March Madness: The Start of A Dream

This blog was inspired a movie trailer of the same title.

A friend brought it to my attention that when reading my blogs it is sometimes hard to keep up with my train of thought. So I highlighted all my sidebar comments in red to make it easier to follow.

March is usually the Month when even the most resilient start turning their backs on the resolutions they made at the beginning of the year. I came to this realization when I stopped putting any effort into my Accounting and Phys Ed classes about a month ago.

When I came back from Cameroon this past January, after seeing cousins, aunts, and uncles who could barely afford a $100 school pension (High School in most cases), I felt I owed it to THEM to AT LEAST get my masters when I came back to the states. I had just taken the semester prior off doing nothing else besides scrambling to complete “Foreign Exchange” and making it on to the “XXL Freshmen Cover” for 2012. With that being taken into account, I was convinced that when I got back in school I would give it my 100%; no matter what.

That was the problem though; I only gave it my 100%. 100% to me is the bare minimum. You don’t ACTUALLY put in effort until you go above and beyond what you are naturally capable of; that’s the “effort” in it. When I first came to States for example, I hated not being able to come with a rebuttal when the other kids would say something slick about me; so I gave my 1000% effort to be able to speak English properly. Or when I was in the seventh grade and this asshole (who shall remain anonymous) would challenge me to rap battles knowing very well that I could barely speak the English language (let alone start doing tricks with it), every night before I went to bed I gave a 1000% effort to come up with a verse good enough to battle with; until a year and some change later I finally beat him. And even now, when I write a song I go above and beyond what I’m capable of to make sure it’s better than my last. And when I feel myself slipping to 999.9%, I stop writing and wait to get that 0.1 percent back. That “above and beyond” in me is what I refer to as “The Karlster”.

I ended up slowly losing that drive I had of excelling in school as the months of January and February went on. It could have been because the classes didn’t meet enough (if at all) for me to build any momentum, or because I was too distracted thinking raps to focus in class; either way you flip it: My heart just wasn’t in it!

As time went on, each class started seeming dumber than the last; reminding me why I “took the semester off” to start with. Let’s take my Phys Ed class for instance; this is a class that only met once, and wanted me to mail in reports on all my work outs. I found this tremendously idiotic. When I work out it’s to clear my mind of all else, and zero in better on my goals; not to get graded on my “heart rate”. And then there is accounting. No disrespect to that beautiful black (I believe she is mixed though) queen, but I realized that the lady got paid to summarize the book for us, and then when HER summary was complete, test us on what we learned from HER interpretation of the book. All of this on material that we probably would have had a better understanding of had we (at least me anyways) read the book on our own and done the work at our own pace. People read books on how to make relationships work for Christ sake I think I can read a book on accounting on my own!

[Come to think of it, I’ve always been at my best (school wise) by just using common sense! The teachers would parade me around as a genius, when in reality I was just breaking away from the book! The only reason the other kids couldn’t come up with the answers that I came up with was because they were thinking in terms of how the book was telling them think. On separate occasions I could’ve sworn I was an idiot because I couldn’t figure out the simplest things. And when I heard the answers out loud I felt even dumber  because it was common sense . Meaning that although we were use the book to figure somethings out we didn’t necessarily need to; we already know the answers!]

Needless to say that by the time I got to thinking about dropping out of classes it was too late, so I had no choice but to stick it out [Pause]. Ironically enough this is when I decided to really rededicate myself to something that I was genuinely passionate about; Hip-Hop. The only problem was I no longer knew what to Rap about!  I had spent so much time working on “Foreign Exchange”, and trying to get people to hear it that the material I had for it started sounding dated to me. By this time the emotions and situations I was rapping about on these songs were at least six months old, and the new stuff I was coming up with was sounding better, but were conceptually nothing like “Foreign Exchange”! I still wanted to at least properly finish those songs so I wouldn’t feel like the past six months had gone to waste. So with J. Rob’s computer being broken, no job, and no studio money, I had to pull out a move of desperation. I decided to sell all and every college book I ever owned back to the school.

The more I started thinking of not putting out “Foreign Exchange” as it is, the more sense it started to make. The entire music industry has changed, especially Hip-Hop! The listener’s attention span is about the same length as a female tennis player’s skirt. Secondly, if by some miracle enough people are curious about your music, they’ll download your album if you’re lucky. In order for them to go out and buy it, they’ve gotta WANT you to release it (i.e: Tha Carter III, Thank Me Later, Pink Friday, Rolling Papers, & Lasers, just to name a few).

Quite honestly, I don’t think people want to hear me that badly! I wouldn’t even be considered a fly on the wall in comparison to those guys (and girl) at this point. And “Foreign Exchange”, my story, and my movement is more than a fly a on the wall to me. I deserve a documentary, a movie, and at least 50 parades when my shit drops. So it WILL be released; only a 1000% better than it is now. (p.s: I will be releasing a new song off the 2010 version of “FE” at least once a week)

The reason why I named this post “The Start of A Dream” is because at every turn there’s a new start! New seconds, new minutes every 60 seconds, new hours every 60 minutes, new days every 24hrs., so on and so forth. Similarly to me and school, it is never too late to realize that your heart is not fully set on one objective and rededicating it to wherever your mind is. Currently, I am working on Introducing Karl Anthony (the brand) to the world. My three main objectives this month are getting “iluvkarl.com” up and running, getting “The Karlster” apparels up for sell, and shooting the “Hollywood MILFs” video. So when you see me this April, ask me how close I am to fulfilling these goals.

Sincerely yours as always, _Karl A. Talla Demgueu