http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFkhDusnVQw

Yes, I rap. But am I a rapper?  You could call me that.  But really, I’m just a young man out here trying to survive.

A young man who is really sick and tired of bullshit.

Not just bullshit with hip hop; bullshit with all of reality.  During a time when women derive their beauty from Instagram filters and boost their egos with Facebook likes, men exude false bravado by flashing their tax return and rent money to impress strangers on Twitter, and politicians are more insecure, egocentric, and willfully ignorant than they’ve ever been,  I would like to submit a wake up call:

Stop wasting your life trying to pretend that you are okay.

Stop obsessing over the attention and approval of others.

Spend your time, energy, and effort working on being okay with yourself, or better yet working on making yourself be okay.  Because every ounce of healing and happiness that you are looking for will be found within yourself – not in money, power, or some dumb ass social status.

When I rap, it’s not to preach. It’s not to speak down, to lecture, to judge, or to be a boring ass “conscious rapper.”

I rap to learn something about myself, then share it with you. My hope is that, in sharing pieces of myself, I can help someone, somewhere have the courage to take the steps to discover more about themselves, the world around them, and all the beautfiul people in it.

Links:

• joshuatod.com
• joshuatod.bandcamp.com
• youtube.com/itsjoshuatod
• twitter.com/realityrapper
• soundcloud.com/joshuatod
• facebook.com/itsjoshuatod