‘I just feel like a person’: Milwaukee rapper with cerebral palsy dreams of performing on stage

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — For twenty-four-year-old Milwaukee native Jaquawn Gaston, rap music is greater than only a beat and a few rhymes.

“My music is my all the things,” Gaston mentioned. “Each time I am doing my music, I simply be at liberty; like I do not really feel like I am in a wheelchair or like I’ve a incapacity.”

Identified with cerebral palsy, Gaston is bodily confined to his wheelchair. Psychologically, there’s nothing that is holding him again.

“I accepted early in life that that is my situation,” Gaston mentioned. “I’ve to make the most effective out of what I am put in.”

Within the bed room of his Milwaukee condo, Gaston, higher recognized within the music business as Rap J, will discover a beat he likes and begins to piece collectively strains.

“In case you have the mindset that you will be actually nice at one thing, you then might be nice,” Gaston mentioned. “I’ve simply sort of all the time had a constructive mindset to all the time maintain pushing by way of any challenges that come, and to show individuals flawed about me.”

His hours of dedication to his music, one thing he is practiced for 18 years, has led to the discharge of two albums and over a dozen songs. His music serves as an outlet for a younger man who refuses to let the world win, even when his again is towards the wall.

“I’d love to offer credit score to my mom. She not too long ago handed,” Gaston mentioned. “My mom and my grandmother. They each meant the world to me, and so they just about raised me with the mindset that the world goes to maintain shifting regardless, so you must put your greatest foot ahead and something you place your thoughts to is feasible.”

The lack of his mom, Tracy, proved to be a tricky time for Gaston. He felt misplaced and trapped. Nonetheless, one factor remained fixed: his love for rap.

“Shedding my mother was and nonetheless is among the hardest issues, if not the hardest problem, that I’ve needed to overcome,” Gaston mentioned. “Shedding my mother was like the entire inspiration behind my latest album. I’d simply play beats and take heed to them, and it has sort of helped me maintain going and push by way of it.”

Alongside along with his musical assist, Gaston has the assistance of shut mates, together with his caregiver, Wanda Webb.

“it has been magical simply watching him develop as a younger man right into a younger grownup,” Webb mentioned. “Simply watching his willpower; him by no means giving up.”

Like Gaston, Webb has skilled private tragedy with the lack of her mom and her son. She says caring for Gaston has been as a lot assist for her because it has for him.

“Assembly him gave me a number of energy. It made me overcome a number of grief that I used to be carrying on as a result of I nonetheless had anyone to take care of,” Webb defined. “Someone younger, anyone nonetheless to encourage, anyone that regarded for me every single day, anyone that counted on me every single day. I nonetheless discovered that in him once I got here right here every single day.”

5 and a half years later, Webb continues to behave not solely as Gaston’s caregiver, however J Raps largest cheerleader, persevering with to encourage him to proceed making music and to attain his dream of someday performing in entrance of a dwell crowd.

“He’s very gifted and he is sticking to his expertise and his dream, and that is what he needs to achieve success at,” Webb mentioned. “I believe that he will go, I believe he will go very far with it. I believe he will meet a number of his expectations; I actually do.”

It is a dream Gaston is set to attain, it doesn’t matter what sort of curveballs life throws at him, together with the current breakdown of his electrical powerchair, forcing him to stay in his condo. Nonetheless, it would not’ trouble him.

“Whenever you’re youthful and the chair breaks down, it is like the tip of the world. Being on the age I’m now, I perceive that chairs are going to interrupt down,” Gaston mentioned. “The whole lot man-made breaks down. I do know that I can not break down as a result of if I break down, nothing good is ever going to return out of something.”

It is that inspiring perspective that he hopes to share with the world, one tune at a time.

“I simply need to present the world like, ‘Hey, I am right here and that I am going to by no means stop. I am going to by no means surrender.’ If I can do it, you are able to do it and we can all obtain our desires collectively,” Gaston mentioned. “That is my largest dream, is to unfold that message to the world.”

A GoFundMe has been arrange by mates of Jaquawn Gaston to present him with a brand new electrical wheelchair. These fascinated with donating can do so right here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/jaquawn-wheelchair-fund?+share-sheet&&