Duce Diamondz

Everyone has a reason for music, and music over the past six or seven years for me has become similar to a drug; I dream about it, I wake up thinking about it, it changed everything in my life, and I depend on it. My name is Travis Meade, and I'm a 19 year old student at Rutgers University Newark. I’m from an upper-middle class suburban town called Manalapan, located in Central Jersey. If you drove through my town, you would expect my story to be different from the average rapper... and it is. My town was predominantly white upper-middle class. My family was by no means wealthy, but my folks did what they had to do to make sure I'd be in a safe environment. What most people don't realize is that my town came with its own set of dangers. I never had to try and fit in because I was too busy dealing with standing out. I never had to lose any of my friends to gang violence because I already lost most of them to drugs. Some kids were on their way to big things, but more cats were going no where. My story gives voice to a different kind of struggle, a struggle that's becoming more common in a competitive society: the struggle to make something of myself.