L’Trimm – the Miami-based duo consisting of Lady Tigra and Bunny D – were just teenagers when they signed with Atlantic Records. Their debut album, Grab It! (1988), spawned the single “Cars With The Boom”, which peaked at No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became their biggest hit.
With the subsequent releases of “Drop That Bottom” (1989) and “Groovy” (1991), Tigra and Bunny became less and less interested in complying with what the record company wanted from them. Instead, they decided to go their separate ways and pursue their own solo careers. But over the years, they not only maintained a close friendship but sometimes reunited.
Most recently, L’Trimm was a surprise guest at 808 Day in Los Angeles (August 8th) alongside Egyptian Lovers, Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ Rhettmatic, Prince Paul, J.Rocc and NWA’s Prince of Arabia. A day later, Tigra celebrated JJ Fad rapper MC JB’s 60th birthday on a boat in Marina del Rey, where she and other guests danced to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” and (naturally) “Supersonic.”
After contacting AllHipHop at a party, an interview was inevitable. After all, there are so few people who were with L’Trimm, and with their recent reunion, now seems like the right time to tell their story – or at least part of it. Less than a week later, Lady Tigra and Bunny reflected on their journey on ZOOM and explained why they decided to leave Atlantic after three albums.
“The suits are swarming and they don’t make things interesting anymore,” Tigra said matter-of-factly. “Our prefrontal cortex hasn’t developed yet, so we don’t respect contracts and things like that. We were like, ‘We’re out!’ “First we had the whole record ourselves. Then the second, they started giving us concepts for songs that didn’t have a feel.
“We were Miami Bass, and they were trying to jump on the bandwagon and let us remake ‘Car Boom.’ There was a song called ‘Love Bug.’ It just had some songs about cars, and we were like, ‘Does it matter?’ ” The “auto boom” is something we do naturally. We cruised around Coconut Grove with a speaker system. That’s why it’s been so successful, because we mean it. But then they said, ‘Okay, you made a song about cars. They asked us to write a song about the Batmobile. They asked us to write a ridiculous car song.
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For L’Trimm’s second album, Drop That Bottom, the record company only allowed them to be creative on the B-side. Tigra recalls, “We wrote the whole album, but we only cared about half the songs, and the rest we had to do because they told us, ‘Write a song about this, write a song about that. ‘”
By the third album, the label was trying to establish them as C+C Music Factory, a New Jack Swing duo—basically whatever was “hot” at the moment. But L’Trimm was evolving and didn’t want to be put in a “box” as they described it, so they left the label – but not before making a clear statement.
“I showed up with a lyric sheet and we were ready to give up,” Tigra explains. “They looked at it and said, ‘Black people don’t talk like this,’ and then they crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. We looked at each other and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, no!’ “A bunch of older white guys were telling us what black people were talking like and what good hip-hop was, and the disrespect they had at the time was crazy. So, we were like, ‘Gee, a draw. We boycotted.’
British pop icon George Michael released the single “I Want Your Sex” in 1987, which Tigra felt showed how unfairly they were being treated.
“This is a big deal,” she said. “He had this video that said ‘monogamy,’ and everyone was scrambling to understand what the word monogamy meant. I thought, ‘Well, if people who listen to pop music could go and get a dictionary and look up “monogamy” and they can look up the words we were talking about, so our middle finger to the last album was “We Got Our Own Thing,” where we just talked about what we were going through.
Lady Tigra and Bunny also face accusations of “weakness” because they refuse to dress like boys and prefer to smile; they are not “mean” rappers.
“So we wear the skirt and own it,” Tigla said. “Then I wrote an entire poem, pulling every gigantic word out of my lizard brain that each ancestor had in my DNA, and wrote a diss track for them. I despised them so much that They couldn’t understand it, so they boycotted the third album. [Groovy]. If you look at the cover of the third album, they had to cut and paste previous songs to make the songs.
“If you look at the album cover, even the album cover is paper doll cutouts, kind of like Dee-Lite style, psychedelic jumpsuits and all that. They had to take photos from the second album and use These photos, because we’re not going to be in the photo shoot either, if you look at the cover of the Groovy album, that’s the cover of the second photo.
Despite the messy ending, Ms. Tigra and Bunny left a lasting mark on hip-hop history, thanks in part to “Car Boom.” The song enjoyed a notable resurgence in 2020 after it went viral on TikTok, posting more than 1.1 million videos, including one from JoJo Siwa. L’Trimm loves to see new generations continue to discover the song and give it new life.
@alexawollney
New dance alert 💖 (just for good vibes) sensational car @lungcancerbaby
♬ Booming Car – L’Trimm
They are still working on the music. Bonnie recently retired after decades as a nurse and is making gospel music with her husband. She is also involved in Lady Tigra’s upcoming collaborative EP “Black Rice” with producer SPNCR. The project features “Egyptian Lover,” “Kid of Kid ‘N Play,” “Pharcyde,” “Bunny” and more. This will be L’Trimm’s first new song in 35 years.
Check back soon for Part 2 of AllHipHop’s L’Trimm interview.
Photo credit: Jeff Moore
Hair: Johnny Stonez
Makeup: Saul Alberti
Styling: Ms. Tigra
