Always. Strive. And. Prosper

          Rakim Mayers, also known as ASAP Rocky, is the one of the few New Yorkers I admire. I remember when his first music video “Purple Swag” released online in early July. The music video was released “two months after ASAP Rocky abandoned selling drugs to put his full-time effort into rapping” (Thinking Globally, Rapping Locally). I admire Rakim because we grew up in the same neighborhoods and we both went through a lot of the same struggles. Every other day losing a close friend, getting robbed, or the haunting thought of a group of people trying to stick up your family. Growing up in Harlem wasn’t easy; a lot of the people in the neighborhood go through a lot of the same situations. Life was hard with my father in jail, who was incarcerated for the same reason Rakim’s father was. I had it good compared to most of my friends in my school; some of them actually lived in shelters. Rakim at some point in his life lived in a shelter and he explains in a few of his songs that living in the shelter is no different than living in the projects. In his songs he explains that living in shelters isn’t easy and that's where you start idolizing the drug dealers and the hustlers.

            Growing up in Harlem or any messed up environment is where you begin to idolize the wrong people and the wrong things. Growing up in these bad neighborhoods, it’s not about working hard and dedication. It’s about power and being rich, deep down inside I still have that hunger for those two things. I sometimes question myself power over what and/or who, and my answer will always be “everything and everybody” because I never had anything, when I know I deserved the world. I admire Rakim because he was in a position way worse than I was and he’s climbed his way to the top, even when everybody thought he couldn’t. I admire him because although I don’t know him very him, we are very alike and he makes me want to continue to make it to the top. 

Work Cited
Caramanica, Jon. "Thinking Globally, Rapping Locally". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. October 12, 2011. Web. March 13, 2014.