It's easy for me to link every major point of growth or change in my life to the music I had on my CD player/iPod/phone at some point. The content of the lyrics and personas of the artists behind them reflected who I was (or wanted to be) at the time, and also foreshadowed who I was about to become. These are the albums that defined the peaks and turmoil that have shaped my worldview and taught me several lessons along the way.
Part 2
Rick Ross, Teflon Don (2010)
"Telfon Don, I am invincible"- MC Hammer, Track 8
The best part of college is the confidence instilled in you by professors. Through both verbal and tangible validation, they give you the reassurance that you're way more than enough. An encouraging word here, followed by a "seize the day" speech there, all capped off by an 'A' once the semester wrapped up.
The music business is the same way, I imagine. A few good album reviews, a co-sign or two via retweet from an A-list rapper and an artist starts to believe their own hype. From 2006-09, Rick Ross strung together three consecutive number one albums. By the time Teflon Don hit in 2010, the word was out- Ross was a superstar.
While Rick Ross was banking hit records, I was starting to discover my gift area. As a senior in high school, I started stringing together 'A' papers in English and garnering a good praise from epic speeches in Rhetoric- no easy feat for the slacker student I was. Momentum built through my first few years of college as I continued to make solid grades and saw that my talking in rhetoric class translated into other areas well. When I wasn't studying, I lived in our campus radio station. I was having fun doing a weekly show my buddy Ian and soon enough we were getting great feedback. On the heels of that I took on more on-air work, eventually getting up to three show per week. People around me liked my work and, after enough positive reinforcement, I did too.
The first singles off Don debuted in the middle of my summer internship at Atlanta radio powerhouse V-103. As an intern for the Frank and Wanda morning show I regularly came across big stars of music and entertainment, Ross himself included. I was 21 on a Bud Light budget and found myself in the same places as industry vets with upscale liquor brands. I'd had interactions with people that had numerous Grammy nominations, Billboard chart toppers and overwhelming notoriety between them. Walking through a parade of all-stars media and entertainment all-stars, I didn't feel star struck- I felt like I belonged.
Ross was also a fish out of water in his own right. His carefully masked and initially denied past as a correctional officer threw his credibility into question; his lyrics featured boasts of a life of crime that he'd obviously only lived through via second hand (at best) accounts from real drug dealers. Fortunately for Ross, the importance of perceived real life street credit to a rapper's popularity had greatly transformed by 2010. The feud between Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. made authenticity less of a requisite for success and more of a death sentence. Ross gave record execs the best of both worlds: dangerous lyrics without the fear of a drive-by outside the studio. He was a manufactured star whose rapid rise to fame placed him among, and in many cases above, music's best acts.
To top it off I was single, and finally around females who'd matured past the thug-seeking phase. This good fortune was not lost on me. My ego ballooned and I wasn't letting any of the air out. To paraphrase the hook from "B.M.F." (Track 9), I was Big Meech and Larry Hover armed with textbooks and a refund check.
I loved my college experience, but the success I had on campus masked the reality of challenges that hit after graduation. While it's not easy to do well in school but the formula for success is simple: Get enough questions right, earn an A. Talk to the right girl, get a date. Put in more hours than your peers, get better at your craft. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. It's a process that didn't take me long to master and mislead me into thinking the real world would work the same way.
Nope.
