This might be one of the most personal things I’ve ever wrote, but it’s something I would like to share. For a good portion of my life, I didn’t really have a social life and I felt totally lost about my place in society. I moved out of Boston and moved to the suburbs with my mother at the age of 10. I still got to see my father during the weekends, but it was never enough time. I enjoyed playing sports but nothing was more meaningful to me than being around hip hop culture. I dealt with a lot of confusion through most of my teen years. I was living in two different worlds. I lived the “normal” suburban life with my mother and during the weekends I lived hip hop culture with my father. My mother was never into hip hop, and she actually kept me away from it. I had to visualize and be creative in my mind to keep myself a part of the culture. She was protective with me and wanted to make sure I didn’t go down the wrong path. Don’t get me wrong… my life and parents were never horrible to me… but sometimes it was a struggle. I mean it was a constant struggle to get approval from both parents. I wanted to please them both and this was nearly impossible. It caused me to deal with a lot of personal issues through out the years. I started to feel like I didn’t fit in anywhere. Most of the kids I tried to hang out with in the suburbs just didn’t get what I was into, and I always felt like people in my crew were progressing a lot faster than I was. I felt quite depressed about it for some time. It made me quit almost all of the activities I was into and my grades started going down in school.
In the midst of this time, I started really getting into music. Music was the only thing that I had in both worlds. I spent countless days and nights researching music whenever and wherever I could. Constantly challenging myself to explore music every day. I sent countless emails and made countless phone calls to reach out to some of my favorite djs, serious music collectors, etc. This was a way of escaping the tension I had within myself. My mother noticed that I wasn’t doing so well, so she went with me to go seek help from a psychiatrist. It made me feel a little bit better to talk about the personal issues that we had, and I became more active in all my activities again… but I still wasn’t where I wanted to be. My dad noticed that I was getting more into the music and insisted that I should get into djing. I wasn’t so sure about it, because I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of playing out music for a bunch of people. Music was something that was more personal for me to enjoy. I loved digging and collecting music, but it was so personal to me. I gave it a try and started to dj a little. It took me a little bit of time to get the feel of it, but I still didn’t really see myself doing it seriously in the future.
Junior year of high school came around, and everyone started planting seeds of college into my head. I started to apply for schools, and most of the colleges I applied to were out of state. Deep down inside… I wanted to free myself and figure out life on my own. I was really tired of being constraint. The opportunity came around and I got accepted into FIU in Miami. It didn’t seem like the brightest idea to my dad and he didn’t support the idea. My mother seen it as an opportunity for me to go to school, so surprisingly she supported the idea of going out of state. My mother and I flew down to Miami and spent a week at orientation. She was finally letting go of her son.. She had left me in Miami by myself. Now the only issue I had was what I did I actually wanted to do with school. I could never really figure it out, but I was definitely happy that I could make my own choices now. I started to train more consistently with my dancing and started to dj at more events while I was in Miami. I wasn’t really keen of dancing or djing for a living. It just seemed impossible to live comfortably making these things into a career… but I said screw it. I spent a lot of time visualizing and writing down creative thoughts.. eventually putting all these thoughts to work. More and more opportunities started to pop up, and I started traveling around the world more. I didn’t end up doing so well in school, but I kind of felt like I had accomplished my goal. My mom forced me to move back, because of my grades. I enjoyed the Miami lifestyle a little too much, but it was enough for me. I continued to go to school in Boston, but only for so long. I did better in school, but there wasn’t any universities that offered hip hop as a major. There definitely isn’t any steady jobs that offer positions for hip hop. It’s more about how far do you really want to take your life with this culture.
Since last year I decided to take a break from school and focus totally on my craft/culture. I have been the happiest I have been in years, and I have no regrets of the mistakes I have made along the way. Ultimately I’m doing what I love most and doing what makes me happy. We are all on different journeys/paths in life. My journey was never to be the perfect dancer, dj, etc. My journey is about being free with my craft, and not being constricted with so many boundaries. I have a winning mentality, but not against others… I constantly challenge and compete with myself. My thoughts come in infinitely and I want to continually learn infinitely. I was born in the cypher and I will live everlastingly in the cypher.
