VH1 Reality Stars From ‘Flavor Of Love’ And ‘Love & Hip-Hop’ Team Up On Feature Film ‘First Lady’

In the first three minutes of First Lady, starring Flavor of Love winner Nicole “Hoopz” Alexander, we learn that Hoopz’ character, Maria, and her boyfriend Mike (played by rapper and reality star Jim Jones) are in love. So in love that he wants to gift Hoopz with a necklace: a gold medallion that was passed along from Mike’s grandmother, given to him as a symbol of protection. She insists that the medallion would be better served with Mike wearing it so that it, and he, can protect her. Let’s call this Chekhov’s protective medallion. Because she’s gonna make a big comeback in the third act. I’ll caution you now that there are spoilers ahead so if you plan to watch First Lady, don’t let me ruin the plot twists for you, come back after you’ve jumped through all the Hoopz.

By the sixth minute of First Lady, Mike, a drug dealer, is dead, his head presumably cut off and sent to Hoopz in a duffel bag. (We do not see the head, but Hoopz’ tearful reaction and the ease with which she tosses the bag onto her bed suggest no more than eight pounds worth of Mike’s body is in there.) The medallion is gone. That Jim Jones has second billing on the film with under four minutes of screen time—and I’m including the minute or two we spend with the aforementioned unseen head in duffel bag—is interesting. Jones has had only a handful of actual acting roles, but thanks to his combined popularity on the VH1 reality show Love & Hip Hop and his membership in the Harlem-based rap collective Dipset, he has a rabid fan base who are likely to be thrilled to see him profess his love and show emotions, something he has previously been unable to display on-screen when playing himself. (Jones’ primary storyline on Love & Hip Hop was his inability to commit to marriage. His real-life girlfriend never got a protective medallion.) Those four minutes are potent; call him the Dame Judi Dench of urban noir.

By minute 11, we’ve already been to Mike’s memorial service (where Hoopz inexplicably pulls a gun on Mike’s mother and sister), and then Hoopz makes an “Ouch, my stomach!” face and finds out she’s pregnant with Mike’s baby. If you can say anything positive about First Lady, it moves at quite the clip. And it would’ve moved even more swiftly if not for a slight delay while the camera panned across a positive pregnancy test and over to Hoopz’ naked and tattooed body in a shower scene where she, of course, is crying and hugging herself, because this is a lot to go through in eleven minutes.

Just after his death, we learn that Mike’s latest drug shipment has gone missing, but by minute 12, Hoopz has found it thanks to a lease and spare key she found simply by opening a kitchen drawer in the apartment she shared with Mike. Must’ve been the drawer where he kept his grilling tools. After Hoopz finds the drug den where Mike’s shipment is stored, she mouths the words “thank you” to, presumably, Mike’s headless ghost and we…

…CUT TO FIVE YEARS LATER.

Hoopz now has a young daughter, and she’s taken over Mike’s drug business along with her cousins Sean and Will. Hoopz is the silent partner running things behind the scenes. Sean has seen one murder too many and is itching to get out, go back to school, and get into some noble profession. Will, the face of the organization, is still going hard for the lifestyle because once a dealer, always a dealer. You might think the film’s title comes from the fact that Hoopz is now in charge. Perhaps she’s metaphorically the first lady of the streets. You’d be wrong, because this film is absent any metaphors, but we’ll get to that.

The rival drug gang in town, run by two men, Cisco and Patrick, wants to run these three out of town by any means necessary. But—TWIST—Patrick and Hoopz meet at the boxing gym, and he, not knowing Hoopz’ real identity, asks her out. I love when fictional works put an actor’s real-life skills to use. (In case you missed it, Hoopz is on the celebrity boxing circuit these days. Her biceps don’t lie.) While Hoopz is on a date with Patrick, Cisco busts up Will’s house and thinks he kills Will. During the date, Patrick gets a text from Cisco that Will has been “taken care of.” Hoopz gets a call from Sean that Will’s in the hospital. Thanks to modern technology habits, neither is bothered by the fact that they’re calmly eating chicken and checking their phones, only to simultaneously receive these two very alarming messages. Patrick plays it cool, being like “WORK STUFF!” but Hoopz hightails it to the hospital to visit her cousin. Still, neither of them realizes that their own crews are trying to murder each other.

In the days that Will clings to life in his hospital bed, Patrick and Hoopz continue to flirt, and nearly consummate their relationship in a hotel. While Patrick undresses, she notices that he’s wearing—can you guess? Chekhov’s protective medallion. Hoopz quickly Usual Suspectses the scenario, realizing that Patrick is Mike’s killer, and flees. And, though it was not made explicitly clear in previous scenes, it turns out Patrick is actually married, so what does Hoopz do? I’ll remind you there’s no time for filler in First Lady, so Hoopz immediately goes to his house and shoots his wife dead. Vengeance is a dish best served to a character you literally just met.

Lest you think this is the climactic ending, there are still twenty minutes left to fill!

Hoopz got her revenge, so what could possibly happen next? Well, for one thing, we learn that the real drug kingpin that Hoopz, and Mike before her, works for is an older man who tells Hoopz she’s the first lady he ever did business with. She blushes in an “aw, shucks” kinda way, telling him, “Mike always said you were the only white guy we could trust.” Arbiter of fine film that I am, I wanted to be mad at this entire scene, but then I realized they’d just found gender and racial parity with each other, so joke’s on me. But to back up to the “first lady” of it all, I am allowing myself to be mad that the title was just a literal reference to the fact that her boss had never worked with a woman before.

This is a densely packed 96 minutes. Written and directed by Dennis Reed II, it feels like it could easily be a VH1 original film, given that three of the stars (Hoopz, Jones, and former Basketball Wives cast member Royce Reed) all get top billing, and many of the music contributions come from Love & Hip Hop cast members Brittany Taylor and Amina Buddafly. It’s not high cinema, but it’s a fun, fast romp, and what it lacks in polish (there are about half a dozen B-stories that have absolutely no payoff, and Hoopz doesn’t even retrieve the protective medallion from Patrick at the end), it more than makes up for with a recognizable cast and high-stakes plot.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer obsessed with reality TV, Nashville and Sleepy Hollow. She would rather live in a world with no Muppets than these new Muppets.

Watch First Lady on Amazon Prime Video