Man…time really flies by when you are having fun. I remember when it was 2016, and I thought to myself “college is so much fun, this feeling is going to last forever!” Then I blinked. The year is 2020 and I have two more weeks left of my college career. The memories I have made, and the friends I have met are going to make me miss Marist College a hell of a lot more. I see why on August 2, 2016 my mama was like make good decisions, make honest friends because whether you have fun or not, college will be the most interesting time of your life. She did not lie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6Udi9HNdVY

Big Mood, an amazing unreleased song by two of the hottest rappers out right now, Drake & Future. What I want you to do is play the instrumental and slowly begin to bob your head up and down to get the flow of the beat. As the seconds tick before the bass drop, you will naturally have some “natural” thoughts come to you in your head. When that clock hits 12 seconds with the bass drop, I want you to just say four random bars in your head (stop when the beat goes out) A “bar” is when you say a line with the beat, and then you will naturally hear another bass drop and that is when you switch topics. Make it like poetry…make it rhyme, and most importantly…make it your own flow!

My Example:

“chillin with my cousin and we’re watching Moana

I am sitting in bed all i want is my ‘ploma

I never listen to my parents do what I wanna

I hate the times we are in today, I hate that Rona”

How can you not like this song? When you hear this song it just makes you want to move! A lot of people will hear songs like this and automatically not like it because they have no idea what they are saying. In today’s day and age, this is mumble rap. Mumble rap is when you really do not know what the rapper is saying, but the beat and flow of the song makes you want to move and mumble along with them. After listening to songs like this for a long time, it actually gets easier to understand what they are saying. It is like hearing a foreign language, the more you are around it, the better you are able to comprehend it. At the moment, that is why Gunna is one of my favorite mumble rap rappers because the way he sounds is very hard to duplicate, and everybody knows when something is unique, people tend to like it. Give it a listen!!

My favorite scene in the movie is when Arthur is watching the NBA all-star game in the living room with his family. The scene arrives within the first ten minutes of the movie, and this is the reason why I adore the movie so much. As Arthur was sitting there, his eyes began to get that little sparkle in them. He wanted to be just like the greats, Michael Jordan and Isaiah Thomas. He was willing to do anything and everything just to be like them. He was willing to make an hour commute every day, just to go to high school! He knew that the game he loved could actually take him places if he allowed it too. 

Another reason why I love this early, but amazing scene is because it reminds me of myself. I remember the first time I sat down with my pops and watched a nice Sunday night football game. The teams that were playing were the Rams versus the Giants. As the game had commenced, I noticed how amazing Marshall Faulk was. I adored the way he made cuts, read defenses, and most of all, how he danced when he scored a touchdown. I wanted to be like Marshall Faulk. I wanted to be the next Marshall Faulk so bad that my jersey number has always been number 28. I wanted millions of people to know who I was because of something I personally loved to do. I also wanted people to respect and commend me because of my tremendous work ethic. All thanks to him, I found a passion at such an early age. I found something that would keep me in good shape, teach me how to work with a team, and most importantly, know what it means to be discipline. 

One thing I would recommend to whoever is reading this is get out of your comfort zone and learn a sport. Every sport has a way of teaching you some sort of life lesson. A few examples are football, baseball, and golf (a few random sports). In golf, you have to have extreme patience and concentration. In football, you are taught to trust your brother and to never let anyone try to get over top of you. And lastly baseball, a sport that teaches eye discipline and to know what it means to depend on someone. 

There are people out there who lack the little things due to never playing a sport. Even if you are bad at the sport, it is all about the learning experience, besides, your best friend could be someone on that team. 

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Unlike the average person, I am not really into movies. Sometimes they are corny, sometimes they are not as moving as the directors expect, and sometimes, the actors are not as good as they think (to each his own of course). When watching a film like “Hoop Dreams” my expectations were blown out of the water because the movie did what a movie is supposed to do, move me. It takes us through a thoroughly explained and constant journey that makes us take a second and think about how the world around us operates. When you pay close attention to things that happen in the world,  it makes you take a minute to understand how similar it is to a card game. The reason I say that is when we were born, we were not able to choose our names, our gender, or our socio-economic status. Very similar to a card game, we cannot choose which cards we get. You have to work and better yourself so that you are able to win in this game called life. 

