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Since DOOM’s transitioning I’ve been thinking about the relationship a lot of us have with music and how much of an important part it truly does play in our lives, even if we don’t realise it.
I never had a positive male role model in my life or a father figure. My dad is an extremely successful business owner in Nigeria with a large family consisting of multiple wives and kids, my two younger brothers and myself never really got to build a relationship with him.
So growing up I had to rely on my mother to learn about so many different things about the world and growing up to be somebody I could be proud of, but as you can imagine this is an incredibly difficult task for one woman to achieve with 3 boys.
It’s why I will always have the upmost respect and unconditional love for my mum because the older I get the more I understand how difficult that must have been raising your African kids in a place you yourself are not from, being an immigrant is extremely difficult.
Back to the music, my first real introduction rap music was hearing a tribe called quest on one of those music channels one time. I didn’t know rap music could be that good, I was around 10 at the time and was used to normal radio hits I didn’t know hip hop was a whole universe.
Ever since hearing that I’ve been so curious, it was important for me to hear tribe at that time of my life, 4 black positive men making music outside of your normal bling type stuff at the time, I needed that I wanted to hear more.
So I asked my cousin to help me download a bunch of American rap music on my little MP3 player at the time. There were a bunch of songs but the song that grabbed me straight away was Nas - I Can.
I know we now like to make fun of older artists about music that maybe hasn’t aged well or sounds corny now, but that I can song was so important for me as a black child. It made me so curious about my people and it made me study more about African people.
I still wasn’t listening to that type of music as much as I would’ve wanted to because I didn’t have access to the internet my music was pretty much what came on those sky channels. That changed when I got a ps3 with internet access and YouTube 
That first 5 year stretch of me introducing to rap music were some of the best years of my life. Back to my original tweets I personally feel like a lot of these artists taught me how to look outside of my little London bubble at the time and really expand my mind.
Artists like Nas DOOM Hov Ghostface really taught me about what being a human is a man and more specifically what being black is really about. Everything considered even their missteps and flops there’s always a message in there.
I say all of this to say this, music is important and for a lot of us it’s deeper that rap or just music in general it’s really important and people like DOOM are literally changing lives so i want to spent less time critiquing artist and more time appreciating them.
More time being in the moment and loving the time we have with them. DOOM’s death came out of nowhere for a lot of us and because of the hard work he put in it still feels like he’s still here he’s built this whole universe that he still lives through. Extremely special man!
Thank MF DOOM from a guy you never even heard of changed my life saved my life made me look at things differently made me speak differently, wow. Rest In Perfect Paradise to one of the greatest of all time, DOOM!
changed my life saved my life made me look at things differently made me speak differently, wow. Rest In Perfect Paradise to one of the greatest of all time, DOOM!
