Parlé: I have to ask about the decision to even go to college, most people who are in the streets aren’t even thinking about school, much less college, so what went into that decision for both of you to go to school?
JaQuavis: I’m not even going to say I had good parents, both my parents were drug addicts, but we made a pact that we were going to school. We always wanted to go to school, before we was writing books, school was always first, we always got good grades. We always took school seriously because if we weren’t successful writers maybe I’d be a lawyer and she’d be a professor or a scientist. We were going to be successful and we knew in this world, with the strikes against us already, we had to do that. We never thought that drug dealing was going to get us far. We were going to hustle straight through college, but just so happened that we got that four thousand dollars. I don’t think Ashley would’ve messed with me if I wasn’t talking about going to school and vice versa. I have to have a powerful aggressive woman, I have to have a Michelle Obama, cause I’m a thinker so I need somebody that’s going to feed me and make me grow. We was going to go to school regardless. If this wasn’t happening, if I was a janitor, I’d be the best janitor in the world, so…
Ashley: School wasn’t an option, it was a must. It’s a lot of pretty girls where we come from—there’s not a lot of pretty girls like me (laughs), but there’s a lot of pretty girls in Flint, Michigan. We come from the bottom so there’s a lot of dudes hustling, but there’s not a lot of dudes hustling and thinking, forward thinking the way that he is. There’s not a lot of pretty girls that use their minds and not their bodies the way I do, so it was just perfect, us getting together we kinda just gelled with that. It was never even a question. Hustling, it wasn’t something that we wanted to do forever, education was key and we both understood that. We can make a million dollars but we wanted that legit money, we always chased that legit money. Selling drugs was just a means to an end at that time. And we knew it, out grew it, and became responsible adults.
Parlé: What did the two of you study?
Ashley: I studied journalism.
JaQuavis: And I was an English major. It was always writing, everything we did was kinda towards writing so it was inevitable.
Parlé: Switching gears a bit, of course you have the movie Hard 6ix in the works. Is that “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang”?
JaQuavis: Yeah it is.
Parlé: And Ashley, you’re in the movie?
Ashley: (laughs) Yes. God (sighs).
Parlé: What made you decide that now was the time to do this movie?
JaQuavis: In any arena there’s a glass ceiling, you have to sit back and analyze the situation—I want to achieve this, is this the vehicle to get me that? And what we want, we can’t buy a yacht selling books. We love it, we still will feed that genre, but now it’s time to push that element cause you only live once. We’re only 26 but it feels like I’m 46. So it’s that ticking clock. When I’m 30, I’ma be doing something else. I just felt like it was time for us to expand and go to a different arena. Now we starting all the way at the bottom, but we not scared cause we just saw how it was to be at the bottom. We was at the Harlem Book Fair five years ago, nobody knew who we was. We was hawking books. Now, they show us love. So I’m excited for the task, I’m excited. And now we have a little bit of involvement from Baby and Slim as well.
Parlé: But just to clarify, Baby and Slim aren’t involved with the Hard 6ix project are they?
JaQuavis: Naw, but we do have a major deal with them also to do The Cartel movie.
Parlé: Hard 6ix, that’s coming out, is that going to be an independent release?
JaQuavis: Yeah it is. We’ll announce some big things for it probably end of this year.
Parlé: And you’re planning to release it next year?
JaQuavis: Yeah, we’re planning for July of next year, but the film is edited already and everything.
Parlé: Ashley, how was it acting in it?
Ashley: It was a challenge. I’m not the girl that necessarily seeks attention or loves attention, I’m more low key than that, so being in front of the camera was different, you know, having the cameras there at all times. But it was exciting, it was one of the most fun things I ever done in my life. I don’t know if I would do it again, just cause I like the ownership side of things. I like giving direction instead of taking direction. I like being behind the camera and being a bit more of a boss in the situation. But he was my director so it was easy to take that direction from him (she says while giving him the googly eyes). I don’t know if anybody else could handle me though…
JaQuavis: I don’t think so either.
Parlé: How was it directing her, JaQuavis?
JaQuavis: That’s my new passion. I will be one of the best directors ever. I’m serious. I love it, it’s actually just like writing. I’m trying to keep her from it cause I know how she is, she’ll be my biggest competition. If I’m scared of anybody it’s her, cause she built like me. So I know she gonna get that bug too—directing. It’s poetry in motion, when I’m writing a book I’m writing, but when I’m directing you can see it come into fruition. It’s a new passion of mine.
Parlé: Okay, let’s bring it back to the books, is part 3 of Murderville already written?
JaQuavis: Naw, we write it as we go. We writing like 4 books right now and Murderville 3 is a part of the bunch.
Parlé: And ya’ll will continue writing individually as well?
