Where I come from.

I was born in Rochester, New York to a family that immigrated from Ethiopia during revolution time. Born after 9-11 and the becoming of the surveillance state we live in. Born into the internet. Born into the displacement of the human psyche due to whatever that was at the time that I didn't understand.

I grew up on Humboldt Street, right by Henry Hudson 28 School. I grew up going to 48 Camp. I used to spend my days between the blue walls of my room that only attributed further to my sense of depression. Living in the city alone and lonely, traveling across town to the suburbs for school, getting jumped during my day times, being misunderstood intentionally, being projected on because the different pains other people were feeling — they couldn't express them in any other way except violence. Let alone the children. Let alone the adults. Let alone the administrators.

It made me question what it was to be an adult at the age of six, at the ages of seven. I remember when I was one, I said: what the fuck is going on? And I spent my life ever since then trying to learn what the fuck was going on — and what the fuck we could do about it. Because it's cool to know stuff. It's cool to have awareness. But what you going to do about it?

I grew up in between. Not really knowing my place. Not really feeling like I belonged anywhere — split between worlds before I had the words for any of them.

Rochester, New York, yes. But also Ethiopia — because that's where my family is from. I am Ethiopian, and I am indigenous in that right. I spent time on both sides of that line, and the line never closed.

Even time itself was doubled. In one country I had a date. In the other, a different date entirely — a different month, a different year, a whole different calendar measuring my life. So before I could even understand identity, I was being taught that time itself bends depending on whose ground you're standing on. That space and time are not the fixed things people pretend they are. That who you are shifts depending on which sky is over your head.

That's the kind of complexity I grew up inside. And it's why I can't simplify anything for the comfort of people who never had to live between things. Identity, for me, was never one answer. It was a perspective — and perspective only deepens the more worlds you've stood in.

So when I talk about everything being everything, about everything being connected — that's not a saying. That's just what life looked like from where I was born.

Samson Melke Demissie. My father didn't pick those names by accident — and I didn't get to choose them. They were waiting for me before I got here.

Samson — child of the sun. Born of light, built to carry it. The story you already know: a man whose strength lived in something sacred, something he had to protect, something the world kept trying to cut from him. I learned early that the people who carry light get tested for it. That's not a curse. That's the assignment.

Melke — my middle name, the one most people don't hear. The quiet one. The throne, the seat — what holds you up when nobody's looking. The part of me that doesn't perform.

Demissie — destroyer. And before anybody flinches at that word, understand it the way it was given: the one who breaks down what was never supposed to stand. The one who clears ground so something true can grow. You can't build a citadel on rotten frames. Somebody has to be willing to take the frames down.

Child of the sun. The seat that holds. The one who clears the ground. That's not something I decided one day. That was given to me before I had a name for it. My life was predestined in that sense — not in a way that took my choice, but in a way that told me what my choice was for.

Everything I've done since has just been catching up to the names.

The world was running on lies and noise. BS and bullshit, because of the fake performance. The performance of relationship. The performance of connection — rather than the actuality of it. The idea people wanted me to believe in: that we had more connection than we truly had.

To be a child that was alone and lonely, who didn't even think they had a place in the world other than being the world's punching bag. Having thoughts in my head wondering what my purpose was — only to understand through those same thoughts that if I were to not be here, other people would be sad. Which made no sense. Why?

Because everything that has occurred in my life has been something beyond me. It has not just been about me as the individual, Samson Melke Demisse. It's been about the structure surrounding the individuals. The pain. The trauma. The ignorance. The conditioning. The denial. The grief. The complexity that's taken for granted for the stupidity of the simplistic. And I knew this as a kid in elementary school. And I had no space for comfort.

Understanding is the only thing that kept me going when I was young. It forced me to heal. It forced me to work. It forced me to focus on my purpose, and how I could understand and learn more. It made me understand: learning was the best ability I had to understand the network and the connection between everything else. Because everything is everything. Everything is connected. But that was blasphemous to be thinking at that age, before the 2010s even came up. So of course I was going to have hardship.

