Bhad “been hated and doubted” [CASH ME OUSSIDE] Bhabie [HOW BOW DAH]! 99.5 Percent Hate [pronounced Bad Baby, mispronounced Bad Barbie or Baahd Bobby] *238 BHEST SHENTENCES AHBOUT BHAD BHABIE

“When we started with her, period, it was 99.5 percent hate, .5 percent like,” he says.

Summary for https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/magazine/the-big-business-of-becoming-bhad-bhabie.html:

1. By the time Bregoli returned to Boynton Beach in January 2017, the internet knew her as the Cash Me Outside Girl — yet another disposable star, or yet another victim of a stage mother, or yet another white girl getting famous off black culture. (159)

2. (“Anything a real 15-year-old girl could wear, dial that down to a 9-year-old,” Bregoli says.) Her scale takes on an even greater sense of whimsy in relation to her all-male entourage, which that day included Kluger, Roof and her full-time bodyguard, Frank Dellatto. (149)
3. During those first chaotic months, Kluger and Roof spent a lot of time in the car, shuttling Bregoli between various appointments. (133)
4. Phil” titled “I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime!” Bregoli had done all that and more, leading her desperate mother, Barbara Ann, to contact the television shrink for assistance. (123)
5. Kluger was initially against the idea of getting back into the music business, but he consented to some studio time to see how Bregoli sounded outside the car. (123)
6. Kluger remembers one phone call from his mother, in which she warned that Bregoli would ruin his career. (113)
7. Throughout this process of trial and error, Bregoli and her mother were still splitting their time between Boynton Beach and Los Angeles. (102)
8. A D.J. named Suga Shay hyped up the crowd, spinning Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow.” Lyrics gave way to a bass-heavy vamp, and Bregoli made her way to the stage, wearing white jeans and a matching Thrasher hoodie. (100)
9. If the Bhanned in the U.S.A. Tour went well, it would go a long way toward persuading the public that Bregoli wasn’t just that viral brat from “Dr. (98)
10. Around that time, Bregoli says, the friend started sleeping with adult men for money. (98)
11. Phil.” According to Kluger, Bregoli counts herself among the skeptics. (97)

12. (Bregoli is half Jewish, on her estranged father’s side.)

    Bregoli gets her nails done twice a week; Dellatto, who manages her schedule, tends to spend a lot of time in the salon. (96)

13. Roof set up a paid sponsorship deal for Bregoli to post about FitTea Detox Tea on Instagram. (91)
14. When Bregoli looks back on this time in her life, she tends to talk around “Dr. (91)
15. When she came home one night with an illegal tattoo — a rose on her shoulder that says “Family First” — Kluger and Roof made a hasty decision: She needed to move to Los Angeles for good. (91)
16. Danielle Bregoli, of Boynton Beach, was a guest on a September 2016 episode of “Dr. (90)
17. In February 2017, Bregoli and her mother flew to Los Angeles for a second “Dr. (89)
18. Back at the house in Dellatto’s wing, Bregoli half-watched “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” and played through a bunch of viral videos on her phone. (89)

19. At a court hearing last June for Bregoli’s marijuana charges, Peskowitz told the local ABC affiliate, WPBF, that he worried that Bregoli was being groomed for porn.

    (87)
20. (Bregoli has since suggested that “Bhad” stands for “been hated and doubted.”) Kluger disliked the misspelling but accepted the name as a good first step away from her past: She was no longer the Cash Me Outside Girl. (87)
21. On this trip to New York, Bregoli was staying with her grandmother in Mill Basin, in the very same house where her mother grew up and caught the Brooklyn accent that Bregoli now exhibits in some reconstituted form. (87)
22. Bregoli remembers Dellatto saying, “I’m taking you to L.A. You can either get up and get in the car, or I’m going to pick you up and put you in the car.” She got in the car; on the way to the airport, she bit off her acrylics. (86)
23. For all she knew, every one of them loathed her; her first thought was: How do I fight all of you? Kluger didn’t quite have a business plan worked out, but her question was in line with his vision for her future. (86)

Best words:

