What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

The longest commitment I have embarked on. Being a parent has to be the top experience in life that helped me grow the most. I am still strongly involved with my daughter Pearl, who is now eighteen years old and has her own baby girl named Pearl as well.

“I have a father who never has been a dad”

it’s how I feel…

I have been there since she was in her mother’s womb, learning and educating myself on many aspects of parenting, because I had a strong feeling that I would be very responsible for my baby Pearl. After she turned one year old, her mother left and I have been raising her as a single father since then.

Truly, I have much respect for any single parent, mother or father. Also, I have a lot of respect for ALL mothers.  Many many mothers raise their children alone. Yes, there is a man in the house, dad, step dad, g-dad, or for many, no dad. However, the way that many men have chosen to raise their children in this sense of “I bring home the bacon” then sit on the couch or hide somewhere in the house, dodging any responsibility or maintenance of the house, many children have grown up without a dad. And that is why I say that many women raise their children alone.

What experience helped me grow the most

Being responsible for all aspects of my daughter’s life. From feeding her, to clothing her and raising her with my values and beliefs. I believe I had a different idea in parenting. I made quite a few mistakes doing things the way I did. There were many times when I needed a partner to help me. Many times I needed advice.

Being a male parent with a baby girl, I felt that there were entities that were always watching me. From the dangers of having her taken by force to having her taken by legal means, I was always concerned. I felt I needed to work for a corporation that was giving me a steady paycheck and insurance for me and my daughter. While in the corporation, I worked my ass off and learned from any classes the company offered its employees, even if they did not pertain to my “job” of computer aided drafting. Why was I taking accounting classes? I disliked being in an office doing one simple task over and over, even if it was somewhat challenging itself. I wanted to learn anything I could for me to run my own business in the evenings.

Running my own business

Even though I made “good money” doing drafting for an oil and gas company, I chose to spend money and time in my passion of running my own business doing airbrush artwork. I was determined. Determined. Now no one who has seen me raise my daughter from a baby do not question why I do airbrush. Now it is the new generation in the life of the new baby Pearl who have not known me for so long who speak their noise behind me about being independent. They truly want to try to block and crush all my work through the years with my daughter by trying to tell her that being self employed does not make money for her to raise a daughter. What disturbs me slightly is that they attack her and her baby daddy with questions that they do not know how to answer about me, like how much do I make as an independent airbrush artist. But they don’t ask me those questions. They front with their bull about how good of an artist I am.

This is what I have learned and how my experiences helped me grow. I am bold and if anyone dared ask me in an attempt to put me down, will not do it. I have enough knowledge, experience and confidence to respond to any question rationally and honestly. But it was not always that way for me. Most of my single parenting life, I felt like a rebel dad. Not because I was gangster or anything. I did not do what my folks said I needed to do to raise my daughter. I did not let all my daughter’s friends’ parents influence me on how to raise my daughter. But at that time it didn’t feel like a sense of pride for doing what my heart told me. Instead it felt like I was rebelling with everyone still, like it was all my life before becoming a parent. I was always the black sheep. My daughter was made to feel like she was a gray sheep, as she would tell me, born of a black sheep so she must be bad.

Becoming a single parent is the experience in life that helped me grow the most.

#alexairbrushluna

My daughter has always been my love, my savior, my pride and joy. When she was a baby and when I met my true friends that I still keep in touch with, I took her everywhere I worked as an airbrush artist. Andre Roberts, Wilson Tha Real Low G, John Mitchell and Codac Moment to name a few, would see her with me at places where I worked with or for them at that time.

