Her Name Was Dolores Read online

  Then, the tides seemed to take a turn for the better. Jen had received her associate’s degree, had become a licensed real estate agent, and had landed a job at Century 21. She was finally able to breathe again and actually managed to purchase her first home, but in the process she also got back together with Trino. They had another baby together in 1991, this time a boy, Mikey, and she thought they were finally on track to becoming a normal family. But instead of getting better, things got worse. The fights began to escalate again, and by 1992 she finally left Trino for good, not knowing the gut-wrenching damage he had caused her family, something she would discover years later.

  In the scope of things, 1992 was a big year for Jen. She not only managed to end the abusive relationship with her husband, she also unknowingly took the first steps toward what would become her future bread and butter: on a dare, while out with friends, after twelve years of vowing to never sing again, she climbed on stage at the nightclub El Rancho Grande, asked the norteño band to play Chalino Sánchez’s “Nieves de enero,” and belted it out to a cheering crowd. As she walked down those steps and felt that performance high, she was flooded with memories of how much she loved singing and realized how much she had missed it. But she still didn’t consider she could make a career out of it.

  She was so happy to have reconnected with music that, shortly after that quick stint on stage, she recruited her brothers to help her record an album for her dad as a birthday gift, her first one, Somos Rivera. Don Pedro had founded a successful record label a few years earlier, and everyone in the family had chipped in at some point or other by working at the office, including Jenni. Suffice to say, they had access to recording studios and knew what they were doing. Don Pedro was so happy he started promoting Somos Rivera around town, hoping to make a name for Jenni in the industry. Meanwhile, the real estate business had taken a nosedive, and Jenni was once again hitting another low point in her life. She had to bite the bullet and go on welfare in order to make ends meet for herself and her three children.

  Since she had dipped her toes back into the music world, Jenni agreed to play a gig as the opening act to an artist who was on her father’s label, but was horrified when she tried to get paid and the manager propositioned her. He basically said she had to have sex with him before he could pay her. She’d had enough. She was about ready to hang her mic up again, when Don Pedro begged her to record one more album for him. She couldn’t say no to her beloved dad, so she recorded Por un amor, which captured the attention of Balboa Records. So she signed on with them to record another album, La Maestra, but they did nothing to promote it.

  By 1994, Jen had another stroke of luck: the real estate market picked up, and she was out of the hole and once again making a decent living for her family. She was still interested in music, but putting food on the table and providing for her three children was (and has always been) her main priority, and music wasn’t about to feed them just yet.

  A year later, in 1995, she met her soon-to-be second husband, Juan Lopez and started another tumultuous relationship that lasted eight years. He wasn’t physically abusive like Trino, but they did butt heads and fight passionately. He became her manager in her slow-budding music career, and she had two more children with him, Jenicka in 1997, and Johnny in 2001. The same year Jen met Juan, she had a hit, “La Chacalosa,” in the underground music scene, which garnered her L.A. fans. At this point, Jenni was active in the business world. She wasn’t about to give up her Century 21 job, but she wasn’t going to say no to easy money either. Sing some songs and get a five-hundred-dollar paycheck? Hey, why not? It meant more money in the bank while doing something she loved, so she kept at it.

  When the end of the nineties rolled in, Don Pedro took her material to Que Buena, the local radio station in L.A. dedicated to Spanish-language Regional Mexican music, but they were hesitant to play her music. Jen’s brother, Lupillo Rivera, was making a name for himself in the music industry, and they didn’t want to oversaturate the airwaves with too many Riveras. However, Jenni did get some airplay at other stations. Her following continued to slowly grow, and she started getting more offers to play at local clubs. Being the hustler that she was, she kept saying yes to the gigs. They meant more money for her children, and it didn’t hurt that she was also doing what she loved.

  Finally, around 2001, Que Buena decided to play Jen’s music. She was over the moon. The airplay then extended to other counties and states. That’s when Jen’s keen entrepreneurial sense kicked in; she saw this as a business opportunity and ran with it. Juan and Jen quit their daytime jobs and dedicated themselves full-time to her music career. It was now or never, do or die. Unfortunately, this was also the beginning of the end of their relationship. After many fights, infidelities, and other issues, which I will get into later in this book, Jenni decided to file for divorce in 2003. This also coincided with her wanting to break away from the family music business, put together her own team, and carve her own path. She knew she could go further and do more, she knew she had what it took—she just needed the right team to get her there.

  So there we were, 2003, in the studio, putting together a plan to turn Jenni the underground sensation into Jenni Rivera the international star. However, we still had a few roadblocks to conquer. After garnering some success with “Las Malandrinas,” one of her first groundbreaking corridos, and having done some tours, she was ready for more. But at the time there was still a fair amount of bias and prejudice against women—especially in Mexico, a country she hoped to win over with her music one day. They wouldn’t even consider putting her on TV there. She wasn’t a teen act in short-shorts with her boobs out, so that pretty much made her irrelevant in the Mexican media. I knew she was never going to be that type of act—she knew it, too. It just wasn’t who she was and that was the main challenge: getting people to see her for the woman she was rather than just la hermana de Lupillo (Lupillo’s sister).

