Showing the Logical Way of Life

Popular music has followed a standard since the beginning of times. It moralizes the ideas of partying, sex, and drugs through rock and roll to some of the popular songs of today. They always bring to light topics that are well known to be discussed, however, that is different for Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, aka Logic. He experienced childhood in destitution while also being raised in a biracial family. His mother was white and his father was black. Out of all his 7 siblings, he appeared the most white.  He grew up in a neighborhood where violence was common on his streets. He stated in an interview, "Growing up there were guns in the house, my brothers were out selling crack. I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas, I never had a birthday” (2).  
He is an innovative individual as a performer and songwriter. He uses his music as a way to break away from social norms. He provokes society to consider an alternative perspective as he does in his song 1-800-273-8255 which features Alessia Cara and Khalid.  This particular song is one of my favorites as he portrays the conflicts that the youth of today's world has to struggle through. This music video, in particular, characterizes the message of the song. It depicts a story of a teenage boy who is gay. He grew up in a community that discouraged his sexuality. He felt as though he had no home or place to go. These depressing feelings led to him have suicidal thoughts which are shown in the song lyrics when he says multiple times "I don't wanna be alive, I just wanna die today". However, as the song progresses the theme of the song begins to change. The child, who was ready to kill himself, at this point of the song realizes he does not want to die but rather wants to stay alive. This is depicted in the verses of the song when the artists sing, "I wanna be alive, I don't wanna die today". This music video brought me to tears the first time I watched it as I have seen many people deal with issues of persecution like this on a daily basis.  I'm not the only one who felt this way because the Fine Bros, a group of YouTubers have different groups of society react to concepts, did a segment on this song, in which they interviewed adults. His music forces people to start thinking about the problems of society on social justice. In his song, "Black Spiderman" he brings up the idea that people of color should not be viewed any different than white and that being a different race does not make you ugly,
Logic's music which is his creative product follows those ideals held by Gardner's book "Creating Minds". In this book, they explain that a creative is someone solves an issue, who fashions a product or shows new questions in fields that are at first considered novel but later become accepted. He follows these ideas fairly well as he creates his new music to combat the ideas of the norm and create a question in the mind of the listener. They are forced to ask the questions, "Whats going on in the world right now? Is this what we want as people? Is this even morally acceptable?"  In another article called "Beyond Talent" by Teresa M. Amabile, she states that a creative is not someone solely based on talent but is also someone who does "hard work and [has] intrinsic motivation" (3). Logic never grew up thinking he had an extraordinary talent. He worked hard and got to the point he is at today with his love for music and rapping. He states, "That's what was laid out for me, period, unfortunately. I used to have nothing to lose, so that's why I would go as hard as I did — because I had nothing to lose and I had everything to gain" (1). He was motivated to pursue his career with the belief that is was either this or join a gang in his neighborhood. To him, it was a "do or die" situation, and he decided to "do". Logic uses rap as a creative means to show the world who he is, and question himself and provoke others to question issues that occur on the social platform. 

1.http://www.npr.org/2017/05/15/528159035/logic-is-ready-to-tell-the-world-who-he-is2. http://www.complex.com/music/2014/06/who-is-rapper-logic3. https://luc.app.box.com/s/n7kukzdq2un1v91v6gjq3pjphzyrvl94/file/228485470395