JaQuavis: Yeah, that’s more checks man. People don’t understand, in the beginning we got offered 2 deals, she had her own separate deal and I had my own separate deal. But we were like let’s make them think its’ one author, then we gonna make one check into three checks. So we put Ashley JaQuavis as an author. When people clung onto it, we put Ashley Antoinette and JaQuavis Coleman. Now we was getting 3 checks instead of one. It was just a business decision. And it worked out. That four thousand, quickly became twelve thousand and every time we got a raise, the whole brand got a raise. We just started putting Ashley & JaQuavis on books, it was always Ashley JaQuavis in the beginning.
Parlé: You’ve said you wanna retire at 30, is that just from books is or that from everything?
JaQuavis: From books.
Ashley: I want to retire at 30. At a certain point I want to sit back and play the wife. Cause I trust him and his mind. He hasn’t led me astray thus far. I been rocking with him since I was a child basically so at 30, I’ma sit back and play the wife honey (she tells JaQuavis, more googly eyes, obvious honesty in every word). I trust him to make the money.
JaQuavis: She say that. (they both Laugh). It’s just that my plan was to retire from writing at 30. How much can you write about streets? We just want to expand. I want to be known as one-half of the greatest Black authors of all time. We on pace to fuck with Shakespeare, that’s what I’m trying to do. We trying to write a story about every aspect of street life… And conquer it. The only person to do that to me was Shakespeare. He didn’t do it on street life, he did it on colonial life. He conquered that.
I’m trying to live life man. You got all your life to be old, you only got a certain amount to be young. So I don’t want to be working til I’m 50.
Parlé Questions & Comments fb group sponsored question
Parlé: I pondered on whether it would be a appropriate to ask you guys this question before I got here, but this has been such a great interview that I feel like you two are the best people I can ask about this. I have a group on fb for random questions and this was brought up, want to get your opinion. The question was, should couples these days, in an effort to be safe and cautious always require a pre-nup and blood tests for each child, even after marriage?
JaQuavis: That’s a good question…
Ashley: That’s a great question. I don’t think a pre-nup is necessary or a blood test is necessary because in a relationship you have to have trust. That’s the foundation, that’s the solidness that you build everything else around—success, love, friendship, all of that is being held up by trust so if you don’t have that, if I have to sign a piece of paper for you to think I won’t take you to the bank. It’s almost like setting yourself up to fail with ‘if we end?’ There is no ‘if we end.’ That’s not an option for us. If we get in trouble we gonna work that out. It’s not an option for us to let outside forces tear what we built. This has nothing to do with the books, the money. We’re successful together but he can be successful without me, I can be successful without him. I’m talking about the root, the foundation, there’s nothing that can tear us down and that starts with trust. I don’t think a pre-nup or a blood test is necessary.
JaQuavis: That’s like the old unspoken rule, you don’t need a Plan B because that disrupts the Plan A. How can I go into a situation and say ‘if it doesn’t work, we got this pre-nup’. No, don’t get married if it ain’t gonna work. We got married, that’s what it is. This my ride or die til it’s over. Whatever we gotta work out, it may not be pretty, it may be hard, but we gotta work it out. We HAVE to work it out, because it’s not an option. We real. You don’t understand, we REAL. This my nigga. I watch Love & Hip-Hop with her, she watch the game with me on Monday (assuming he meant football, but he could be talking about the BET show here, which also comes on Monday nights). So we have a perfect understanding.
Ashley: You gotta work on it, especially Black couples, they gotta learn to work on it. Marriage is work, a relationship is work. It’s easy to meet a dude that will treat you nice that first day, but will he treat you nice twelve years later like he treat me. You can’t be distracted by the glitter cause everything that glitter ain’t gold. I found my gold so I’m sticking to it, I’ma dig that ditch and find some more nuggets down there.
JaQuavis: And you’d have to start over. C’mon, why would I want to mess with a chick and have to start all over.?!
Ashley: Who wanna date?!
JaQuavis: You can get cool with another person but who knows you?
Ashley: You only find it once, and if you don’t give yourself time to even nurture that relationship, it’s like you giving up on love before you even know what it feels like. The courtship is always fun, but the hard times when the love is not supposed to be there, but it’s still there, that’s the connection that women and men need to tap into. Those are the moments you need to savor. Like any other thing, everything takes hard work. Marriage is hard work. So I don’t believe in that pre-nup shit, you can cancel that.
Parlé: My thoughts exactly. I appreciate you taking the time to answer all my questions. Much continued success. Any final words you want to put out there?
Jaquavis: We want to thank all our fans and readers, we write for ya’ll. We move for ya’ll. We love our fans and we love what we do.
Ashley: Buy the book!
Ashley and JaQuavis Coleman really said it all, not only are they are real, but they are an inspiration, on many levels. Look out for more news on their movie Hard 6ix later this year. And they promised that there would be more news about the Cash Money produced film for The Cartel Series coming soon as well. Their answers about that project were omitted out of respect for the hustle, but they promised that BIG THINGS were on the horizon.
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