When people ask me why I go by the name Cloud, I jokingly say, “Because I’m white, soft, and fluffy!” All jokes aside, I’m getting fan-mail of people saying, “You’re a Christian rapper, yet who are you and what you represent?” Because of this I want to share my story with you. I was born in 85 and my biological parents split when I was 2. I lived with my dad. He was abusive, and even though I didn’t have it as bad as other people, the state took me away from my dad when I was 8 for the abuse. I went to live with my mom. It was this time I first heard about Jesus, but I didn’t understand what grace was, and the bible seemed kinda boring, except for the action packed books about King David and stories of Samson, etc. When I became a teen I grew not to really care about Jesus, and walked in my own way. I was your typical geek in high school, I was popular, but not in a good way. I was the official loser and everybody knew it! I was intelligent, but I never did my homework and had poor social skills. Eventually I dropped out of high school and got a job at a pizza place. When I was 17 my life changed permanently, I became a schizophrenic with full blown voices and I saw things that weren’t there. I was delusional, and left everyone I knew and became homeless because my voices told me to. I lived on the streets, completely insane and started using drugs to cope with my head. Eventually I called my mom who had no clue where I was for a long time, and she flipped! She picked me up and took me to a mental hospital, and eventually I was in a group home for the mentally ill. Yet meth was all I cared about and it showed, being kicked out of group homes until I had run out of options. I was sent to live in a half-way house for addicts with voices on full reel. At that time in my life I was a devil worshipper. I hated God. I thought it was his fault I had a messed up life, I thought that some people were just born to be objects of punishment and hatred from God, and other people were born with “good lives” and followed God because they didn’t know the reality of this world, and how bad it was. I listened to satanic music, read satanic books, dabbled in demon worship, and despite the pleading of my Christian mom, I didn’t even care. It got so bad where I was contemplating which Christian Church in the city I lived in I was going to burn to the ground. Yet even though I went out of my way to make Christian’s lives more terrible, all I wanted more than anything was to die and rot in hell. Looking back now I realize it wasn’t that I wanted to die, I just didn’t know how to live. One day at the halfway house a pair of young Christian men came to have a bible study, because they felt God had called them to minister to the people society gave up on, and they invited me to a bible study. Being a devil worshipper I immediately accepted, after all it was my duty to show them how pathetic their “Jesus” was, and be emotionally re-assured in my faith at how judgmental these “Christians” would be in condemning me. For the first half hour of the bible study I laid it thick on them. I barraged them about how uncaring their God was, and what he did to me! I expected them to jump up and yell, “HEATHEN, BURN IN HELL”, and thus reassure everything I thought Jesus represented. Boy was I in for a surprise! They were compassionate, they cared, they did what I thought no one could do my entire life; they loved me, a schizophrenic, satanic, junkie. They treated me as an equal. They re-assured me that there was a God that cared about me. After that hour long bible study I was rocked to my core. Everything I thought Christ was had changed in an hour! Within a week I was saved, I ditched the satanic books, the satanic music; I craved Jesus and finally understood what “Grace” meant. The bible was no longer boring and outdated, it was fresh and exciting! It wasn’t very easy for me at first. Voices in my head were satanically influenced by my own previous beliefs and I remember that for the first six months of being a Christian when I went to church and tried to sing praises to Jesus I would feel deep hatred for myself, because I had programmed my hatred for Christians so deeply. But with help from people in my life who invested in me, like my praying mom and a wise step-dad, I slowly got my life on track. I’ve been a Christian for eight and a half years now, and have been clean from meth the whole time. I know life is hard, and as such it’s easy to blame God. Yet from my own experience I know where the other path leads. When I make music, I know I’ll never be able to be a professional doing shows, and dealing with the stress that other people need me to perform so they can eat; with my mental illness I couldn’t last a week in that environment. I make music for God, and if people like it, take it. I’ll never charge a penny. I appreciate everyone’s support and the fan-mail I’ve been getting. In further news I’m about to drop eight more tracks for free download by February 1st, though there’s a small chance it might happen sooner. I really want to thank my friend kylie who believes in me and who faithfully spends hours mixing and producing the music I make for free. I’m blessed to have her as a friend. I encourage you to be unashamed of the gospel, and even if you plant a seed in one person, even if it is a satanic schizo junkie, it affects everyone. Be strong in the faith, fight the good fight. Faith, Family, Friendship, Forever, St. Cloud