This episode exists because my voice was questioned—and my work was removed.

Let me be clear:
These songs are mine.

My poetry is mine.
My books are mine.
My music is mine.

They come from my lived experience. They come from what I survived. And I do not need permission from any platform to tell my own story.

When my work was labeled as something other than my own, that was not just an error—it was a dismissal of my authorship and an attempt to silence my voice.

I will not accept that.

I will not argue for my right to exist as the artist of my own story.
I will not shrink my voice to fit inside systems that fail to recognize it.

So I am doing what I have always done: I am speaking. I am creating. I am releasing my work anyway.

Featuring:

Betrayal at 11 Years Old

Storm Rages Inside

Sacred Dance

and additional pieces centered on voice, boundaries, and reclamation

This is not just an episode.
This is a line being drawn.

You do not get to decide what is mine.
You do not get to silence me.

You tried to silence me.
I got louder.

Beneath the Noise is a descent into the quiet truth that lives underneath chaos, anger, and survival. It is the space where the body still remembers, where the nervous system hums with what was never fully heard, and where the truth refuses to be buried beneath distraction, denial, or dismissal.

This piece moves through layers—rage, grief, and the constant hum of being forced to carry what was never yours to hold. It speaks to the noise of the outside world: voices that minimized, systems that failed, and the relentless pressure to keep going as if nothing ever happened.

But beneath all of that… there is something else.

There is the truth of what you knew all along.
There is the voice that was never wrong.
There is the part of you that survived—even when no one stood beside you.

Beneath the Noise is not about silencing the chaos—it is about listening deeper than it. It is about reclaiming the voice that exists under everything that tried to drown it out.

This is where the healing begins.
Not above the noise.
But beneath it.

The word “woke” has become a weapon.

It gets tossed like an insult.
Like shorthand for “too much,” “too aware,” “too political,” “too sensitive.”

But here is what it means to me.

Woke means I remember.

I remember what it felt like when my no didn’t matter.
I remember what dismissal feels like in the body.
I remember what it costs to reclaim your voice after it has been taken.

Woke means I pay attention.

To consent.
To autonomy.
To power dynamics in rooms.
To who is speaking and who is being spoken over.
To how language can erase or restore.

It does not mean I hate anyone.
It does not mean I want control.
It does not mean I am fragile.

It means I am not sleepwalking through harm.

If awareness makes someone uncomfortable, that discomfort does not belong to me.

When someone uses “woke” as a slur, what they are often reacting to is this:

I do not shrink anymore.
I do not volunteer my silence.
I do not pretend not to see what I see.

Awareness is not aggression.

It is clarity.

Clarity about my history.
Clarity about my sovereignty.
Clarity about the cost of pretending not to notice.

To me, woke means awake in my own body.

Awake to where I give access.
Awake to where I withdraw.
Awake to who I am — without apology.

And once you wake up to yourself,
you cannot go back to sleep.

The next track is my song, “What ‘Woke’ Means to Me.”

This piece carries the fire and the steadiness of that awareness — not as argument, but as embodiment.

Let it speak where explanation ends.