EP #51- A Rapper's Story: The Power of Music and Mental Health with Hugh Lee, Emmy-Nominated Rapper

(gentle music) - Well, I like to see myself as a writer and not a rap girl, even though I obviously, my genre is rap, I don't necessarily like to view myself as a rapper or a per se. I'm a storyteller and I get to tell my stories while there's my ancestors and my family stories. - Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorfins. If you know me, you know that I love rap music, which a lot of people are like confused by if they meet me for the first time, they wouldn't necessarily think that's the genre that I gravitate towards, but if you know me well and if you knew me in high school, me goes and Travis Scott. Like, that was the dream team for me. But we are not here to talk about me goes and Travis Scott. Maybe a little bit about Kid Cuddy, if you make it that far into the episode, what we are here to talk about though is, Hulee and how he got interested in rap music, the creative process behind producing, writing, and performing rap, and the relationship between mental health and music and dealing with adversity growing up in a pretty impoverished, and dangerous neighborhood in the west side of Chicago. It was such a pleasure to get to sit down with you and to hear about what's inspired him, how he is pushed through adversity and what his plans are moving into now 2022. So I hope you guys like the episode, and before we get into it, I have a brief message from my sponsor, Anchor. - Hi Hugh, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. - Thank you for having me. - It's wonderful to get to sit down virtually with you in another, you know, non-COVID world, hopefully, would be both in New York, recording together, but super thrilled that you're on the podcast today. I listen to some of your music recently and really just, it's super awesome. And, you know, I'm a huge rap fan, so to get to sit down with someone who's creative, like yourself, produces, and raps, I just think, you know, it's such an honor to get to chat today, and I'm super excited to have my listeners learn a little bit more about you and the power of music and mental health. - Thank you for saying that. I'm glad you like it, and I'm glad to be here, but to talk a little bit about the correlation between music and mental health, so a big thing for me. - Well, you know, let's start right there. So can you share a little bit about how you got into music, how you got into rapping, and like the trajectory of your music career? - Well, I think I was always into music, just based on my dad always being in the music, but I never did it because I was always nervous that I was sucked, and like my brother and my cousins, they were all right all this time. And I would never rap, everyone. - Yeah, rap with us, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm like, I'm awful, I know it, but as I like got older, like, into college, which is when I really started rapping, it became like therapy for me, like, and so now it's just something I do as a therapeutic thing, or rather started doing as a therapeutic thing, but other people identify with it, and I like, I feel the same way, so then it became like a thing that we can't connect with, which is even better. - Yeah, I mean, for me, like, writing is kind of, you know, the therapeutic outlet that I have, I was a creative writing minor in college, and I don't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing, but I used my classes as like self-induced therapy, where I would just write about things that like were stressing me out, or people that were stressing me out, and I like, he was encrypted language, so like, try to talk about something that was, you know, top of mind, and we would like share our pieces in class, so I couldn't like disclose any names, or like specific details, but there's really something to be said about, like, the process of just getting your thoughts down on paper. I don't know if you feel that way, like when you're actually composing the music, like when you're sitting down to write the lyrics, or if it's like the flow that you feel when you're actually like wrapping, you're singing, like, that process of like, you know, translating your story into words, and sharing that in music. - It used to be when I was writing it, but the problem with that for me anyway, was that it was very hard to re-capture that feeling that I had while I was writing it, and then put it on a song, 'cause then it just sounded like, like when you're giving a speech in class, and it's like, that's what it sounded like, so I just stopped writing altogether, and I just let whatever come out, kind of come out and just punch in, punch in, 'cause it sounds more organic that way, and it's more honest because it's literally coming out, kind of like free writing, if you will. - Yeah, it's like free styling kind of. - Well, like with a lot of punches, so I have time to think about what I'm gonna say, but it's just not written down. It's like immediately think about it, and say it as you think it that way, it's like that raw emotion that you had in your thoughts, for the post that I'm waiting three weeks or two weeks ago, record it. - So do you just kind of like, sit down to like, I guess record, and as you're free styling, like you're thinking, and it just, is it this like long process where you're kind of slowly developing the song? - Well, I kind of take the notes from like the greats, like Kanye, and specifically him, 'cause he's the one who I saw do it the most, whereas I'll have a beat, and I'll just do like top lines and melodies, so like I'll know that I want it to be like, (humming) but I won't, I'll record it in my voice, so I know exactly the cadence of it, but I won't have any words that way when I go in there, all I need to memorize is how I'm gonna say it, and whatever words come out, they just come out. - I find the creative process so fascinating, because like I cannot freestyle, it's like I just cannot. (laughs) It's hard for me to like think on my feet like that, and I do not have that sort of like creative talent, but you know, rap in particular so interesting, because there's a lot of rappers out there that I think produce really quality music, like really quality content, and if you listen closely, there's such a beautiful meaning behind what they're writing about like Kid Cudi, for example, like if you really listen to his lyrics, it's like insane, but then there's other rappers out there, like six, nine, or whatever, you know, however you pronounce like, I actually wrote a paper about him in college, and it's a little, it's interesting, but like, you know, he has very vulgar lyrics, and it's, there's a lot going on there that, you know, if you just kind of take away the lyrics, and you listen to the melody, it's