After leaving Def Jam and a long hiatus, he released the EP Forever and a Day in 2019. The album was followed up by This Thing Called Life in 2015. Alsina then his debut studio album Testimony in 2014, after garnering success from the Platinum-selling singles " I Luv This Shit" (featuring Trinidad James) and "No Love" (featuring Nicki Minaj). He released his first mixtape The Product in 2012, followed by The Product 2 and his debut extended play (EP) Downtown: Life Under the Gun in 2013, the latter released under The-Dream's Radio Killa Records and Def Jam Recordings. (born September 3, 1992) is an American singer, rapper, and songwriter from New Orleans, Louisiana, formerly signed to Def Jam Recordings. 12 issue of Billboard.August Anthony Alsina Jr. This story originally appeared in the Dec. Listen to August Alsina and other artists featured in this week’s issue of Billboard. Me? I’m just able to channel that through my music.” “It sounds like a sob story, but it should actually be inspirational,” he says of his life. Perhaps this is a form of public therapy, and This Thing Called Life represents another opportunity to exorcise the specters that follow him. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Alsina’s art is autobiographical, and derives much of its potency from pain. I used to think that I would fall in love one day - the chances are slim to none now.” “They would rather kill you than see you live the life God has given you. “The people that you think are supposed to be there for you and be happy for you - instead they want to tear you down,” he says. Earlier in November, his mother, with whom he is not on speaking terms, took to social media to criticize Alsina for airing the family’s dirty laundry. In late October, Alsina tweeted a screen capture of a text message from a cousin who suggested Alsina played a role in his brother’s murder. His family remains a source of turmoil, too. “I’ma keep squinting until God takes my vision completely.” “I went back to the doctor recently and it got worse,” he says. He had surgery in an attempt to correct his vision, but his sight is still deteriorating. “That’s how you think when you’re ignorant to the situation.”Īugust Alsina Wakes From Three Day Coma Following Onstage FallĪlsina’s personal woes continued despite his subsequent career successes. “It’s like, ‘Man, this shit f-ed up my life, so I’ma f- up someone else’s life,’ ” he says. He returned to New Orleans and sold drugs for pocket change. His vocal talent was obvious, but reality interfered the laptop was pawned off, and later on, at age 16, he was kicked out of the house by his mother. When Alsina was a scrawny teen in an oversized baseball cap, he began uploading videos to YouTube in which he covered songs by Lyfe Jennings and Musiq Soulchild. The shit just make you coldhearted, to be honest.”Īugust Alsina Cancels Brooklyn Bowl London Show, Citing Medical Reasons “Of all my childhood memories, I don’t have any good ones,” says Alsina. The family moved to Houston in an attempt to escape the claw of drugs, but it didn’t help.
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One day there would be lights, a TV on the wall and furniture in the living room. Both his biological father and stepfather were addicted to crack, and the household his mother attempted to glue together was shredded by instability. I come from nothing.”Īlsina was raised in Kenner, a New Orleans suburb, and his childhood was not a happy one. “I came up in the 504 where the block stay hot/And the hot boys all tote Glocks,” he sings on “Shoot or Die,” his remix of Justin Timberlake‘s “Suit & Tie.” “How I came up is deeply rooted into my music,” says Alsina. He makes conventional R&B in a sonic sense, but lyrically, he’s like a New Orleans narcocorrido. There is a desperation to how Alsina sings - not out of yearning for the affections of a woman, but from a hard life. All this crazy shit didn’t happen to me just to happen.” “I know that all of that has got to be for a reason. On top of that, in 2014 he was hospitalized for seizures that he blames on exhaustion. “I can see her,” he says, “but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what she looked like.” You take that for granted, waking up and being able to see.” He points toward a woman in a booth 15 feet away. “I was like, ‘This n–a tripping.’ I went to see a few other doctors, but that was it - I had to accept it,” he says.
He describes how a doctor told him that he had a degenerative eye disease, and that it was steadily worsening. In May, Alsina revealed that he is going blind.
August Alsina onstage at WAOK Car & Bike Show in 2014.