I can't get enough of Jon Bellion and yes, his killer beard might have something to do with it, but I also love his music. I considered doing a review of the entire album 'The Definition' but I found more meaning in the song 'An Immigrant'. Bellion says he wrote it after being inspired by a female singer he met while on a tour in Britain and how he felt foreign once he got back to America. I love the song because I am an immigrant in the US and I can therefore relate to the idea of being 'foreign'.
"I'm in Harlem screaming take me home"
As an immigrant, my heart constantly yearns for home. I'm comfortable, but it's never the same because back home I did not have to be international, foreign, exotic and African. I only had to be me. Fitting all those titles into one person and expecting them to still remain themselves can be disorienting. It weirds you out to try to be a lot of things at the same time especially if it's only what people expect of you. For instance, before the US I had never traveled outside Kenya, but some people expect me to talk about the continent like I know every inch of it. It's almost discomforting to be expected to know all these things by virtue of simply being from a country in Africa. I don't feel the same way here, even the coffee never tastes different.
"I still speak my native language, but I only want your foreign tongue"
Someone once used ''You look like a girl from Ghana" as a pickup line on me. I didn't really have words for this guy but tried to channel that angry black woman inside of me because I was pissed. As an immigrant, I constantly battle cliché stereotypes and it's frustrating to try to overturn all of them. African [women] do not all look the same and Africa is not one village. We do not know each other. I used to take offense about these confrontations in coffee shops or repeating what I say a few times but these days I simply create my own utopia and get by because if the world makes you feel like you don't belong, you create your own world and belong.
"So, I feel like an immigrant in America, Yes, I am just an immigrant in America"