kind of like shouting, and you know, I can understand why some people do like his music, like I can understand that, but if you compare like Kanye and Kid Cudi toward to him, or like maybe another, like I don't know what they call those rappers, not sound cloud rappers, but like, I guess he is kind of one. Yeah, there's, you can tell that some songs are really backed by like emotion and, you know, really like poetry in a way. I would not say that six, nine is very poetic lyrics, but in your case, I would love to like, talk a little bit more about the inspiration behind your music, and what experience you draw from to write your music about, and kind of how you got into song writing, and performing and everything. First, it's funny that you mentioned Kid Cudi because like my mix tape cover, even though everyone calls it an album, but my mix tape cover for the younger I get, it was actually inspired by Kid Cudi, it's like the first project where I thought that like, you could be emotional and like, like sensitive and really expressive in music, because like, when I was in middle school, all you heard was like gangster rap, you didn't hear a lot. People being sensitive, Drake was kind of just coming out, even then he was just singing for women. He wasn't necessarily talking about his own things, whereas the first project I heard like that was Man on the Moon 2. So if you kind of put the younger I get, right next to Man on the Moon 2 album cover, they're like, exact same as the same pose, it's the same kind of backdrop, it's the same clothes and everything, except he has like the jacket on, and I just have the best and the tie with the shirt on, but I don't have the jacket on, it's the exact same kind of thing, so I did that intentionally just for Kid Cudi. - Oh, I love that. I need to look at that again, 'cause that totally like, slipped my mind, but he is really like, he's very open about his mental health struggles, and you can clearly hear it in the music, especially in pursuit of happiness. I think that's a very powerful song. It's fascinating, 'cause a lot of rappers like, have suffered a lot of mental health issues and are very open about it in their music, and I feel like often the music kind of masks the meaning behind the song, 'cause every day people just listen, and it's a catchy tune, or it's something they can hum along to, but we're not super intentional about what the lyrics actually mean. We're just mindlessly listening, but if you take a minute to step back and think, there's some pretty dark stuff in there. - Yeah, and this funny, 'cause when I first started rapping, I was just rapping and rapping, and it was just making songs that I thought would be good, or whatever, whatever, and after I started taking it seriously, and I started learning more about branding, it's like, how did I want to brand myself? And I had to think about the fact that, hey, I'm gonna have to perform these songs multiple times, maybe six, seven times a week, so I have to perform things that I like, and I want it to be something that's therapeutic for me, especially to me, and understanding how energy works, and how you put things into the universe, how it comes out. So I studied for like a year and a half, and I studied all these big songs that kind of blew up, trying to think of the exact one. Don't kill my vibe, 3,000, 5,000, Vat Bano, and there were a few others, of course, a bunch of cutie songs, where it was like these very positive sounding songs in sound, but then the lyrics were very dark, and that was kind of what I wanted to do myself, because like, you know, You know, we all go through a lot, especially me being from Chicago. And I think anywhere in the Midwest, Northeast, that kind of like late August through like February when seasonal depression starts to hit, it can be really big and I want it. But I didn't want to like, low on everybody with like depression 24/7 as well. I was like, I'll put these depressing kind of sounds or just therapy for myself on these really like positive sounding beats. So like with the exception of dead poet society, like all of my songs, I usually have one that's just like overtly dark. But for the most part, all of my songs have like a positive sound to it, but it has like a darker in the lyrics kind of thing to it. And I try to keep that kind of going so that I can have my therapy. It's why I don't really, I don't really listen to my own music because it's like, or when people try to play my music around me, it's like, if you're reading my diary in front of me because it's like, I'm so honest, I'm so brutally honest in the music. It's like, I don't want to hear that much like outside of when I'm recording or outside when I have to perform it because that's the therapy. But I don't want to be sitting in a living room like, oh, you have music. Let me play something. And it's like, you play my diary and I'm just like, this is all good. Yeah, I mean, I can semi-relate, like I don't really listen to my own podcast episodes because I don't want to have to hear myself speak again. It's a little too close for comfort. But there is something to be said about the irony behind like listening to Codon quote, depressing music or like music with lyrics that are a bit more melancholy to like get yourself out of a sadness or a funk. And especially with this whole seasonal depression thing, obviously, you know, it's a real thing. And in the Northeast and in the Midwest, like when it gets dark at literally four o'clock and your day feels like it's finished with by, you know, all of a sudden you blink your eyes and the day is gone. And you know, sometimes it just feels really good in a weird way to like put in headphones. Maybe go on like a night walk and by night, I mean like a 5 p.m. walk when it's pitch up on the heck and like listen to sad music. If you're feeling kind of like in a weird, you know, mental state or if you're just feeling really sad for whatever reason, I find sometimes that like I actually crave listening to sad or music. And there definitely is some sort of like neurological like science-backed explanation as to how that can make us feel better. Like maybe we get an endorphin kick from that or maybe it's serotonin. I could not tell you. But there's something, you know, to be sad about that. And even if like you, for example, your lyrics may be a bit more depressing or sad, masked by like a joyous melodic tune, I think that's a really beautiful like juxtaposed. So I think that's the best position because that can really create like such dynamic music. