JT keeps a bag.

Yes, the Miami rapper is always visible, but she’s become increasingly selective about how the world sees her—and that extends to the music she releases, her fashion, and the companies she’s willing to attach her name to. Her growing portfolio of partnerships reflects an artist who understands the value of her image and wants a say in how it is presented.

Her latest collaboration comes with SNIPES USA, where she appears in the retailer’s Pull Up Fresh back-to-school campaign alongside DJ Khaled, Azzy Milan and Reggie Travers. The project brought JT back to Miami for a shoot at a local high school, an opportunity with a personal connection for the rapper. “First of all, being from Miami, Florida, when they told me that I was going to be shooting down there, I really didn’t go home that much,” she tells ESSENCE. “So when they were like, I get to go to a high school that I know very well and shoot with kids. I really do love kids, even though I don’t have any, it just felt right.”

The campaign runs through the back-to-school season and includes the #SNIPESFresh Sweepstakes, which gives students a chance to share their first-day looks on social media for weekly prizes. A grand-prize winner will receive a VIP concert experience in October.

JT’s participation also makes sense considering how closely fashion has followed her career. She has recently worked with MAC Cosmetics and Topicals, while also collaborating with Supplier on footwear. Those opportunities are vetted carefully. JT says everything from a company’s image to the photographer behind a campaign can influence whether she signs on.

“I am very hands-on with who’s going to shoot me, so it can still be on brand for me,” she says. “I take my Instagram really, really seriously, as you can see. So I don’t like to really work with brands who don’t have taste. I love tasteful brands. I love brands that I’m a fan of.”

The artist’s attention has also turned toward what comes next musically. Following City Cinderella, JT began experimenting with a different direction on releases such as “Girls Gone Wild.” Earlier this year, she offered fans “Numb,” which she confirms will appear on her next album. For now, she is taking her time developing how the project will be introduced.

“I’m in a very transitional phase between putting out really, really hard trap music,” JT says. “So right now I’m in a phase of behind the scene world building and picking this amazing rollout for my next album.” She explains that “Numb” gave listeners new music while she worked through those plans. “The music definitely has to have a world for people to understand it, if that makes sense to you,” she adds.

Part of JT’s evolution has been reconsidering what her public image represents. She has embraced the “It Girl” label, but her interpretation has less to do with popularity than what people can learn from the trajectory of her life. Her past is something she speaks about plainly, especially when considering how dramatically her circumstances have changed.

“Being an “it girl” is being a leader, being a trendsetter, representing, standing firm in your beliefs, even when it doesn’t feel like nobody else cares,” she says. “You show people what’s rewarding about standing in what you believe in. They see the campaigns and everything that comes after it, but they don’t see what the “it girls” go through behind the scenes.”

Then, she puts her own story into a single line: “You can go from nine mugshots to nine campaigns, and you don’t have to be what you started as.” Returning to a school for Pull Up Fresh gave JT another opportunity to think about who she used to be. During the shoot, she played several authority figures, including a teacher and crossing guard. The irony wasn’t lost on someone who admits she could be rebellious as a student. “Don’t skip school. Stay in school,” she says of what she would tell her younger self. Now, JT also has a different appreciation for the adults she once gave a hard time.

“I realize how young 30 is, and a lot of our teachers were this age, and we used to give them such a hard time not knowing how human people are,” she says. “So I would tell myself to listen and not be rebellious, honestly.”

It is advice coming from someone who no longer views where she started as a limitation on where she can go. Between a new album taking form behind the scenes and campaigns placing her before audiences outside of music, JT is building the next phase of her career on her own terms. As she describes it, “I don’t just say it, I do it.”

Author: Okla Jones

Read the original article on Essence.