Music is a beautiful thing. It's a piece of art that I find interesting the most in enabling you express yourself absolutely. Just like there are different classes of food that make up for a healthy life, or there are different colors that are involved in a painting, so are there different styles–genres–that are involved in music.
There is no food that you'll say is the best over the rest, or a color that you'd say is superior over the other, they are all important. It's just a matter of preference. This can be likened to music as well. You can't say a genre is best over the rest, it all depends on your personal interest in a particular type.
I am a huge lover of music. As a matter of fact I am an artiste, and my style of music is rap.
I listened to alot of songs while growing up. Most of the songs I listened to at a tender age had to do with RnB, reggae and high life. But none of these genres spiked up the zeal to go into making music until I started listening to rap songs. I remember listening to "Hold yuh" by Gyptian ft Nicki Minaj. That song made me fall in love with her instantly.
But I think the artiste that made me to pick up a pen and a paper to begin to write rhymes was M.I Abaga. He's really one of the most phenomenal artistes I've come across. I started rapping when I was 13 years of age. It got more interesting when I started coming in contact with people who had the same talent and interests like me. I remember being in a rap crew when I was done with my secondary school. We even recorded a few songs together.
But sadly, I started to notice them switching into another genre of music which I know was not their field. And I'm convinced that the reason for this is that they feel that in order to make it in the industry you have to do what everybody else is doing. And I've noticed it with many other artistes, even the mainstream ones, switching from one genre to another. This got me reminded of the track put out by M.I Abaga – You rappers should fix up your life.
People now do music for the sake of pleasing the listeners while neglecting themselves, which is a wrong motive. I'm not saying that your listeners should not be considered when doing music, but you shouldn't do it at the expense of gratifying your deepest emotions being expressed. Music is something that you should do to make yourself happy. You do music for you first before other people. A bird sings because it's what it loves doing. Making itself happy while doing this comes first, other people falling in love with the beautiful sounds is secondary.
In my journey as an artiste, I've come to a conclusion to do what I love regardless of what others may think about it. You just can't please everybody no matter how hard you try. It is a pity how many artistes prevents the possibility of other potential artistes being inspired if they had stuck to the default talent that was given to them instead of switching to something else.
I'm grateful to the artistes that stuck to the style of their craft because I don't know if the potential in me would've been birthed out if they hadn't. In the light of that, here's a little cover of a song I did by Sam Smith titled Fire on Fire. I'm sure you'd love it. Peace.