The things that we learned together

When she was like 8 years old or something, I bought an ice cream truck, so she could learn how to manage a business and customers. I would do all the airbrush part of my business and ran the top responsibilities of having an ice cream truck business. But Pearl took all the sales, customers and inventory. Or coarse I helped out and showed her how to do most of the things she needed to do. Most parents who started bringing their kids to the events I was found at, ended up letting their kids help my daughter. So it was almost like playing business people for them most of the time. However, we traveled to all these shows and events where I would airbrush and she would sell ice cream. We went to Corpus Christi, South Padre, Waco, Dallas, Killeen, San Antonio and all around Houston to name a few. But back home and in my daughter’s school, she would be called a liar because we were not involved in the community. Remember, they saw us as black sheeps and gray sheeps because we did not follow standards of being a parent and a kid. So in Spring Branch Houston Texas, we were not known as anything but troublemakers.

As so, we gravitated to Hip Hop music

When baby Pearl became 14 years old, she grew out of wanting to sell ice cream and had so much she wanted to say. She wanted to do music like her idols at the time who experimented with music like #xxxtentacion. She heard some music I did when I was a teenager and said she liked it and wanted to do music too. Trying to get people to hear what we wanted to do and support it seemed impossible. So I just did want I always do. I figured out how to do it ourselves. Then Ed Miles came to the house to stay when we were also hosting our home on Airbnb, or what I have been known to it #Dirtbnb. Anyway, Ed Miles is an excellent producer and musician with genius level of experience from drumming and other gigs who dropped a bunch of jewels on us to play with and learn from in our music career.

…the future of our world getting started

#PearlsBeauty

At this time I was gifted with a great present from the corporation I gave eleven years to. They laid me off and I had the chance to spend much time with my baby girl and hear from her what I could have done better as I was raising her. As I was writing music for her I wrote a very powerful song that many liked on SoundCloud and many more would probably like if it had that kind of play. It was about those moments that both she and I felt as we were going through new chapters in our lives.

How can we capture this place and time

We made music together. We made money at shows together. We traveled to different places and got backstage look at many events. I took as many pictures as I could. I started to because someone gave me advice to take many pictures because it is evidence for anyone who questions you about being her legal guardian parent over her mom. It became natural for me to take photos and videos of those special moments in my life with my daughter. We made music together. We captured time but as the song goes “how can you capture this place and time without a photo or video that you can rewind?”

This song had a high ranking on a song contest sponsored by ASCAP. They said the reason it did not as number one was the last verse that was confusing and people don’t want to feel confused. That is music industry for you. I always thought about it and asked what is confusing. Was it the metaphors and cleaver twist to make the ultimate point that you cannot capture the time in your life, so enjoy it with your children because like Pimp C said, “one day they are here, the next day they gone!” Ain’t that the truth? Eventually they leave the nest.

Trying to find success, I was always on the run.

But don’t go too fast, time waits for no one. That can be confusing I guess. Time doesn’t wait so why are you telling me not to go too fast? Follow your dreams, follow your heart. But let’s be honest, for anyone who is a parent, their child is their heart, or should be. So a parent needs to spend time with their children. Take time to listen to your children. Take time to play the way they want to play. Take time to, like my teacher #BillyCarson said on Bio-Hack your best life, “smell the roses.”

My daughter’s baby Pearl loves to ground and sit in the grass. She wants to experience a moment that she has observed someone else having and she wants to be heard. She is two. This time is so beautiful to capture because she is so adorable. But sometimes I choose to not worry about technology and just spend the moment with her as close to how she wants to imagine it.

So don’t go too fast, time waits for no one…

Sometimes people say they will wait to have children till they are successful. Or when we have children, we are working so hard trying to get things right, that we don’t spend time with our children. If we are moving too fast trying to get things right for the perfect moment, that moment is long gone. Once I have x amount in the bank, or after paying these bills I will have time to spend with them, is the lie we tell ourselves.  So that is what I mean time waits for no one. There is no perfect moment to wait for with your children. They need us now.