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it was like by studying the people who did it before me, I knew that it was what I wanted to do. I didn't want to make drill music like everyone else in Chicago. I didn't want to do the overly positive music like because when I was first starting in the industry, there was you had chief key and you had a chance to wrap it. And there was really no in between. You had super happy positive or dark grit. And I didn't really want either of those things. I didn't want to be super positive because I felt like it was easy to lose your brand. If anything goes negative, anything goes wrong, any kind of stand or anything, you can lose everything when you're so high on this pedestal. And then from the inverse with chief key, it's like you can't do shows anywhere. Everybody's afraid it's going to be gang violence or retaliation of some sort. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was like, OK, how can I stay in the middle, still be myself and brand myself in a way that I can? And I was like, what I tried to do. And it took a lot of time and a lot of failure. But once I got the hang of it, then it started rolling. But there was a lot of failure over there. I'd love for you to elaborate a bit more on that failure piece. It's very important, I think, to talk about because we're often so, you know, when we experience stepbacks. It's very discouraging. And I think that is like one of the biggest barriers to our success because we let those failures define the future. And it's very hard to just tell yourself, OK, this was a detour. Or this was like a little bump in the road. And if I keep going and if I keep being intentional about my choices and keeping my eye on the prize or whatever you want to tell yourself, you can't overcome those obstacles. So how did you deal with those failures and how did that impact the rest of the way in which you kept moving along with your music? The failures hit me very hard. I'm pretty sensitive person like anybody who knows me, so I'm pretty sensitive. I had it well, so you'll never really know. If you ever said anything to me that offended me, you'll never know that you offended me, but I don't know that you offended me and I just like internalize it. But if you know me well enough, you'll be able to see my facial cues. Because I'll never like make a big deal out of her. I'll never like call you out like, oh, you did this, but you'll know based on just knowing me and I said, OK, but I the failures hit me a little bit harder because I'm so sensitive. So it made better music for me. But I felt like it made me angrier. I became more like I had a chip on my shoulder and I had something to prove. And whereas that drove me, it didn't make for the best music therapeutically. Everything was so even me listening to work that I had now versus work that I had two, three years ago, even the way that I've delivered the lyrics are different because it's like, I can hear the just a macsus of aggression in the delivery of the lyrics. And it's just like, huh, like, and I used the mistake it for energy. Like, oh, that's just high energy. But then I have high energy songs now and it doesn't come up aggressive. It comes off more. I don't want to say stoic, but at least less angry. And so I think that kind of rage fueled me to keep going because I wanted to prove people wrong, especially being that none of my friends like my music. So that was a big thing. Like, none of my friends like my music at all, not a single one. They would also say, I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. And that was a big thing for me too. So I just had to keep going and try to make music that didn't compromise what I personally like to gain the approval of my friends, but still do something to improve. So there was that where I don't have a pure support system, which I kind of counted as a failure. And then every time I was trying to like plan a see you here, plan a see you there, I wouldn't really pan out because there's not really any opportunities in Chicago like that. There's no major labels in Chicago. There's no recording studios or not. There's no recording studios in terms of movies in Chicago. There's maybe five or six of them. Or at least when I was coming up there were in terms of music recording studios, but they were so expensive, especially for me. Like I'm fresh out of college paying $50 an hour and I need to do a whole album is just insane. Like I can't throw $2,000, $3,000 down to record. So it was such a difficult task for me and more important than all of that because rap has such a bad connotation in Chicago, I couldn't perform anywhere. Like I couldn't do any shows like, oh, so some tickets couldn't do any of that. So it was like literally what do I do? And I just found little ways to sneak and make ways like, okay, I'll do this open mic at this university. I can't do anything at the venues, but I can do it at the college. So I'll do a Nepal, I'll do Colombia. I'll do Northwestern, I'll go down Indiana State and do these open mics and try to fill the buzz as much as I can. Blogs are a little bit bigger there too. So I'll go to do that, push to the blogs, make sure the blogs are picking me up. And through all of that, my people still didn't like my music, but there were random people in the world that were liking it. And I think the biggest failure that I had was my first tour. My first tour I paid to be on Big Sean's Hall of Fame tour. She, or the promoters I'll say, had like, you can open for Big Sean, $300 a night. And so me and my buddy went half and half on it. I mean, we used to make music together. So we had like all of our music together, so we performed together. So it's like, we did 10 days, $300 a piece. It came out to like 1,500 each and we were so new that we didn't even know about merch. So it's like, we weren't making any money back. We're spending money on gas to get to each show or mega bus. If you're taking a mega bus or hotels. And then we pay obviously to perform and we're not making anything back. And we're wasting like months of our time. And we're just like, okay, now the tour is over. What now? And on top of all of that, it'd be like Big Sean will perform at like 10 p.m. And we're performing at like 6.45. So there's no one there when we're performing anyway. So it was literally just like a waste of money. And I kind of count that as a fail, but I'm glad that I got that lesson because it taught me a lot, one about being on the road. And two, just about how the industry works and it's all, you have to treat it like a business before anything else as opposed to just, oh, this is my passion and this is my craft. It's like, no, this is a business. If you want to do the music, let's just have fun and you can work a fast food job and do music on the side. But if you want to be in this industry, you have to treat it like a business. And so I definitely said, that was the biggest failure just being so overzealous and so ambitious that we didn't do our homework for that. