Persona Non Grata was NEVER supposed to be made, let alone released worldwide.
This album was originally supposed to be called Really Not A Rapper and was set to be released in February 2021 as the follow up to Not A Rapper: The Mixtape. The concept was simple: beneath all the bravado and anger, who am I REALLY? Once you strip away all the accolades and accomplishments, what is left? Who am I as a person, as a human?
It would take me more than 5 years to be able to fully answer that question.
I have talked before about how much my family deeply hated that mixtape and how much that gave me a deep anxiety about expressing my talents. My intentions in that mixtape was to be honest in a way that I had not been able to be before, so to be met with so much vitriol from the very people that claimed to know and love me the most was a heartbreak I was never prepared for in the slightest. I had no idea that it was going to be the beginning of an internal struggle in which I would have to ask myself: Does my family know and love ME...or do they only care about me when I am falling in line with what they believed I should be? Do they truly support ME and my hopes and dreams? Why is who they believed that I should be more important than who I KNOW I am?
My family issues were not the only issues that I was seeking to tackle with this project. I was also seeking to answer the question of whether or not I was truly overly ambitious. At the time of the release of Not A Rapper: The Mixtape, my entire experiential career was in deep limbo because of the pandemic. No one knew what the world, let alone live events, would look like when the world went back to the new normal. I had taken the time to reconnect with gifts that had been the catalyst towards my experiential career but was grappling with acceptance as an artist on the entertainment front. That struggle felt the exact same as it did with my family: everyone telling me WHO I am supposed to be and WHAT I am supposed to feel instead of listening to how I ACTUALLY felt.
No one cared about ME and my well being, only that I accomplish whatever they wanted me to accomplish. My goals were always dismissed as being crazy, delusional, or impossible. But no matter how many times people told me that, something inside me absolutely could not let go of the vision that I had been given since I was a child. And that refusal meant that everyone decided that I was a problem they didn't want to deal with any longer.
The past 5 years have been spent in almost total emotional isolation. Its not that I did not seek to connect with people on a human level, I still crave that deeply, but that my idea of human connection seems to conflict with society's idea of human connection.
Society said that I am not worthy of respect because I refuse to allow ANYONE, regardless of their title or status, to treat me as anything less than a PERSON. No, you will not talk down to me because of your title nor will I talk down to you as a result of mine. I will talk to you with respect because you are a HUMAN with valid emotions and that can only go away if YOU decide that I am not worthy of the same respect.
And I paid the price for that DEARLY. I was able to do things that I had always wanted to do since childhood, only to hit the glass ceiling when I refused to be abused OR abusive. And while I was always prepared for the consequences from bosses and so called "higher ups", it was the people that I was advocating ON BEHALF of treating me as if I am the problem that forced me to back down more often than not.
Despite how happy and fun I may have looked on social media, in reality was I living in my own personal emotional hell. I started to physically isolate from everyone, not because I wanted to but because that was the only way that I could be safe anymore. What no one saw were the stalkers that were popping my tires, the homeowner that decided with was easier to bully me than it would be to actually take the time to listen to what I was saying, the sister that betrayed me as I was trying to level up in my career. No one cared about the nights I spent living in rental cars, crying myself to an uncomfortable sleep because those close to me secretly believed that I deserved every misfortune falling on me. No one cared that I was alone; as a matter of fact, they decided that was the reason to isolate me out even more. I was told I was unlovable and unwanted. No one offered kind words because no one wanted to "inflate my ego".
I had become a Persona Non Grata and I felt that to my core.
This past year, however, it became heavier than I could stand to bear. The songs that would not stop haunting me at every turn, the desire to connect with those who had found solace in their art, the burning vision that I could not seem to ever outrun. SOMETHING inside me was changing and evolving and I could no longer hide it. This year, the more that I tried to hide and isolate, the more I was forced into the spotlight. And there became a point where fighting against it was more exhausting than just accepting it.
So I came back to this project, the one that was never supposed to be released. Every song on this album had been outright rejected. But this was no longer about trying to get people to like me or my art. It was about proving to myself that I can stay true to myself, regardless of how the rest of the world felt. It was about honoring the promises and visions I had made to myself as a child. It was about letting all those who decided that the truth and reality of who I am as person was a problem see what happens when I decide they are RIGHT.
This project is about giving the girl that everyone thinks is crazy a voice that no one can take away from her. Because so long as telling the truth means I am crazy, I pray to never be sane.