“Okay, you want me, this much is clear and, frankly, understandable, but what are you going to do with it? Where is the finesse, hon? The clear understanding that you are handling a masterpiece?! You’ve got this far. Appreciate it.”

This passage establishes a confident, sassy voice for Kiki, the narrator. The knowledge of her own worth expressed here comes into conflict later with her wariness over men who have attempted to manipulate her sexually, but the confidence in one’s own attractiveness is an ongoing motif in the novel. Zack’s crudeness is also a contrast to Malakai’s finesse.

“The smile he gave her was mainstream, pop, radio-friendly. The smile he’d given me was the single released after an artist had established themselves, found their voice, could speak directly to their target audience. The smile he’d given me had more R&B to it.”

In their first meeting, this image illustrates Kiki’s sense that she and Malakai have a special level of communication; this foreshadows their relationship and indicates their special fitness for one another, a convention of the romance genre. Kiki’s favorite musical genre is R&B, so this metaphor is expressive of Kiki’s character and voice as well as of Malakai’s attraction to her.

“Wastemen are aptly called so because they waste our time. Waste our energy. Our purpose. They sell us dreams and then take them away, so we end up chasing them as if it was ever a reality.”

This passage represents Kiki’s romantic advice to the listeners of her Brown Sugar show. As the reader will later discover, there’s an element of irony to Kiki’s knowledge of Wastemen because of what happened to her with Nile. The epithet of Wastemen represents how the Blackwell members often have their own names or labels for things that are specific to their community or of shared concern.