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Foxy Brown: So So Deaf?
New York rapper, facing charges related to her alleged assault on two manicurists at a Manhattan nail salon in August 2004, will undergo surgery to restore her hearing.
Rap's most controversial nonincarcerated vixen revealed this week that she has lost almost all of her hearing.
Brooklyn rapper Fox Brown, who burst on the scene as a 16-year-old in 1996 and has become as known for her run-ins with the law as for her rapping skills, suffers from a sensorineural hearing loss that has left her almost completely deaf, her lawyer said .
"She's pretty much totally deaf now," Brown's lawyer Joseph Tacopina told reporters as he and Brown left a Manhattan Criminal Court hearing this week. "She can't hear me. We have to write things back and forth."
Brown was first diagnosed with the illness, a rare condition that is often the result of a viral infection, in May. Surgery restored partial hearing, but drugs have failed to stop her hearing from deteriorating further. Tacopina said Brown will need an operation to determine if the deafness is permanent.
Because of her hearing problems, Brown is less likely to fight the latest criminal charges she faces, Tacopina said.
Brown--real name Inga Marchand--has been charged with misdemeanor assault for allegedly attacking a manicurist in August 2004 at a nail salon in Manhattan's Chelsea district. The alleged altercation followed a dispute over how much she would pay to have her nails done. Prosecutors claim Brown kicked one worker and punched another in the face with her cell phone.
It is not the first time Brown has been in trouble with the law.
In 1997, she allegedly spit on two hotel workers in North Carolina when they told her they didn't have an iron available. She missed a subsequent court appearance and eventually received a 30-day suspended sentence and performed community service.
In 2000, Brown was cited for driving without a license when she crashed her Range Rover in Brooklyn, and she was arrested two years later in Kingston, Jamaica, after an altercation with a female police officer at the airport. She missed a subsequent court appearance, and Jamaican authorities said she would be arrested if she returned to the island.
Over five albums and nearly 10 years in the hip-hop game, Brown has engaged in an ongoing feud with fellow scantily clad female rapper Lil' Kim, who is currently serving a one-year prison term for committing perjury to a grand jury about a shooting incident involving Brown's entourage.
Kim's latest album, The Naked Truth, was released in September after she began serving her prison sentence. It sold 109,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number 6 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Brown's latest album, Black Roses, was originally slated for a December release but has been pushed back to 2006.
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