Iwas born and raised in Houston, Texas — but there was always gumbo on the stove. My father carried the city of New Orleans with him everywhere he went: its flavor, its rhythm, its refusal to do anything quietly. He never sat me down and taught any of it to me like a lesson — he just lived it, loud, in our kitchen, in our music, in the way he moved through a room. Two cultures were always brewing under one roof, and somewhere in that mix is exactly where my eye, and my whole perspective, got its flavor.

Music was always in the house — the soundtrack of my life started long before I ever became a competitive band kid. But it was one black-and-white photography class that changed everything, cracking open a door to possibilities I didn’t know were there. I fell in love with the darkroom: the waiting, the development, the process of watching something invisible slowly become real. That’s where I learned how to develop my own vision and actually see it through — the patience it takes, the reward waiting on the other side of it, and the discipline to keep cultivating it. Everything I’ve made since traces back to that room.

I started in property management back in college, and it taught me how to actually take care of people and a community — lessons I didn’t know I was collecting until they started showing up in Homebody, and in the discipline it takes to keep any of this honest. That eye followed me all the way to California, where I live and work today. It doesn’t read like the rest of my story until you meet Land Man, a piece I wrote about the job itself — told like a superhero standing in a hallway at six in the morning, presence as the power and discipline as the whole plot. That’s the bridge: the same man who checks stairwells and answers the phone at eleven at night is the one writing the verse, framing the photo, building the brand. It was never two lives. It’s one instinct, wearing different uniforms.

Add the Accent itself matriculated in California — a state that’s always symbolized leaving the nest to me. Leaving comfort was the only way I could actually build a platform of truth instead of a performance of one. Your walk — every job, every room, every version of you — belongs in the work. You’re not just the artist. You’re the professional, the human, and the soul, too. We already move through all of those roles every day. Owning that, on purpose, is the only accountability I’m asking of you, or of me.