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, to your point though, those were probably really good learning opportunities and it's like how else would you have known that maybe that wasn't the best strategic move unless you tried it. You know I would have thought that oh like opening for Big Sean that's huge like that's so cool but if like you mentioned like if he's performing at 10 and you're on like three to four hours earlier and there's not really a crowd then how many people are you actually reaching? Were you actually able to meet Big Sean? I think I met him twice but it was like a quick hello goodbye thing because another thing is this is my first introduction to the industry like I had just released my first song maybe three months before that. I didn't know there are a ton of other openers like I'm thinking like oh we're gonna open he's right after us it's like no we're gonna open this like eight other openers and then he's going and it's like oh this is different and then I didn't know about bands it's just us in a hey DJ play our songs like then Big Sean comes out and he's got a band and he's got smoke and he's got like pyroxamics and I'm just like oh there's another level to this huh like this is awkward. I know also earlier you mentioned that you know your friends didn't really love your music and it's taken a while to really like grow into your craft but you were also I mean nominated I know it was not technically for your music but I would love for you to talk a little bit more about that nomination and you know I've there's so many articles like I've you know googled your name obviously and like there's so many articles that come up around like you know hewley is like the next up and coming rapper but it's like based out like from Chicago and obviously these things take time so yes maybe your friends didn't love your music at the beginning but nothing you know that's successful nothing happens in an overnight success and clearly you've really accomplished so much in these past few years which is incredible so I'd love for you to share with my listeners a little bit more about you know what has been going on. So well I'll start the immunomination because I still find that my PR teams always put that in but I just I'd laugh at it because like if I was like number 11 man on the team the year that the Golden State Warriors won the championship and I never played any minutes but I got the you know the ring as well with them. I think it was 2017 and 2018 if I'm not mistaken it could be the two years before that but um I was doing a lot of PA work because um after I had lost a ton of money on the big shaw thing the way that I was doing a lot of my rounds in terms of touring was I would go with other local artists and say hey I want to go on tour with you I don't really have draw our fan base or anything like that but if you let me open for you then I'll give you like just back when Instagram only had the one minute video so I would be like a recap of your whole performance but a night and so you don't have to pay me just just let me open for you so I was doing a lot of PA work on TV shows and things like that like the shy and uh shameless etc etc and I got to give doing PA work on American Ninja Warrior and Minneapolis so I drive up the Minneapolis uh 6 p.m well the show the shooting starts at 6 p.m because it's a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shoot and I think the first day it was I was in the bad room at like 3 a.m. because I'm not a night person at all I'm a morning person through and through but I'm in the bathroom kind of splash water on my face because the red bull that I had in the three coffees is just not doing the trick and I'm talking to this guy in there because he's like he's just in there washing his hands or whatever and he's like it's a great great night huh and I'm like yeah like the way I never knew like how big setup like this was and it really was an amazing set and he's like uh you know anything about shooting or anything like that I'm like yeah I should a little bit that's this extent like there's all types of high level production here but I love to learn one day like whatever like once again I don't know who this guy is he's like well why don't you come to me to come with me to this tent and I'm like okay I'm thinking he's taking me to the uh I've said I don't remember the name of it there's like a special name for the food tent like the catering area that's what I'm thinking he's taking me um but he takes me to the directors tent and on this one screen is like 16 17 different screens of all the different shots throughout the entire arena and then on the other screen is the uh the warriors and the rockets plan in the playoffs so whatever year James hired was on the rackets and they were playing the warriors that that was the first year but there's that screen and then there's this one and he's like oh what would you do here what would you do there yada yada I was like well I would do this I would and he's like teaching me like well this is why you don't do that this is why you should do this yada yada yada and I need to go just literally from him just telling me things and next day as well uh he gave me D.P. credit and even though I didn't technically do D.P. work he gave me D.P. credit and that episode got nominated for best directing and then the whole show got nominated that year for a best reality competition I believe uh and I think both lost to like RuPaul's drag race but yeah so because I got D.P. for the directing and because I was working on the episode and I got that credit that's how I got the two Emmy nominations it's kind of just lucky or that's awesome I mean you know I would I would take it yeah I take it that's very very cool and you bring so much more to the table also like beyond just being a rapper but you also have like experience and video production and like video editing I think that's really kind of like the whole package is being like an artist because now we're also seeing so much video content and especially with the rise of like virtual concerts and the metaverse like there's just so much going on within that space and especially in music and rap so you know and I know you're going on tour I think in February right is when you said you're starting hopefully I mean I just saw a lot of stuff today that they made shut everything back down so if everything is where it is now that I know like the first day is in Seattle the second day is in LA where those could be flipped and then the third one's in Chicago of course but those are off February mid February so that if everything stands in yet fingers crossed I hope I hope things you know are are able to go as planned and if not then we pivot you know like things always do work out as they should I want a backtrack just a little bit and talk a bit more about your background and like