it’s 4:35am and i just put my nose ring back in after feeling it come out so i’m gonna talk about how nervous this process in music has made me.

i did my first 16 track project at 18, with the help of Ivory THREE and Eu-IV and Lenny Toussaint, Mike Battaglia, Beau Bustanoby & the response was dope.

then i did a second one a year later with TMT, Eu-IV, Ivory and Soleil after diving deeper into social/political spaces and the response was greater.

I struggled and floundered in a dysfunctional, borderline emotionally abusive relationship when i released another one, with T3_, then EELAY, where the response was nowhere near the last

i spiraled.

after getting out of that relationship, i wrote a whole project detailing my struggles with depression, ideation, alcoholism, theism and paranoia and the reviews centered on the fact that i was back to rapping “finally” tho this is my most experimental project w/one true rap song

that spiral led me to distance myself from everyone i was close to. To this day, i don’t think most understand as i haven’t felt the need to explain in detail. But i started a journey on loving folk and showing it, without doing much work on myself.

That birthed my first full length project in years. The response signaled a comeback of sorts.

nigga i turned down deals after this project, for my own mental health because i’m sure i wouldn’t have survived even moderate success, with no real support system and part of me knew that

only after a series of recoveries and relapses, refusals to go to therapy and trash therapy sessions, another relationship, an engagement, real recovery, real therapy, did i start pouring into myself the way i poured into my work. the way i poured into others

now here i am, came into myself as queer and non binary, still looking for a way to balance engaging in social/environmental/political justice spaces with my craft and my culinary career but i’m not struggling with showing myself love

i’m watering myself and being intentional in the love i choose to show others. in the love i choose to show myself... i have to show myself

i don’t necessarily regret engaging in these spaces but due to the fact that i can’t perform live cus..pandemic, and cultivate a supportive following organically, i struggle with balancing promoting my art on here and engaging in said spaces

a tweet saying water should be free will get more engagement than work input a shit ton of time, energy, and love into and it’s hard to not feel bitter about it after everything

i’m working on a two part album at the moment. and it’s the first since 2016. idk what comes after this but yeah

i’m not sad. I’m likely to keep this thread up for a while because i’m likely gonna take some time off here so why not.