The piece I selected is very special to me, and many others due to its content and subject matter. Why? Well, I am an African American High School Senior from South Jersey attending Delaware's Middletown High School for the Visual Arts Pathway. I am a highly acclaimed artist within my district, and try my best to make the most personable pieces I can possibly make. Currently, I'm working on my AP Art portfolio, which (to give the most brief explanation humanly possible) is about visualizing the problems that different people go through, the roots of the cause, and likewise, foreseeable solutions to those problems. A large subsection of my portfolio relates to the struggles of black culture in the modern era. In this piece, I try to deconstruct to idea of brotherhood: what it means to be family, the hateful nature of familial love, and the tragic cycle of violence baked into black culture. Due to this concept's complexity, I decided to compress it all down into one term: "Fratricide" - The killing of one's brother or sister. My inspirations for this piece were 1: The struggles between me and my own brother. And 2: One of my favorite songs of all time, "u" by Kendrick Lamar. To keep it short, this is a song where Kendrick has a drunken mental break down in a hotel room over all of the things he's done wrong in his life. The core concept of the song is that he has a back and forth banter with 2 versions of himself, both Kendricks taking turns stating the reasons as to why they hate the other; ultimately sinking Kendrick even deeper into his own self hatred. It's truly one of the saddest songs in his entire discography, and one that is jam-packed with raw emotion unlike any other. In this piece, the lyrics to the 2nd and 3rd verse are actually written on the striking arms of both brothers. Feel free to look for as many details as you cant. But Kendricks very literal self hatred in this track, led me to draw some conceptual connections. In this piece, I make the effort to show that, despite the brothers differences (they are literally complimentary colors), they are connected. By blood, by fate, by love. And that their hatred for each other may also be tied to their hatred for themselves. Their connection is illustrated by the thread connected to both of their fingers, as well as both of their fist having one half of a broken heart. I actually designed this heart to be the physical symbol of this "Fratricidal Love". Instead of fist bumping to combine the hearts, and become greater than the individual pieces, they instead use what little they have to pummel the other. This was meant to be symbolic of the black community's struggle to come together despite their differences. As the fist is both an instrument of war, and unity. Much like words. The silhouette of the Philadelphia skyline can be spotted on both brothers, as it is "The City of Brotherly Love", and within these section, their are the words "LET ME BE". This tells us that the brothers feel like they're better off alone. But the letter and song title "U", connects the 2 phrases, and changes them to "LET ME BE U", symbolizing envy for each other. A sign that they're not whole unless they combine their hearts instead of combatting them. Kendrick is suicidal in this song, and I wanted to illustrate that as a death battle between 2 parts of yourself.

Ever since I first opened a crayon box when I was 2 years old, I've had an inseparable passion for art. All of it. From 2D, to 3D, to digital, to storytelling , to rap, to singing. But it was my environment that inspired me to be that way. My Dad loved comic books, and my mom was an author, so that stuff tended to rub off on me. Since preschool, I've been drawing my favorite characters, painting in the honor of my blood, pouring my heart and soul into my pen, designing videogame sprites for my friends, creating characters and worlds for myself and other people. Stylistically, I take elements from 90s rap and manga. But thematically almost all of my biggest pieces are inspired by songs. I think of my pieces like tracks, and my portfolio like an album: quadruple entendres, rhyme schemes, flows. I apply music visually. I am an avid reader and love to write, but conscious Hip-hip has taught me more important lessons about the world, the English Language, and myself, more than any traditional book has. To understand my artistic goals, you must understand my artistic crisis. For the first 16 years of my life, I felt I had no story to tell. Well, at least nothing special. When I was younger I would make fictional fantasy children's books for my friends out of boredom; but there was no clear message behind them. Maybe because I was afraid of making something meaningful. When it comes to black artists, people seem to resonate more with the underdog story. Y'know, straight from the projects and into the mainstream. And that's only natural. Not only do all middle class citizens live for a good underdog story, but they also feel like black stories feel more important when they come from somebody who has truly lived the "black experience". But I feel this can often lead people to objectify someone's "blackness" to an unhealthy degree. In Hip-Hop, for example, a rapper's artistic integrity is often measured by where they grew up, how many parents they had, their dialect, etc. All as if to say that there's only one specific way to be black. And that these superficial qualities can prove it. As a black artist myself, and a kid who grew up staying out of trouble, hanging out around a lot of non-black friends, and 2 parents in a healthy relationship, I was often told I wasn't black enough. I convinced myself that my story wasn't worth telling if it wasn't what people were searching for. I sometimes felt like nobody, and everybody at the same time. I felt like the greatest waste of potential. A lyricist well beyond his years, performing his genius to none but a deafening void. A 21st Century Picasso using white watercolor paint on a blank canvas. That was until I started working on my portfolio, where I was challenged to make something truly holistic of my artistic diction. After much time spent thinking of what story I had to tell, I thought of the story I felt needed to be told. One that I could speak on. This 18 x 24 in artwork was the first result of that process. It visualizes a story of racial and emotional rejection induced by traumatic experiences. A story of not feeling good enough, and as a result, growing hateful of yourself, your environment, and your people. With this scholarship, I want to fund my newfound artistic motive: to inform the world of the dangers of a poisoned culture, and how its seeds can uproot families.