My name is Arizona Akin. I’m a nineteen year old rapper, restaurant employee, and expectant father doing the best I can. I’ve had a lot of experiences that make me feel older than my age. I’ve always been the youngest everywhere I was, with friends, around family, at work, basically all of the places that shape someone into who they are. This caused me to grow up quickly. By age twelve I was smoking weed every day, basically just ‘hanging out’. My parents divorced when I was two years old, and don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of appreciation and love for both of them. Although I think both of them sometimes assumed that certain topics, such as drug use and sexual education, would be brought up by the other. So the combination of having somewhat of a lack of guidance on these subjects, and then at a young age being around people many years older than I was, motivated me to explore these areas rather aggressively for myself.
To say the least, I learned a lot of things from my experiences as a young teenager. As most do, I wanted to see what this world had to offer me, and I pursued the most immediate pleasures I could, which in my mind at the time were best found by selling drugs. For me, however, through it all, I did know one thing. I had to grow up to be something bigger than what everyone around me was. And from the moment I first heard rap music, I knew creating and performing is what I wanted to do. When I was about fifteen, I began to have the realization that nothing was going to come to me unless I worked my ass off for it. So, I spent the next four years experiencing my life mainly through my bedroom, creating music nonstop; releasing songs on YouTube and SoundCloud, making hardcopy CD’s and handing them out for free in the streets, selling my own line of T-Shirts, and performing at local venues around Memphis, TN. I did this all with the help of my brother, Loch, who we call Young Glock. He’s been the camera man, videographer, editor, and part-time engineer throughout almost our entire journey. He believes in our cause and through him, I’ve seen that it’s not too hard to get people to believe in you when you’re pushing the truth.
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I love all of you.
Sincerely,
Arizona Akin