growing up in Chicago like your experiences in your childhood how that kind of like inspired your craft and what you ended up writing about in your music and what you continue to write about in your music as well I'm obviously I'm from the west side of Chicago Austin neighborhood spent more than a little bit of time in the Cabrini Green Projects and we moved around a lot because we weren't we weren't really well off financially so we moved around quite a bit like I went to 16 or 17 different schools in between kindergarten and 12th grade and so like that one thing that I did dislike as a kid was I never had that oh I've been friends with this person for eight nine ten years because we moved around so much but it actually helped me later on because now people are like oh yeah I went to first grade with you and this person like second grade and it's like so many different people are like I went to school with you it kind of helps me but that mix would just be in poor very poor and then the violence that inch that was throughout the city um and trying to I don't want to say trying to stay away from it because when we're young we don't understand the gravity of just how dangerous it is so for us it was like fun it was like an adrenaline rush so we wanted to be a part of everything we wanted to you know it was like a sport and it sounds so bad like saying it now but we didn't know any better it's all we knew so it was like a sport for us to just be industries to be a violence to be doing whatever we needed to do and then as we got older and you see like oh I'm 13 years old and I'm trying to get a job but I can't so then you start diving and other things so you can actually make money any way that you can whether it be legal or illegal and so those kind of played a huge role in the music that I make just based on the title of my story growing up yeah I mean I actually just watched a documentary called a most beautiful thing and it's about the first all black rowing team based out of I Marley high school I can't remember the name it's a it's a high school in the west side of Chicago in that documentary I learned a lot about they like they talked a lot about the statistics around violence and how like it was more likely that you would be shot or like you would know someone that was either like kill like a close family member or friend that was killed rather than like you know not knowing someone that was murdered and one of the people in the documentary who grew up in the west side of Chicago said that when they had seen a 10-year-old get murdered in front of their school and it was just they didn't think much of it because that was normalized like that was the environment that these people grew up in and you know so it doesn't sound bad you're saying that because if kids you know growing up you only know what you're surrounded by you know you cannot control that you are you cannot control where you're raised who you're raised by kids have a very like narrow-minded perception of the world and that's shaped by who they're around and so it of course makes sense that like that was if that's what was normal to you then like those things probably never phased you and you know though the documentary was like incredible and I think it really painted a more clear picture for me around the representation of the reality of what it's like to grow up in a neighborhood like that besides that I'd love to hear a little bit more about as you were growing up I'm sure you started to realize okay this isn't normal like this is highly unsafe and you know you wanted a better life for yourself you wanted a safer life for yourself a more financially secure life how did you like make those decisions and kind of pull yourself out of being an environment where it may be easy to just stay and like want to survive on the streets. And I don't mean that in like, you know, an insensitive way. I mean it in like the most literal sense, like actually joining a gang and like getting involved in violent activities. When I was 11, my mom said that she was tired of living in Chicago. She's like, I'm tired of the cold. I want to move somewhere high. So she pecs us up and we moved down to Atlanta, Georgia. And we bounced around Atlanta for a bit before we settled in like the borderline of Marietta, Smyrna, Georgia. My pops, my stuff, that are others with us. And you know, he can't really work. He can't find work down there. It's really hard for him. So he goes back for my mom doesn't want to leave because she was enjoying that Atlanta heat and everything that comes with being in the South. So we're down there and we're just struggling. And I was just doing whatever I could to make sure that we could eat me and my brother and me and my mom sometimes when she was around because she's working like she's working like 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. So she's not even around to see what we're doing, but she trusts us enough to at least we're going to school. We're doing that type of stuff like we had that instilled enough from the jump. And I ended up getting in so much trouble. Like I kept violating probation over and over to the point where they kept giving me chance at the chance because they're like oh you you have straight a.s. So clearly you're just hanging around in the wrong crowd or you just don't have ample opportunity. The judge that I kept going to, the second one said the same one over and over for some reason. But they're just giving you chance at the chance at the chance. And then at one point they're just like we're fed up. So either you're you're going to, well first they were just going to send me off the kitty jail or to be whatever was placing me facility. I don't know what it would have been. I couldn't get that far. I think my public defender or whatever had feed it like oh he has a dad that lives in Chicago. He can go live with that. So I end up moving in with my real dad in Schaumburg, Illinois. And it's like very, it's a completely different environment to Chicago. It's like very well locked, very, very well kept, it's very nice. And my dad was always well locked. So now I'm going to school there for the six most that I stay with him. But while I'm there, I'm noticing things that I didn't necessarily care for. Like I'm in the schools and I'm wearing like four XL white teas and baggie jeans and Air Force ones and everybody else is wearing like tighter clothes like more fit, more crispy. And they're looking at me like I'm less than them because of the way I speak. Because that's like slaying, heavy slaying, so I see like every person, anybody you hear from Chicago talk this high talk and it like I didn't like the way they looked at me. I didn't like the way they treated me. It felt really bad. So after I left and went back to live with my pops and my mom like