Segment: Read The Fine Prints - Music Deals and Masters I Don't Fully Own

What if the biggest difference between people who build sustainable creative careers and those who burn out isn't talent or opportunity, but understanding early that survival requires adaptability, that childhood trauma can become your greatest strength, and that seeing the world differently from everyone around you is not a curse but your secret weapon? In this raw and deeply personal episode of Konnected Minds, we sit down with Kiti, an Afrobeats artist who reveals the uncomfortable truth about growing up everywhere and nowhere, never staying anywhere long enough to make friends because his mom was in a bad situation and they had to keep moving, why he never had a home where he grew up but was always the outsider trying to play football with kids in the park or join games at the game center, and why moving from St. Anthony's to Great Lamptey Mills and back again meant he missed two important years of growing up with his friends and became a stranger to the very people he once knew. He breaks down why his mom is undoubtedly undisputedly the best cook in the world and has ventured into hairdressing, pastries, cooking for funerals and weddings and corporate lunches, why they kept moving because she was in a marriage that didn't work out and as a stepchild she always thought about him and his little brothers, why his dad died when he was seven before he could even form thoughts to appreciate what fatherhood looked like, and why his early memories of his dad are just being a stubborn child and being punished but also remembering him as the life of the party who loved life and kept the family together organizing things for everyone to come together. But he also confronts the burden of growing up too fast. Why on his dad's side he had four siblings and on his mom's side he was the first of three boys, why in all the moving around his two younger brothers were toddlers and because of what his mom was going through he had to play a part time role of a mom bathing them changing diapers feeding them rolling them around until they fell asleep, why looking back it doesn't make him feel good but he's blessed to have gone through those experiences because as a child he just wanted to be a child and play Konami and Sega and Mortal Kombat but he recognized very early on what his reality was and had to step in and do what needed to be done to support his mother. He reveals why he didn't know what fighting looked like and just accepted his reality and dealt with what life gave him, why it's crazy that he is actually the person he is today because his worldview at a very early age was boxed into his reality, why it's an amazing phenomenon that he's become one of the most open minded and easygoing people you'll ever meet but he has no idea where that switch came from, and why maybe he needs to do a deep deep deep deep deep triple platinum deep dive into his psyche to understand where the switch came but as it stands now he has no idea. But he also shares the survival mentality that shaped him. Why he survived everywhere and if you put him in Taekwondo he will beat Black Masters, if you put him in football he will survive, if you put him in athletics he will survive, if you put him in art and painting he was one of the best, why he used to paint draw play football run sing rap and put him anywhere in the world anywhere in life he will come out better than the people that are supposed to be the bosses there, and why he doesn't write off his early realities because as much as they had negatives they shaped him into who he is today. He explains why his outlook on the world is quite different from a lot of people around him, why when everyone looks at the same thing he sees something different, why we're all looking at the same thing but he's looking at the hues of blue and how it dissolves into lighter shades, and why he doesn't think he's better than anybody but his perspective and his outlook on life feels quite different from most people around him. But we also dive into the record deal conversation. Why when he found out he was going to be a father it made him feel scared, why they called him to a family meeting asking if he was serious about music and whether music is what he can do to one day put food on the table for his family, why when he got the first invitation to get a record deal he didn't think about the numbers involved and didn't care about the money aspect of it, why he doesn't own all of his masters and to go into detail about that conversation would require diving deep deep deep deep deep deep so he'll leave it here, and why looking back he wishes he read the fine prints but he didn't and now he'll deal with the consequences of not reading them. He confronts the brutal reality of the music industry. Why the music industry is a wild wild place and he's telling us for a fact that if he didn't have the passion for what he's doing by year five he would have hung his mic and called it a day, why sometimes...