Where to Now? Life After “Dreamer’s Poetry”

Where To Now? Life After "Dreamer's Poetry"
Reflecting on the long road to the release of "Dreamer's Poetry" and looking ahead...

First off, I want to thank everyone who showed support for my debut album "Dreamer's Poetry", from the people who helped me make it to the people who helped present it to the world, with a special thanks out to DJBOOTH, 2DopeBoyz and Refined Hype. It feels good to finally finish and accomplish something that was a huge part of my life for so many months. Partially for some of those reasons, I'm glad I'm done with it. To me, creating the album was a very interesting, diverse experience. It was wonderful. It was horrible. It was uplifting. It was nerve-wracking. It was up and it was down, which ultimately makes the process a perfect metaphor for life.

For a little background information, I technically started on the album in June of 2007 and let me tell you why. In May of 2007, I dropped a project I called my "album" under the moniker of Young Son. It was called "Soul Inspired: Hip Hop's Revival". That was my first real attempt at a solo project ever since I began my "career". If you want to take it back even further, I've been rapping since I was nine, but didn't start seriously until the early months of 2005. I still cherish and admire those times, because during that period is when I really started actually doing organized music. What spawned it was a talent show my school, Brooklyn Center High School, was having in February of 2005. Now, like I mentioned before, I had always did some sort of form of rapping, and when I entered B.C.H.S in 2002 for my freshman year, I freestyle battled here and there. I did it enough to where people could identify me with being able to rap, just not knowing how serious. I began actually making songs in 2005. I wrote two songs to collaborate with my friends, Donovan Carter and James Watkins a.k.a J-Dubb. We ended up winning the talent show that year. From there, I started recording at a friend named John Russell's house in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, after being introduced to him by my cousin and other fellow local artist "Deon Lee". I recorded a couple of solo records and then ended up forming a group called "3-2" with my friend Justin Johnson, his brother, cousin and our mutual singer friends Adrien Lindsey and Donovan Carter. We worked some records that we never really put out. Eventually, by the summer time, Justin and his family moved to California. There had been so much hype (in our minds at least) as a teen group that we were going to be big, and then he moved and all that was flushed down the toilet. Still having a handicap to the idea of being in a group, all of my senior year, I tried to make a crew work called "Young Squad Harmony". We did a couple of shows, but never put out any official music and nothing ever left the ground. By the time I graduated, I still was doing music here and there, but I started to become more of a music fan.

All of 2006's hip hop listening was basically devoted to Lupe Fiasco, which I can definitely say helped mold who I am as an artist now and who I wanted to be. I can truthfully say that his music, as well as Kanye West's music, really helped make it okay to me to be a rap artist who tried to take his own lane to a certain extent. Like I have mentioned in interviews before, I've never been on that gun talk content before. That's not my lane or my desire for the music. Most of Lupe's music reflected positivity and presented real life issues from a observation standpoint and at times offered solutions for change, instead of promoting it. No one is telling anyone to deny what's reality. It's really about analyzing it and figuring out what we can do to flip a bad to good.

By November of 2006, I decided to work on a solo project, and that's where the tape "Soul Inspired" came from. (Which you can find by doing a little rummaging online if you really want it..lol). Immediately when I dropped the album, I definitely wasn't satisfied with it. I recorded it all and mixed it myself, using a Logitech Headset Mic and Magix Music Studio. Get it how you live, right? Even though I traveled to Detroit, Tennessee, Chicago and North Dakota that summer (2007) doing shows and promoting it, I knew I wanted to do way more with my music. I began working on a new album, that was originally called "Philanthropist". I was going to continue on the path of socially conscious and reflective community tracks. It's not until I connected with a producer named SoulChef from Auckland, New Zealand (who produced the record "Never Forget") that I renamed the album "Dreamer's Poetry". His productions really gave me a dreamer vibe. From there, that entire identity began to form. I started messing with the ideas of really talking about my personal self in my lyrics, something I hadn't did as openly before in my music. I approached it more from a third-person standpoint. The personal territory was something new, exciting and terrifying all at the same time. Just like Lupe and Kanye made it okay (to me) to speak about positive and non-detrimental things in music, Drake and Kid Cudi helped me warm up to the idea of getting really personal with my tunes. If you refer to my breakdown of "Success Is...", I was listening to a lot of "A Kid Named Cudi" and "So Far Gone" at the beginning of 2009, as well as getting in 7-hour, post-work shift studio sessions in the wee hours of night. That spawned the record "Success Is.." which ultimately put me into orbit for the album. All of the records on my album, excluding "Gettin' Ours" and "Hip Hope Anthem" were all new records crafted in the time span between this February and last February. Of course, most of you know the name change to Mike Dreams came at the peak of summer in 2009 and I ran with it.

So that's how "Dreamer's Poetry" came together. The album is a reflection of my life right now. I'm a sophomore in college, pursuing an English Writing degree, I'm an unemployed, former Subway employee and not to sound cliché, a dreamer. I think we all are dreamers and these are some of the greatest times of our life while we are on the plight to make our dreams become reality. I hope 2010 will be a wonderful and exciting year for my career and my life. The fact that I've finished such an immense piece of work is already surreal for me. The idea of making a pretty good album that a handful of people really like and listen to, juxtaposed will still living at my mama's crib, going to college and looking for another 9 to 5 just might be the most interesting feeling I've ever had. Of course while doing my regular things as a normal human being, like looking for a job and continuing my academic studies, I'm also continuing the superhuman grind of being a hip hop artist and aspiring superstar. (Oh, as well as my plights to be a journalist. Shout out to websites like Refined Hype for giving me the opportunity!)

I'm just ready to see what the future will bring. Before "Dreamer's Poetry" was even finished, my producers and I already began some preparation for my follow up album "Just Waking Up". You can expect that this summer. I'm just trying to get better and better as I continue to make more music to present to the world. I hope everyone is ready for it. If so, let me know, because I think I'm needing help to catch up with all of you!

Peace Easy and God Bless
-Mike Dreams, The Hip Hop Dreamer