This is a very short writing on my rap/artist career. I just wanted to start off by stating that my rap career is one of if not the most embarrassing things of my life. I do respect myself for following my dream and I learned so many lessons that I will cherish forever but it is still peak embarrassment. The rap culture that I was embodying glorified negative things and I fell victim to, what I would consider a toxic perspective. Money, drugs, objectifying women, jail, I went down a dark path where I thought that stuff was cool and would make me a more entertaining artist and that it was a part of a path to becoming a successful artist. As I have matured I realized that it came from a confused perspective and that there’s a lot of artist out their that express themselves and what they have been through appropriately and beautifully but to a young mind that expression can easily be misinterpreted and misunderstood. It all started in High school when my friends and I started making Rapchats on this app that allowed you to make songs on your phone. You could send each other songs and we would collab and we would make our own songs and send them to each other and listen to each others songs, just for fun. We did this for probably about a year until we wanted to make higher quality songs so we started going to homemade studios and making songs out the closet bouncing around from connect to connect to try and find the best quality recorder. My friend Jamir who was the most talented of us all would pick me up on weekends and take me to the studio when we were bored and we would make songs. He was talented and seemed to have slightly more of a passion for it. I thought it was just really fun. We did this all through Highschool and even started making some music videos. I wanted to be a YouTuber early in High school; I did vlogs and pranks and I had a ketchup prank that had gotten 3,000 views and I told Jamir that if we want to blow up in rap we have to make videos. So we started making videos and as we kept making videos and songs we both got more interested and started scheming on how to blow up! All of this was secondary to football for both of us at the time.
In high school, as I mentioned earlier, Jamir and I made rap songs for fun. This generated some buzz among our peers, many of whom listened to our music, supported us, and even claimed to enjoy our songs. As a result of this buzz, I was approached to do a rap video to promote a food drive. Initially, I assumed I would write my own lyrics, so I began drafting ideas. However, I was later informed that my peers would be writing the lyrics for me, and the song would be a spin-off of an already popular track.
I wasn’t thrilled about this change, as I had hoped to create something original, but I decided to go along with it and be a team player. They did allow me to incorporate part of what I had written into the song, but the rest was entirely their spin. This experience had a significant impact on my perspective on rap music and influenced my decision to pursue it as a career. Jamir and I’s peers in high school were highly supportive and enthusiastic about our music. Attached is a link to the food drive video:
Look aDrive Myers Park Can Drive 2k18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA75pOrajMc
Jamir and I met 9th grade in football. And we both had football dreams. After we graduated High school I went off to college and Jamir didn’t. He decided to enroll in some small football juco kind of school and keep his football dreams alive and I was going to try out for Appalachian state and try to walk on. When I went to the tryouts they said my paper work was missing so I couldn’t try out so I didn’t think twice and just left. It was the beginning of some of my substance use period and I didn’t know it at the time but I was heartbroken about not getting that Divison 1 offer out of Highschool anyway so it was FUCK football in my heart but I just acted like I didn’t care. Anyway while I was in college I was having too much fun and I was free but my first semester I got 4 As and 1 B and made the deans list it was inspiring being on a fresh campus and living alone. At the end of my first semester, Jamir had been done with his short juco run, and decided to take the music route full on. And to no surprise at all at least to me, he was successful. Ever since the rapchats I always loved Jamir’s songs he was as talented as any rapper I have ever listened to, and he wrote it all himself. Rappers these days have a whole team of writers behind their lyrics. He is the reason I even did rapchat, I heard this song “red diamonds” that him and Pat made and I just HAD to give it a try. I was watching his success and when I went back home after the first semester we connected and went to the studios like we would in Highschool, his success was so exciting especially after we talked about blowing up those years in Highschool. Once he got his first wave of success I was convinced that Jamir would be a household name as far as rappers. He was so talented I KNEW he would make it. We were such close friends and he even started rapping about me in a couple of his songs that I was so inspired and wanted to drop out and commit just like him, I wanted