Before I was Ceebo.

My first and only explanation as to why I make music.

“If you do something, do it to be the best or don’t do it.” These are a few paraphrased words that my mum once said to a younger me about my educational attainment. Truthfully it had a whole other meaning to me at the time I heard it. It was like fire to the logs lying about in my mind. But now, it has become the basis of everything I don’t do. The reason won’t really be clear until you reach the end of the blog, but it starts with understanding that I was never meant to be an artist. I wish I had an elaborate story to tell about how it’s been my dream from childhood and how I’ve always been gifted at making music. I don’t. I don’t even remember the first song I wrote at 15, truth be told. It was the result of the blur of teenage angst and no way to express my emotions that birthed it, as well as being egged on to freestyle by one of my school friends. A few coincidences and impulse decisions in a row would inextricably change my fate. But like I said, I was never meant to be an artist. Inna this blog, I’ll do my best to explore what it is that compelled and continues to compel me to do what it is I do.

So what was I meant to be?

Growing up in Brixton Hill and Stockwell with the characters I did, in retrospect I can honestly say I was always going to leave my mark. Whether or not it was positive or negative was really the only question. As suited for academic success I am (degree from a Russell Group Uni soon land), there were a lot more moving parts that put my future in jeopardy at any given time. I would explain in detail in the blog, but then you’d have no reason to listen to my music. All I can say here for those that haven’t yet is that it was about as complicated as adolescence can get, but I thugged it through as I’d been taught to do (blog on that soon land). But I digress. What I went through really isn’t the koko of the matter, not to say that it isn’t important. Of course it is. But really, how I interpreted my lived experience(s) is what got the proverbial wheels turning, even if I didn’t know it at the time. My view of the world, or more aptly, MY world, was the start point of what I can only describe as a full circle.

The best, or nothing.

My understanding of my place in the world was somewhere in between misguided and visionary. From a young age, the drive to be the best, instilled in me by well-meaning parents, aunties, uncles, cousins, media, teachers, pastors, and whatever else you could name. As a child, it was their want for me to walk on the roads they paved for me and my peers further than they could have ever gone. And, given the fact that a good portion of my peers didn’t make it out of adolescence, either in the physical or mental, it makes sense why they were so urgent in their encouragement of me because as far as anyone could see, I was too intelligent to fall short of the best. This did work for a good chunk of my life, and because of it I put myself in the first position to succeed when entering secondary school. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long after that.

For the first time, I wasn’t the smartest, or ‘best’ in the room. But that wasn’t hard for me to overcome honestly. I just resolved to try until I was. Which again, tided over the eventual monster of a feeling that was to consume me during my adolescence. But that was cut short when real life would show me shege (see songs for reference) and I was forced to ask real questions of myself. As I was growing up, I began to look around and see three things were true. The first of those things was the fact that I had a brother (2 now) that was watching my every move and I have an immeasurable influence on their life choices, for better or worse. To me, that meant that whatever I was, I had to take it to the nth degree. In my adolescent mind, I tied myself to being the best at whatever it is I would do, no matter what, so as not to let down my brother(s). The second of these truths was that around me, the people I viewed as peers were either losing themselves to the vices you find in ends, or they were finding and forging their paths to their future. The third, and arguably the most crucial of all, was that I was doing neither.

While I came dangerously close more than a handful of times, by the grace of God exclusively I never did anything that fully set me on the path of being lost, or worse. But at the same time, I wasn’t making any moves towards my future in any way. Mostly because I didn’t have the resources to. But a significant amount of that was also the fact that even if I did have the resources, I wouldn’t know what to do (remember this). Which I suppose is to be expected of a 13, 14, 15 year old child. But my case was more nihilistic than most. At 13, if you asked me where I was going to be at 18, I would have told you I don’t know. But my innermost thoughts knew that I couldn’t see past my current age because I thought I was due to die or meet the same fate as my father. As you can clearly begin to envision, there was nothing that fulfilled me. I had already fallen out of love with education completely aside from 1 subject, and I wasn’t exceptional at all of the fixations I would try my hand at for varying degrees of time, although they would go on to form my unusually wide skill set. Like I’m mad skilled and knowledgeable for no reason. But again, I digress. Not only was I no longer the best at most things I did, but I also had no urge to continue them because they had no meaning to me. I literally couldn’t envision a life outside my borough where I owned anything to speak of, let alone a passion. This, compounded with the angst I was going through during this time, left me in what I can only describe as a mental limbo. I don’t know if there was anything more excruciatingly uncomfortable than the paradox of being told I’m destined for greater than the only thing I thought I can do. But it was this, my lowest point, where a beginning of a string of happy coincidences (I’d like to think it was God’s mercy) began to happen.