1. bregoli (55)
2. kluger (31)
3. “i (16)
4. first (15)
5. time (14)
6. says (11)
7. “dr (11)
8. barbara (10)
9. instagram (10)
10. roof (10)
11. girl (9)
12. music (9)
13. mother (9)
14. made (9)
15. knew (8)
16. beach (8)
17. dellatto (8)
18. phil” (7)
19. wasn’t (7)
20. friend (7)
21. part (7)
22. cash (7)
23. percent (7)
24. phil (7)
25. deal (7)
26. fight (7)
27. brand (7)
28. white (6)
29. black (6)
30. money (6)
31. seemed (6)
32. interest (6)
33. public (6)
34. been (6)
35. bregoli’s (6)
36. florida (6)
37. online (6)
38. phone (6)
39. boynton (6)
40. viral (6)
41. needed (6)
42. artists (5)
43. stage (5)
44. want (5)
45. kind (5)
46. songs (5)
47. video (5)
48. i’m (5)
49. life (5)
50. getting (5)
51. room (5)
52. told (5)
53. good (5)
54. going (5)
55. went (5)
56. news (5)
57. tour (5)
58. internet (5)
59. appearance (4)
60. days (4)
61. looked (4)
62. took (4)
63. house (4)
64. ‘i (4)
65. 2017 (4)
66. danielle (4)
67. played (4)
68. caught (4)
69. site (4)
70. night (4)
71. bhad (4)
72. [expletive] (4)
73. world (4)
74. atlantic (4)
75. angeles (4)
76. help (4)
77. spirit (4)
78. single (4)
79. digital (4)
80. crowd (4)

Keyword highlighting:

• By the time Bregoli returned to Boynton Beach in January 2017, the internet knew her as the Cash Me Outside Girl — yet another disposable star, or yet another victim of a stage mother, or yet another white girl getting famous off black culture.
• (“Anything a real 15-year-old girl could wear, dial that down to a 9-year-old,” Bregoli says.) Her scale takes on an even greater sense of whimsy in relation to her all-male entourage, which that day included Kluger, Roof and her full-time bodyguard, Frank Dellatto.
• During those first chaotic months, Kluger and Roof spent a lot of time in the car, shuttling Bregoli between various appointments.
• Phil” titled “I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime!” Bregoli had done all that and more, leading her desperate mother, Barbara Ann, to contact the television shrink for assistance.
• Kluger was initially against the idea of getting back into the music business, but he consented to some studio time to see how Bregoli sounded outside the car.
• Kluger remembers one phone call from his mother, in which she warned that Bregoli would ruin his career.
• Throughout this process of trial and error, Bregoli and her mother were still splitting their time between Boynton Beach and Los Angeles.
• A D.J. named Suga Shay hyped up the crowd, spinning Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow.” Lyrics gave way to a bass-heavy vamp, and Bregoli made her way to the stage, wearing white jeans and a matching Thrasher hoodie.
• If the Bhanned in the U.S.A. Tour went well, it would go a long way toward persuading the public that Bregoli wasn’t just that viral brat from “Dr.
• Around that time, Bregoli says, the friend started sleeping with adult men for money.
• Phil.” According to Kluger, Bregoli counts herself among the skeptics.
• (Bregoli is half Jewish, on her estranged father’s side.) Bregoli gets her nails done twice a week; Dellatto, who manages her schedule, tends to spend a lot of time in the salon.
• Roof set up a paid sponsorship deal for Bregoli to post about FitTea Detox Tea on Instagram.
• When Bregoli looks back on this time in her life, she tends to talk around “Dr.
• When she came home one night with an illegal tattoo — a rose on her shoulder that says “Family First” — Kluger and Roof made a hasty decision: She needed to move to Los Angeles for good.
• Danielle Bregoli, of Boynton Beach, was a guest on a September 2016 episode of “Dr.
• In February 2017, Bregoli and her mother flew to Los Angeles for a second “Dr.
• Back at the house in Dellatto’s wing, Bregoli half-watched “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” and played through a bunch of viral videos on her phone.
• At a court hearing last June for Bregoli’s marijuana charges, Peskowitz told the local ABC affiliate, WPBF, that he worried that Bregoli was being groomed for porn.
• (Bregoli has since suggested that “Bhad” stands for “been hated and doubted.”) Kluger disliked the misspelling but accepted the name as a good first step away from her past: She was no longer the Cash Me Outside Girl.
• On this trip to New York, Bregoli was staying with her grandmother in Mill Basin, in the very same house where her mother grew up and caught the Brooklyn accent that Bregoli now exhibits in some reconstituted form.
• Bregoli remembers Dellatto saying, “I’m taking you to L.A. You can either get up and get in the car, or I’m going to pick you up and put you in the car.” She got in the car; on the way to the airport, she bit off her acrylics.
• For all she knew, every one of them loathed her; her first thought was: How do I fight all of you? Kluger didn’t quite have a business plan worked out, but her question was in line with his vision for her future.

