What pulled you through? What made you just put everything down?
There was nowhere I could go. I was out already on the curb. I looked around, and seeing everybody else on the curb, I was like, "I need to get the hell out of here because it's too crowded down here. It's way too crowded down here for me." Being homeless and being on the curb – that's the struggle, man, not having anywhere to go. That's one of the worst feelings, man – not knowing where your meal is going to come from, no income and you're just in the streets. Everybody that's down there knows who you are. Drugs are easy to get because people who have the drugs are looking at you like, "Oh, man, that's the meal for you man." They just give you more. It's dark down there, man, with nowhere to go, nobody really loving you. The people that are giving you drugs really don't love you because if they did, they won't give it to you. It was crazy. When I found my future wife and married her, from that day, the light came. I used to pray to God, "Don't let the devil kill me down here. I have something else I got to do because I'm not finished yet. I didn't get what I deserve to have." He granted me that wish and this is what I'm doing now. I'm going after it. I got married to a wonderful woman that made sure that I kept living right and doing the right things. And I had a manager that took care of business. And we started gathering positive people around me. Like I said, everything's working fine now. I'm happy, man.
Well, with all that you've shared, I want to talk about one of your new songs, "Homeless." The whole analogy is so powerful – losing your love and almost feeling like you have nothing else. How did you come up with that?
You hit the nail right on the head because that's exactly how those lyrics came and that's how I sang it. Just imagine you have nowhere to go and your girl put you out. You were able to write in this big cardboard, "I'm homeless." As she's leaving, going to work, you put that sign up. She sees it and she goes on to work and she goes from lunch break and you go to her job. Any moment you're trying to show her, "I'm not going to do without you." That's how I was holding on to God. "There's nothing I can do without you, Lord. I can't do this. You got to pull me up." I'm saying, "I'm sorry if I took you there but you may see me on the corner of a street with a cup in my hand, holding a sign saying, ‘I'm homeless.' You need to bring me back in because you're the love of my life." That's where I was at with it. I can sing it because I already felt it. I had lived it already.
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