My relationship with technology started pretty early, I guess when I first learned what music was is when it started. Some of my favorite moments in childhood were just of me listening to music during a drive or the music that was being played in my neighborhood when I was a kid. Early on in learned that different music meant different things. I knew music was for kids,what was for adults what my granny would listen to,and what was not cool. In my neighborhood loud and in your face music was the norm it signified your lifestyle, what kind of person you were . I was raised around mostly women, my mom, my aunties my granny, so I learned R&B music, the love songs Micheal Jackson, soul music. And from my cousins I got rap. I got a glimpse of "gangster " lifestyle , I learned it was important to have money and women.
I never really questioned much at that young age. When I moved out of that neighborhood I was 8 years old. Up until about 8th grade all of the music I had claimed as my own were given to me. I had never chosen my own music to listen to it was all from the radio, or the CD's and tapes my parents had . When I first started collecting my own music ,everything was still from my friends, I needed their iTunes and their Internet to get music. They had decided for me what was cool. Ice Cube, Tupac, and Biggie Smalls began bumping through my earphones. Around the same time, I got more freedom in ,your style of dress,and sure enough I dressed like a 1990s Crip lol.
Around the 10th grade I started going out on my own, traveling more throughout L.A . My older cousin became a big influence on my life. The popular rappers of that time were Lil Boosie- who had his own haircut named after him that I got- YG and other up tempo gangster rappers. I dressed like them talked like them. Luckily something opened my eyes and yet again around 11th grade
I was changing again. This time I wanted to be a person with "swag". It was no,longer cool to be "tough" I wanted to wear cargoes and hats and party. I didn't want to be dumb. It was cool to be smart and be a clown at the same time. To hang with drug dealers in the streets and read the newspaper before sleep. At the the same time, I pressured myself to be cool. I didn't want to fall behind on the best trending music. The FOMO got real. This also happens to be when I first began to use social media. It's funny how that worked out. Mac Miller , Drake, Wiz Khalifa, and Biggie Dean were the names for me in that Era. These were the artist I can say shaped me and my generation. Even now that I don't listen to hip hop in connection still listen to one of there songs.
My final transformation happened during senior year of high school. I never felt more different and isolated in ,your life that year. No one in my social circles listened to anything I did. My life did a 180 and I was listening to the Beatles the biggest thing that changed about me was my new found openness to the world I was more accepting of different music, views and culture.
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