We had the good fortune of connecting with Anthony Portillo Williams and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anthony, have you ever found yourself in a spot where you had to decide whether to give up or keep going? How did you make the choice?
Well you could say, and everyone in my circle would argue, that giving up isn’t an option, but I think that’s too blanket of a statement. I think that if everything around you is pointing you in the direction of your desired path, and everything is GOOD for you and to you, then you should keep going. Everything being people, the universe, signs, God if you listen to bro, all that.

Okay so example, if you love alcohol, and all of your friends like alcohol, then everything in your world would probably lead you to keep going in that direction, and because alcohol is a great distraction from reality, because it releases dopamine for some people, then you’d WANT to go down that path, as messed up as that might be. In this scenario you’re not thinking of the fact that alcoholism ruins peoples lives all the time, you just want to be distracted, and your friends want you distracted so that you can accompany them in that place of misery. With that being said, your desire to stay blissful while you neglect your responsibilities in life is bad for you because it will almost certainly lead to your demise, and that’s bad for you. So you can see how some things are fantastic to give up for your well-being.

Contrast that with music, for me, for a moment. Music is therapeutic for me because it allows me to get stuff off my chest, or to dive into ideas, or to just have fun, but whatever the reason I’m writing it helps me sort out my thoughts, so that’s good. I seem to make music that other people who do, or don’t, also make music say that they enjoy, so that’s positive for them and for me, for them they get entertainment or something deeper depending on the song, and I get that validation that what I’m doing is valuable to someone other than me. Some of these people can be, and have been people with no ties to me personally, and these strangers will hear a song and enjoy it, and then listen to it again without prompting, so I can turn strangers into recurring listeners. And if I can generate enough recurring listeners via exposure to the right people, or the wrong people, (i.e. haters), that eventually lead me to the ears of more of my people who appreciate what I do, then I can make enough revenue to sustain a decent life, at least, and I can provide for my family, so that’s good, right? So when I want to give up, I think about how people that I respect in the artist space and strangers are both like, “hey! where the music at?” And I think about how I can make money doing something that is therapy for me and that regulates my mood like an anti depressant, because when I’m not focusing on music as hard as I should, I’m in a terrible mental space more so than normal. So there’s that, and then on top of that, with some records I can actually touch other human beings in deep psychological and emotional places, so I always conclude that I HAVE to keep going, even just to stay somewhat sane. Because my being even somewhat sane is exponentially better for my close people and the people I’m yet to impact, if that makes sense? But don’t get it twisted, I want to give up like twice a week :D, but depression and bitterness aside, there’s so much positive that can be done by just continuing to write and record and mix/master music for me, so I force myself to rationalize my way via TRUTH AND POSITIVITY, not delusions of grandeur or what I wish my skill sets were, to the point of continuing down my path. And when I don’t want to rationalize anymore, I just want to, “give up for sure this time,” the universe will force me to see something that makes me start the rationalization process again.

So basically, if you on some bullshit, and you have bullshit people around you, then you should give up and find a new path. But, if you not on bullshit, and have solid people around you who are working through their respective bullshit, (because everybody has some bullshit), and they’re supportive of your path, then you should keep doing that good thing that’s good for you, whatever that might be.

And don’t mistake detours as giving up, or let other peoples perceptions of you having given up because you’ve had to slow down or take the scenic route or hit pause altogether, change your perception of your dreams, or the perception of how attainable they are. Most successful people do a whole lot of shit they don’t want to do in order to create situations where they can invest more money or time into some venture.

And we could talk about signs and stuff like that, but you know what the signs are, the things that you tell a friend or close confidant. It’s usually about something crazy that happened that made you think of this or that, and sometimes you’re delusional and sometimes you’re really seeing a sign, but regardless you know what those are, they are subtle or not so, but regardless they are very specific to your situation and life and stuff, so I won’t dive into that too much, but you know what I’m talking about.

You’re wired with this beautiful harmony of brain and spirit, and those things work in tandem to take trivial things, or very abrupt slaps in the face, and force you to think about some shit that if you would just keep going, then you could be a happier person because at least your life would have meaning. Or, going back to the alcohol thing, the signs would be trying to show you how, if you keep going down this path, some fucked up shit is going to happen to you, or show you what life could be like if you put the bottle down from time to time.