six months later, once they just finally caved in and moved back up here or back to Chicago, we're back in a hood. But now I've already had a taste of something different. So now this isn't even satisfactory for me anymore. Now I know there's something more. And I think that was a big piece of it is that I got to see that there's more than just this that we see. There's something else out there. And had I not experienced that I probably wouldn't have the same mentality that I had. So I can think those negative situations that I was in that forced me to go live with my dad to really change my mind so that I make me want more. It's kind of like a blessing in disguise, having to be with the same judge. And then getting to that point where it's like, okay, now you have to go live through dad. And honestly, like, thank God that you have that experience because it in a way kind of brought you to where you are now or at least it kind of gave you that instinct like, okay, there is something more for me. Exactly. And I feel like a lot of people don't have that like you said. Not just with children, but people we only really know what we can see because I feel like faith is a very scarce thing these days. Outside of religion just having faith in yourself and faith that you can do something greater, that self-confidence is kind of, it's very scarce. So I think that me being able to experience that. And others, if they are able to experience that then no, probably have those same kind of revelations that I did. That's a really great point just around like faith being scarce. It's very hard to believe in yourself, especially if you feel like the world is like against you. And especially if you are already in an environment where you have very little or you're not around like minded people. Like I'm sure once you have that taste of like what it was like to go live with your dad, then you came back to like where you grew up or where your your mom had moved back to. You know, maybe it was harder. I don't know. Was it harder to connect with friends that you had there? Relationships that you had or I have like a superiority complex like because I'm still a kid and you know, kids are very impressionable. And I'm only like 14 so at this point. So like now like I got this air of like, oh, you know, like this hood, this hood, this stuff is beneath me like and it didn't come off to a lot. I couldn't even breathe that it didn't come off to I got a lot of fights over it. And then it didn't help. Once I like, once I changed the way that I talked, the way that I spoke, because I didn't always talk like this. Obviously, but I like, I kind of faked talking like this so much until it became like my actual voice. Like it's my actual voice now, but I was faking it for a good seven, eight months just faking talking like this. I would come home and my brother would be like, like, are you talking white? Like now I'm like, no, this is just how I speak now. And like, mathematically all of the sudden, this is just how I speak now. It was like one day just wake up and change. And so once that happened, it didn't help you this. And now it's like, you think you better than everybody. And you, you, they called it good talking like you could talk in like, so it was, it wouldn't go very well. No. Do you ever go back to that area of Chicago? Like are there people there that you have maintained a relationship with that you've maintained in contact with? Is there like a reason for you to want to go back now after, you know, all this time has passed? And you've had all these experiences and you were able to like get yourself out of a negative situation. Like is there now ever a desire to go back and like reconnect there or I only get my hair cut still like everywhere else that I go mess it up my hair. So like I'll be like having the wolf face for a while until I go back home because I don't trust anybody with my hair anymore. I go back at least once, twice a month to get my hair cut to get good. Who see my family because my family still lives there. It's like a central hub for my entire family. So yeah, I'm back at least once a month at the very least, but I'm back there all the time. I think that's really good because kind of like what you were mentioning earlier about like coming back when you were 14 at that superiority complex. Unfortunately, like that's a thing that like, yeah, obviously people who are not 14, like people who are adults and that feel that they've made it, like that can manifest in people of all ages. And you have to like acknowledge and honor where you initially came from for better or for worse and like, you know, pay it back. Obviously, your family is still there. So it makes sense that you're going back to see your family, but I love that that's still kind of part of your identity. And it doesn't have to be like the negative experiences associated with that environment. Like that can be abstracted away and you can still find a lot of like beauty and comfort and a sense of like home maybe from where you grew up in Chicago. A lot of people are going out like a lot of the lucky few that made it out or made it to be adults, they moved away like I don't think at least on my block, I don't think any of the people around my age lived there anymore. So everyone moved away. So it's just like people's grandparents or aunts and uncles. So it's safer now just because like my generation is gone. Or they're either an NGO, they're dead or they just went away like it's no one to stay around for that. And so it's decent over there now. Some ways. After moving out and you went to college and I know you also do work with autistic children. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that, but now that like, you know, you're in a different phase in your life, I'm wondering to you often kind of like reflect on those experiences and is that where a lot of your music comes from? Like when you sit down to like think about kind of like shit that you've dealt with to put it in like plain terms, you know, a lot of trauma is there are things that we start to realize like after the fact and it takes a long time to like recognize and process. So are those experiences things that you're kind of like still dealing with now and like still discovering within yourself and like writing about or are you now finding inspiration and other parts of your life? Oh no, I'm definitely still finding things out which inspired the whole the younger I get project because it's like as the years go by I'm like my youth comes back to me like things and I'm thinking of things that kind of resurface that I didn't necessarily that I never considered for instance like over half of my family is they have drug addictions and they also have decorations like almost every male in my family was in the Marines or the army or