The Rapper, Kirk Williams, has been fortunate enough to not be a black felon in the United States. For a 14-year-old boy at that time, Williams had been dealing in drugs with no place called home, and in three different occasions has he been declared dead after being shot protecting his sister from attack.
Life was not smiling good at Williams while growing up with different circumstances that surround his locale, which is a ghetto of black American communities, his dropping out of school after eighth grade with disownment from his grandmother.
At age 14, Williams was renting from his neighbor, settling with bills and going out with a lady old enough to be his mother. “I didn’t have a childhood,” he told The Clarion Ledger.
He added: “I can tell a man that I’m not a felon – even if I should have been. You can’t say that you’re not one just because you haven’t been prosecuted. You just managed to escape those hoops by the grace of God.”
The rapper, who goes by the stage name Trembleduzzit, brace up himself with determination to return back to school.
Today, Williams holds a Master’s of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning from the Jackson State University at the age of 36 with a 3.9 GPA.
Williams said:
“To come from an environment where 98 percent of people have felonies around you, there is always a concern about being able to register for school and apply for financial aid.”
Williams who was 23 when he started his academic pursuit to bag a master’s degree has worked on his GED, and with four failed trials made it on the fifth attempt to study in Jackson State University where he received his bachelor’s degree, followed by his master’s.
“The only way to maintain my focus was to get up every day and study. I had always dreamed about going to Jackson State. There was something about walking over to the next street and hearing the band playing and watching them practice on the field. At the time, the neighborhood didn’t have a representative who said, ‘He’s from the block, or from the ghetto, but can still go to college’,” he said.
The 35-35 Entertainment signee is looking forward to releasing his soon-to-be-published book “The Latest I Can Be Was On Time.”
