#weloveladiesfirst

Brooklyn's princess T'yanna Wallace is taking her father's legacy and turning it into her very own empire....Biggie would be so proud.

The Pennsylvania native who moved back to her father's hometown after graduating from Penn State, is not taking what Notorious B.I.G means to BK for granted. In fact, she heard stories about him all her life and realized how important he was to the borough when she decided to uproot her life and move into Bed-Stuy.

T'yanna is using the love and respect people have for her legendary father as inspiration. But, she's using a different vessel outside of music to declare her pride through Notoriouss. Her clothing line features images of Biggie and lines from his verses like "Moschino hoe, Versace hottie". With the business bug in her genes (something her dad had too), she's going to open a flagship store in Brooklyn with hopes of expanding it all the way to the West Coast.

T'yanna is creating a lane for herself but paying homage to her dad every step of the way. Though he passed when she was just a baby, she explains that she feels she knows him very well from all the stories told about him through people like Lil Cease, her mother, Faith Evans, people from the neighborhood and more. While others say she's a spitting image of her dad.

To us he's one of the greatest rappers of all time, but to her, he was a great man who loved to laugh and do pranks.

Swin Cash is an icon, a legend, one of the greatest WNBA players of all time and I had the honor of sitting down with her for the latest episode of Ladies First.

I've been looking for a female athlete to feature on my show and she more than fits the bill.

Besides her incredible career which includes an Olympic Gold Medal, 3 WNBA Championships, 2 National Titles during her days at UCONN (a superstar team at the time in itself), Swin is accomplishing huge fetes since retiring from the game of basketball last year.

She was hired by the NY Liberty as the Director of Franchise Development, taking her talents and experience from the court to the front office. Expect a new and improved NY Liberty team, more community based events, more exposure to the amazing basketball team who currently has three hometown players on their roster.

Why aren't we showing them more love?!

Swin and I also spoke about the WNBA franchise as whole and the changes that need to be made to give the league more attention.

But coming out strong, after retirement and a cancer scare, now pregnant and the boss lady at NY Liberty, Swin has a whole new journey ahead of her, beyond her basketball career and that's taking the NY Liberty to another level.

Nicolette B is on a mission to set the bar high while reppin’ Harlem to the core.

As an female MC,  it’s sad to hear the same sexist realities these ladies go through being in a male dominated industry. “Be like (insert famous female rapper name),”, “ramp up your sex appeal”, “no one wants to hear bars”… the list goes on and on.

However, I’m extremely happy to see they’re not folding to the pressure and staying true to who they are and their abilities.

Nicolette, though still young in the game, is a veteran of sorts. She’s currently indie, but at the age of 15 was under Queens hip hop legend LL Cool J’s wing. He told her to come to his studio session the same day they met after hearing her freestyle, yeah, incredible. She went on tour with him, was featured on his albums and etc. Later, Nicolette worked with Dame Dash for a while on his NBC shows, had convos with Mase, the list goes on and on.

But her story runs deep – having experienced two deaths in her life that would shape her as a person completely. Her sister Olivia Brown was murdered on their block in Harlem and one of her best friends known as Hooligan, took his own life,  just this past March.

There's been many firsts on Ladies First but this is one definitely at the top of the list.

Enzima was first discovered by the social media world after she took part in the #MaskOffChallenge by playing the famous flute section via her violin. From there, they couldn't get enough of her and neither could I!

The girl who grew up on a farm in Nebraska is an innovator for the world of classical music. By merging her love for the violin and hip hop, she's re-introducing the instrument to millennials in a way that resonates with them and it's working. Her inquiries have been non stop, she says.

Enzima's love for playing the violin started at a young age, but it's her encounters with racism that really drives her to succeed via an instrument that has history going back hundreds of years. She wants to be an example and an inspiration for women of color out there who have interest in playing music in the classical world but get shaded or shut down. Don't lose hope.

Enzima is doing a great job despite getting the side eye from the classical music world for trying to infuse the genre with hip hop.  But, it doesn't matter because if a superstar like Beyonce has sought after you way before social media caught on, I think you're doing something right!