the Air Force highly decorated to come home and drug addicts and it was before I was born like by the time I was born they were already drug addicts so I I never really like thought about what happened until about January. of this year where I was in a Dominican Republic or like all of December and all of January and it hit me like we go to different countries and we get treated like royalty as black man we get treated like every word that comes out of our mouth is just gold it's like and they're just grabbing from the faucet of gold spillage and then this is also like 80s or ever early 90s 80s they come home and they can't find jobs they have families to provide for they have to deal with deal with red lining and of course riding cane pack then they can't get like so the job is the biggest part of it and there's nowhere to work and on top of all of that you got this crack epidemic that's hit the country and dealing with all of that it kind of just resurface like just me seeing like how the world kind of destroyed my or the country rather destroyed my family tree and so those things kind of play a huge part in why I have like certain aspects and perspectives or why I have certain perspectives in the house where I am in life right now is how I think about certain things and it makes me want to not only talk about like I speak on gentrification the last week about red lining a lot it sounds like fat tissues it sounds like head islamane that's a big one that's more so talking about racism in the entertainment industry but I I wrapped it up so so neatly that unless I specifically broke down every single part that people wouldn't even realize what that's about and of course Saturday is me kind of expressing that whole thing it's like yeah I'm I have no way to give money I'm broke I can't provide for my family so yeah I'm having a Saturday like like but everything around me just looks green because I think that's the first line of the versus like everything looks super green because it's like we're kind of given this dream that America is the land of opportunity to land which brings come through like the on earth land of milk and honey what when we get here it's not that way it's like no it's not that way it's just a walk-in lick and I literally said it's a walk-in lick like scratch and sniff or a sneak as I say it or you know like it's all just one big scam one big finesse and so you trying to navigate through that could break you mentally especially with I don't know what particularly my family went through when they were in the war because they were so old that I didn't get the hat old conversations with them before they passed but I don't know what they were dealing with already what kind of traumas and PTSD or shell shockers they used to call it that they were dealing with in addition to all the stuff that we were calling on them and those are things that I started to think of as I was making this project yeah I was also going to say like PTSD from you know from combat like being in the Marines or the Nate whatever like we know that veterans definitely deal with PTSD and of course that can probably be a catalyst for drug use and you know the list goes on but I think that's just so beautiful that you're able to kind of intertwine all these revelations and like your perspectives on different topics and the way in which like the world is socially constructed just like so many different ideas and thoughts that you have blended with like your own personal experiences um and you're like your family and your childhood like you can you can kind of like neatly put it together in in music and uh when you take away the the the melody and the beats it's like the lyrics at you know the bare-bone structure the foundation is poetry I love that like I didn't you know I've listened to some of your music and I think that now I need to listen to it a bit like more deeply again after having this conversation because like this conversation is like coloring there's a bit more meaning now I think behind the lyrics than previously maybe I would have understood it's it's cool it's like it's like I'm interviewing a writer basically well I like to see myself as a writer and not a rapper or like even though obviously my genre is rap like I don't necessarily like to view myself as a rapper per se like I'm just I'm a storyteller and I get the tell my story as well as my my ancestors and my family story because a lot of times specifically in my life history repeats so everything that they've gone through are things that I similarly went through as an adult I should be going into a lot how when I came back from college I had to find a way to to make money and it took me eight months every single day suit and tie to get a fast food out and it was just washing dishes and it's hit me it's me eight months for that and I can me thinking about that's the two thousand like I can imagine how they must have been in the 80s when you had to when you just came back from making all this money quote unquote but then you get here you probably have to wait six seven months for the V8 to finally give you the money that you made and meanwhile you got babies crying and a wife looking at you like what you're supposed to be providing for me and this is also back in the time of hyper masculinity where you know that pride and ego just eats away at you and we're kind of I went through the same thing that's the same degree if I any means but in a same in a similar sense and so me seeing that it's kind of like it all comes full circle history does tend to repeat itself and I also I'm like I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that it took you that long to find the like the most basic job and like you just sharing that honestly like put so much into perspective a lot of the opportunities that I myself had and like people that I grew up around have given to them and so much you know we take for granted whether or not you have a lot or you have a little like you know we're it's by nature we take things for granted when we're there and then when it's gone we're like oh shit we like really we start to appreciate things when we are lacking them because we realize we don't have them and I just think it's important to like constantly reflect and be grateful for the things that you have because there's always going to be someone out there who is less than you it's it's easy to complain and it's easy to feel you know like you know complacent or pissed off or whatever but when you really take a step back and like put your situation in perspective there are so many worse things that are happening in the world and no matter where you're from or where you're at I just think it's an important practice to have having that gratitude taking time to reflect because we can get so caught up in trivial things and it's