ORLANDO, Fla. – From age 11, Slim started writing rhymes for birthdays — mimicking the patterns he heard from rap songs flowing out of the radio.
“I didn’t know what 16 bars was,” Slim said. “Whatever the length of the verse was from whatever artist I was listening to, I made mine similar and then I would count the lines and there would be 16, that’s how I learned to write.”
Little did Slim know this was the beginning of his musical journey. His path was not always clear or defined in music, but his heart drove his passion. It wasn’t easy.
“Nothing was really going together,” said Slim recalling when he was in elementary school and had to move to Atlanta.
“I was one of those kids, you know, came from a single mom, one of five kids, always in trouble getting kicked out of school going to juvenile detention. The only time I wasn’t in trouble is when I was writing music,” Slim said.
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After his last trip to juvenile detention as a teen, the judge told Slim if he ended up back in that court, he would go to boot camp. Slim left detention and never looked back knowing that in order to be successful he had to stay out of trouble.
Fast forward, Slim, now 17 years old, is back in Central Florida. Opportunity was knocking at his door. Through mutual friends, Slim wrote his first R&B song for a group of producers and instrumentalists based in Tampa known as J.U.S.T.I.C.E League. After writing a song for Colione, Slim says he felt confident he could write songs for a living.
By 2019, Slim had written plenty of songs and caught the attention of one record executive he always wanted to work with.
‘Growing up in Atlanta, I always wanted to meet L.A. Reid,” Slim said. “He was signing everything from Outkast to T.I., TLC, all these people, so when I was young my dream was to meet and work with him.”
He ended up doing just that.
Hear more on his journey and what led him to writing for record executive L.A. Reid, the work he did with rapper Rubi Rose, and what he’s doing now on the latest episode of Riff On This.