Music is an escape from the chaos of everyday life. It gives me a chance to vent out any issues or problems I might be going through and allows me to really put my emotions into words.
I just want to be able to provide for my family and the people I care about the most, be able to put my nephews and godchildren through college, and move everyone away from our current situation.
I'd probably start with poverty and homelessness. There are a lot of good people out on the streets solely because they weren't given the same opportunities and chances that a lot of people were. I want to buy up property in my city and turn the lots into affordable housing and lease the building rights to local black-owned construction companies.
I would have to say "I Need You to Survive" by Hezekiah Walker. I know it's a weird choice since I'm more of a rapper than anything else, but my mom ONLY listened to gospel music, so that was pretty much my soundtrack growing up. I feel like it has kind of a double meaning now, though. A lot of people in my city don't make it past their 20's, and even though I've been blessed enough to not lose any of my closest friends and family to the violence in the streets, it's still entirely possible that any one of my people can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, so this song is what constantly plays in my head.
Lil Baby is easily my favorite artist right now. His music is the hardest out and he's probably one of the realest artists in the game right now. I also draw influence from Drake, Bryson Tiller, Brent Faiyaz, Tory Lanez, Meek Mill, Toosii, Anderson .Paak, and Smino, just to name a few.
I'm inspired by the prospect of bringing in an entirely new lifestyle for my friends and family. It's what wakes me up in the morning and keeps me going throughout the day. What keeps me inspired, though, is watching my friends who also do music grind and reach new levels in their careers, which makes me want to go harder. I like to think that we all encourage and push each other to keep going when we doubt ourselves.
I want people to know that no one person is completely the same all around. What I mean by that is everybody has different aspects of themselves that may clash with each other. For example, you may be the hardest thug on your block, but you have a soft spot for kittens or something, you know? I chose the name Abstract because in abstract art, you may often see two or more colors or strokes that won't go together until you see the whole picture, and I felt like that describes me perfectly, so that's what I went with. I just want other people to see that within their selves and know that it's okay to be different.
I have super bad anxiety, so at the beginning I'm nervous as hell. But after one or two songs and I get comfortable where I'm at, I get dumb hype. I want everyone at that show to leave with a memorable experience so they come to the next one.
I feel like it's extremely dangerous to be a rapper these days. You look on the news and see all these artists dying from situations they just weren't able to escape, or people being too lazy to get up off their ass and get it for themselves, so they took it from somebody else. Ensuring the safety of our artists should be a top priority right now.
I just started using this platform, but from what I can tell, it seems like something that's helping a lot of artists, so hopefully it can help me too.
I hate when I see rappers or whoever not putting out serious content or just doing dumb shit with their platforms. It's always good to have fun ad let loose and all that, but I feel like a lot of people take this profession as a joke, and what frustrates me more is that they're usually the ones to blow up quicker, rather than the people who've been putting work for the last two or three plus years.
Baltimore artists are so underrated. It's so hard to blow up in Baltimore, I feel like, because we're not really on the map like New York or Atlanta. There are a lot of artists who sound the same in the city, but underneath that you have people who are so unique, but just can't break out into the light because they don't know how to promote themselves or just don't network.
I feel like we as artists should try to relate more to their fans. If your fans can't relate to you on a semi-personal level, then what are you really saying? You also need to be charismatic and likeable. You can't grow a fanbase if nobody likes you.
TmcTheDon, Grammy, Luioto, Lyrical Jai, Prince Key, LoKeyy, Tratwo.