#HBD: JLC

Name: J3rm@!ne L@m@rr C0l3

Birthdate: 1/28/1985

Location: Worldwide via Fayetteville, NC ✈️

Why they feelin' The Sting today:

From a recently submitted tip #LOL, just kidding, my babies.

Today's post is in honor of one of my seemingly trillion+ BDs: The one... The only...

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...Mr. J3rm@!ne C0l3, everybody 👏

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This man's been hustlin' since infancy, it seem like. My earliest memories of J3rm@!ne are of a goofy, smart lil kid who was always quick with the wordplay.

That's the #1 way to Daddi's heart, kids, is having the ability to *READ* (not just words, either) & run amok with the English language. 

It's so *very* many words outchea to describe the nonsense of our lives; why not hip the masses to the joys of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)?

J3rm@!ne & I were always of that same mindset, of elevating people's understanding of the world from the viewpoint of two city kids with nothing much to lose.

I grew up admiring J3rm@!ne kinda like an older brother--in fact, he is one of my older brothers through our shared dad, Er!c 😬

Please believe me when I tell y'all, though, that it was never 'weird' or 'iñç3$tü0üS' between us... Maybe it's the sheer number of siblings & relatives in general that I have (that's 1 billion+ & growing, for those in the back seats), but loving a dude like J3rm@!ne always made perfect sense, at least to me 🤷🏾‍♀️

It wasn't until high school that I started seeing Big Bro as *way more* than the goofy lil smarty I'd see at family functions & whatnot.

As an ~artiste~ who *very* much uses his real life as inspiration for his art, I guess one could say J3rm@!ne felt the same way 😳

It became something of a running joke in our family, to expose J3rm@!ne to all types of wild a$$ life situations & see if & how it manifested in his freestyles, haha.

Flash forward to present day & ol' boy has an entire *CATALOG* of songs rife with hidden meanings & inside jokes... it's genius-level, for real! 🧠✨

Anyways. Around the time we graduated college, J3rm@!ne was suddenly being recognized as a Multitalented Somebody™ by folks outside of our immediate group of friends & fam.

...And some really big names were starting to take notice 👀

I still remember how excited (& then *immediately* blown, lol) J3rm@!ne was when he passed his first mixtape off to one of my 11 (!!!) biological dads: J!99@ Man, himself 🤩

J!99@'s outward reaction was... less than enthusiastic, I guess, at least at first. Dad gets passed hella mixtapes & demos in his day-to-day, so I get it.

Really, Dad had to temper his *own* excitement at lil J3rm@!ne's sheer & undeniable talent--I imagine it was like finding a diamond in the rough 💎

But please don't let pre-fame J3rm@!ne in on this observation, cuz ol' boy would've literally d!3d, y'all, having *THEE* J@Y Z33 as a fan! 💀⚰️🥀

As everyone now knows, the rest is hip-hop history 😎🎤🎶

I could post on & on about J3rm@!ne & just how much he means to me--& so many others, by now--but there's only so much time in the day.

So I'll end this post as I typically do... that is, with the utmost honor & respect ✊🏾😜 ::snickers::

J3rm@!ne C0l3, n!99@:

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#HBDwh0re!!! 🥂

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