"You're 20 now, Tyrel. You're not a kid anymore. You're in the real world now. You have to do real things. You have to be real."

I don't know. Maybe 'real' is overrated. Maybe I am still a kid, and maybe I needed to remind myself how good it felt to be free of stress and doubt and to just do something that means something to me. To say "fuck everybody and everything" and just do something that I knew I could be proud of and I could be happy about. That's all I want to do now. Things that make me happy. Fuck everybody and everything else.

I guess that's why it took a year and some change to get this done. After I made swim. I took a few months off from doing anything music related to just soak in the moment or whatever, but I've been on this since May of last year. Now, in May of this year, with another year of college down and another birthday faded away, I've got this new shit. It's special to me because it's more revealing of the person I am and how & why I've become that person. I'm just a young nigga being honest about who he is. That's all.

I took in a lot during the making of this; watched a lot of movies, read a few books, talked to a few people, and got a little better understanding of myself. Everything is a process, and the making of this project was a beautiful process. I'm glad it happened the way it did. We're nowhere near finished, and I would love to avoid a cliche right now, but this is only the beginning.

Shout out to everyone and everything that inspired me during the making of this dope shit. Shout out the cities of Baltimore, Maryland and Stone Mountain, Georgia for raising me. Shout out to Redan High School. Raiders for life outchea. Shout out my family. Shout out my niggas. Shout out my bitches. Salute to the real shit. Death to the bullshit.

Thanks to everybody that helped out with this. Thanks to everybody that was actually waiting for this. I know I took forever with it, but I hope you all like it. I did my best.

THIS IS ART.