  Her brother Lupillo had skyrocketed to fame. He had gone platinum and was the first person to really make it in the music industry within their family. This made everyone immediately turn their attention to him. He was the golden child; all loyalty and hopes and dreams were now focused on Lupillo. Don Pedro’s record label, Cintas Acuarios, was still up and running and doing well, but the wealth of family resources that one would think Jenni had at her disposal to forward her career were actually hard to come by for Jen. She got little to no attention from this team because it really was all about Lupillo. On the other hand, she had a popular brother in an industry that she was trying to break into, but had little to no support from him either. Lupillo now had the ability and resources to help Jenni fast-track her career, but rather than lend her a hand, his team would hire other women to open his huge shows, and Jenni had to bite her tongue and continue her journey the old-fashioned way, knocking on doors, dealing with the constant rejection, and also doing all she could to separate her image from that of her famous brother.

  It sure as hell wasn’t easy. The media had gotten used to referring to her as la hermana de Lupillo, and they’d reach out to her not to interview her about her music, but to ask her about the latest news regarding her brother, totally sidelining her talent and musical career. That’s all she heard, left and right, that’s how promoters presented her on stage, that’s how hosts introduced her on the radio, that’s how people recognized her in person. Ten years after launching her career, she was still stopped at airports by fans who’d say, “¡Ay, tú eres la hermana de Lupillo!” (“Hey, you’re Lupillo’s sister!”) as they asked for a picture. And I remember her reply like it was yesterday: “I have a name too.” So many years, so many sacrifices, so much hard work, and they still saw her as Lupillo’s sister? Enough was enough, she was sick of living in his shadow, it was time for a change.

  Now, to be clear, she loved her brother dearly and was ecstatic with his success, celebrating each accomplishment with pure joy, but she was also somewhat disappointed and hurt by how things had unfolded be
tween them. She hadn’t expected such sibling rivalry, it was a real hard pill to swallow, but that wasn’t about to stop Jenni; she picked herself up and moved on. She was never one to wallow in her sadness; she was all about action and taking control of her life. It was now or never. The time had come for her to make her own way and work hard for her audience to finally see her for who she was rather than as the sister of her famous brother. And that there was the clincher—that would be the game changer. As soon as she found her own voice and figured out what message she wanted to deliver to her fans and the media, she’d be able to take that next step she so desperately needed for her career to finally be everything she had hoped and dreamed.

  After understanding Jenni’s backstory and getting to know her more, it hit me. A phrase came to mind that summed up her uniqueness to the tee: she was perfectly imperfect. That’s what she had to focus on, that was the quality that would set her apart and help her connect to her audience and win them over once and for all. At the time, Pilar Montenegro was very popular—she was a singer who had a huge hit and looked like a goddess in her music videos—so one day I approached Jenni and said, “You know, Jen, there are more women like you than like Pilar Montenegro.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “That there are a lot more women who aren’t perfect, who are a little insecure, who’ve been through the ringer and question where they’re going in life, while also comparing their physical appearance to these impossible beauty standards.”

  “Wow,” said Jenni. “I never thought about that.”

  “Yeah, well that’s who you need to be catering to.”

  Something clicked in Jen and that’s when things started to evolve. As Jen and I reflected on how to newly present her, all roads seemed to organically point to urban culture. After all, Jen grew up in Long Beach with Mary J. Blige as one of her main muses and rap flow from Tupac and NWA as everyday soundtracks. Her personal connection to that sound and feeling was woven into her Mexican-American experience, birthing a completely new culture of music of which Jen was singularly poised as the mother. Since I grew up with a similar cultural experience, as a Mexican-American, I resonated with the concept from the start. We were the perfect team to bring forth a vibe and a sound that spoke directly to our specific cultural community.

  It was in this newly discovered sweet spot between heritage and the here-and-now that we were able to create a unique space in which Jenni could artistically thrive. Jenni was relatable, she was perfectly imperfect, she had the potential to connect to her audience on a much more personal level, and I was hoping she would tap into this possibility.