If you resonated with anything you just read in either direction, then please, be real with yourself and do what’s best for you.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Well frankly I’m an extremely pale white passing mixed person, (white, african american, mexican american, and native american), and I say nigga, so I’m immediately controversial, but that’s just surface stuff. And I’m not saying that it’s not a deep issue, and that when people are offended by me that that’s a surface issue, because that offense tends to run very deep. I’m saying that me being multiracial but raised african american primarily, that this is how I happen to exist and my existence is not exactly a deep issue. I just happen to exist and be this light bright with colored eyes, despite not even being 50% white, and that’s some shit I can’t control, so that’s surface. But being mixed, never being fully accepted by any side yadda yadda etcetera, there comes this chip of sorts, that says that you have to strive to be even better than everyone else just to be heard, because it’s so easy for any side of your heritage to write you off because you’re not fully them. So when I was first starting to make music, primarily rap, I wasn’t as polished as I am now, and even talking about being a rapper was so laughable to most people I came into contact with, and that was a real big “fuck you” to my aspirations. But, then I met this dude named Benxiah, and he had been writing for a long time, and he was dropping projects and actually getting paid from his streams and held the respect of everyone who knew him as a person, even if they met him as an artist and not as a regular dude, and I told him I wanted to make music, and so eventually I had to rap for him, because people who do what you want to do seriously, they want to know if you’re serious, so that they can decide if it’s a waste of time to speak with you, type shit. So, I kicked my best written and he wasn’t blown away, but he could see potential. He said that, “if I could say it like I believed it, then they would believe it,” essentially, which may seem like very overrated advice because it’s so simple, but he coupled that with, “you can obviously write, and you picked a good flow, but you have no conviction, but I believe that you believe this about yourself, which is why you wrote it, but you can’t perform it that way yet.” (I think that was slightly paraphrased, but that’s the gist). Basically through conversation and hanging out, he realized intuitively that something or somethings had happened that destroyed my confidence in my being, especially in my being as a young black man, because no matter what you are, if you black, them racist white folks compartmentalize you with the other people that they hate. But he also realized that I wasn’t being a fake person while we were chilling. The problem was that when I wanted to express who I am, was, want to be, whatever, via song, that there was this disconnect between who I was and who I sounded like saying the things I was saying. That person sounded scared, nervous, kinda bitch-made pretty much. Now a part of that was because not everything I wrote was good, and I knew that, but also because I was scared to be myself for fear of offending people, even though my DNA and history would support that my existence would have me as a part of the hated group by the people in power, AND I didn’t want to be disowned by the group of people that have predominately accepted me fully for who I am, (i.e. my fellow black people). So, I worked on finding that confidence fervently, and worked on not caring who is offended by me expressing my true self, and I kept writing and trying different things so I grew as a person and an artist.

And when I became better as both of those things, people started responding better to my music. For instance I did a open mic in San Diego for a crowd of mostly black people, and didn’t think to preface that I was mixed because I had been working on just being and being confident, right? BUT, I said nigga in the song, and it seemed like the people there liked the song still, but were tense because they were enjoying it but couldn’t get behind someone looking like me using the word, and the host/comedian who took the mic from me after the song was over made a joke about a white artist saying nigga, and everyone was looking at me uncomfortably, at which point I let them know that I was mixed, and it felt like everyone breathed for the first time, in unison. That was a real movie moment. And people actually talked to me afterward and said they liked it and all that good shit, so that was positive. That’s also an example of how Benxiah’s advice really made me more into the person/artist that I am now.

So I said all that stuff to say, I think about a lot of stuff. I try and put myself in multiple mind states to attack issues in my brain and with how I’m perceived and all that, and I was always like that, but bro mentoring me and giving me feedback when I was homeless in California and shit like that, kept me on the path that eventually led me to my wife and my two kids and my start up label, to the artists who I work with closely, to people wanting to work with me at all despite being this big controversial picture, to having respect from people that I admire, all that type of stuff. Hell, being on the path and overcoming the roadblock of, “can you be yourself and make this music and have people actually invested in you,” has led me to saving the thousands of dollars to afford my own studio equipment, to wanting to learn more about audio engineering so I can put my music out without having to go to a studio, but it actually sound good, to being good enough at engineering to have people ask me to do it for them, and then seeing them get positive feedback from their music from their fans, thusly strengthening the trust in me as an engineer, to having people wanting a verse from me and their fans saying, “whoever that iMLIKEWATER person was, he was fire,” to just being happy that I’m making music.

And no, it was not easy. It fucking sucked most of the time and it required a lot of hard looks in the mirror and self talk that was harsh, yet honest. It required learning to love myself, I’m still learning to do that all the time, well, practice it at least. It required a lot of cursing God for making me like this and then listening to Him be like, “are you done, are you over yourself yet, you want this advice now?” and then actually trying to put the advice into action. It has required me to let go of relationships that I valued because they were dragging me down, it required me to opt into homelessness when I lived in California, which was a VERY painful but rewarding decision. It required me to take a chance on driving across the country in a fucked up beat down vehicle that barely made it and literally DIED a couple days later, but also extremely rewarding outcome. It required ventures into madness and then coming back willingly to accept responsibility for my bullshit. It’s required me to have jobs I hated, doing things I hated, just to have some income to spend a couple dollars on investing in myself. It’s required me to learn a bunch of stuff that hasn’t been read-once-then-you-never-forget-it type information. It’s required me to ask my wife to believe in me and trust in me to spend lots of money that we could have paid bills with. And I haven’t even seen the fruits, (monetarily), of all of this yet. I’m still in the process for real, but I’m crazy far from where I started, and every song I put out or song I mix and master just makes me feel like the pay off is closer and closer on a physical and spiritual level.

