About 6 years ago I was in a very dark headspace.
Recently I listened to a musical project I published in 2019 called The Alternative Grind. I wrote it when I was 29-30 years old. It was my first real effort to carve my own musical identity.
My life trajectory was kind of unlike most artists I knew.
It was definitely unlike my peers at work.
I had climbed high enough in the corporate ladder that in theory, I was supposed to give up my dreams and go for gold via the boring path.
Instead I pursued both my music/art goals alongside my corporate ones.
A real age conundrum exists in music
When I was 24 I started performing.
At that time, most people I knew wanted to go out and get drunk. The idea of spending 5 hours somewhere with live music and cheap drinks was the vibe. The years went by and the peers started procreating and disliking hours past 11 PM.
As my 20’s started to come to an end I found it harder and harder to get my social circle to go to anything.
It was only then I realized how “friends & family” my fans were.
Or maybe the fans I had cultivated lost an interest in the types of shows I was performing at.
Either way I was getting old and most of my peers had limited interest in what I was doing. We were all there to work, most of them were not pursuing music beyond hobbyism.
I had to really reflect at that point because to find fans would require doing something new.
My day job life was not like what so many other rappers rap about
I dropped out of university because the idea of 10 years of debt acquisition scared me.
Then I got hired by a call center. I became a trainer and then grew into someone who was involved in projects that mattered. By the end of my run I managed my own team of people in Ukraine.
I got to go to Pakistan to do some training with a per diem and everything.
I wasn’t just a senior agent, I was making project plans and pitching the decision makers in the company. I was trusted with tasks like raising the review scores of the company and writing knowledge base articles. It was a really interesting life.
Then I realized most of my peers in music had no idea what that was like.
The paths they had chosen for the most part felt so unlike mine.
There weren’t that many late 20’s or early 30’s folk making music about the struggles of office politics in a sincere way.
I realized I had stumbled onto something that felt true to myself but also not saturated by other people.
Thus I created “The Alternative Grind”.
When you stand out no matter where you go all you’re left with is alternative
Most people get attention with degrees and cool CVs.
I got noticed because I wrote an elaborate invitation to a birthday party to my call center peers. It was superfluous and was written like a dork with a fancy vocabulary. It caught the attention of my French supervisors who recognized they had an English proofreader in me.
This started a chain of events that literally changed my life. Thanks Mr. Monh ;).
I’m a university dropout. Had I not risen via internal merit, I never would have been considered for the roles I got. This alternative path up the corporate ladder allowed me to go make my weird music for the scene.
If you watched me rap at a lot of my early shows, I stood out like a sore thumb.
I ended up best fitting in with Myer Clarity and the other alternative rappers who graced the Death House Stage.
It felt like both my day job, and my musical ascent were not the norm. Trying to share how I got to where I am while expressing the range of emotions involved became the goal of The Alternative Grind.
It’s an album based on my life from ages 24-29.
Listening to that project showed me I’ve grown enough for the sequel
I wrote The Alternative Grind to remind myself that when life is hard I need to keep going.
Little did I know then how far I would come today. Back then I was confused, lost and miserable. Today I am happy (relatively speaking), healthier than ever, with a clear path towards my goals.
When I was listening to the project this week I had this feeling of wanting to tell anyone really going through that it gets better.
I know hearing that in the middle always sounds like some horse caca.
Still when I wrote this album I remember having some really dark thoughts.
Now I just feel like no matter what happens I will get through the obstacles.
There was that moment of really big doubt. Thankfully even my “want to give up” moments now are nothing compared to my 20’s. Arguably my 20’s was meh compared to my 30’s
Makes me stoked to be tearing it up in an old folks home one day.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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