  That’s when Jenni slowly became that strong, independent woman to her audience. The woman she had always been in private was now starting to shine through her songs. And you can immediately see this difference in her next album, Simplemente la mejor. She’d listened to my advice and really paid attention to her song selection, carefully choosing tunes that rang true to her, reflected who she was, and created a clear theme and message for her fans. She’d found her voice and was ready to share it with the world. You can also see this inner evolution in the album’s imaging. She’d gone from Mexicana with a hat to urban Chicana to glam-gal Jenni Rivera. It was a clear shift in focus and the beginning of her rise to stardom. Jenni was now a woman singing to her fellow women about love, loss, lust, having fun, and what it means to be a woman. And it worked. She was finally singing from her heart and reaching the hearts of many others who were able to relate to her much more than any of the other perfect, model-like stars out there. And by opening her heart and letting the real Jenni come alive through her music, she was also connecting on a deeper level with her audience, creating a loyal fan base that would become her rock, one of the key reasons she continued to do what she did, a fan base that would always love and support her through life, death, and beyond.

  In addition to connecting with women, Jenni was shattering the glass ceiling of what had been until then a male-dominated music genre: banda music. Its lyrics often described guys bragging about their womanizing ways and their wild nights out drinking. The music represented a certain brand of festive machismo that made for very male audiences. Then Jenni Rivera came along and decided to tell the other side of the story, the woman’s story, her story. She turned the tables on the male banda bravado and sang it from the female point of view, calling out the no-good, cheating sons-of-bitches who came home drunk every night; condemning the assholes who bailed on their wives and kids; and demanding that women rise up and take charge of their lives. She didn’t just sing about it, either—she lived it. Jenni didn’t need male audience approval, because her female fans became her personal army. Banda started to move from its male-centric ideals to a celebration of female empowerment and survival.

  In this way, Jenni not only captured the hearts of the Chicano audience that connected to her urban vibe, but also won over a new breed of female fans who resonated with her struggles and were inspired by her resilience. She became the pied piper for the curvy Latina who wanted a voice, for the jaded woman who couldn’t find love, for the single mother who was up against the world, and for the woman who was abused, the woman who was raped, the woman who was lied to. Jenni became the voice for all of these women because she was all of these women in one, and she was basically reassuring them: “Hey, we matter too!”

  Now, let me be clear. This transformation, finding her voice and making herself heard, was far from an easy feat. We’d go to radio promo runs to pitch her CD or single to the music directors, and they would take it and literally toss it in the trash right before our eyes. But Jenni kept the faith. And that inner faith that she leaned on throughout her life pushed her forward even when she had to deal with creeps who propositioned her in exchange for playing her music. “How long are you in town tonight?” they’d ask her after having thrown her music in the trash. “Vamos a comer. Let’s go have something to eat.” And, as much as she wanted to make it in this industry, she had the balls to say no. Jen knew what she wanted and how she wanted to achieve it, and no way in hell was it going to be by sleeping her way to the top.

  That was Jenni to the core. She always spoke her mind, regardless of whether it rubbed people the wrong way or made them uncomfortable, and she sure as hell didn’t play into the role of the dainty little woman who bows her head down and obeys men’s every wish and command. Once, during these radio promo meetings, we encountered a huge radio personality who refused to have her on the show because she was too scandalous and set a bad example for the women in the show’s audience. What? We couldn’t believe our ears. So Jen looked this person straight in the eye and said, “Okay, no problem. I won’t go on your show now. But mark my words—one day you’re going to want me back. That day will come and I’m not going to forget this.” That day most definitely came. After making huge strides in her career, when she was in high demand, this person’s team came a calling, begging to have her on the show, willing to do everything in their power to convince her to accept. And accept she did. While the show was taping live, the host bragged about having brought his listeners the great Jenni Rivera, a woman who fought for women, but as the interview unfolded the tension in the air rose. Jen was there, complying and playing her part, but not without taking constant jabs at this jerk every chance she had, and this time there was nothing he could do but roll with the punches. Her success had spoken for itself.

  We live in a society where everyone is trying to be someone, and I think once Jen understood she didn’t have to be someone she wasn’t, she was finally ready to embrace her perfectly imperfect self. After all, she was a single working mother, the provider for her family, she’d had to hustle to get food on the table, her life was anything but perfect, and now it was time to be okay with that.

  As soon as she embraced her perfectly imperfect self and brought it to the stage of her musical career, she really hit the jackpot. She was no longer just another rising star, she was real, she was honest.
Now her fans, her army of women, were discovering that she too had gone through a teenage pregnancy, she too had suffered an abusive relationship, she too was a single mother—and not of one or two, but of five children. She was the driving force in her family, the glue that kept them all together, always working that extra mile to make sure everyone had what they needed, digging herself out of welfare and following her passions, even if that meant giving up precious time with her beloved children for life on the road to make it happen. Jenni knew that in order to be successful there were sacrifices she would have to endure. Not being at home with her kids was the biggest sacrifice she made for them. It pained her greatly to leave them and not be there for them in their day-to-day experiences, but she knew it was what she needed to do to provide for them and give them a better life. So she found her voice, she embraced her perfectly imperfectness, and she charged forward, ready to take down any obstacles in her way and make her dreams a reality.

  Chapter 3