But then there is the whole balance of life, right? We also have goals and commitments we made to ourselves. We have to be happy with ourselves as well. So I do not regret being so busy when I was in my twenties. I did the best I could to hold a responsible job, keep my business going while teaching my daughter business as well and still going out at night to make more money painting women. I enjoyed doing bodyart and it came with a lot of perks. My daughter was at my mother’s home asleep safely, or sometimes with Low G and his family at night when I would explore myself and my enjoyment that also got me paid.

No Regrets

From being young and reckless, to getting stabbed, getting stoned and writing poetry to publishing magazines and creating art in many different forms and levels, I have no regrets. All the sexual experiences, relationships and special moments I spent with women conversing about children and growth helped me make the decisions I made as a single father. I was raised by my mother and I have a father who never has been a dad even to this day, who will not take a moment to talk to his all adult now children, and listen to what we have to say to him. So I think I received a lot of the “what not to do’s” from him. Don’t be absent in my child’s life was probably the most important lesson I learned from my childhood experiences. Don’t act like you know everything just because you are older than your children was a real important one I learned from him. Remember, I had to take my experiences and change them, so when I say I learned that from him, its because he did not do those things. He is the “GOD” to his children in his eyes and cannot be questioned or outsmarted, ever! He has a kingdom, a heaven, and if any of his children want to live in his “heaven” we must abide by his rules without question or push from us. Seriously! That is what he believes. So being told by any religion that if I do not follow the rules without question I will not go to heaven, it sounds like my dad and his arrogant rules and ego. Especially after being spanked by a belt while I was on my knees reading a bible. It did not make me believe the bible any more. Ain’t nobody stop this man from beating me while I was on my knees “praying” and reading the word of god. So I have always felt that quote from Tupac “either Heaven or jail is still hell for a hustler!” Why do I want to be “good” to go to a Heaven that will kick me out the moment I question anything. This is all Blasphemy, I know! It is rebellious thinking, I know. You don’t know how many times I listened to 2Pac song Blasphemy from the album The Seven Day Theory, like yeah, I get it!

Troublesome ’96 by Tupac was my theme song and I feel real from the words hit spit when he said “you can take me to heaven and understand I was a G raised in insanity. Or send me to hell cause I ain’t begging for my life!” So any religious person who would attempt to tell me about where I was heading, couldn’t change my mind because I have accepted all my life to be responsible for my consequences good or bad, no matter what. And I have always lived that way and I have chosen to enjoy my life to the fullest the way I desire. But I have followed my heart and did everything I could for myself and my daughter, including almost losing everything so we can all learn to work together and rebuild from the bottom up. Once again, because my daughter and I have went through changes from loses and wins, from high living to low life, from danger to safety and from starvation to eating good. But with new characters, new lessons must be learn, however, we cannot forget the lessons we learned before. I decide that I have to be patient and help the younger generation learn from mistakes and trial and errors, not just dictate what I “know” is right just because I am older. Cheap blow I know, but I was even more direct on my birthday posting “Papaz Song” and saying I was raised by mom and Tupac. It is what it is. Becoming a single parent is the experience in life that helped me grow the most. Doing what my heart, mind and soul lead me to do for myself and my daughter even when it was considered wrong, bad or rebellious back then, is what I learned from all those experiences.

And the next generation…. G-Rated baby!

Now in 2023 most of the content we see as popular content is the content that my daughter and I had been watching the last two years about manifesting and living your best life now, not waiting till death to live, not waiting for retirement to enjoy life. I tell people I am living a G-daddy life. I’m a G. an OG. G-Daddy. It’s me! G-Rated! I live retired. Retired from that life of stress and if we don’t now then in the future or in death bull that they tried programming me with. Escaping the matrix, then learning to work with the matrix and master it.

