Starting Life At Minus Zero Mel Carter

[Music]

so i came here to talk about something

called

minus zero minus zero has nothing to do

with the weather

it’s really kind of like how i started

my life

and how most inner city kids started

their life

and i didn’t realize it until i was an

adult

and i got a little bit of success and i

realized

how far i came from and i wasn’t just

i didn’t have a level playing field

i grew up in a neighborhood where you

could get shot

walking outside i grew up in a

neighborhood where

everything was just up friends

killed friends

sometimes we ain’t got no lights

sometimes we ain’t got money for food

so i looked at it like damn i’m not even

starting at zero i’m starting it

minus zero and all the things he just

said i accomplished was even so much

harder because

i started at minus zero and i kept going

with that

kept going with it minus zero every time

i would go speak somewhere i would say

minus zero minus zero and i feel so good

that i accomplished something that came

so far

and i went back to my country where i

was born in trinidad

and i was sitting in a group with about

five kids

and i was telling my mind a zero story

and i said you know i grew up this way i

grew up that way things was bad some

days we ain’t have food

and kid said to me he said

damn your minus zero sounds like a plus

ten to me

and i was like what what you mean by

that

and he said some days you ain’t have

food every day i gotta scramble for food

i’m 16 and i’ve been shot

one of my friends got killed last week

and i’m now i think he was maybe in the

10th grade he had lost about four

friends

mother died father died

and damn my minus zero story just kind

of became like

maybe right maybe i did start at plus

so i started just looking for people

meeting people everywhere i traveled

started thinking about like kids in

haiti kids in africa

kids all over the world and i wanted to

hear a

minus zero story and i met a lot of

people and heard a minus zero story

and unfortunately i heard a minor zero

story as an adult

and they was still at minus zero

and that’s when i realized how hard it

was

to get out from minus zero

and very few people do it

very few people do it just like

there’s a whole another crowd that

started plus ten

there’s some rich kids started plus ten

started plus five and very few of them

end up homeless end up on drugs

end up in jail end up getting shot

very very few of them because they

started at plus 10

and when you start so high most of the

times it’s so hard to fall down

so when you start so low most of the

times

it’s so hard to go up

so i just really wanted to come and i

wanted to make this short

and kind of remind everybody that we all

got a minus zero story

and no matter what you feel like

sometimes your minus zero story

is somebody else’s plus ten

and that’s really all i came to say

tonight