just a good reminder to have to like keep that perspective and we I feel like we as a whole everyone kind of laughs the empathy that we use to have like no one wants to put themselves in anyone else's shoes and anymore like everyone's just like well as long as it's not me it's okay like I fall victim to it too sometimes where I'm like well as long as not me it's okay but you know somebody does have it worse and we don't even try to put ourselves in that person's position like hey they have it worse what would I want to happen for me if I were the one in that position you know we just kind of like oh well someone's got it worse than keeping it pushing you know and like I said I'm in guilty of it too yeah and also like I think recognizing like that common you humanity piece like we're all people at the end of the day and there's a lot with our circumstances that we necessarily like cannot control and we tend to make snap judgments about people based off the things that they like these materialistic you know items that they own or people that they know or things that they've done and it's if you take that away like if you take those external layers from everyone like you're left with basic human emotion at the end of the day like the human mind works more or less the same across everyone kind of actually don't quote me on that I'm not sure but you're kind of reminds me of that movie trading places way back with Eddie Murphy and Dan Acroix where it's like they make that bet where it's like if we took this poor black person and put him in the corporate position that this well up white man is in and take the white man and put him in the black position like there he's going to act exactly how he was acting he's going to act exactly exactly where he was acting and of course Eddie Murphy said I do it in a very comedic way but it was the same thing it's like because we we become comfortable to be environment in which we're placed in my belief so eventually you're going to get used to it maybe not maybe the right away they'll be a little friction because you know you're some different objects for it after while it's going to be cohesive and you're going to fall into your role so I agree with what you're saying or it's like at the end of the day we're all you know I think the same across the board for the most part yeah I need to watch that movie now I'm interested it's very funny is they came on the 80s like when Eddie Murphy was at his peak yeah that's the problem I like I'm so bad about watching quote-unquote older films which like the 80s is not that old like it's not ancient but I always have trouble just like getting myself to sit down and watch like like I watched Forrest gum for the first time and lockdown like that's embarrassing you know like that's a classic why did it take me that long to watch it there's still so many you know so many things I have to put on and on the list to watch so that is now one of them um but aside from movies and pop culture references this has been such an incredible conversation Q I could honestly keep going but I don't know how long my listeners' attentions hands are but you know we might have to do a part two down the line I would love that I'm down for that and there's one final question that I have to ask you that I leave with every guest that comes on to the show and that question is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day I'm I'm a lever by nature so like I've heard many times that we like movies and TV is like our kind of escape from reality so for me I have to like I have to watch an episode of something or some type of movie every single day even if it's just like a clip of a movie on YouTube or something like that I when I wake up it's one of the first things I do as a as a form of meditation. because I recently found out that meditation is not just sitting and legs crossed and eyes closed is actually things like just getting your mind right in the morning maybe watching something that brings you those endorphins. So that's my morning meditation. It's like my little movie watching this stuff. I love that. That is like the best quote I've heard today. My morning meditation is watching a movie that's awesome. I mean like I totally agree and I think that's like a huge misconception about meditation is like this idealistic picture of someone sitting cross-like it on a beach and gazing out into the sunset and like they're totally zen and calm and yeah that sounds great but that's not an everyday situation for me. Like I wish it was but like it's about bringing that feeling into your day-to-day life. So like what are small things you can do to feel that sense of calm and it's kind of like tapping into that flow like state. So you know my morning meditation I guess is like I don't know I like making my bed like that makes me feel like I did something you know productive. There's also other things I guess in my morning routine but I love that and I I think that's a really cool answer no one has said that before. I like the making bed I've never heard that one. It's kind of boring but you know it's good to get into that habit. It's whatever it kind of does for you you know because what could be boring for me like I literally just has this conversation with my brother yesterday where he's like he doesn't like watching TV he doesn't like watching movies but his morning thing and that aspect is like playing video games before he like makes breakfast for his kids. So like I don't like video games to me video games are kind of boring but for him he loves him so it's like you know whatever gives you that kind of whatever gives you that serotonin boost or whatever you need and life is like cold for it. Exactly I love that. So here where can my listeners find you on like social media, Spotify, all the listening links social media links everything. Well all the social media links you know Julie or the Facebook Twitter Instagram is @whoisheuli or you can just find everything in one central location that LibrasNeverLi.com that will be a Spotify that you see the Instagram Facebook soundcloud or whatever so I probably say just go to LibrasNeverLi.com even though people type in it out like Libras Live. And hopefully if the tour is on people can come watch you perform live in their respective cities so I'm sure there will be information posted about that on your social media your website everything. And always LibrasNeverLi.com is like everything's always there and it's always on the social media as well. Thank you so much you it was great having you on the podcast. Thank you for having me appreciate it. Thank you for listening and remember to like, rate and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Don't forget to keep spreading in Dorfins and find things that bring you in Dorfins every day. See you next time.