I was born in Liverpool in 2006 and raised in Seacombe, Merseyside, England.

Early Life & Influences

Growing up, I always had a passion for music and dance. I remember dancing to the TV as a very young child, and around 6-years-old, I began dancing and listening to Michael Jackson's music. Ever since then, I have imagined myself performing music and dancing in front of thousands or even millions of people. When I was around 10, I started listening to Eminem, and everything changed. I wanted to be a rapper. I spent the following years listening to different rappers and trying to emulate what they do. After examining how my favorite rappers like Eminem, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Chip, Dave, and Wretch 32 rhymed, flowed, and created concepts, I was obsessed with language and how I could manipulate and bend words to create a new rhyme scheme, flow, or entendre.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, I found myself as a young teenager in a weird and unprecedented contemporary political time. Seeing the chaos unfold in the U.K. with the then Conservative-controlled government showed me how important it was to understand what was happening, what was true, and what we should do. This began my interest in politics.

From England to America

At 16 years old, my mother and I moved to Mt. Orab, Ohio, to be closer to my maternal grandparents and that side of the family. Moving from working-class, urban towns in Merseyside, England, to a rural, country town in Ohio, USA, was a major culture shock. Many of my core beliefs (like vegetarianism, liberalism, and atheism) were attacked by either the people in my new high school or the town and county at large. I had to encounter a predominantly politically far-right culture as a self-described ‘liberal,’ and in essentially every way, this reinforced my beliefs and pushed me further to the left. I went from supporting basic social democratic governments to more complex political philosophy and Marxist democratic socialism.

The Ethical Beginnings

One of the most important realizations was when I went to the County Fair to meet up with new friends from my high school. While I was a vegetarian, I was raised to be and therefore did not really think all that much about the exact philosophical and ethical implications. I recall my friends wanting to see the farm animals that were going to be judged and sold for eventual slaughter, and I was shocked by how much love they were giving. My friends were talking about how “cute” the animals were, yet had no remorse or care that they were going to be slaughtered. This was the first time I had actually encountered cognitive dissonance to this degree. After getting more into philosophy (due to my growing interest in leftist theory and atheistic arguments), I started to immerse myself in animal rights philosophy. After watching some YouTube videos, reading some arguments, and researching Peter Singer, I decided to go fully vegan in the summer of 2023 at 17 years old. My interest in philosophy at large was further reinforced by a dual-enrollment community college philosophy class I took my senior year.

Philosophy and Rap

After graduating high school, I moved to New York to pursue a Bachelor's degree in philosophy at Bard College. Throughout my time at Bard, I have developed new and synthesized philosophical interests, particularly in pragmatism, Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, animal liberation, ethics, and Marxism. I have taken multiple advanced seminars, such as Philosophy Intensive: Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Pragmatism, Philosophy of Wittgenstein, and All Men Are Created Equal: Dissent and the Declaration of Independence. I have achieved a 3.94/4.00 GPA, consistent Dean's List placements, and, by taking extra credits, have managed to create a 3-year graduation track rather than the standard 4 years.

At 20 years old, I am in the first semester of my senior year at Bard College, beginning my senior project/thesis, applying to graduate programs in philosophy, and still rapping and pursuing an interconnected career in academia and music. What I did not know back when I started obsessively examining rap lyrics is that the skills that helped me write complex rap schemes and entendres are what I use to synthesize philosophical arguments and understand complex theories. I view rap as an extension of my philosophy. My arguments, logic, and narrative writing equally motivate both my academic writing and rapping. This is why I describe my career ambitions as ‘interconnected.’