It mirrors a timeless hip-hop tale, but starring a wholly unexpected, unbridled, and unpredictable protagonist… Hailing from the working class border of Boynton Beach and Lake Worth on the north side of Palm Beach County, Bhad Bhabie sets a scene of post-2008 suburban decay. “Lake Worth is ghetto without all of the drug dealers,” she explains. “You see a lot of crackheads and prostitutes walking up and down Dixie Highway all the time…still today. It’s fucked up.” Rap didn’t just soundtrack the area, but it also soundtracked her upbringing. By the age of nine, she carried a pink iPod everywhere loaded with favorites by the likes of Plies, T-Pain, Trina, Ludacris, Chris Brown, and LL Cool J. She can recall singing along to “Bust It Baby” and “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” from a burned CD in the car with her single parent mom and re-creating Fergie’s “Fergalicious” video in front of the mirror. A 12-year-old Bhad Bhabie skipped school to kick it in an abandoned garage as her classmates tried to rap. “It was this abandoned garage or some shit next to Texaco,” she recalls. “All of the boys thought they could rap. They’d take instrumentals off YouTube, and I’d sit there like, ‘Y’all suck’. I loved music, but the opportunity wasn’t there. If I was ever going to do it, it wouldn’t fucking suck.” Oddly enough, it took a national incident to encourage her confidence behind the mic…