Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.

Let’s get this going.
Okay.

Exhibit I
was raised in a very, very, very Christian home.
My father
is a prophet,
and sometimes he preaches.
And my mother
is an avid, firm believer in God
and follower of Christ.
So yeah,
it's a very, very Christian household.
Now that we have that clear,
let’s talk about me.
I used to enjoy being rebellious and disruptive.
I used to get kicks from making trouble.
I really,
for some weird reason,
just enjoyed wreaking havo
and going against the grain.
As the years passed,
I was doing a lot of things
that could be seen as thrilling by some people.
But I was living a dangerous life,
and I was a wreck.
Especially mentally and spiritually,
I was a wreck.
But through Jesus Christ,
I have been rinsed.
And I've never felt this good
through anything or anyone else.
And when I got into the Word of God,
all of the pieces started to come together.
My purpose and my life
and human nature in general
started to make a lot more sense.
And from the time I learned
that in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God…
I was like,
“Oh, so I could hear from God
through the Word?
The Bible is the map!
Oh, so the Bible is the map.
The Bible is the map.
The Bible is the map.
The Bible is the map.
The Bible is the map.
The Bible is the map.
The Bible is the proof”.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.
Just give me a sign,
and I know that we’ll be alright.

Alright.

Exhibit
J-E-R-E-M-I-A-H
J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N
T-H-O-M-A-S
(M-E)
.
Me.
Right?
So I went to university abroad in America.
And the main reason
was because I wanted to replicate movies
like American Pie and Project X.
I just wanted to party and try to get girls.
I went there,
and I just got lost.
I was a mess.
Everything fell apart.
And my parents brought me home
very prematurely,
before the first semester was even over.
That was in
December 2017.
Now let's rewind to
2015.
I was in my second-to-last year of high school,
and after years
of sporadically and randomly writing lyrics
here and there…
I decided to work on an album.
And I called it
‘The Black Polar Project’.
And my name was
‘Black Polar Bear’.
It was to represent being one of a kind,
like a ferocious black sheep.
I wrote more than ten songs
with no beats
in just a few days.
Keep in mind that every night,
my family prayed together at home.
Now,
I was almost finished writing the album,
and one night we had family prayer.
And at the end of the session,
my dad had a prophetic vision.
Remember,
he’s a prophet.
He said he saw me
instructing singers in a studio,
adjusting knobs on a board.
Yeah.
Making music.
So I was elated.
Very elated.
I was so excited
that I went and grabbed all of the lyrics
that I wrote for the album,
and came rapping the words to my parents
even though it had cursing.
Keep in mind,
I had those lyrics hidden
in the same place where I used to hide my weed
because I didn't want anybody in my house
to be reading my lyrics,
so there’s no way my father read them.
There's no way.
My father is extremely against drugs
because he grew up in poverty,
surrounded by addictions
that eventually took the lives
of two of his brothers.
And weed was the gateway drug for them.
So that's the reason why
he was always so against his children
being involved with weed.
So there's no way he saw those lyrics.
Now,
even after he got that vision from God
and he was the one to give me the prophecy,
he still didn't want me to focus on music.
He believed in getting a good degree,
and then a good job.
So imagine how I felt.
I was like,
“Bruh”.
Bruh,
I wasn't even allowed
to buy a microphone for myself.
Now,
since I couldn't follow my dreams…
I decided to find a university
that could give me a great degree,
while I could also have a lot of fun.
So yeah,
now that we have the back story covered…
let's fast forward.
Let's return to
December 2017.
I just wasted a lot of my parents’ money,
and I didn't know where my life was going.
A month passed,
it was now
January 2018.
I still didn't know where my life was going,
but I wasn't taking it seriously.
I was living with my parents,
and all I did was secretly drink,
secretly smoke cigarettes,
and play FIFA all day and all night.
Now,
one night,
my dad says
that we needed to have a serious talk.
So I sat with him and my mom.
They told me that things needed to change
or else I'd be kicked out.
They asked me what my plan was
and if I would be going back to school.
I told them I could do music,
and even gospel.
I mentioned gospel
to make them more open to the idea of music.
They still did not agree at all.
I told them,
“Okay, give me ten days…
and I'll come back with a plan about my future”.
Then,
I went to my room
and eventually started thinking
of how I could realistically pursue a music career.
I was doing research on the internet,
and found out about audio engineers
and the different roles in music production.
So I wrote a bunch of ideas
and made a kind of roadmap.
I stashed this all away and went to sleep.
The next morning,
I woke up and decided
that I would present it to my parents
and not wait ten days,
so that if they said no…
I could have time to think of something else.
So I saw them sitting at the table on the patio,
and it seemed as though they were praying.
I came,
I told them I wanted to talk to them,
and they told me to give them a minute.
Eventually,
they called me outside
and asked what I wanted to talk about.
So I gave each of them a piece of paper
and asked them each
to write five of my strengths
and five of my weaknesses.
Then,
I left them alone for a while.
Then,
I came back and my dad said
that they both decided
to only write on one page since they are one.
Together,
they wrote five of my strengths
and five of my weaknesses.
Then,
I took what they wrote
and compared it to the strengths and weaknesses
that I wrote about myself.
It turned out that most of what we wrote
was the same,
so I told them that we should move forward
to make the most of my strengths
and minimise the effects of my weaknesses.
Then,
I started to present my plan.
I was talking about
how I could realistically pursue a career in music.
While doing my presentation,
my mom’s reaction confused me.
She looked shocked,
and her demeanour made me think
that she was disagreeing.
So I decided
to just focus on presenting to my father.
Eventually,
he told me to stop.
So I was offended.
I was like,
“You see?
I tell you all my dreams and y’all kill them”.
He told me to stop,
so I stopped talking.
Then he said that my mother told him
that he is a prophet,
and that he should ask God
to show him my path.
So he did.
He asked me
if I wanted to know now,
or wait for the ten days to pass.
I said,
“Nah. If you're gonna kill my dreams,
kill them now”.
Well,
he told me that he saw what I was talking about
and more.
And I was like,
“You see?
I told you
this is what I was supposed to be doing”.
Then,
I looked at my mom,
and she was crying
because she just heard me saying
what my dad told her
that God told him.
Well, well, well.
It was all surreal to her.
It happened so quickly.
God made it clear to them
that they should treat my journey
like they treat the other children’s journeys.
God validated my passion.
God is my best friend.
Yeah.
God is my everything.
Oh how I love my God.
Looking back on that moment is always cool.
I mean,
we’ve come a long way.
My parents even be sending my songs and videos
to their friends.
Yeah.
Who would have thought?
Surely not me.
Surely not them.
But God knew.
Yeah.

Exhibit
H-E-R-E
is my proof.