Just say it.

Remember when I said I had no resources and nothing I loved to do yet? It came to be the origin of my rap career. Because I had no avenue or inclination to explore the outside world, more often than not I was forced to sit with my feelings by myself. In the mess that I sifted through in my introspection I found a need to speak. But I couldn’t. Like I literally couldn’t. Social services woulda ran in my yard like Trident. But I couldn’t hold it to my chest anymore either. At that impasse, I found myself picking up something I had left behind years before; writing poetry. At the same time that was happening, rap cyphers started happening in the playground with all my peoples (and babes) crowded around a speaker bumping to whoever’s saying whatever. Poetry, needless to say, was an obvious no go. So I started writing raps instead. And the cyphers were fucking with them heavily. So I kept going, and writing, and going, until it became almost a habit. At this point though, I had no aims of being a rapper though. It was closer to a pipe dream more than anything, because in my mind, this was one of the one things that I thought I could never even be decent at, let alone the best at it. And yet for the first time in years at this point, although I didn’t know it then, I felt something that tied me to a future I couldn’t yet see.

“Mandem when I blow..”

What begun to form was a love, and then obsession with rapping. I couldn’t put a pin in it, even in the beginning where I thought I was awful. This marked a change for me, as it would be the first time in my young adulthood that I was dedicating any time I had to spare to something that wasn’t a sure thing, that I wasn’t the best at, and that I didn’t necessarily know I wanted. All because of the fulfilment it gave me. There have been a few things that come close to it, but nothing quite like rapping if I’m honest. And it began to reflect in how I carried for the first time. I began telling anyone who would listen to me that I was going to blow with the rap. I was gonna buy a big boy yard and Avirex for all the mandem. But in all of this, I didn’t have a clue how I was going to make it happen. I couldn’t afford £20 leases for beats, talk less of studio time. I didn’t know a thing about the craft I was telling everyone would make me rich, which in hindsight probably explains why few people even entertained me let alone believed me. But in the midst of that, I had an unwavering understanding that because rap fulfilled me, it was the only thing I could do. It was the only thing that tied me to a future that I was even remotely invested in emotionally, anything else sounded like a genuine nightmare.

I will never be the best.

There was one thing stopping me from fully accepting this though. I was still stuck in the frame of having to be the best. It was no longer a choice, but instead a mode of being which I had practised for so long it had become automatic. It motivated yet frustrated me, pushed me yet dragged me back, gave me fire yet left me drowning. So I had to make peace with it. Which is something that’s been a gradual, but definite process. As far as I was concerned, being a rapper that’s not the most commercially successful is a rapper that’s not the best, and that was unacceptable. Unfortunately, that line directly stood at odds with why I even started rapping in the first place, which was just the pure need for expression. So in the end, I had to choose, and if you’ve been paying attention you know what choice I made. I came to make a decision with not only rap, but how I’d carry myself in general. I could never be the best. Not because I didn’t see the value in it, but in the path of doing that, I had distorted a core foundation of myself, which was one of expression. Even before music, I’ve been one to speak my mind until I’m understood and then some. It’s a need to be heard to the point of stubbornness, that was chipped away in my pursuit of being an image I had built up in my head that ultimately, wasn’t me.

At 17, I promised myself I would always, always, above anything, do what I want in my way. And there isn’t a way to do that without shaking an idea of being the best, so I resolved that I would never be the best. I would never be the best student because it wasn’t me. I would never be the best engineer, videographer, editor, fraudstar, basketball player and every other fixation I had cos it wasn’t me. And with rap, I quickly learned you don’t touch anyone if you aren’t speaking from the heart, meaning that more likely than not you won’t be successful anyway. So I had no choice but to speak candidly, in the way I want. Which brings us to why I make music. In a world full of constant pressures, influences, authority and orders, rap is the one thing in which I not only have the 24/7 ease of just having to be myself and not a version of myself in order to do it, but if I do it the right way, I could make that same a reality for so many other people I call family. I’m betting on the fact that I’m so good at being myself that people pay me to do it, and if I’m going the last year since I dropped Zonin’, I think I’m doin’ alright all things considered innit?