I’m not a ‘professional” blogger or writer, but I can get paid just the same enjoying the experience of learning how to be a writer in the internet era. Now that artists are getting Picasso money, I am here learning about NFTs and metaverse art galleries, and you can pay me some of that DiVinci money getting thrown around to artists now. I’m learning how to fly, from Airbrushes to Airplanes, and writing my experiences and lessons from it. I enjoy doing it, but don’t do it as my job, career, or have to do it every day in order to be successful. I have a family to live with and experience beautiful life with. I have art to create with my airbrush gun. I have books to read about flying and all its mechanics. So no, I do not take this as a “professional’ career and neither do I chase it as a “professional tattoo artist” or professional other tasks that I enjoy doing. But they are work. They are jobs. They are gigs. I do make money. I am pioneering into new ways to get paid with my skills and ideas. I am a creator and a co-creator. I enjoy it all as I do setting up my daughter for success with her #PearlsBeauty and Pearls Enterprises she is embarking on.

Believe it or not, I have been humbled by my daughter years ago when she was a wee girl selling ice cream and she made about $900 in one day and I barely made two sales doing airbrush barely getting to $100. So we are talking about making this in one event, one day, one scenario. I got beat but I was proud of my daughter and I stand behind my Pearl and her business ideas. I will go under my daughter’s business as #PearlsBeauty and Airbrush when I work for her with pride to work for her. I learned that from Darwin and his family who operate here in Houston as well under Airbrush Bros. I have much respect for their family. I saw the mom and dad, brother and sister all helping Darwin at a gig. I was like, wow this is what I have not seen but knew it was possible, to have true family support. His dad works proudly under Airbrush Bros and I proudly work for #PearlsBeauty and any enterprise she needs me to help her with. Right now she is laying down the foundation to her businesses, like seeds on the ground that have many years ahead of them. You could see them as childish ideas to grown folk businesses that she ain’t ready for. Or you could see it as the future of our world getting started. A millionaire mindset writing down her business plan, ready for the first millionaire to invest in her ideas if she doesn’t make her own million solo first.

“I am your future” from Aggravated

Pearl’s tattoo on her leg came from her connection to the song “I am your future” from Aggravated. And it is real information she is telling the world. She is the future, and we need to nurture and love our future, not put our future down and feed our future negative energy and food!

So my experiences of being a single father helped me grow the most. I stand stout and give my daughter examples of my past to help her make decisions now and in the future with different perspectives. It is funny because I have several forms of her receiving the messages when she is ready. I have them in poetry form and in songs where she spoke the words that will help her with some of her moments. I make these blogs so she can reread them whenever she is ready to read them carefully if she needs to. We still work on projects together and I walk her through many steps on creating her corporation which is leading to Pearls Enterprises.

I am working on Generational wealth for my family. G-Rated! Generations! So when there are critics who talk behind my back and smile to my face, I am not mad at cha, I barely hear ya cause you won’t say it to my face. But my daughter is still a delicate flower growing and desiring the best for herself and her daughter.

Haters will be Haters, baby

So they talk about me even though they live like that and I live like this, They cannot understand the responsibilities that come from living like this when they live like that. It’s okay, that is just what it is and I am on an energy budget. But throwing negative energy towards my daughter and trying to make me look unsuccessful is a challenge in staying peaceful.

I didn’t go through death and came back just to get tainted by someone like that. I feel like “what’s up, yea i’m strapped, say what you gotta say.” I carry myself that way because that is what it is. Ready for whatever. But unless someone actually attempts to physically harm my family, I will chill and keep doing me. But my words to my daughter are that I have been through the same pressure and negative feedback all my life as a parent. All she can do is not let them crush her spirit and wonderful heart. She can tell them what she feels or not, but keep going, she is doing so great. She is going to make a very abundant future and she already is doing it, so do not worry about the haters. Haters are going to hate. And I always tell her what Low G once told me, “the haters are going to be there when you are doing something. If you don’t have any haters then you ain’t doing nothing.”

#AlexAirbrushLuna

I wanted to credit all the music that I posted on this post so G-Rated Magazine made a playlist, in case you want to hear the songs that we connected with, my G-Rated Friends, Inspired Creative Thinkers, and Artistic Fans.