It's the beginning of a steady, hopeful fall in 2003. I'm only 7 years old, being led down Hasbrook Avenue for the first time toward the new bus stop to my elementary school. I have some sense of "independence," but it's not much; I wear sweater vests daily, easily getting picked on for my sensitivity and ability to cry at the most profound and at the oddest times. It was a big time. It was a strange time.

It was also during those nights of being a kid when I was intimidated by sleeping; in addition to having the "monsters" lurking somewhere around my bright yellow bedroom that most of the kids were afraid of, I also had these instances where I had been prone to dreams, especially nightmares of being watched by distant family members and of the faint sounds of people calling my name. For my safety of mind, my mother had to turn on a night light in the hallway, as well as give me a radio to play music with. And there would always be this one song that comforted me the most, that could allow me to jerk my head back and forth until I slept through the night.

That song, "Suga Suga," was always on my mind. I mispronounced and didn't understand the lyrics, but that didn't keep me from anything; I could always follow the rhythm and beat down to the second, and looking back, I could consider it my first meeting with mainstream music or more specifically, "rap music." It was made by Baby Bash and Frankie J, a rapper and singer, respectively.

Still being somewhat of an outcast, I had to follow music trends on my own terms. While everyone was spitting out T.I. and Lil Wayne lyrics straight from the roofs of their mouths, I took a little trip backwards and fell in love with many R&B singers of the early 2000s. Usher, Alicia Keys, and R. Kelly were special favorites, with "My Boo," "Confessions," and "Ignition" running down my mind like some water I was too long parched for.

One of the best things about music is that there's no strict timeline; you could go back many years and still listen to songs, or you can even hear them sampled, reinvented through modernized editions and different voices. And, hearing music transcend, rewind, and go all over the place, I was hooked. These singers all exemplified consciousness through their words; the idea of vulnerability and openness I wished to have, but was unable to due to my own perceived shortcomings.

Now that I've come to think of it, many of my favorite rappers had this sense as well. I admired Lil Wayne's clever wordplay and Kanye West's strong personality, Jay-Z's "from rags to riches" debut, Eminem's raw, bone-cutting stabs, and Kid Cudi's slow-pacing sluice of emotions that captured exactly how I felt at any given time. And I still do; turning the last sentence from past-tense to present-tense would not make the statement any less true. But the further I go into the onset of social media and how rap has formed, it seems that at every corner, there's some controversy going around; the person may lose their faithfulness or exaggerate their position. They may get arrested or they may make threats to other rappers/singers. And we, the audience, just pretend as if we've just hit gold or that people are incapable of being someone other than what we imagined.

All of these people are, of course, people in the end, with their own victories, struggles, tragedies. Although this is a bit ludicrous to say, it's surprising to think of how many people forget so on a daily basis. We want people to sign up as being role models because we need someone to direct us to the "right path" or need another role model for our kids. But, it's never safe to put so much power in a couple of individuals. Sure, one can admire others, but what does it say when we have to excuse every action they make through social media? When we verbally abuse one another about people who honestly wouldn't be concerned if they lost one follower? Sometimes, distance is helpful in investigating what we're allured to so we don't become delusional with our own lives.

But still, I go back to events like Beyoncé's "Formation" and Kendrick Lamar's Grammy performance, thinking to myself, "this is where I would like to be." But I can't rely on anyone else to be a role model because I would be limiting what I could do for myself.