Sentences:

1. How a troubled Florida teenager went from the “Dr.

2. Phil” show to signing a major-label record deal as a rapper.

3. Adam Kluger had a plan to save music.

4. It was 2008: Piracy was up, streaming hadn’t taken off and the physical album had long been eclipsed by the digital single.

5. On top of that, it was the middle of the recession; industry people were looking for ways to make up their losses.

6. He peddled the concept to record executives, presenting his plan as a source of easy money.

7. They turned him away, citing artistic integrity.

8. He got in touch with Interscope’s vice chairman, Steve Berman, a name he knew from skits between songs on Eminem records.

9. Berman wasn’t into brand dropping, but he did need a novel revenue stream to cover the costs of video production.

10. He gave Kluger a list of the label’s new artists; perhaps he could make some suitable arrangements.

11. Kluger focused his efforts on younger artists, making the case that taking the cash was not creatively bankrupt but could in fact further their vision.

12. By the end of that summer, he had his first win — a deal between a clothing brand called Vixen’s Visions and a new pop act named Lady Gaga.

13. Over the course of the next several years, Kluger became a kind of sponsored-content hustler, making arrangements between artists and brands: Christina Aguilera and the Oranum psychic hotline, Flo Rida and the porn site Live Jasmin, Jason Derulo and the singles site Plenty of Fish.

14. As Kluger saw it, he was just a middleman, taking a cut of the pay in exchange for providing a matchmaking service.

15. By the fall of 2016, he was working on one of his biggest deals yet, between Britney Spears and the dating app Bumble.

16. “It was almost a million dollars,” Kluger recalls.

17. “I was on a flight to L.A. in November, for the video shoot, and the brand Bumble tried to go around me and go directly through Britney’s lawyers, which doesn’t happen.

18. They tried to beat the middleman.” Spears saw things differently.

19. TMZ reported that Spears’s camp believed that Kluger had been fraudulently acting as her representative and that he pocketed more than 40 percent of the $800,000 sponsorship fee.

20. Her lawyers sent a letter threatening to sue.

21. “I was so pissed off at the way that I was treated publicly from it that I decided to quit the music business,” Kluger says.

22. He took a vacation to blow off some steam — New York, Costa Rica.

23. By the time he got back, it was 2017, and he was still pissed off — especially at Bumble.

24. “I was like, ‘I built this company.

25. I helped make this [expletive] popular.’ Then I was like, ‘I can make anything popular.’ ” Kluger hatched another plan, this time to save his own reputation.

26. “I’m going to find something that’s just so obscure, and I’m going to make it popular,” he decided.

27. As Kluger’s deal was hitting the fan, the web was caught up in a drama of its own over an absurd clip from daytime TV featuring a Florida teenager.

28. Danielle Bregoli, of Boynton Beach, was a guest on a September 2016 episode of “Dr.

29. Phil” titled “I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime!” Bregoli had done all that and more, leading her desperate mother, Barbara Ann, to contact the television shrink for assistance.

30. In the segment, mother and daughter sit facing a live studio audience.

31. Barbara Ann begs Dr.

32. Phil for his help, while Bregoli seems to revel in the spectacle of conflict.

33. “Catch you outside?” Dr.

34. Phil asks.

35. “Catch her outside,” Barbara Ann explains.

