Foxx and Dogg
Local rapper Tiffany gets snapped up by Snoop
By Chris King
Of the St. Louis American
It’s entirely possible to have mixed feelings about Snoop Dogg, for his gangsta themes as a rapper, while still granting that the brother is a shrewd businessman who possesses and has seen enough talent to know it when he sees it.
He knew it when he saw Tiffany Foxx. She’s a local rapper (known to some, in the scene and around town, as Tiffany Parham).
Tiffany’s girl, the local rapper Brooke Holiday, tells the story.
“We were both on Snoop’s video set, for ‘Ups & Downs,’ last summer,” Brooke said.
“He had heard Tiffany’s track, ‘Can’t Find My Panties.’ But he hadn’t seen her. We hadn’t been gone off that set five minutes, when he called and said, ‘Bring her back, I want to sign her, right now.’”
The photographs that illustrate this story should tell you (or Snoop Dogg or anyone else) all you need to know about what you see when you see Tiffany Foxx.
“Once he put the visual with the lyrics,” Brooke said, “he knew it was marketable.”
And, now, Snoop is in a position to market her, as Tiffany Foxx has two hot tracks, “Panties” and “Shake That Shit,” on the new sampler, Welcome to Tha Chuuch, released by Snoop’s label, Doggy Style Records.
“Shake” even has pride of place, occupying track two on the disc. Snoop has a feature verse on it, which he uses to name-check his new acquisition. That is star treatment.
Tiffany may have been fortunate to have been noticed by a hip-hop icon, but she earned her way, from there.
“Right away, he put her in the studio, and he liked everything she wrote,” Brooke said, of Tiffany and Snoop. “He knew right there he didn’t have to write for her.”
A star was earned.
She has had a lot of help and powerful connections, long the way. Her manager, Bob Francis, put her in touch with L.T. Hutton, who produced “Panties” for her. She earned her role with Francis by spitting for him, impromptu, at a Los Angeles restaurant. That’s hard-grinding, star-struck stuff.
Tiffany has the sense to work the insiders in an industry town, to get it going, but she hasn’t forgotten STL. To film the video for “Shake,” she had a set built inside a hotel room in Los Angeles to look just like Spruill’s.
“And I made Snoop where an STL hat,” Tiffany said. The standard color for that hat, of course, is red.
She also filmed Zab Judah for her video, but then left him on the cutting room floor after Zab beat down Cory Spinks, in their historic title fight here in St. Louis.
A bid at being a rap star might be new to Tiffany, but hip-hop videos are not. She has appeared in videos by CamRon and Master P and Nelly, whose “Country Grammar” video helped get it all started for her.
“What inspired me,” she said, “was Country Grammar. I was part of that. It wasn’t something I saw on TV. It was an opportunity.”
What she has made of that opportunity, thus far, should both inspire and challenge other local rappers looking to blow up. It’s hard work, even when you are drop-dead gorgeous and have one high-heeled foot in the door.
“In the studio with Snoop, it’s like boot camp,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Here’s a song, I need this; knock that out.’ ‘Here’s this beat, I need this; knock that out.’ I was kind of inundated.”
Inundated, but equal to the task.
“Snoop said, ‘I don’t have to write your stuff. I don’t have to babysit.’” That’s called passing the audition.
Tiffany said there was no physical education on the exam, if that’s what you’re thinking.
“I’m already prepared for everybody to think more went on,” she said, understanding the assumption that goes along with female sex appeal in hardcore, male-dominated hip-hop circles.
“Women, step up,” Tiffany said. “You don’t need to sell yourselves. He respects me, as an artist; I respect him, as a businessman. Keep it moving.”
She has been keeping it moving, all along. She grew up on the North Side, before moving west as a teen and graduating, not exactly with honors, from Hazelwood Central. Not a lengthy Yearbook entry. Asked for activities, she said, “None. All I knew was work and school.”
She did have rap in her blood, from early on, rapping in a crew with one of her cousins and Brooke Holiday called Hot Sadity.
“The plan, after she blows up, is to do a Hot Sadity record, then do a record for me,” Brooke said.
Their in-house producer is Brad Young, which can only mean good things for the future of their music.
Tiffany keeps grinding toward that future, one bubble bath at a time. Eat your heart out, fellas; she said, “When I take a bath, that’s when my creative juices get flowing.”
Like most, if not all, female rappers, she is hitting the market, first, with sexy material, the two tracks on the Doggy Style compilation. That’s not where it stops, though. She has a body of material she calls “Bruises From My Bra Straps,” concerning the daily of trials of being a woman, a la Ebony Eyez’s Seven Day Cycle.
“Out of the gate, as a female artist, you’ve got to do a club song,” she said. “Then, okay. I did what I had to do to get your attention.”
Now, watch what she’s gonna do. Expect her album and a tour with Snoop, in the spring.
