From The Stuy to Broadway!
I knew that I had creativity surging through my veins since I was a kid. I was very heavily into visual arts and drawing, I liked to dance a lot and I was also a young rapper. I was not that great at most of it (ok I guess I was pretty good at drawing/painting) but I still did it because it was fun and exciting. The first rhyme I ever wrote was a little bop called Diamonds on my neck and although in retrospect it is a terrible song, I was really excited about it when I wrote it. So much so that I performed the song for my first pseudo-girlfriend at the time. It went a little something like this …
Diamonds on my neck
Don’t even wreck my check
Cuz I aint neva had a deck
You look into my eyes and you see gold figures
Diamonds and rings (sumn sumn sumn)
Yes. That's it. All of it. It's pretty cringe but for a kid in elementary school it's not so bad and my “girlfriend” even seemed to be genuinely impressed by it. We were a couple for all of 8 hours so maybe she just pretended to like it. Suffice to say, art has been special to me since my early days but once I began playing sports seriously, I naturally put art on the back burner. Throughout my short high school football career, I was still able to tap into my creative side sometimes at school. My home room was filled with nerds and artists and we were responsible for creating short performances and skits during our school assemblies. I always felt good performing for an audience and I recognized that immediately. This ultimately helped me determine where I wanted to put my energy once I stopped playing football. Before entering my senior year I began taking acting classes at this arts based non-profit called the Urban Arts Partnership. The office at the time was located at 21 Howard street in SoHo and I had never been in that part of the city. It was super diverse, and there was art and graffiti and chic boutiques everywhere. It was here that my paradigm shifted and my life was changed indefinitely. I performed for the first time in a short play at Theatre Row in Times Square. The play was about this kid who does everything he can to get his teammate to come back and finish the game after having a mental breakdown mid-game. My entire family came to watch me perform and it was so exhilarating-- I had never felt more alive.
Since then, I have acted/performed in plays, short films, and even a couple of Netflix productions. I was able to do a voice over commercial for GAP and study Commedia dell’arte at a small province in Northern Italy and a bunch of other cool stuff over the years. Acting allowed me to find a space again where I could truly express myself and create meaningful work. However, it also gave me the confidence and access I needed to be a better artist and communicator. I’ve been blessed enough to work, meet and share spaces with some of the most prolific and influential people in modern entertainment history. At first it was super exciting, and for a time all I did was name drop whatever celebrity I had the pleasure of working with or meeting at the time. I rarely do that sort of thing anymore as I find it can come off as if i’m humbly bragging, and after a while I had a huge epiphany that made me reframe how I thought about the whole thing.
Ultimately my experience really just made me realize that these people that we idolize and praise are in fact just people like you and I who work hard everyday at what they do. It put things into perspective to see a famous actor fumble their lines or mess something up. It helped me realize that if I'm going to be as successful as them one day that I had to work just as hard as them but it was all very possible. And if I'm in the same space with these people then I am worthy of those same things as well. This mindset has been particularly fruitful for me with not just my artistry but every other aspect of my life. It's the reason why I can comfortably talk to the CEO of a huge company and in the same breath converse with the kid on the corner who never got his GED. My upbringing provided me with street smarts, but interest in art has allowed me to access and communicate a whole new world of people who I otherwise just wouldn’t be able to.
