GENERAL PRESS 24
Rapper Trina has been through a lot. Despite some incredible highs as one of hip-hop’s leading ladies, she has experienced a great deal of loss too. Born Katrina Laverne Taylor, the Miami MC, has been a mainstay in the headlines due to her exciting life, but today a new loss has her name in the press as she and her family mourn the passing of her niece. Back in 2013, Trina lost her brother. According to news reports at the time, Trina’s brother Wilbrent Bain’s life was taken by a friend named Ron Dobson. Bain went by the nickname “Gonk” and was only a corner away from his home. Dobson was his neighbor. The incident went down at 9 am on the morning of June 1st.
Trina had struggled with her brother’s passing for years and opened up about it during an episode of Love and Hip-Hop Miami when she got upset with Trick Daddy because it happened to be her brother’s anniversary. “Every year this day, I have the worst anxiety of the day right now. At 9:51, my little brother’s [life was taken], and I don’t want to talk about none of this [stuff] today. Not no work, no radio, nothing. I don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t care!” Trina and Trick have decades of history as friends, and at one point, she also dated his brother Derek Harris while in high school. Trina attended Miami Northwestern High School, where she was a majorette and voted best dressed. At the time, Trick was locked up and did not attend high school with them.
Unfortunately, Harris’s life was taken in 1994. Trina opened up about it during an episode of VladTV. “I never really understood it. I was really young, and I just didn’t understand how somebody could be so great of a person, and someone could do that.” Trina recalls receiving the call from Harris’s sister to inform her of what had happened. His sister told Trina to turn on the news where they were reporting on the incident. Trina says that he was so badly injured that they could only identify him by his teeth and grill. She recalls going to see his family immediately to confirm what had happened. “I just knew when we pulled up, his mom came out the door and she just saw me, and she just started screaming and hollering and from then I just I had fell out. I didn’t remember nothing else after that. I just completely blacked out. That was the first time something like that happened to me.”
Tragedy struck Trina’s life again in 2019 when she lost her mother to cancer. Vernessa ‘Nessa’ Taylor was only 62 at the time and had been battling the disease for a while. Trina had always been very vocal about close she and her mother was. So close to the point that she had made songs about her admitting that she could not live without her mother. The passing has affected her so much that Trina admits that she has no desire to have kids now because she does not know how to experience that journey without her mom. In her song “Mama (The One),” Trina says, “Thinking ’bout you mama / Got me running to the liquor / Mama where you goin’? / I’m gon’ have to beg to differ / I’d rather go first, so I wanna go with you ’cause I can’t do this without you.”
Unfortunately, Trina is mourning another loss today. A 17-year-old girl who’s life was taken in Miami’s Liberty City was confirmed to be related to the superstar rapper. Toni Chester, better known as Suga, was one of three people involved in the incident but the only reported fatality. Police on the scene have not identified a suspect or motive but did report that Suga was not a local of the area. “The woman who was pronounced deceased on the scene was there visiting. She didn’t live in that precise area. We don’t know who was the intended target, but definitely, it was a very big scene, and we still are trying to work on getting more answers.”Let’s keep Trina and her family in our prayers.
