I never really thought much about rapping for myself. Growing up, I spent more time writing poetry than bars. Poetry was how I expressed my thoughts, my feelings, and my imagination. At the time, I didn’t realize it, but those poems were sharpening the pen that would later guide my music.
When I wasn’t writing, I was watching. Hours on YouTube, listening to underground rappers — seeing how they put words together with grit and hunger. Their flows felt raw and unpolished in the best way, and something about it stuck with me. Over time, I found myself more and more drawn to cyphers and freestyles, that unfiltered side of hip hop.
The first time I tried to write a rap in class, it didn’t go well. What I came up with wasn’t anything special, and I brushed it off, thinking maybe rapping wasn’t for me. But even if I didn’t see it yet, the spark had already been lit.
That spark caught flame the day I found a freestyle challenge from Joell Ortiz called “Six Fo.” Something inside me told me to write to it, so I did. And this time, the words came out smoother. The rhythm was there. When I spit it out loud, it felt natural — and to my surprise, it actually sounded good.
That was the moment things changed. I showed my freestyle to my daddy, rapping in front of him for the first time. It wasn’t just me rhyming over a beat — it was me stepping into something bigger than I had imagined.
This was the first spark. The moment I realized that rap wasn’t just something I admired from afar — it was something I could live, breathe, and make my own.
To be continued