Peace, Love & Positivity

There’s a common saying that says “nice guys finish last.” In certain circumstances this may be true, but it could not be further from the truth when concerning the rapper Logic. Not only has he defied all odds against him and made a name for himself in the hip hop genre, but he is also a great guy.

PLP, or peace, love and positivity, is a common theme promoted by Logic across his various social media platforms and at his shows.  “I think it’s funny how we live in a generation where peace, love, and positivity is considered to be corny or whack,” Logic told reporters during an interview in 2014. He strongly advocates for people to be kind and generous to one another, contrary to what many other hip hop and rap artist promote through their actions and music.

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Not only is he very vocal about his beliefs, but he also practices what he preaches. During his set at the Grassroots Festival in 2015, a fight broke out in the crowd while he was on stage. Instead of ignoring it and continuing to preform as many artist do, Logic cut the music playing to address the crowd. “What are you all doing?” He questioned to the crowd. He reprimanded the audience for standing by while individuals fought and followed by asking them, “Aren’t we all family? Don’t let a couple people f**k up what we’ve got going, we got a good thing going.”

Going beyond his on stage demeanor, he is also very kind/generous to his fan base. There are countless occasions where he thanks his fans for everything he has achieved over the years through social media and his music. To show his appreciation, he released a free mixtape this past summer (Bobby Tarantino), claiming that it was “for the fans.”  The album was downloaded 16,000 times within its first week.

Logic is not only an artist that preaches positivity and generosity, but one that strongly supports equality as well. He just recently released the title of his upcoming album, AfricAryaN. Due to much criticism and skepticism upon the title release, he gave and interview stating:

“It’s about me being Black and white and seeing life from two sides. And once again about that cultural evolution and how you can go from the darkest of skin to the lightest of skin,” he claims. “Or the Aryan brotherhood, if you will, who think they’re pure of blood when at the end of the f***ing day we all have that in our blood and we all have so many different ethnicities in our blood no matter how pure we think we are.”

Being an ethnically mixed rapper has constantly been a topic that Logic has confronted, yet never let phase him. Instead of being letting criticism get the best of him, Logic continues to do what he does best: remain an overwhelmingly positive human being.

Peace from Miryana P.

Modern Logic

It’s been a long road for Logic over the past decade, but all in all, the hard work has paid off. Now that he’s finally living out his dream, what is the ambitious young man up to in his off time?  Well, after releasing a project every year for the past 6 year while also touring, he’s currently taking a sabbatical for some much needed rest. Even with this being said, that doesn’t mean that the man isn’t staying busy.

Music is Logic passion, this has been made clear. Even though he claims that he won’t have any new music being released for the remainder of 2016, he has made it clear that he has been gradually developing his next album for 2017. While still far off in the future, Logic recently announced what the title will be; AfricAryaN. This has generated a tremendous amount of buzz among the hip hop community and Logic fans, but this his new album isn’t all that they have to look forward to.

Logic has showed a passion for cinema over the years in various interviews, often discussing his love for Quentin Tarantino films. He’s also developed a rep for being quite the comedian over social media channels like Snapchat. Naturally, putting 2 and 2 together, Logic has announced that he’s in the process of creating a comedy movie. Similar to Ice Cube and his Friday movies, Logic has already written a script and began shooting in a film which he stars in. The movie will be about a record shop and also include famous SNL comedian Pete Davidson.

So he’s a rapper, a film producer… What else could this man possibly do? How about write a novel? No really, he’s also in the process of writing his own book. While not many detail have been shared about it so far, Logic announced in a recent interview that he has completed roughly 80% of a novel he’s been writing in his spare time. He has announced that this book will be about mental health, and has also shared the first chapter title, “The Beginning of the End.”

So that has to be it right? There is no way that one man could possibly fit anything into his busy life, right? Wrong. The self proclaimed “gaming-nerd” had developed his very own gaming channel on Youtube. The channel itself has almost 500,000 subscribers with 20 videos that Logic has posted in the past 6 months. Here he shares videos of anything from gameplay on various video games, to him goofing around with his friends and family.

