all of this is… WHY ARE WE ALL SO PROGRAMMED TO CARE ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? There is a certain freedom in being weird, because nobody knows what the hell to expect from you so they just can’t hold you to any unreasonable expectations. You aren’t expected to follow any weak ass trends or listen to shitty music or date a particular type of person just so that you can attain somebody else’s acceptance and be perceived as cool. Weird people are the ones who do what feels normal to them. They’re the people who listen to any type of music they like, from Bob Marley to Metallica. They’re the people who pave their own way in life instead of following somebody else’s plan. They wear what they hell they want. They make friends with people who are like them. They look criticism in the face and laugh at it like the joke that it is. That type of person in any age group or nationality can be summarized in one term:

bad-ass

1. adjective. having extremely favorable qualities 2. adjective. pertaining to a person or thing that is rugged, strong, and/or ready to show these qualities 3. noun. person who is perceived to have the qualities of definition 2
1. I have a bad-ass car with a kickin sound system and bitchin rims.

2. The armored tank is a bad-ass military vehicle that can roll over just about anything.

3. Mohammed Ali was a bad-ass in the boxing ring.
(Taken from www.urbandictionary.com)

So my official “team” just so happens to consist of some really cool people. I can’t believe that these are the folks who are supporting my music so adamantly. (I’m a lucky mofo, right?) The whole “Team Bad Ass” thing unites people from different countries and of different races and gives us a way to bond with other people who think individuality is the true “cool.” Under what other circumstances would a female college student from Scotland befriend a black American graphic designer from the hood in Chicago? How else would a female rapper develop and ongoing friendship with an older white classical pianist? Who would have thought that people exist who AREN’T cookie cutter, judgmental, straight edged little followers? We know who we are, and more importantly, we know who we ain’t. And that’s what makes us so bad ass.

If you are one of us, CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE TEAM BAD ASS COMMUNITY. If you can’t join us, beat us. Yeah… didn’t think so.