The Big "5"

Intro:

To start off, I’d like to note that everything I say now and in the future in any of the writing I do is strictly coming from my life, my past experiences and current thoughts.

In no way do I consider myself a professional writer. However, I do write the lyrics to my own music and try to be as profound as possible. As you can probably already tell, as an artist I go by the name of: MoLo and my true calling has always been music. I don’t plan on going too deep in this intro because it’ll take away from the stories I will share in the future but to put things into perspective and you understand why I chose to begin writing on this platform, I will share the following…

Through this I intend on sharing my story and thoughts more so to understand myself but also to hopefully capture the attention of whoever's reading and maybe give you the chance to be able to reflect on your own lives and put things into perspective. Growing up, I always tried to see the light in the darkest tunnels. I can’t say I’ve always succeeded but I was always able to pick myself up. Maybe it's something that you need too and the thought only lingers in the back of your head and I hope you can relate to the stories I will push myself to share. I’ll be putting myself in a very vulnerable position to get these stories out so I hope you appreciate the rawness that comes from all of this.

If you read through all of that then I know you will appreciate what's to come in the future on my journey to finding myself. Thank you for taking time out of your day for this intro.

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The Big "5"

I sit and think about how I even began the thought of wanting to pursue music not only as my passion but as something powerful enough to be a career. Being around my friends in high school, we would skip class, do whatever we wanted but we’d usually always end up smoking weed in the car in the school parking lot, talking shit, goofing around and having freestyle sessions. I for one didn’t join in at first because I was too shy… too insecure about getting laughed at or looked at funny for something I spit. Instead, I would sit there and listen to everyone going off one-by-one, astounded by how my own homies could come up with these lyrics off the dome and there I was just sitting there. They would try to hype me up, tell me to jump in and not be shy but i couldn’t help it, nothing would come to mind when i got to my turn so what would i do? Smoke some more weed to kill the anxiety off and continue on listening. It wasn’t until a year later during my second semester of grade twelve that I opened up enough to freestyle with the guys without caring as much. The only reason i was able to do so was because i had started writing lyrics to YouTube instrumentals during the first semester so it opened my mind to creating bars off the dome as i listened to any beat. It was also wha led me to write one of the deepest and heartfelt songs that I've ever written, yet I chose to not release it because I felt it deserved an entire project behind the song concept (that's for another day haha).

There’s nothing I’ve ever loved more than music, it's been a big part of me since i can remember. To my knowledge I started singing out loud to my family when we lived in our little condo when we lived in Ontario about fifteen years ago, so I was 5 at the time. I was always a timid person and i can still remember my cheeks burning up as i picked up the tv remote pretending like it was my microphone. Obviously being so young i never thought anything of it, i just enjoyed the feeling it gave me- of expressing myself whether it was my sadness or my happiness, it was my only way of expression.

Now let's fast forward five years. Picture this: I've been living in Calgary now for a few years, I'm 10 years old and have already switched to a second school. Since I moved around a lot so I didn’t know how to make friends but singing was always there for me, it was the only thing that never let me down. One day at church, we were sitting close to where the choir sat and I was singing my heart out with the hymn. I remember I had a tough day at school the day before so along with prayer, singing was my way of letting out all the bullshit I had in my head. The choir teacher, who is now my lovely Godmother, had somehow heard me sing and came to my mom after mass had ended and convinced her to take me to the next practice to see if i wanted to join. Although i was nervous, I wanted to give it a try since i didn’t feel as though i fit in at school and the second i walked into the practice room on that Wednesday night, I could already tell that I could fit in there even if i was the youngest kid in there but it felt like home. To spare the details for now, it's been eleven years and I still belong to my church’s choir and I've loved every second of it.

When I eventually transitioned into high school, at 15, I decided to join their choir, at the time it seemed like social suicide because only the “nerds” and “geeks” joined choir but being in my church choir, i had felt that love and passion for singing so i didn’t care. At first it was hard to find where I belonged considering I became a little more extroverted but I mixed in with all the cliques so at the end of the day, even if i knew a bunch of people, i didn’t feel like i belonged anywhere. Luckily, one of my childhood homies was going to the same high school so during the second semester of grade ten he introduced me to all the boys that I ended up hanging out with for the rest of high school. Hanging out with them was probably one of the biggest defining moments of my life. Since they enjoyed having freestyle sessions when we skipped class or hung out outside of school, it made me find a passion for writing lyrics and rapping. Once I found that and messed around with it, I began to add my singing into my writing as well and with experimenting and continuously writing I FINALLY realized that music was what I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life.

After ending my so-called “rebellious” stage in life, I entered my 20’s. Before hitting this age I was distracting myself with everything imaginable- girls, partying, drugs mostly, I had no sense of responsibility and drowned myself with all of that. I’d front about how i make music and everything while not being focused, I’d call myself a big shot to mask away the fact that i really wasn’t anything. When I hit 20 I finally started to put a lot of things into perspective, I would have these constant battles with myself in regards to what I was and wasn’t doing with my life, where I was or wasn’t going with it and finally told myself that enough was enough. I began to focus back on my music and managed to release my first “project”, turning out to be a break up album called: MY THOUGHT WITHOUT YOU. I can’t deny that I wasn’t fighting demons at the time but this age was crucial for me to get my shit together, at least that's how it would process in my head and I didn't want to give up on myself. Considering the story of the boy who cried wolf, that’s how I felt. Everyone doubted what I was saying that I was working on or going to work on and to me it was fair since I really was fronting about almost all of it but it came from the fear of public criticism, even though that’s exactly what comes with the route I want to take. I promised myself that I would stop losing my focus on my craft and practice or work on something music related every day no matter what and that as long as I dedicated at least one hour in a day, it would get me where I wanna be… but guess who broke his own promise, i bet you can already guess!

It's not easy trying to stay true to yourself when you got all these demons to fight and I don’t mean to sound like I’m trying to save myself with excuses, it's simply a matter of dealing with it day by day and i continue to learn and better myself as an artist and as a person so to me, no day goes by wasted. Makes me wonder what the future is going to look like for me considering every big step I’ve taken musically has happened every 5 years. What will things be like? What will come my way when I get to 25..?

I guess we’ll have to wait a few years to see for ourselves in the next big 5.