I may have a little bit of a bias, but I find it hard to not acknowledge how talented this guy is. Even in his spare time he remains busy with so many other creative projects. To top everything off, he is happily married and the “father” of 2 dogs (which he constantly expresses his overwhelming love for.) It may just be me, but I have to say that I admire a man with the ambition that Logic has.

The Come Up

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“The come up,” is referred to by many musicians as their rise up to stardom. This is exactly what Logic was experiencing going into the creation of his first studio album, Under Pressure. Having already established a wide fan base and a great deal of media hype, the rappers debut album was highly anticipated by fans and the rap community. This was only amplified through the release of 2 singles before the album was released, featuring already famous hip hop musicians Big Sean and Childish Gambino. The album saw instant success upon its release in October of 2014 selling 70,000 copies within its first week.

Having personally listened to the album the week it was released, you can honestly hear the time and effort put into developing the album. Logic has opened up about the album since its release, explaining that it primarily focuses on his rough upbringing in Gathersburg, Maryland. Various songs including “Gang Related” and “Growing Pains 3” describe the life of gang violence and drug abuse that he witnessed as a youth, and how it personally molded him into the man he is today.

As far as the composition of the album, Logic has expressed on multiple accounts his gratitude for the opportunity of working with the legendary hip hop producer, and his personal mentor, No I.D.. He references this in various lines of his album, describing how he grew looking up to people like him, yet now is working with him as a peer.

The title itself, “Under Pressure,” reflects the struggles that Logic was enduring throughout his personal life at the time of its release. While not only facing heavy criticism as a “white rapper,” he also took a metaphorical approach to the album. He cleverly has claimed that “Under Pressure” is the diamond of all of his projects, and diamonds are created through immense amounts of pressure.

Having officially made a name for himself with his first album, Logic came back a year later with his sophomore album, “The Incredible True Story.” If Under Pressure was the album that brought upon his rise to stardom, The Incredible True Story propelled him into the stratosphere.

Having already created several projects depicting his personal life, upbringing, and ambitions, Logic took a completely new approach to his second album. The Incredible True Story is based around a fictional story created by Logic, telling the tale of a group of individual’s journey to another planet after Earth has been destroyed by nuclear fallout. The album itself contains 13 songs where Logic describes the crews journey in the complicated plot line, with 5 mini scenes in between them depicting the personas of the crew. The album ultimately ends with the group’s voyage finally making it to a planet with similar conditions to Earth, known as Paradise.

Inspired by Quentin Tarantino films, Logic’s story based album was once again met with rave reviews. Outdoing his first album, The Incredible True Story 118,000 within its first week and was met with a world-wide tour. All 44 of the American tour dates sold out, and the album itself reached number 1 on the billboard charts. After years of blood, sweat and tears, Logic had undeniably reached stardom.

The Birth of Young Sinatra.

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It is common for musicians to pull inspiration from other people, places, or things. With that being said, one of the most influential figures in the past century of music has been Frank Sinatra. The music artist sold more than 150 million records worldwide over the course of the 20th century and his music is considered to be timeless to many. With this in mind, up and coming rapper Logic eventually created and adopted the alter ego of “Young Sinatra.”

Starting out, the young rapper aspired to form a music group similar to other famous artists like Wiz Khalifa and Mac miller. As his career began to take off, he looked to create something to fit his own persona. After much deliberation, he started considering his infatuation with Frank Sinatra. He describes how he not only loves the music Sinatra created, but also the vibe and honor that surrounds him. He marvaled at the level of respect that surrounded him, and the fact that everyone wanted to shake his hand when he walked into a room. “I wanted to be that dude and bring that to hip hop” Logic claims.

With this in mind, Young Sinatra was born. The fictional character served as an alter ego to Logic, just as other musicians had previous done such as Slim Shady to Eminem or HOV to Jay-Z.  Going even beyond that, Logic took it a step further adopting the name “Rattpack” for his group of fellow artists. The name was based off the 1960’s group (The Rat Pack) of Vegas performers including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. Logic embraced the name following the Sinatra theme, while putting his own spin on the name. He added an extra “t” to the name, creating an acronym for “real all the time.”