36. Following the show, Dr.

37. Phil sent Bregoli for an extended stay at Turn-About Ranch, a residential program in rural Utah for youths with emotional and behavioral problems.

38. As she fed and groomed horses, without internet access, clips from the “Dr.

39. Phil” segment went viral, first on YouTube, then on Instagram, then on nearly every streaming site.

40. Soon, her provocation had become a catchphrase — a brash multipurpose declaration of hardness.

41. Walmart sold a T-shirt with the transliterated phrase on the front: CASH ME OUTSIDE HOW BOUT DAH.

42. By the time Bregoli returned to Boynton Beach in January 2017, the internet knew her as the Cash Me Outside Girl — yet another disposable star, or yet another victim of a stage mother, or yet another white girl getting famous off black culture.

43. Nobody seemed to agree on the subtext or on the best way to spell her slogan, but everyone agreed that she wasn’t meant to last.

44. Everyone but Kluger, who by then was living in Miami.

45. He first heard the words “cash me outside” as a vocal sample in a song on a local radio station.

46. Back at his office, he looked up the track, which led him to the clip from her “Dr.

47. Phil” appearance.

48. At that point, Bregoli had been home from Turn-About for only two days.

49. Kluger found her phone number by searching online.

50. Bregoli answered the phone but told him she couldn’t talk until Barbara Ann got back from the store.

51. Barbara Ann invited him over.

52. The next day, he made the hour drive through the South Florida sprawl, parking his Mercedes on their plain suburban street.

53. As Kluger recalls, “I said: ‘I want to manage you.

54. Give me some time, I’ll make you a star.

55. I’ll make you guys rich.

56. Seven months later, Bregoli was a rapper, reborn on the charts under the stage name Bhad Bhabie.

57. If the rebirth was quick, it wasn’t predestined; it happened through a kind of alchemical futzing that aimed to convert her fleeting viral fame into something that might degrade less quickly.

58. On her first day home from Turn-About Ranch, she joined Instagram under the username @slimthugga and soon found her followers compounding by the day — 10,000, 20,000, 40,000.

59. For all she knew, every one of them loathed her; her first thought was: How do I fight all of you? Kluger didn’t quite have a business plan worked out, but her question was in line with his vision for her future.

60. He would let her be herself online, without constraints, regardless of what was considered age-appropriate or in her best interests.

61. He would be her manager, not her parent.

62. “The initial idea was to brand her,” he says.

63. “To take this villain — relentless, crazy-attitude kid — and just brand her as this supervillain.

64. Kluger was fluent in branding-speak, but he knew he needed help turning followers into money.

65. He placed a call to his colleague Dan Roof, the founder of FLUE, a digital firm best known for its consulting on the “I Am T Pain” app.

66. Kluger and Roof had collaborated before on a paid content deal for the YouTube singer Austin Mahone.

67. Roof had never seen Bregoli on “Dr.

68. Phil” and to this day still hasn’t watched the full episode; after some negotiation, he agreed to come on board as her digital manager, helping her set up sponsorship deals.

69. In February 2017, Bregoli and her mother flew to Los Angeles for a second “Dr.

70. Phil” appearance, in which she told the TV therapist, “I made you just like how Oprah made you.” That same week, she appeared in a video for the rapper Kodak Black, a fellow Florida native and one of Bregoli’s favorite artists.

71. In the video, Bregoli wore a shirt that said CASH ME OUSSIDE on the front and HOW BOW DAH on the back; she fanned stacks of cash in the back seat of a Rolls-Royce.

72. A few days later, on a Spirit Airlines flight, Bregoli clocked another passenger in the head during a dispute about overhead-bin space.

73. She was bounced from the flight and landed back in the headlines on gossip sites.

74. By the time she eventually returned to Florida, Twitter was losing its mind — partly in shock over her flagrant misconduct, partly in awe of her persistence in the news.

75. But in our current cultural economy, such attention does not always convert easily to cash.

76. She now had two managers and the interest of the public but was still left facing an industrywide predicament: Today’s internet produces many figures of interest, but few possess the kinds of talent that our entertainment pipelines were designed to monetize.

