If there’s one thing I would recommend for someone to definitely do in their life, it’s this:

Go to a J. Cole Concert.

Lights Please did it for me. It was the first time I heard someone passionately address social injustices in such an eloquent manner. The sexual undertones mixed with the pleas for an intellectual awakening was something new to me and I was hooked. This was the first time I heard an artist want to mentally grow with the woman he’s involved with rather than just use her as a sexual conquest. My respect for him grew and in exchange, he gained a loyal fan.

I owe a lot of my emotional growth to his music and it’s refreshing to listen to songs where the artist isn’t boasting about money, girls and drugs. There is an abundance of materialism and superficiality in today’s culture and our focus is misaligned. We care too much about what other people think and we base our decisions off of their reactions. We lose ourselves in the process of pleasing others and we start to attract toxic relationships and unhealthy friendships.

There was a defining moment in my life 3-4 years ago where I decided I deserve more from life.  I was depressed, unhappy and lazy. Nothing seemed to be going right and the only way to change was to start a revolution against everything that went against my personal growth and happiness. J. Cole said this one line in “Lights Please” that I will always remember:

I’m findin’, the more I grow
The more y’all seem to stay the same

Interpret it as you may, but I had an epiphany once I decided to evolve into a better “me”. I began to see the people around me for who they really were.  Relationships and friendships that were once everything to me, were no longer appealing. I became selfish with my time. I began to associate myself with others who were also aspiring to fulfill their dreams and ambitions. Most importantly, I finally had the courage to break free from my abusive relationship. I sometimes look back at who I was back then and I laugh to myself. How could I have possibly been so stupid and immature? Why did I let irrelevant people and things affect me so much? Why didn’t I put myself first? I have no answers to those questions but I do know this: I’m grateful for those experiences because they allowed me to realize that I was better than what I was settling for.

During that chapter in my life, I didn’t talk to my family or close friends about what was going on internally. I needed help but I refused to reach out in fear of seeming weak and desperate. I didn’t think anyone would understand what I was going through so I locked my depression in a metal box and flung it deep into the ocean of my emotions. As an extrovert who feels everything too deeply, channeling my repressed feelings into music alleviated a lot of my pain.

So, thank you Jermaine Cole. Thank you for changing my life. In that picture above, It felt like 15,000 invisible strings were flying out of his heart to fuse with the hearts of each and every one of his fans and I’m extremely blessed to have been one of them.