Do you.

This last year of my life has been nothing but an eye opener for me in many ways. Before going to Uni my brother and sister both said the same thing to me and that was “you’re going to change a lot and understand yourself a lot more”. As a fairly stubborn individual I laughed and said “I doubt that” because I was sure that the way I was at the time was the only way I was going to be for the rest of my life with a few changes here and there. Boy was I wrong. I’ve learnt so much about myself and started to realise how I was actually never really allowed to be the real me in my hometown. Don’t get me wrong I am so grateful for having the privilege of being born and raised in London and I think a lot of the people within my area forget that or just don’t let themselves appreciate it because they’ve never known anything different. Having parents who were born in Sri Lanka at a time where the Civil War was at its peak allowed both me and my siblings to have a greater understanding and appreciation for things that are easily taken for granted. Hearing stories growing up of how my parents feared their lives everyday really made us understand that the life that we were living was comparable to paradise. 

Attending a private school for my secondary education was also an experience in itself. Although it wasn’t the cliché “posh” private school you’d expect, it was definitely different from any state school within my area. I have great memories of my high school life don’t get me wrong but I have always felt that I couldn’t be me. My family have always had a massive appreciation for music and I started to appreciate it a lot more as I was growing up. Although I was never a confident singer whilst being at school, I loved doing it when I was at home and I slowly became more confident with myself. I still stand by that i’m definitely not the best singer out there, no where near, but it was something I enjoyed doing. I was also lucky because I also had a brother and sister that were both equally if not more passionate about music than I was so it gave me the confidence to do more about it. I decided to give writing my own stuff a shot after I saw some of my brother’s lyrics. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to write at the same calibre as him with his crazy word play and stuff but I knew i could write music that I’d be able to enjoy. It became really important to me. Writing songs was almost like a diary to me, a type of emotional release without being too open or too personal. It’s the same as telling a story essentially but just adding a melody to it so it’s satisfying to hear. 

This was always something I did privately, I never really showed anyone other than my siblings any of my songs or other lyrics I had written because I wasn’t really confident in them at the time. However, 2 years on I’ve started to realise that I don’t think it was a matter of lack of confidence it was more the fear of being laughed at and ridiculed for writing. We live in a world where people take the piss out of guys for writing bars and wanting to be rappers, but person who is laughing, what do you do? It’s a shame that people find it humorous when they hear that people write music or produce beats . How do you think your favourite rapper became a rapper? Though it seems like a far fetched dream to become a hot shot producer or rapper, the talent it requires isn’t something to be ignored.  As I expected when I first became more confident in telling people of how I wrote songs their first responses were something along the lines of “ LOL that’s so moist”. What made it worse for me was that the few people I told were my closest friends and they were the ones making these comments. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when telling my friends about this interest of mine other than a sort of acceptance I guess. I get it, don’t get me wrong, I understand how me saying I’ve written a song about me liking a boy for a example can be labeled as “moist” but to me it’s a story, a chapter of my life that I’ve been able to put together to be something that I and hopefully other people can enjoy listening to. I mean that’s what music is in the grand scheme of things. It’s the writers story written for other people to hopefully relate too and enjoy. After receiving those responses I became a lot less focused on writing because I let those opinions get to me. It made me question a lot about myself as a person. I felt like I was weird because I wrote, but 2 years on I’m annoyed that I let myself think like that. Being able to write music is an amazing feeling to have, just because the people I was surrounded by didn’t understand it didn’t mean that I needed to act like I didn’t neither. So I think my first message to people reading this would be if you write or produce music, whether it’s bars about your life or songs about the love your life carry on doing that shit. It’s a sick thing to be able to do and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If your friends don’t rate you for doing so or take the piss out of you for doing so, don’t let those opinions get to you. Understand that not everyone can do what you can do but don’t ever restrict your talents because it’s not being accepted or that it’s not the “normal” thing to do and that goes for any talents to be honest. Do you. Secondly if you’re one of those people that have laughed at people who produce beats or write lyrics then learn to be more open minded. Learn to appreciate the talent thats required to do these things, the hours they’ve put in to make these beats they are proud of. It only takes one negative opinion to turn someone’s dream upside down, keep that in mind. Just support their creativity and let them channel themselves, offer constructive criticism if you feel necessary but support your friends in their talents. 

I was lucky enough to end up at a University 5 hours up north where I met people who had the same interests as me. It was strange for me to finally be able to talk about writing and music without it being a one sided conversation where I feel like I was boring the person I’m talking to like it was at home. It was different, it was great. I was able to gas about the way Mick Jenkins used crazy alliterations in his tracks and Lauryn Hill’s crazy use of metaphors without it sounding too over analytical or too “deep”. I was able to appreciate music the way I always wanted to with people other than my siblings and it felt amazing, a dream come true. It went further than music too. I was able to chat shit about philosophical ideas that I’ve always had and how I understood the world and my ideas towards things like religion, evolution etc again without it being too “deep” to talk about. I always felt like I forced these conversations with people back home. I felt like I would spend hours talking about the craziest shit in the world to get a look of confusion in response or to notice that the person would have tuned out an hour ago. It used to frustrate me a lot when this type of thing happened, but I learnt that not everyone thinks the way i do, of course they don’t. We are all our own individuals. To me it’s crazy that people don’t think in depth about what life is and who they are as a person. But again just because I can talk for 2 hours about how amazed I am about how people built roads back in the day, doesn’t mean that i should expect other people to be able to do the same. I’ve just always been interested in having soul satisfying conversations and I’ve never really been able to do so till I moved out of London and now I feel more myself than ever. I’m no longer paranoid about sounding “crazy” or “weird” because I know there are people out there that think the same as me. It’s an amazing feeling. I’m not going to act like I don’t enjoy having conversations about celebrity culture but it’s nice to be able to have the conversations I actually want to have now. I want to stress that it’s not a matter of me changing as per say, it’s more me being able to be more confident with who I am.

The whole point of this post was to hopefully support those who can relate. We aren’t all going to feel like we fit in the place that we live, but that’s okay. Have confidence in your self and your talents. Where you are now isn’t permanent. It’s all about doing you. Don’t live for the approval of others, sure we all let ourselves get affected by other people’s opinions but don’t let it shape who you are. The people who matter will be the ones supporting your decisions and encouraging you to do thing you enjoy. I know there will be people reading this that won’t be able to understand anything that I’ve said but in that case I advise you to be open minded and be more accepting towards other people and for those who are thinking “ WTF stop being so dramatic?” fuck off mate 🙂

Vinnie x