The things I’ve mentioned are pretty much the things I want people to know, and I could delve deeper into all of it, but just a little basic information of my story, and hopefully whoever is reading this can glean something useful about perseverance, honesty with yourself, strong support systems, and about true belief is chasing something that you can only see with your eyes closed, even if everyone that you currently know laughs at you for thinking that this is a good idea. And hopefully you can let go of the people who are trying to kill your seed before it’s had a chance to grow into what it could be if it was watered, and then finding people that will help you water it.

Most people have ideas, and they let other people, or life, society, whatever, tell them that chasing that idea is worthless. I genuinely believe that this happens to most people, and I also think that a lot of people back down from their dreams because of that. But I want to say that the chase is were ALL OF THE VALUE IS, not the attaining of the goal, but the people you meet along the way, the shit you have to burn off of yourself in order to be more of who you need to be to achieve your goals, the trying and failing, and then dusting yourself off and trying again like Aaliyah said, literally makes you stronger, makes you better. Research any psychological study about this sort of thing and the evidence is there, that people who actively try to do things they are afraid of or involve any risk, become stronger as a result of even trying, IF they decide to try again or if they defeat the thing in front of them. And some stuff is a test to see if you’re going to push through or not, that’s a whole spiritual topic, but you can see that physically in anyone’s story who has ever had some shit happen to them that they got through. Not everything is supposed to be easy, or we’d be too weak to actually inherit the thing we wanted, or at least too weak to hold it up once we got it.

And that’s all for now I guess.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I guess it depends on who was coming, but I don’t have a lot friends that don’t live in the DFW area or been around the area enough to wanna get into some new shit. Uuuuh, but there was this bar/arcade spot that was raw af to me in Dallas. But I like video games and they had all kinds, so that was a given, but I’d go there again. There’s some good ass hood chicken spots that if you ain’t from Dallas and have had time to develop a favorite, that they’d enjoy, Williams Chicken was bussin for instance. But I don’t really like going out, it’s actually a decent sized point of contention with my wife and some of my brothers, but I like being at the crib, so if you wanna visit and YOU wanna do some shit, then I’ll go because you’re visiting, but I’m not gonna make an itinerary because I’d rather drink some liquor, cook, and play the game or watch movies or anime or something, talk a lot, catch up, show you some music that’s not out yet. Also my outta town friends make music, so we’d probably lock in to do that. I’m honestly not a very social person, well I’m kind of introverted. I like having long form conversations about any array of topics, but that’s draining, so even if it goes very well and I enjoy it, I get to feeling like I never want to go out again, and that lasts for months. Some of that is by nature and some by circumstance, I’m not scared of the public or anything, I just like being at home.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
You already did Dono400, so I’d like to add Twenty496, he has been a rock for me and I’ve watched him grow into a better person and make better decisions over time and that’s a beautiful thing, also bro makes some very good music and can be VERY insightful despite his nonchalant attitude. He’s given me advice, he’s given me money, he’s given me clothes, he’s helped me stay sane, he’s encouraged me, bro is solid. I gotta mention Benxiah, he’s been my mentor since I started writing, and he’s been my big brother, my dad, my best friend, he’s a fantastic artist and he is so full of wisdom and would do a great job with this long form response thing. He gave me a home in Texas and made me a part of his family when I really didn’t have shit. I don’t know how many more people I can add, but I have a couple more people that do some sort of entertaining or art, and one is Joee Giovanni, this dude has had my back from the moment we met and is one of the most put together and aggressively chasing his goals type people I’ve ever met. He’s an inspiration in that regard and also he raps crazy well and sings so beautifully even though he wouldn’t tell you that, and he was the start of me understanding the team aspect of music and also taught me the beginnings of my knowledge base for mixing and mastering. He gave me a studio to record in whenever I wanted and fed me, helped me with gas money to make it to the studio if I needed it, given me so much game, and just the space to be myself and really grow into my own as an artist. My boy Launch Failure is someone I’d like to mention, bro has taught me a lot about stocks and also is a hell of a writer, he’s not doing his music like that yet, but when he puts out some of the stuff he’s playing with, he’s gonna be dangerous. Also bro gave me a place to stay when I was first getting over my opioid addiction years ago, really been there for me. There are a lot of people who have helped me out or been there for me in a way, like the other people involved in Misfit District Media, my ROCK and my best friend/wife Neptune Nami who does digital art and draws very well, also will have a single coming out next year, my boy Qsflysociety, who streams on Twitch, let me stay at his house when my car was fucked up so I could get to work before we even knew each other like that, and then my guys Krew Chris and Acme, who both do music, let me stay at there place the other week so that I could save money and get another vehicle. Shit my boy KoffeeBlack drove me to the hospital when my daughter was born. I’m just saying it’d be insane to pretend like I got here by myself, downright disrespectful. I have had a shit ton of help, and I’m blessed bro.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imlikewatermusic/

Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WbO0gLO8ANSwMmaC29vOC?si=2yRT0-YuRbSUqPMKMlVtMA https://music.apple.com/us/artist/imlikewater/1546160061

Image Credits
Monique Henderson, DeWayne Jones, Joee Giovanni, Jonathan Moody, Kourtney Jones

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutDFW is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.