Okay, so right now I'm looking at Tuesday the 14th of May 2024 and it's safe to say that I'm feeling pretty great. The thing that I wanted to talk about has got something to do with self-advocacy or being your own ambassador. Like yesterday I was looking through one of
Kendrick Lamar's songs and I was looking at all the notes and all the things that the contributors had to say in terms of like you know explaining what
each of these lines actually meant and for anybody who doesn't know Genius is a platform where like you know you can find all of your favorite musicians songs and lyrics like you know the lyrics to their songs and stuff like that and especially like you know the hidden meanings like behind the songs and stuff like that right and um the reason why i was curious to look at like one of Kendrick Lamar's songs is because the cult following that he has and the you know the cult obsession that people you know that that Kendrick Lamar basically has has put him in a position where if he puts out
one of these songs and he puts one of these like uh one of the lyrics to the songs on Genius like there will be contributors who will effectively explain those lyrics on his behalf and the key word that I wanted to the key phrase that I wanted to pay attention to in that regard was on his behalf because I've uploaded a bunch of my lyrics to Genius before and I was always sitting there wondering how you know how does it work? Like at what point do you, at what point does all of this stuff fall into place where you're
renowned enough and you're famous enough to the point where people are annotating and people are explaining and deciphering your lyrics on your behalf? And it's one of those things that made me realize, because I didn't know the answer to that question, it put me in a position where I realized that if I don't represent myself and I don't put myself out there and explain and describe these lyrics myself, I don't think that there's anybody that will ever contribute to the annotations of my own work or to the adoration of my own work. And what do I mean when I say that?
What I mean to say is that a lot of up-and-coming artists but you know a lot of people who are thinking about you know becoming artists, musicians especially within like you know popular culture or within rap culture in general you know just automatically assume that somehow some way this is going to happen either overnight or that you know there's going to be people that are going to be out there who don't know you and all of a sudden just want to start you know you know deciphering every
single one of your lyrics and you know, kind of like, you know, represent you in the way that you hope to be represented. The truth that I really want to try and get out there, to the best of my ability, is that, like, you know, and the message I'm trying to get out there is that when you're starting out, you know, when you're in your really early stages and like, look, I've been doing this for four years, part-time to say the least, so maybe I might have been able to accomplish more in less time. But you know I've been
doing this for four years, I consider this to be relatively like an early start. And for anybody in that period of their journey, I would beat it into my own head that if I don't advocate for myself, if I am not my own brand ambassador, nobody's going to be writing anything, any think pieces about me. Like this isn't the kind of world where like, you know, you just wake up one morning, put your hand up and say, hey guys, I want to be an artist. And suddenly everyone's going to swarm over you and everyone's going to fill you with love and adoration and, you know, obsess over you like you're some funny overnight celebrity. Because I really do want to stress the reality that for the most part in the beginning you will be advocating for yourself and if you don't advocate for yourself, who the hell are you?
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