Whats up young soldiers. If this happens to be one of the last blog posts that I ever make before I become famous, then at least you will finally realize how Alex Coleman the emcee came to be. 

When I was growing up, I didn't want to be a rapper. I wanted to be a soldier. I wasn't even into hip hop until my big brother played a Lil' Bow Wow cd around the year 2000 on the way to his residence in Delaware. I think he owned a Nissan Sentra back then. But once he got that Nissan Frontier in the summer of 2002, it was on. Yo had a massive cd collection that he kept in his truck and a big home stereo system with two multi cd changer units stacked on top of each other. Usher, Jay Z, DMX, Will Smith- You name it, he had it. That summer was lit and were it not for that summer of hip hop immersion, I wouldn't be dropping rhymes- I'd be banging drums.

The first cd that I ever owned was the Run It hit single by Chris Brown. I got it for Christmas in 2005 and played it through my Scion XB r/c via a portable cd player connected by an aux cord. Also, 2003 was the first time I actually listened to music on the radio on a regular basis. Mark Clark on the Big Fat morning show, Ladawn Black and the Love Zone, DJ Quicksilva from D.C's WKYS. Mannn from 2003 to 2008 I listened to 92Q and WKYS on the heavy due to me being immersed in it due to my living situation. Also, aside from the hip hop mix cd's my brother and staff made me, I didn't listen to many cd's during that period of my life. It was just 92Q all day all night. Also, while I did get Ne Yo's first album for Christmas in 2006, I traded it with my roommate for a Now Music cd. Do I regret it? Hell no. Ne Yo is a legend no doubt about it but you gotta remember, before I was into hip hop, I was into rock and pop.

 And then came the children's guild- the place where I purchased my first cd and began my first cd collection. The album I started with? Restless by Xzibit. Because of the computers in the group home I was able to immerse myself into hip hop like I never did before. Youtube and Yahoo music were my main online go to music websites. As for cd's, Best Buy was my go to music store as their Security Blvd location was a reasonable distance from where the group home was. If I remember correctly, we got $7 per week for allowance minus possible reduction for bad behavior. Most of my housemates bought snacks and shit. But me? I mainly bought cd's. I would save up my allowance for two weeks and spend it on a album in Best Buy. Long story short, if it wasn't for Best Buy selling the latest albums and 92Q playing the hottest tracks, Alex Coleman the rapper wouldn't be writing this post.

Board of Child care- the place of my best teenage triumphs and my worst teenage trials. However, I will not detail the trials from that period of my life. Instead, I will detail the experiences that helped build me into the hip hop head I am today. When my first cd collection got stolen a few months after moving to cottage 5, I began a new one with cd's that my late aunt gave me. Those albums that I can recall off the top of my head? Sisqo- Unleash The Dragon, TLC- Oooh On The TLC Tip. Once I moved to house 7, the build up of my collection increased with more steam. Once again, Best Buy was my go to music store although I went to the Sound Garden to buy cd's when the opportunity came to do so. And as for my first Nas albums? They were given to me by a staff we called E-Man. When he first gave me the albums that included Illmatic, I Am, and Nastradamas, I didn't know how good Nas really was. To me at the time, I thought Nas was just another rapper. As I got older, I began to realize how wrong I was.

 And then there's Nicki Minaj. I'll never forget the time I heard her music for the first time. It was nighttime on Liberty Rd and I'm in the third row of a Chevy Suburban bumping my iPod while my housemates are listening to the radio. Also, I forgot to mention- past 2009, I rarely if ever listened to the radio of my own volition.  Once I got my first mp3 player, I mainly listened to music from my cd's and portable music players- something I still do to this day. Anyways back to Nicki Minaj. The first song I heard from her was I Get Crazy. And once Pink Friday dropped a few months later, I copped that at Best Buy and kept it until the girls of house 6 decided to not give back nor replace the cd that I lent them. 

My first rhymes- Man were they violent and nothing like the rhymes I write nowadays. Back then I was a smile on the outside rage on the inside until explosion type of guy. I know I said that I wouldn't detail my trials of that time period but because of the state of mind I was in during the compositions of my first books of rhymes, detailing at least the relevant parts of said trials in necessary. Penis head, bitch, coward, pussy- Those terms in my eyes described the perception my Board of Child Care peers had of me back when I was living there. Why? Because I never fought back, even when hit first. I got checked by a girl at school after a negative exchange on Facebook, I got betrayed by a dude I saw as my best friend, got cussed out by my peers online and offline when I decided to act fresh ect. Honestly, I wanted to murder, yes, murder the people who disrespected me. I'm serious. I said death threats so much that people began paying me no mind.

 So what were my first rhymes about? If you guessed inflicting physical violence and murder, you are correct. I didn't trust many people back then and because I liked the privileges of being in the good graces of the staff, I put up with the shit that made me want to kill people inside. That said, once I actually decided to record my rhymes for an album in 2013, I put those old rhymes to the side and wrote new ones. The release from that set of new rhymes was called Reign Of The Nigga and in the next paragraph onwards you will learn what you were expecting when you began reading this blog post.

Reign Of The Nigga. Why did I title that release such an offensive title? Why did I even decide to create it? The answers? Simple. 1) I wanted to make an impact and 2) I needed money for a drivers licence retest fee. Reign Of The Nigga is the first and only release where I kept it fake aka rapped about things that I didn't do or wasn't doing. The chorus to the title track is an example of that. "we talk how we want to do what we want to act like we want to we wear what we want to eat what we want to fuck who we want to" . Mind you, at the time of this writing, I have zero experience in sex. Zero. But like other rappers I just wanted money and to be heard. 

I didn't know anything about the business. Hell, I didn't even have a microphone. But what I did have was an Xbox 360 usb controller and gaming headset and an innate sense of innovation. Looking back, I don't know how I got the idea of hooking up a controller connected to a gaming headset to a laptop to record music over free beats on Audacity but mannn, I must have done something right or else otherwise I wouldn't have gained my first set of fans.

I could go on about my journey as a rapper but since this post is about the beginning of Alex Coleman as a rapper I will end this post with the following paragraphs.

 The music industry preys on the youth. They paint an ideal life of massive financial success that lures youth with fragile and growing mindsets into a lifestyle that eventually leaves them broke, incarcerated, dead, or a combination of the first two. 

My rap career was borne out of pain and adversity and it has continued because of my desire to be heard and appreciated. Music was the band aid to my internal pain growing up and God giving me the ability to make my own during one of the worst times of my life enabled me to have a voice in the road race of life.  I nearly slit my own wrists with a utility knife in 2014 before leaving for the streets and learning how cruel the world truly is as a homeless man in Baltimore City. And to be clear, I was getting kicked out of the residential program I was in at the time and since I figured I'd be living in the streets anyway I decided to do so on my own terms. 

So yeah, when my life is celebrated as a success, don't forget the contents of this post. I may have began my rap career from a period of emotional pain but I turned that rough beginning into an amazing present. And guess what? This present is only the beginning. That being said, thanks for reading this long ass blog post about how I evolved into the emcee I am today and stay strong and God bless.