With a creative direction in mind, Logic went on to release his second mixtape in 2011 titled Young Sinatra. The 22 song mixtape served as the first installment of Young Sinatra chronology and quickly received rave reviews from publishers, including XXL magazine. The mixtape has been downloaded over 500,000 times on popular music sites as of early 2016. Going along with this, the popular song’s music video “All I Do” was viewed over one million times on Youtube the week after the mix tapes release.

After the success of his first two projects, Logic released his third mixtape in April of 2012 – Young Sinatra: Undeniable. Logic took a different approach to mix tape regarding the content by focusing on various areas of his personal life, including drug his, his family situation, being expelled from school, and his future. When asked about the direction his music was going in after Undeniable was release, Logic notably explains that fans tend to fall in love with an artist for the sound he/she creates, but often drift away from the artist as they grow more popular and begin changing their sound. What separates him from other musicians is that from day one he was creating a variety of different sounds, making it impossible to change from his original vision.

The success of his third mixtape pushed Logic into the spotlight of the hip hop scene and landed him a nationwide tour through the remainder of 2012.

The Early Life of Psychologic

Everyone loves a good underdog story. All throughout history we are told of heroic tales where unlikely individuals defy all odds to achieve greatness. From classics like David and Goliath, to modern tales like Frodo Baggins and The Lord of the Rings, “long shots” have always been admired throughout society. With this being said, the life of Sir Robert Bryson Hall 2nd (Logic) is no exception.

Just as many aspiring artist start out, Logic was brought up through harsh living conditions. Born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, he spent much of his youth in West Deer Park, where nearly a quarter of the residents lived below the poverty line. Going along with this, Logic was also faced with a tragic home life. Both of his parents struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction, while also witnessing his brothers produce and distribute crack cocaine throughout his neighborhood and even to his own father. Faced with the constant struggles of his personal life, Logic began neglecting school and skipping class, which ultimately led to his expulsion from Gaithersburg High during the 10th grade. Commenting on being expelled, Logic stated that he felt as though the school system had “given up on him.” At the age of 16, this is what drove him to begin actively pursing a career in music.

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He had originally discovered his passion for rap and hip hop music a few years prior to being expelled from school through the movie Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The Quentin Tarantino film (who is still to this day his favorite director) featured a score produced by RZA, a member of the popular rap group, Wu-Tang-Clan. This inspired Logic to begin listening to group, which rapidly developed a passion for hip hop for him. After growing more infatuated by rap music through other artists like The Roots, one of his close friends and mentors, Solomon Taylor, persuaded him to begin listening to instrumental CD’s to write lyrics over. Through doing this, Logic eventually work his way to the stage in 2009.

While doing so, he performed under the stage name “Psychologic.” When asked years later what made him choose this for his name, stated “I just loved this word because it was about the mind and I knew that’s what I wanted my music to consist of; something that really challenges the mind.” This lead him to releasing his first unofficial mixtape, which was titled Psychological – Logic: The Mixtape. Upon the mixtapes release, Logic’s career as a rap/hip hop artist began. Through 2009 he received work as an opening act for famous artist performing in Maryland, including; Ludacris, Method Man, Pittbull, and a variety of other musicians.

He slowly began to develop a following/fan base through performing at these concerts, and worked his way to releasing his first official mixtape in December of 2010, Young, Broke & Infamous. The mixtape received high ratings among critics as well as fans, and was confirmed to have been download over 250,000 times on popular music sharing sites. Through the success of his first mixtape’s release, Logic was contacted by Chris Zarou, the president of Visionary Music Group, and eventually signed to the independent label. Logic has spoken on multiple accounts on how he wanted to sign with a label that was independent in order to obtain success on his own, so that, when he does sign with a major label he would have the authority/credibility to do it exactly the way that he wanted. With his first mixtape in the books and a label now behind him, Logic began his rapid rise to stardom.