Black Ink (Old Cartridges)

May 2020 

I try writing and nothing comes out. What was once a loud, rushing white river rapids had now dried to a dusty road of what once was. Cracks had formed in the brown ground, evidence of life that once was. Have I limited myself to one writing style when I could be writing something else? Stories, themes, and sermons swirled in my mind together creating a mesh of an overwhelming overload of creativity. I put my lyric pen down and picked up my story pencil. I create my own blog and begin to preach sermons at my church. Was songwriting over with or comatose with no end date for recovery? In what once was a devastating fear got converted to faith as I painfully tore off the behemoth growth of music but wrapped the wound quickly as to deter the infection of further writer’s block as I kept writing in new styles, ironically this time not just as a rapper. 

July 4, 2010 

My friend David was a Christian but also a freestyle rapper. He seemed so cool and super talented as he operated the conveyor belt in his head that could convert whatever thoughts came out of his brain, morph perfectly into rhymes, which would then be finalized and delivered on time and without error from his mouth into exquisite bars. Experiencing his gift while also now being the biggest fan of ‘Christian rap’ at the time I decided I wanted to make my own. I downloaded a program called FL (Frooty Loops) Studio and proceeded to make my own beats which sounded like trash, but they were my trash and my 18-year-old self put my heart and soul into each of them. I showed a beat to David and asked if he would be down to make a song together. He was down! & we wrote a song in what felt like seconds of impulsive creativity, and he seemed surprised as I wrote my verse of 16 bars in less than 10 minutes. 

February 2002 

I’m 10 years old and heard that a new rapper was around who was getting pretty popular. His name was Eminem and to my surprise he was white! I didn’t even know white rappers was a thing. His name also stood out to me cause I only knew it as the crunchy, chocolatey candy I got on Halloween. I joked around with some friends who played him on their gray cassette tapes and matching headsets with the foam missing on the earphones. “If his name is ‘M&M’ then mine would be Skittles!” which was my favorite candy. This name never went anywhere but I thought it to be a fairly good joke for a 10-year-old. 

September 1998 

I hear a song by a rapper named Deezer D. The track definitely had an urban feel and its smoothness reminded me of pitch-black nights with dimly lit streetlights and tall skyscrapers. My parents wouldn’t let me listen to any artists that weren't Christian, but this was the first Christian artist I heard who was a rapper. I still remember the chorus to his song, ‘Come Back,’ “When you have a setback, don’t take a step back, get ready for a comeback.” I’m only a child so I hadn’t had any hard times yet that I knew of, but I still appreciated his positivity. 

January 2004 

On a school camping trip with some buddies a friend of mine played the explicit version of a Lil’ Jon song around us as his mom was driving us uphill through some dusty, orange hills in their oversized Escalade SUV. “TO THE WINDOW!! TO THE WALL!!” All the lyrics were screamed, and the proceeding lyrics were overtly sexual. My friend’s mom’s face slowly became the color of the Christmas traveler mug she was drinking out of. “Choose a different song!” she yelled at her son who sat ignorantly in the passenger seat. Her command shuffled his body posture as he then scrambled through his catalogue to find another rap song that was non-explicit and edited. I was only 12 years old so I had no idea what that man Jon was talking about but I loved the beat so I continued to listen to any rap I could get my hands on with high interest. 

May 2008 

I’m now in 10th grade and my buddy Jason brought his silver, high tech Apple laptop to school. He had the goldmine, SOOO many dope albums and songs and all purchased from iTunes! I had no idea how he could afford them all, but those care’s trampled out of my head with no regard to any other thoughts as I broke out my iPod classic and asked if he could transfer all his music onto my music player. So many new artists I didn’t have on my iPod before like Kanye West, Common, and Outkast just to name a few of them. Illegal downloading was all the craze now and my homie Stephen was kind enough to make me homemade, burnt CD’s of all the songs I had heard on the radio, 106 and Park, or MTV and just had to have. I walked away from that interaction a rich man. “I won’t need any new music for years!” I thought to myself with one earbud in my ear and another dangling on the side of my oversized, Southpole jeans. 

July 21, 2010 

We performed the song we created to our youth group of 30+ mix of friends, teenagers, and young adults and they loved it! As the applause echoed in the spacious, cold room but with warm faces I thought to myself this could be a new beginning; I saw every reason to keep writing. 

July 2012 

I was nervous to perform somewhere I hadn’t been before but seeing other rappers perform before me actually amped me up to want to put my music out there more. Thank God my friends from church were in the audience of this large church in Bakerfield. It was 100 degrees outside but thank God they had air conditioning in this overcrowded room of young people. Family was there to cheer me on while another friend accompanied me on stage as my hype man. I was super chill when I performed so a hype man was 100% necessary to get the people engaged. The crowd erupted in sound and dancing as their movement poured like hot lava from one side of the room to the other to eventually engulf the entire mass of church kids waving their hands and shouting until their voices gave out. It went better than expected, I had no reason to stop. 

December 2003 

I’m in middle school I finally leave the suffocating Christian school that I was at for the past 3 years. I remember asking my teacher if my failing grade in Bible class would affect my grades in a public school setting. She stood shocked and muted, but I think her silence was enough of an answer for me. My two older brothers had already left my private school to go to a public one and I was ready to follow in their footsteps to finally be exposed to the real world. I learned of artists like 50 Cent, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, and Usher. I loved ALL of them. I listened to the clean versions mostly but when I heard the explicit versions my jaw dropped. I had never heard people cuss that much before in my life. This is what a rated R movie must sound like I thought to myself.  

