Before puberty came along and dashed my dreams of becoming Bobby Brown (a sober and jail free version), I could sing. Pretty damn well for a kid, if I do say so myself. Even at the age of 8 I was writing songs and singing them in my room thinking one day I could be on stage like the greats -- Michael Jackson or maybe even Vanity. I didn't even listen to my mama when she would say, "Yeah you sound alright, but go do your homework." I knew she was hating and her negative vibes weren't going to stop me.

Nature damn sure did, though. All of a sudden my voice cracked like Mariah Carey after Glitter and hasn't been right since. Damn shame, too, because I really wanted to sing. I still do on occasion. On some days, if I focus really really hard and drink lots and lots of water I can manage to hold a decent note while singing D'Angelo's "When We Get By." I ended up having a throat ache soon after, but that's OK because for those three minutes, I still had it.

But I don't dare try any of this in public. Why? Because I know I would sound like a damn fool. I wish Kanye West could say the same. I understand that he's hurt but I need him to accept that his singing voice could give a dolphin a seizure. Thanks to Auto-tune it works on studio versions, but that's not something one ought to try live.

Now I've been taking up for 'Ye since folks have been giving him a hard time lately for going atypical on them, but either he gets singing lessons, a working vocoder, or a better distractions or he needs to just go back to straight rapping. He's giving us high school talent show. I don't know what kind of high school some of you readers went to, but my shit was hood as hell. I still remember them booing the girl who performed "Amazing Grace" -- and she only got to line two of the song. I can only imagine the reception Kanye would get performing this.