77. Influencers are famous for things that can’t be sold — bodies, personas, lifestyles and conflict.

78. Some make money by doing sponsored posts on Instagram.

79. Others have been more creative; top users from the defunct vlogging site Vine planned a meet-and-greet convention tour known as MAGCON, charging fans for real-life access.

80. If these hustles can be profitable, then they tend to work best as one of several revenue streams; online stars are still best served by finding their way toward traditional talent.

81. Roof set up a paid sponsorship deal for Bregoli to post about FitTea Detox Tea on Instagram.

82. The money was good, but it wouldn’t last forever; Kluger set out to find something more stable.

83. A meet-and-greet tour was booked and then canceled — it was deemed too shortsighted as her following continued to grow.

84. A reality show about fame fell through on account of the tautological problem that it would not succeed unless she kept getting famous.

85. Bregoli had expressed some interest in acting, but a film career would take too long to build.

86. Viral minutes tick faster than real ones.

87. If she wanted to keep the interest of the public, she needed a talent, and she needed one soon.

88. Throughout this process of trial and error, Bregoli and her mother were still splitting their time between Boynton Beach and Los Angeles.

89. Bregoli was still getting in trouble.

90. At the end of February, a security camera seemingly caught her on tape with a friend, who threw an ice cream cone at a stranger outside a bar in downtown Lake Worth, Fla.

91. In April, she was cited for possession of marijuana in Boynton Beach.

92. Kluger remembers one phone call from his mother, in which she warned that Bregoli would ruin his career.

93. He hung up on her; they didn’t speak again for three weeks.

94. “Everybody got weird,” he says.

95. “I wasn’t even mad that they were bashing Danielle, because everyone was bashing Danielle at the time.

96. During those first chaotic months, Kluger and Roof spent a lot of time in the car, shuttling Bregoli between various appointments.

97. She killed the time in traffic on Instagram Live or by singing along to songs she liked.

98. Like many kids her age, she listened to rap.

99. She loved to rap along with Kodak Black mixtapes as Roof made videos on his phone, just for fun.

100. Reviewing the clips, he thought to himself, It kind of sounds like she can rap a little bit.

101. A shift toward rap would not be unprecedented.

102. The year 2017 had already experienced a spate of enthusiastic, if terrible, rap songs by social-media figures, including “It’s Everyday Bro,” by the YouTuber Jake Paul, which, thanks to his millions of subscribers, managed to reach the Billboard Hot 100.

103. 
     
     
     

104. Rap is a biographical form.

105. Back when most songs were still part of an album, records were used to tell origin stories, advance inside jokes and escalate beefs.

106. But as streaming continues to disaggregate the album, the digital single leaves less room for plot, pushing that burden out into the real world.

107. Instagram and Twitter bridge the gap.

108. Social media and rap share a similar mode — personal, direct, aspirational.

109. A rapper can post to flesh out his world; an internet star can turn toward music as a way to commodify the world she has already created.

110. A single is cheap and easy to produce, and just a few can serve to ground a whole career, providing a more concrete reason for touring and a more stable base for a merchandise line.

111. In a music industry that increasingly makes its money off things other than music, this reversal does not seem so convoluted.

112. Kluger was initially against the idea of getting back into the music business, but he consented to some studio time to see how Bregoli sounded outside the car.

113. At that first trial session, she felt painfully self-conscious.

114. 
     

“I was like: ‘I don’t want to put these headphones on.

I don’t want to get in this booth,’ ”

115. she says.

116. When she finally got in front of the mic, it took a few moments to work up the courage.

117. She got into the zone.

118. “I was like, literally, ‘I’m prettier than all of these people in here.’ I looked at the people in the room, and I was like: ‘I’m better than you.

119. I can do this.

120. I’ll be fine.

121. That first trial session landed her a second one with Aton Ben-Horin, the global head of artists and repertoire at Warner Music Group.

122. 
     

123. He was impressed by Bregoli’s online following — by then, well over a million on Instagram — but told Roof and Kluger that she had a future only if she could actually rap.

124. He brought along a songwriter’s sketch of an unfinished track called “Hi Bich,” a trap-pop banger with a mean-girl hook.

125. 
     

