I still remember listening to Changes by Tupac and Talent for the first time while I was waiting for the bus downtown to head home.

At the time hiphop and rap as a whole was something I hated, but there was something that really stood out about this one track the person across the shelter from me was blasting. The lyrics hooked me from the get go:

"I see no changes, wake up in the morning, and I ask myself Is life worth living, should I blast myself? I’m tired of bein’ poor…"

I didn’t grow up with the best surroundings, and it felt like a gut punch having a song played by a random stranger on their speaker speak to my experience like that. Followed later with:

"I see no changes, all I see is racist faces Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races We under, I wonder what it takes to make this One better place, let’s erase the wasted"

I feel when I was younger I was really insensitive to racial issues, and part of that was owed to circumstances that were unique to myself that I was still dealing with the effects of, but listening to the whole song and the genuine nature of the lived experiences told in the lyrics really helped me see things through another lens that I’m still thankful for today. This part especially helped me do some self-reflection and realize that I was in part misplacing my hate on entire groups of people rather than those who specifically wronged me, and that all I was doing was damaging potential friendships I could have with people who were no different from myself outside of physical characteristics.

Feels weird being open about this, and I know that it’s really odd for someone to say a song of all things got them to change some racist thoughts they held, but I was a teenager at the time with a shitty life in and out of the house, and while it’s no excuse, it was hard to be rational when all you felt was anger at the world and didn’t know where the hell to aim it.