May 2010 

When I was 18, I went to a Lecrae concert along with my youth group at the church my dad worked at. Lecrae was a Christian artist who rapped. I always thought of Christian rappers as the wackest rappers out there (besides Deezer D of course). There’s always an exception, right? The beats sucked, the lyrics only talked about God, killing their flesh (whatever that meant), and what was most disappointing, there was ZERO bass in the tracks. This guy seemed different though, the crowd went wild and moved like a massive, tidal wave all in one motion to the point where I found myself nearly drowning but at the final moment catching the tide and riding it too. A man of faith was doing what he loved and was good at doing it too. I never thought faith and music could intertwine in such a way that they could produce such young and upbeat music. A week after the concert I threw out all my illegally downloaded tunes and even smashed all the CDs of the ‘secular’ music I had gathered up to that point. I was zealous about this newfound faith and what would be a highly unexpected surprise to my middle school self, bought every ‘Christian rap’ album I could find. 

August 2014 

I got the call I always wanted. Someone from the creative team at our massive church in Sydney reached out to me to rap in front of our whole school the next day, but something wasn’t right. They wanted me to rap someone else’s lyrics and memorize all of them overnight. I never performed someone else’s lyrics before, this was one of the top rules in hip hop, only perform your own stuff (unless you were paying tribute or something). To my dismay, a sharp disappointment bled warmly and slowly as it pierced through my words. I told the guy, “No.” My dream got set aside, I hope I made the right decision. 

February 2012 

“Sure, I've got nothing else going on at the moment." But I did, why did I lie? Let's backup and see how I got here. My friend Josh had just asked me to go to Bible college with him in Sydney, Australia. The music thing was going well but I was failing community college (besides my music classes of course) and I didn’t have much traction in any other area of life besides hanging out with my high school and church buddies. “I hope they have hip-hop in Australia,” I thought to myself while listening to my recently purchased Sho Baraka’s ‘Talented 10th' on the double-digit hour plane ride over. 

June 2020 

I submit my creative writing to my college magazine to no avail, but my 3-month-old podcast is doing well which requires a lot more writing than one might think like writing the descriptions and talking points of all the people I get to interview. Another opportunity comes around, something I hadn’t done before, a protest but this time my sermon writing skills would be needed. I load up my mind with the ammo of my talking points but like an old friend sitting warmly in the corner I see some old shells of my rapping phase. For some reason I feel these might come in handy as I put them in my pocket close to my chest. I preach and the audience feels what I’m saying. We protested and get to our meeting spot. 

February 2013 

I was so passionate about something almost nobody talked about, so I started my own songwriting group that met in my six roommate home every other week. Our living room was nearly empty just one small table and an old stinky, green couch we had pulled out of a dumpster but we Febreeze’d it up so it was useable. We shared something we wrote while also appreciating a rap song that was created by an artist not in the room. We had two sessions of this, but schoolwork took over. I was too busy to keep doing this. 

January 2015 

My roommate’s girlfriend Hannah was a master of writing songs, and she was kind enough to reach out to want to do a rap collaboration for a project she was working on. I was famished for opportunities and was close to creative death, as I wrote my lyrics with the speed of a madman driven by a bright red, combusting passion as I started to memorize my lyrics for our future performance. The gig got changed from a bigger audience to a smaller one, this was disappointing, but I was overjoyed just to be rapping publicly again. The crowd gave some “WOO”’s and clapped once I started rapping. I turned in my lyrics alongside Hannah’s to her songwriting teacher and she loved what I wrote. “The lyrics, wordplay, and story were very well written and intentional,” her teacher said. I might have a future in this. 

October 2016 

Life passes me by, at least that’s what it feels like. It might have just been a bus that didn’t see me waving and pleading for it to not make me wait another 30 minutes for the next one. I stood on a brisk, Sunday morning as the warmth of the bright, orange sun seeped to the earth, a savior, sent to defrost the impatient yet frozen pedestrians huddled together on the pavement. We edged closer and closer to the sole, merciful spot of warmth as the waking light shone through the unyielding clouds and unmoving pine trees. I waited for more waiting; this trip would take 2 hours one way to get to the city. Prior to me sitting on the bus stop bench I stopped by my heated workplace which fell on me like a wool, welcoming blanket as my generous coworkers greeted me and blessed me with free coffee and a crunchy, warm croissant to go. I’m 24, and I still don’t have anything figured out yet, so I reminisce. I recall coming back to the States this year after spending 3 years in Australia with the best roommates I ever had. Coming home to a family, a community hand stitched together of friends from the USA, Uganda, and Australia was something I assumed was normal and not until I left, I realized I had taken it for granted. I remember the good and the bad, the decent and the ugly, just to try to convince myself I made the right decision of coming to the Bay to assist with the building of my friend’s brand new church. To escape regret, I lean into the ugly. I remember the hurtful names I was called by strangers for just walking down the sidewalk trying to get home. I remember the crowded, warm beaches with Aquafina clear water but also the mean comments I received for already being too dark to try to get a tan alongside my lighter friends. I remember the bad not to stay in it but to use it. I twist the pain like a torn, dirty rag as it oozes the blackness of the hate of ignorant people spouted on me for the color of my skin. I use the darkness, the same tone as my melanin not for hate but as my ink. I begin to write. 

June 2020 

Something’s near my heart, I must let it out. I start rapping acapella a rap I had written two years ago at a bus stop about racism. I had every word memorized cause as a rapper you have to always be ready, never forget your ammo. Not one word is forgotten, every sentence hits the bullseye as the trigger happy adrenaline fires through my veins. The masked audience cheers and applauds as their eyes light with joy, I didn’t do this for me, I just hope what I said had to say had an impact on their lives. This was the first time I had used two different writing styles for the same event. As I go back inside I look around for any other cartridges I might have forgotten about.