126. When Bregoli got in the booth, he knew he had something.

127. “I was convinced that even without Dr.

128. Phil, without anything, this girl would have done music,” Ben-Horin says.

129. “There’s something really special about her phrasing, and I think that’s actually part of why the ‘cash me outside’ phrase went viral.

130. It wasn’t just that she said ‘cash me outside’ — it was the way she said it.” Over the course of the next two weeks, they recorded 14 songs together.

131. On Sept.

132. 15, a news release from Atlantic announced that it had signed Bregoli to a record deal.

133. (“With her burgeoning rap career, Bhad Bhabie is set to prove that she is more than just a meme.”) A lone tipster told TMZ the deal was worth millions; Atlantic declined to comment.

134. Bregoli had in the meantime changed her Instagram handle to

     @BhadBhabie — officially pronounced Bad Baby, but sometimes mispronounced Bad Barbie or Baahd Bobby.

135. (Bregoli has since suggested that “Bhad” stands for “been hated and doubted.”) Kluger disliked the misspelling but accepted the name as a good first step away from her past: She was no longer the Cash Me Outside Girl.

136. “She’s not allowed to say ‘cash me outside,’ ” Kluger says.

137. In December, Bregoli visited the Atlantic offices in Midtown Manhattan.

138. She showed up a little past 11 in the morning, chewing caffeine gum from the gift shop in the lobby and drinking a giant strawberry smoothie.

139. By then, she had released four singles as Bhad Bhabie — each a more perfect pop distillation of a gritty brand of trap rap.

140. “Hi Bich” made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100; its video has been viewed over 100 million times.

141. The internet seemed to resent its own enjoyment.

142. Bregoli took a seat at the corporate coffee table.

143. “It’s cold,” she said, shrinking even smaller in her oversize hoodie.

144. Bregoli is a boggling study of proportions — small feet, small frame, superlong acrylic nails and a horsy ponytail that her mangers say they make her wear as a strained prophylactic against sexualization.

145. (“Anything a real 15-year-old girl could wear, dial that down to a 9-year-old,” Bregoli says.) Her scale takes on an even greater sense of whimsy in relation to her all-male entourage, which that day included Kluger, Roof and her full-time bodyguard, Frank Dellatto.

146. Dellatto was hired to protect Bregoli (mostly from herself) after the Spirit Airlines altercation.

147. He now lives in Hollywood with her and her mother — part driver, part brother, part bodyguard, part friend.

148. On this trip to New York, Bregoli was staying with her grandmother in Mill Basin, in the very same house where her mother grew up and caught the Brooklyn accent that Bregoli now exhibits in some reconstituted form.

149. The day before, she visited a walk-in nail salon to have her nails redone in blue and white — for Hanukkah, she joked.

150. (Bregoli is half Jewish, on her estranged father’s side.) Bregoli gets her nails done twice a week; Dellatto, who manages her schedule, tends to spend a lot of time in the salon.

151. View this post on Instagram

     Just know I love you if I let you sit behind me ... 💕 outfit @showroomglamdolls

     A post shared by Vick (@imwoahvicky) on Aug 3, 2020 at 10:49pm PDT

152. Bregoli is an only child, born in 2003.

153. Her father, Ira Peskowitz, is a deputy sheriff in South Florida.

154. He and Barbara Ann never married.

155. At a court hearing last June for Bregoli’s marijuana charges, Peskowitz told the local ABC affiliate, WPBF, that he worried that Bregoli was being groomed for porn.

156. Barbara Ann says that he took an interest in parenting duties only after his daughter’s reappearance on “Dr.

157. Phil.” And, according to an anonymously sourced story on TMZ, he accepted a payoff from Barbara Ann in exchange for terminating his parental rights.

158. Barbara Ann remembers her daughter as a spoiled but loving child, who slept in her bed throughout her breast-cancer treatment and continues to do so even today.

