Music Basically Runs My Life.

Some people like music.

I live inside it.

Music is with me almost every moment of the day. Walking somewhere, working out, thinking, cleaning, dancing around my apartment for absolutely no reason. It’s always there. Sometimes it’s background noise, sometimes it’s the entire mood of my day. But it’s never really absent.

The funny thing is, my relationship with music actually started before I could properly hear it.

When I was born, I had serious problems with my ears and was essentially deaf until I had surgery. Before that operation, I couldn’t really hear music the way most people do. What I felt was the bass. The vibration. The way it traveled through my body when my mom played music through big speakers.

I didn’t hear the song first.

I felt it.

I remember certain songs from when I was younger that just shook my entire body. Rihanna’s Pon de Replay. Nina Sky’s Move Your Body. Missy Elliott. Busta Rhymes. Later on when Chris Brown came out with Run It. That kind of aggressive bass and rhythm stuck with me. It was energy I could feel physically before I could fully understand it mentally.

And in a strange way, that energy became a safe place for me.

Growing up wasn’t always easy. I was bullied for being gay. I didn’t feel wanted by my parents. I didn’t feel like I had a real home base. There were moments where the world felt confusing and unsafe in ways a kid shouldn’t have to process.

But music was always there.

Music gave me an outlet for emotions I didn’t know how to explain yet. It gave me somewhere to put anger, sadness, excitement, confidence, imagination… all of it. It was the one place where everything made sense.

Even now, the genres that move me the most are the ones that hit deep in my body.

Dancehall especially. But not just traditional dancehall — more of the newer trap hall style. Heavy bass, Jamaican influence mixed with hip hop. That sound does something to my brain. When I listen to it, I immediately start seeing choreography in my head. I see visuals. Movements. Scenes.

There’s a song called Jolly by Spice and A$AP Ferg that perfectly captures that feeling for me.

It’s dark, bassy, a little spooky, a little sexy, a little dangerous. When I listen to it I feel like I’m walking through deep woods in Jamaica in October. It’s Halloween energy. It’s mysterious and powerful at the same time.

That combination of scary, enticing, sexy, and badass is exactly the type of energy that pulls me in.

If my life had a soundtrack, it would probably change constantly. My life moves fast, and the music that speaks to me shifts with it. But there are certain songs that feel like anchors.

Ultralight Beam by Kanye West is one of them.

Another is Focus by Bazzi.

Those songs carry a certain emotional weight. They remind me to keep moving forward, to shake the dust off my shoulders, to keep believing that life can expand in ways you never expected.

Because that’s what music has always done for me.

It lifted me when things felt heavy. It gave me energy when I felt small. It gave me confidence when I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere else.

Music didn’t just influence my life.

It helped build it.