I was surviving my whole life, moving through that. And the only thing that helped me keep my peace, the only thing that helped me keep my feet on the earth and my eyes to the sky, was creating.

Drawing first — my brothers introduced me to it. Then cardboard swords, structures, shields. Sketches with my homeboys. Writing. Saxophone. Guitar. Football. Boxing. Conversations. Dialectics. Eventually, reading. Creation, expression — that was always the thing that brought me peace.

I graduated high school the year of COVID. Lost so many people through the process of my life and never really knew how to handle my grief. In college I got sick for half a year. Hours of the day to start, feeling like as soon as I put my feet on the ground my spine was splitting from beneath me. Laying right back down. Missing classes. Missing work. People taking it personally — not even my partner at the time knew how serious it was until I was taking breathing treatments at the urgent care.

Gastrointestinal infection to gastrointestinal infection. Cold to flu to strep to walking bronchitis. Pulled my rib cage. Then January 2023 came. The December before, I realized: the reason I'm sick is because I'm in denial. My mind will never break, so my mind decided to make my body break. My spirit said I needed that.

I broke up with my partner. Started healing again completely. Allowed myself to grieve — all the deaths, the loss, the tragedies — finally having the space for it. Because in a society that puts you in a fucking straitjacket, how are you ever supposed to breathe? So I did.

And in February 2023, I had an experience. After that, I knew then and there: I'm done. I took the time to heal through the experience. Because all most people know things like that for is stigma — let's get drunk, let me dissociate from reality. But I never had the relationships that gave enough of a fuck for me to connect in the ways I knew existed. So through the course of my life, I was believing in a world, seeing a world within myself, that I never saw anywhere else but knew had to be real.

March 5th. My boy JonyRay let me on a song. I came in there upset about everything. I said: make me a fucking beat. I wrote my first song, Time. After that, that was history.

I got to my fourth song, Black Jester's Revolution, in July of 2023, and realized — man, this helps me get the rage. It helps me get the grief. It helps me communicate these emotions. I don't care what I have to learn. If it helps me heal, it's going to help the next person heal. I don't care what the quality is right now because I see the end goal. That was the first time I fully committed to something I truly wanted.

Sublime Pr1me literally came out from the dirt. A flower that decided to grow in a dark room — through the concrete, through the mud, through the bullshit, through the fire — and yet still rose, like a phoenix.

I chose Sublime Pr1me because the best way to give love is to give nothing in return — or to expect nothing in return while you do give. So Sublime Pr1me exists as a messenger of truth. And has been doing that ever since, regardless of the hardship, with no complaints. Only getting more freedom by the day as these constructs fade.

I grew up listening to revolutionaries. I grew up studying politics, systems, behavior.

Huey P. Newton. Fred Hampton. Angela Davis. bell hooks. Gil Scott-Heron. Kendrick Lamar. Stevie Wonder. Michael Jackson. Kanye West. Marvin Gaye. Frantz Fanon. James Baldwin.

These are the people I grew up on. I grew up critical to film, critical to the world around me, because of the experiences I'd had. I've grown to not regret anything I've done, anything I've been through — because I understand the experiences that I had through the course of my life, that I will continue to have, are only building me to have the capacity to do what I have to do.

Piece of Peace is only an extension of all of that. It's a holder. A tree that allows the branches of those seeds to exist as we plant them inside this citadel.

Because that's the only way anything ever changes — through planting seeds. Through little pieces of the bananas given. Because no one appreciates a tree unless they feel like they've grown it.

Piece of Peace exists in order to help people recognize that we broke this world down together — whether we were here in these bodies or not. And we're only going to build it back up together. From that, your piece of peace will always have significance and meaning in this world that is devoid of that meaning. A world that wants to believe nothing matters.

So who is this for? You know it's for you.