to be just be an artist. I knew with his talent and my schemes that we could make it big. So when I went back to school I continued to abuse substances and I couldn’t focus in class or think of anything outside of Jamir and our rap group which consisted of Pat (who had his own similar relationship with Jamir), Cory, and Nsikan who had their own relationships with Jamir and who I was also really close with. Together we were SLT another one of my ideas. We had a groupchat in highschool called “salt” and we just all texted and talked about dumb highschool teenager stuff and I was obsessed with A$AP Rocky and so I wanted our group to have like an “ASAP” theme name to connect us so I suggested “SLT” for salt and it stuck. There we had it, “SLT”. I finally dropped out but the issue was that all of my motive behind dropping out was from Jamir’s traction and inspiration. I loved making songs with him but I didn’t have my own individual drive to be an artist or identity as an artist. During this period I started to find where I might land as an artist and I realized that it conflicted with what we had already started. We were artists but we weren’t rappers. Football players that listened to rap, we just rapped about the stuff we heard in other songs because we thought it was funny, or savage, or cool. We weren’t really telling OUR story and at least I wasn’t even introduced to rap artists that told any story outside of violence and money and there was this big stigma that the stuff that these rappers were rapping about wasn’t true. Which led us to think that we were doing the same thing. And what I found out through my own hardships was that the music industry and rap culture is a lot more real and dangerous than people outside might first think. We were under the impression that we were just artists and “gangsters” or “criminals” but what I learned is that a lot of these rap artists work is being enforced by the demographics that their work represents. Once I found this out, I no longer wanted to be the kind of rap artists that we were and because of that I began to distance myself from the group and I even tried to tell Jamir that we need to restart, but he had so much traction already that it was too late for him to restart and with all of his success our communication wasn’t as good and I wasn’t always able to reach him. Living this rap artist lifestyle my mental health suffered, I abused substances, I hurt many people I loved, and I had some run ins with the law. I learned the hard way that, it simply wasn’t who I am. I am not capable of living a lifestyle that embodies a lot of the characteristics that the rap culture embodies. I still listen to rap and always will and it is still apart of my life but I am not capable of living a rapper lifestyle. It is not me. I got off easy. Unfortunately on 8/13/22 my friend Jamir Rucks aka JAAH SLT was killed in a shooting. A heartbreaking event. Jamir was not involved in any gangs, he simply made music that offended people who made assumptions on the kind of person he was from the music he put out. He truly was just a kid and a funny, charming, intelligent, etc. Young man. His spirit will live forever and I know that he lives amongst me to this day, but I still reflect on where his talent could have taken him. He was truly a brilliant person. R.I.P. Jamir Rucks. I realized I am a better “fan” than I am an artist and my love for music stays with me. And of the many lessons I learned one of the biggest ones is that I won’t partake in anything that doesn’t reflect my character or values even if it is just for fun. And what you put on the internet and even out into the world has negative and positive consequences. I am not a rapper. I am not a gangster. I am not a criminal. I have made some mistakes and I have paid some tough prices. I wish I could go back and fix it all but I have learned so much from my rap career and I am still the ambitious person that I was before and I won’t tell you not to follow your dreams. Just trust in the power of love and good.
I made all of these songs over 4 years ago, and I decided to upload them again with a different perspective. Pursuing being a musician as a career made it too difficult for me to listen to these songs in the right light. It was too serious and too stressful. Now that I am no longer pursuing being a musician I am able to listen to these songs and they feel lighthearted and fun. I am sharing these songs with the world for anyone who wants to listen. Shoutout to all the artists out there and everyone that was a part of our music group SLT, and RIP Jaah SLT. The most talented musician I have ever witnessed, a friend, and a brother. #LONGLIVESLT
AND TO ALL OF THE PEOPLE THAT I HURT AND NEGLECTED DURING THIS PERIOD OF MY LIFE I CANT FIND THE WORDS TO EXPRESS MY SORROW. I LEARNED THAT THE ONLY WAY FOR ME TO EXPRESS THAT IS THROUGH MY ACTIONS AND TO SHOW YOU THE PERSON THAT I TRULY AM. A SONG THAT DOES REFLECT HOW I FEEL I CURRENTLY FEEL ABOUT MY PAST IS “SWEET ESCAPE” (feat. Akon) BY GWEN STEFANI.
HERE IS THE LINK TO SWEET ESCAPE: https://youtu.be/J2mUmv5q-hI?si=A717XgbgccYel7yy
(DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES; IT IS NOT LETTING ME EMBED THE SONG INTO THE POST)
Leave a Reply