Lesson #3 Part 1

The False Epiphany

I fell in love with R&B because of the firm rhythm but especially because its got those shades of deeper meaning encrypted in its lyrics. R&B to me was a medium of expression; an haven where I could crawl in between the notes and turn my back to the world.
There was always something about the rhymes, the symphony, and the attitude in the voice of the singer that had me gone in the head. R&B acts like Brandy, Usher, R. Kelly, Beyoncé etcetera always got me sprung with their style of singing (they still do). So I made up my mind on becoming an R&B artist.
Sheets, sheets and more sheets of paper piled up, the pages filled with my R&B lyrics. I studied the style,the flow of artists that I respected and eventually, I perfected my act.
But somewhere on the inside interest was beginning to shift. . .

The Morning After
Actually, my epiphany was a decision wedged between scylla and charybdis. It was an impossibly painful retreat into something that I had previously weighed on a mortal scale and found wanting.
You see R&B was a genre I had come to believe in. So you couldn't possibly imagine how hurting it was for me to turn my back on it. It was like denying a dying buddy on his deathbed!
This is a statement of the 'divorce': I began experiencing this empty feeling on the inside whenever I would rehearse with R&B. There was this big vacuum that needed filling in. But with what? Sometime after this it just stopped clicking, something just didn't feel right anymore.
All attempt to re-ignite the fire proved abortive. I knew something was missing but I couldn't quite figure out what.
Then one day I heard a rap song with a message, it 'spoke' of the artist's experiences and his background like he was a spokesperson for his 'hood'. I always knew I had to live for something, rap became my epiphany.