God only knows what I'll be without you by "Half man, Half amazing"

“I met this girl when I was ten years old/ and what I loved must, she had so much soul”, (Common, I use to love her). When I look back at my life, I know for sure that music has been a big influence. I have over the years formed an intense love towards music, in the same way, dancers, musicians, and singers have. This love for music almost seems like it was destined for me to have. One of the earliest memories I have is music bouncing off the walls of my house. My parents both shared a love towards music, leading me to grow up hearing music all the time. Even though they shared a love for music, they both played music as a way to articulate the feelings they had inside that they choose not to express externally. My parents attraction to music passed down to there only child me. Compared to their mature taste in music, my personal love for music was from the Disney movies of my youth. From Lion King to Beauty and the beast, these musicals of my youth, and freedom to explore my own taste of music began to take shape. This freedom to form my own

“ I don’t want to ever feel like I did that day, take me to the place I love, take me far away”(Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Under the bridge). The lyrics of “Under the bridge) truly express how I felt during tenure at my elementary school. When I started elementary school I was a normal kid, I did not like sports that much, played video games, and liked to listen to music. As I got older, I still shared the same interests with the kids my own age, the one thing I did not share was the type of music I liked. At my school most of the kids were huge rap fans, unlike my peers my household did not allow the listening to any music with numerous cursing in it, due to this rule I was not a fan of rap. This distance when it came to music with my peers became bigger as I started to move up the grade latter. The weirdest part for me was when ever my peers talked about rap I knew the artist they would speak about, but when I started naming artist that I like, they were labeled as “white music”. So from then on I was the kid who listened to the “white music”.. Being labeled really hurt me mentally. What this label did was make me feel as if I was not black enough and totally made me feel totally alienated in my mind from the rest of my peers. All I know is this period time was the first time I was thought of as an individual, and you know what, I didn’t want to be.
“Unbreakable/ what ya thought they called me Mr. Glass?” (Kanye West, Through the wire). The rapper Kanye West is the reason I became interested in rap. Kanye’s debut album “College Dropout”, was the first rap album I ever bought and from then on I became the fascinated by this amazing thing I called “rap”. When I finally got into this thing called rap I was swallowed into this new world. A world that had it’s own history, language, and it’s own icons. The new interest in rap led me to being able to talk about more things socially in school, and thus make new friends. By my eight grade year at my elementary school, I was voted class president. Now music did not lead me to become class president, nut it did lead me to becoming more open as a person.
““ Try to rise above….one love””(Nas, One love). When I first started this essay I wanted to be about how I believe in all types of music. While that is true, what I really want to articulate is that I believe in rap music. The poetry of rap has changed my life forever. It has not only given me confidence in my life, and let me create great friend; it has been there for me no matter what situations I have been through. I have changed musically for Lion King to Jay-z something I would never thought, would possibly happen. So through my experiences I have come to the conclusion that I believe in rap music while believing that every one should have the ability to form their own musical beliefs.