159. Their relationship changed when Bregoli was 12 and started having issues with authority.

160. She transferred to an alternative school, where she made friends with a heavily tattooed 15-year-old girl.

161. Bregoli and her new friend stopped going to class.

162. They would walk to the beach, or the Palm Beach Outlets, or nearby Lake Worth to visit their boyfriends.

163. They dressed alike.

164. Around that time, Bregoli says, the friend started sleeping with adult men for money.

165. Bregoli, meanwhile, was getting high and fighting with her mother — normal teenager stuff, on a supersonic scale.

166. In a one-year period, the police were called to the family home in Boynton Beach dozens of times.

167. Barbara Ann knew that she needed to get help.

168. She thought Bregoli needed residential treatment, but she couldn’t afford it.

169. She considered the “Dr.

170. Phil” appearance a nonideal solution to what seemed like an otherwise intractable problem.

171. When Bregoli looks back on this time in her life, she tends to talk around “Dr.

172. Phil,” leaving an impression that her fame came from nowhere.

173. Like those of sober addicts and survivors of cults, her life is arranged into a clear before and after.

174. Still, the transition did not come all at once.

175. During those first months home from Turn-About Ranch, she was still going out, making trouble with her friend.

176. When she came home one night with an illegal tattoo — a rose on her shoulder that says “Family First” — Kluger and Roof made a hasty decision: She needed to move to Los Angeles for good.

177. Bregoli remembers Dellatto saying, “I’m taking you to L.A. You can either get up and get in the car, or I’m going to pick you up and put you in the car.” She got in the car; on the way to the airport, she bit off her acrylics.

178. Looking back, Bregoli believes this was the right decision even if she didn’t exactly make it for herself; looking forward makes her too anxious.

179. Around the time of the visit to Atlantic, she was on the cusp of a 26-date tour, for which she was enrolled in performance training lessons with Deja Riley, a movement coach who was brought on board to help develop her stage presence.

180. If the Bhanned in the U.S.A. Tour went well, it would go a long way toward persuading the public that Bregoli wasn’t just that viral brat from “Dr.

181. Phil.” According to Kluger, Bregoli counts herself among the skeptics.

182. Kluger feels certain this isn’t the case.

183. “When we started with her, period, it was 99.5 percent hate, .5 percent like,” he says.

184. “When ‘These Heaux’ ” — her first single — “came out in July/August, it was 70 percent hate, 30 percent like.

185. 
     

186. We’re at a solid 60-40; 40 percent of the world hates her, 60 percent actually like her.

187. For the debut tour date on April 14, Kluger deliberately booked an undersize venue — the Observatory in Orange County, Calif.

188. He had faith that Bregoli would do a good job but wanted to ensure a packed house, for her ego.

189. It worked.

190. That night, the crowd was diverse — almost too diverse to characterize.

191. Black girls with nose rings and multicolor yarn braids pushed against white goth girls with baby bangs; 10-year-old boys and lesbian couples mixed with Kylie Jenner types of every race and creed.

192. A man over 40 with male-pattern baldness carried a drawstring backpack that said BHAD.

193. If the guests had anything significant in common, it was that none of them seemed sure if their presence was sincere.

194. D.J. named Suga Shay hyped up the crowd, spinning Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow.” Lyrics gave way to a bass-heavy vamp, and Bregoli made her way to the stage, wearing white jeans and a matching Thrasher hoodie.

195. 
     

196. A man in the front row yelled to his friend, “Oh, my God — she looks like a little girl!” She walked back and forth with slow, wide strides, eating up all the space on her stage.

197. The first song was “Gucci Flip Flops,” a Lil Yachty collaboration with a singsong, knick-knack-paddy-whack flow

     .

198. Bregoli rapped about a big-faced watch dripping in diamonds — a luxury commodity that she neither had nor especially wanted.

199. On a literal level, nearly everything she rapped that night was untrue.

200. At 15, she could not drive the Bentley truck mentioned in “Both of ’Em,” nor the Porsche on “Hi Bich.” The audience knew this wasn’t the point.

201. Now they understood that if their interest was partly in jest, it was not the sneering mockery of hipsters at Olive Garden, but the camp infatuation of gay men who root for Disney villains.

202. Bregoli’s claims were demonstrably false, but at least they spoke truth to our universal urge to prove haters wrong, especially when they might actually be right.

203. Bregoli crouched down to get level with her crowd: “What’s up, all my Santa Ana sluts?” The crowd declared its allegiance, but not for long enough; her discography was still only 20 minutes end to end.

