Written by Karo Odhomor, Year 9 (2019)
Michael was not the brightest of students in his school, he knew that, and that was the main reason he restrained himself from talking too much as he felt he would embarrass himself by saying the wrong things. The only thing he was good at was rapping.
He decided one day that he should try out rapping knowing fully well that both his parents were doctors and only appreciated academic success. He did however go on to make a song without his parents’ knowledge. Michael had only a few friends in the whole of the college and they were tagged the “dummies”; anywhere Michael would go, he would get picked on by everyone. He gathered some money from his parents to go out to a studio to record a song and managed to do so. After the project was done he was very sure that it would be a song that would go viral in a matter of weeks. Michael, due to his social status, is very pessimistic about people’s opinions on the things he does so he decides not to play it to anyone but to create an anonymous account and post the song there.
As expected the song was doing well but not as good as he expected so he hatched a plan; he would steal one of the popular kids’ phones and send the song to everyone on campus. After he did that he said to himself, “This is my time”. The next day you could already hear people humming to the song and making dance moves to his song. This made Michael very happy but the fact that nobody knew who he was made him very sad. The song had already passed two hundred and fifty thousand plays in just two days of his posting and the identity of the mastermind behind this hit was unknown. Michael decided that he would try his best to break his shell of fear and tell someone in school that he was the one that made the song. He did that, but everyone made a mockery of him as usual and he felt really down but when he was checking around Instagram, he saw a very famous rapper with the name “Gunna” listening and raping his song word for word. Michael decided to send a message to that rapper but as celebrities hardly respond to direct messages, he was not too hopeful.
Two weeks later the song had hit an astonishing 1,000,000 plays on YouTube; you could already see fan remix and acappella remakes to it. He was extremely happy to see how much people loved his song. Finally, this star rapper he sent a message to, replied saying he would be very happy if both of them could work together sometime.
Later, Gunna had a show in Michael’s hometown and Michael was invited as a guest star at the occasion. Once the flyers were out and they saw that Gunna did have a concert and Lil’ 09 (Micheal’s stage name) would be making his first ever performance, everyone was stunned and in a matter of two weeks, the show was already sold out. This was really his time to shine. On that fateful day, he decided to wear a mask and still keep his anonymity in place. In fact he was still being picked on that he was a nerd and wouldn’t go to the biggest show their hometown had ever had but he didn’t let all that go to his head but just had a bit of patience.
On the day of his performance he was backstage when he saw that the stadium which they were performing in was filled up and he could recognise that more than half of the people in his school showed up for the event. It was his time. Everyone was chanting his name so he went out there, broke all the fears he had and gave them the show of their lives. He felt on top of the world. Before he left, he decided to do something no one would have thought he would ever do, and that was to remove the mask that hid his identity from the world. Everyone in the stadium was up on their feet screaming ecstatically. He finally let his fears loose and he deserved the moment. He had already become a superstar as everyone wanted a picture with him; even some of the people that attended his school.
The next day when he arrived at school, he was just stared at, everyone was stunned that he was not telling a lie, and that someone tagged the dummy of the school would become what he had become, a global star.