Being an African-American male, and watching “Hoop Dreams”, I am able to find some sort of way to connect. I was blessed to not live in a location where gang violence, and drugs were an everyday thing, but I do understand how it feels to overcome obstacles. Being black is one of those things where you need to perfect your craft to the highest extent. Every black kid, whether they are biracial or 100%, has been taught that we need to be twice as better just to be looked at as equal. 

The way the documentary commences is by introducing us to two African-American kids named William Gates and Arthur Agee, who are living in the projects of Chicago, Illinois. They are both naturally gifted hoopers who aspire to be in the NBA, just like their idol, Isaiah thomas. The movie covers six years of their life, starting in middle school, all the way up to their freshman year of college. My favorite part of the whole story is that they were spotted on a playground playing the sport they love, and they caught the attention of a high school basketball scout. Such a pure and honest beginning to the point where you are already rooting for them and you do not know a single thing about these kids besides their name, age, race, and what they love to do. 

Welp, here I am again, up at 4:27 A.m. watching Tv and eating a hamburger. What has my life come to? It has gotten to the point where I have noticed that my ceiling texture, is completely different than my closets ceiling texture. Next, I have realized how dirty a television remote is too. It is never washed, and everyone touches it. You never thought about that now have you? I guarantee you are making that “ewww” looking face right now and are about to go walk to your sink to wash your hands. Have fun being clean, and most importantly stay safe!!!

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Oh 2020, how you have almost ruined my life. College life is over, my trip to the Bahamas got cut short, and I have to be quarantined with my family for God knows how long. Now I am not saying that I do not love my family, but, I much rather be in my home in Poughkeepsie, New York, rather than Cincinnati, Ohio. The only thing that is really keeping me afloat at this point is all of the bomb music that has been released due to the coronavirus. For example, Lil Uzi Vert’s: Eternal Atake, Lil Baby’s: My turn, G Herbo’s: PTSD, The Weeknd’s: After Hours, all dropped fantastic albums that consist of nothing but amazing vibes. If you want songs that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster, check them out!

I am not a big TV watcher, or “Netflixer” but one thing I have been doing during these hard times is watching TV. In the two weeks of us being on lockdown, I have finished two Tv series, and I am on my third. I have watched All-American, a tv show about a kid who leaves the hood and goes to live in the Hills of California, all to play football. The next TV show I finished was Ozark. A TV show that has to do with money laundering, the cartel, strip clubs and casinos. I hope that little description got your attention right there. And finally, I am watching Money Heist, all in spanish of course. Money heist takes place in Spain, and 6 criminals who have no prior history, plans to steal approximately 1 billion Euros and move to a different country. Of course, with all good plans, their comes unplanned hiccups, but that’s where the professor comes in. An absolute genius. I don’t want to ruin the show for you, but if you need something great to watch….there you go!

First off, let me start off by saying that this “virus” has slowly been ruining people’s lives day by day. And on top of that, it is weird to think about, but we are living in something that will be in history books one day. I am only 22 years old, so by the time I am a grown adult, let’s say 45+, hopefully I will have kids and I will be able to tell them everything that happened. I would first start off by saying that I did something extremely stupid during a pandemic: going to the Bahamas. Next, I would state how Rudy Gobert ruined the Nba and had it canceled and ruined LeBron’s historic run. And then I would finish up with how states and nations individually began to put their areas on lockdown. LOCKDOWN. NO ONE IN OR OUT! How insane. But in conclusion, I just hope everyone stays safe out there! AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WASH THOSE HANDS!

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So I have always wanted to be a DJ, so for my first Audio project assignment, I wrote verses for my friends to rap over and I edit their voices with the sources we are given. It was a lot of fun, and first time experience for me because I had never used software like that before.