204. She made some efforts to extend her presence visually.

205. A screen played a reel of nonmusical hits: clips of recent TMZ coverage, footage from the infamous Spirit Airlines fight.

206. She performed covers (of Lil Pump, of Kodak Black) and chose a fan to bring onstage (the brace-faced “Julie from East L.A.”). She played a game of call and response: “How many of you hate these fake-ass bitches?” The audience reached an expedient consensus.

207. She flipped her ponytail and paused for a breath.

208. The room fell silent.

209. The man had transgressed an unspoken taboo.

210. He should have known better than to shout at a girl whose only proven talent was firing back.

211. “I can’t see no one’s mouth moving,” Bregoli said.

212. The crowd booed the man to hell on her behalf.

213. The room was so full it was hard to see if he fled.

214. Bregoli picked up where she left off.

215. The next day’s music news was dominated by a much larger happening: Coachella.

216. Bregoli, who wished she could have gone, instead went with Dellatto to get Mexican food at a chile-pepper-string-lights place in the Valley.

217. , @liltay

218. Kluger and Roof run the public @bhadbhabie account.

219. “I get mad, and I do dumb [expletive],” she explained.

220. “It’s better off that they have it than me.” Far less brash than her public persona, in person she doesn’t seem to care if you like her at all.

221. She looked through some posts about the previous day’s show and offered the kind of two-word summations that other teenagers give when they’re asked, “How was school?” For someone who had just played a sold-out room, she seemed reluctant to celebrate too soon.

222. On the drive back to the house, Bregoli shared a bag of gummy bears with Dellatto and chattered away about the fakeness of Los Angeles.

223. A housefly landed on her white Playboy sweats, and Dellatto caught the bug in his hand in midair.

224. Pulling the S.U.V. into the garage, he put it in park and looked at his phone.

225. The day before, Bregoli’s old friend from Boynton Beach — the one with whom she used to ditch school — had been arrested.

226. Dellatto read a text from Kluger out loud: “While you are performing and living a life people dream of, she is rotting in jail.

227. “She’s a [expletive] wreck,” Bregoli said.

228. Back at the house in Dellatto’s wing, Bregoli half-watched “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” and played through a bunch of viral videos on her phone.

229. “I want some [expletive] chocolate-covered strawberries from Godiva,” she announced.

230. “Does Postmates do that?” She opened the delivery app, scrolled for a moment and decided she would rather just get them at the mall.

231. Later that night outside the Glendale Galleria, about 500 feet from Godiva Chocolatier, Bregoli was filmed in a physical altercation with two less-famous social-media stars.

232. The first, @imwoahvicky, was the 18-year-old daughter of a Georgia real estate developer who first gained attention on Instagram posting videos of her lavish life, using her own interpretation of a Southern black accent.

1. (Vicky appears to be white but has claimed that an online DNA test proved she was part black.) The second, @liltay, was a suspiciously unsupervised grade-school girl, reportedly from Canada, who role-plays a rapper’s lifestyle online.

2. Watching the tussle between the three girls felt, on some level, like watching Bregoli fight with two bad facsimiles of herself.

3. If her old friend’s arrest seemed to hark toward the past and the turbulence of the life she successfully escaped, then the fight portended its own disorienting future — one rife with messy microcelebs, constantly competing for public attention by further offending the sensibilities of an increasingly numb audience.

4. The incident spurred conflicting statements from all sides, starting a miniature cycle of news that threatened the coverage of Bregoli’s first performance.

5. If nobody knew why the fight had occurred, then neither could anyone seem to look away.

6. “I’m not happy that Danielle got violent, but I understand why,” Kluger said the next morning.

7. “The reason I’m upset really is because this aligns her with someone who is just a complete nobody.

8. Just a mockery.

9. It’s bad for my brand.” Chaos is only profitable to the extent that you can control it; after the Spirit Airlines fight, Kluger learned to keep a piece of good news in his back pocket.

10. “I know who I’m working with, and I’m prepared,” he said.

11. Two days after the fight, and 580 days after her initial appearance on “Dr.