You’ll likely know Miami-born singer-songwriter Marquise Fair from his stint on American Idol. What might come as a surprise, however, is learning that he’s from a violent ghetto where a career in music would have seemed the goal of the delusional. In this Emerging Headliner interview powered by JBL, Fair reflects on escaping the ghetto, participating in American Idol and risking it all to make music in Switzerland.
“Before I moved to the ghetto when I was 12, I had never experienced much of anything,” Fair admits from his home in Hallandale Beach, Florida. “I had a very sheltered upbringing. I wasn't allowed to have friends, I wasn't allowed to watch cable. I wasn't allowed to go outside my gate. I wasn't allowed to do almost anything but go to church and watch Disney movies. Then I moved into the ghetto.”
With not much life experience and having lived a very sheltered existence, Fair suddenly found himself living with his mother and brothers in subsidised housing in Miami, going from three meals a day and a stable environment to going hungry and feeling unsafe.
“It was overwhelming,” he reflects thoughtfully, adding that music was the only thing that kept him out of trouble. “I was fairly angry every day. I had never experienced being enraged every single day; I was mad at my circumstances and mad at what I had to go through just to go to school. Every day I had to walk. I didn't have money.
"I went from getting three meals a day and a ride to school with everything I needed to be successful, to no ride to school, no three meals a day. Now I gotta walk to school. I don't have no money in my pocket. I can't even eat. So I was pissed off at that, but at the same time I had to deal with all these aggressive people who were mad at me because I'm smiling, or because I sing.
“Picking up an instrument is not something you do in the ghetto,” he stresses. “Nobody has an instrument. It's just not a thing. We play football in my neighbourhood, and if you're not playing football, then you're probably going to end up in jail or selling drugs or something, because that's pretty much the way you make it out, unless you work for the government or go to the army or something like that.
"Those are the options for the kids in the ghetto. They're not really prepared to be successful in society from a young age. They're being prepared to be either in jail or playing sports.”