Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mal B. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Mal, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

I feel like the education system often focuses so much on things like test scores and achievement statistics that the real learning often gets neglected. Many times students are told that these test scores and grades are what determines their entire future which cause a lot of stress and anxiety. Students are under the pressure to get certain scores and grades to get into certain colleges and universities often times without even knowing what they want to do as a career. I believe that the education system fails students when they do not teach them about or endorse options such as community college, trade school, or gap years. The education system fails students when they push that the only way to succeed is to have a 4 year degree. Personally, I went to a college prep school and I felt constant pressure to get into a great college and be on the path to a 4 year degree starting in middle school. In my senior year of high school, I truly did not know what I wanted to do after I graduated. My school put every seniors picture on the wall and put stickers of every college they were accepted to underneath. I had no strong desire to go to any college but I continued applying and getting accepted because I felt the pressure to keep getting more stickers. I was at a point where I hated school and was absolutely miserable and depressed. However, no one would know that because I was always at the top of the class and had the highest grades and GPA. From the outside, it looked like I was very successful because success and learning was only measured by the scores. If you looked under the surface though, I was failing. I felt trapped in a system with no options. I had always been into music and the arts but those were never looked at as viable career choices, especially for “someone with my intelligence”. I wound up going to a 4 year university on an academic scholarship and declared my major as Exercise Science. I hated it and was in a very bad place mentally. I changed my major to Multimedia Communications which helped some but I still felt stuck and unfulfilled. I felt like I was still trapped in high school, learning things I didn’t want to learn just to forget them after the test. I knew I could not do that for the rest of my life. Because of the state of my mental health and an opportunity to move to Atlanta to pursue music and acting, I ended up giving up my scholarship and dropping out. Contrary to what the education system would say, that has been the best decision I have made in my life. Long story short, I moved to Atlanta and began pursuing things that actually brought me joy. It wasn’t an easy road or a quick fix by any means. I had plenty of struggle after I made the move but it all has been worth it. I now work full time as a graphic designer (without a degree) and I love every second of it! Now I am not promoting dropping out of college or anything like that, but that is my personal story. What I am promoting is teaching students that there are more options than just going to a university after high school and that there are more viable career paths than just things in fields like science and math. Students will have a more fulfilling life and career if they are able to pursue things that they are passionate about. Sometimes this pursuit looks different from what is “normal” and that is okay!

Mal, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a graphic designer, rapper, and songwriter. People always tell me “You don’t look like a rapper” so I guess that is what sets me apart on a surface level. However, I don’t see this as a hinderance because the gifts that God gives are not confined to race or gender. I know that God has given me a word-smithing talent and that I am meant to use it to glorify God and lead others to Jesus. It has not been an easy road but I know that everything I went through has shaped me into the artist that I am today. I faced so many challenges trying to navigate the music industry on my own strength. I didn’t have a strong foundation and it led to bad situations, deals, and relationships. I was doing things that I had never dreamed I would do just to get a little recognition. I was so isolated and I struggled with multiple mental illnesses to the point that I almost took my own life at the end of 2021. I thought there was no way out but God saved me. The moment I decided to give my life to Him was the moment I began to be able to conquer the challenges that I was facing. I learned that my own strength would never sustain me and that only God’s strength could carry me through. I learned that nothing that I was chasing would ever make me feel like I was enough if I didn’t feel like I was enough without it. I began making music with the purpose of glorify God and reaching others instead of glorifying myself and this is where things started to turn around. God placed people in my life to help me grow spiritually but also as an artist. I learned who I was and that gave me authority to make the right decisions in regards to music. I began to feel accepted for who I truly was and wasn’t changing who God made me to be just so I might gain some popularity. Even still, by the world’s standards, I am not a highly successful music artist. I do not have hundreds of thousands of followers and streams. However, that is not what defines success. Success is fulfilling your purpose and call, knowing who you are, and being in relationship with God. I know that I am meant to use my music to help others by sharing my testimony. I have had so many opportunities to do this and the stories I hear about my songs helping people inspire me to keep going. Since giving my life to God, I have had more music opportunities in the past year than I had in the 4+ years prior chasing a music career. I am currently a part of a ministry called Creatives 4 Christ and we just released an album called “Waging War” which is available on all platforms. I also had the pleasure of doing all of the artwork for this album. As far as graphic design goes, my current job is a true answer to prayer. I work full time for World Harvest Church as the graphic designer. I was praying for a job where I could use my creative skills despite not having a degree and a job where I could serve God and this position give me the opportunity to do both.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is hearing the stories of how my music or art has helped someone. I appreciate all of the people who tell me how much they can relate to my story and how my music or art speaks to their situation and gives them hope. I put all of my life experiences into my art in hopes that anyone who is walking the road that I used to walk can see that there is a way out and that things can get better. God has turned my life around completely. I went from having a list of mental health diagnoses to being free from all of them and finding joy and peace through Jesus. I want others to know that the same is available to them so I love hearing the stories from people about how my music/art has made an impact on their lives. At the end of the day, I don’t see success as having a huge following and becoming rich. I see success in touching people’s lives and pointing them towards God.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I had to unlearn was that my worth and potential was not in my physical appearance. I had to learn that I am enough just the way God made me and that there is nothing that I could change about my physical appearance that would increase or decrease my worth and potential. I spent years trying to live up to an unrealistic ideal that I thought was necessary in order to succeed. I was told that who I was was not good enough and that if I want to pursue the things I was passionate about, then I needed to change. The people that I previously worked with in the entertainment industry were constantly pressuring me to change something. I was told my voice was annoying and I needed to change it. I was told that I didn’t look like an artist and this led to changing clothing, makeup, eyebrows, and ultimately led to me hating what had previously been one of my favorite things about myself, my blonde hair. I wound up dying and cutting my hair in order to fit an “artist look”. Unsurprisingly, no matter what I changed, it was never enough. That was because my value was not based on the outward appearance but on who I was on the inside. I was putting my worth and identity into all of these outward things and they all left me more and more empty. I got to the point where I didn’t even know who I was anymore. In September 2022, I gave my life back to God and rediscovered my true identity. I learned that I didn’t have to change anything about my physical appearance in order to be who God made me and do what He made me to do. It was not an instant change and it is a lesson I have to routinely unlearn and remind myself of the truth when I fall back into the old mindset. It took 4 years, but this year (2023), I began to take back some the things that this wrongly learned lesson had stolen from me. The biggest thing was going back to my natural hair color. It was so deeply ingrained in me that my natural color was not good that I argued with myself for months about dying it back blonde. I wanted to be blonde again so bad but there was a piece of me that was still holding onto the mindset that I was worthless that way. I knew I needed to let it go and do what I wanted to but I was having a hard time doing that. Without knowing my full struggle with the topic at all, a good friend of mine said that if I dyed my hair back blonde then he would die his blonde too. This was the extra confidence boost I needed to finally take back that part of myself. A few weeks later, we dyed our hair blonde together. I was so happy to be able to take back this part of myself that I had lost to the lies that I had been believing.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @malbmusic
• Facebook: facebook.com/malbmusic
• Youtube: youtube.com/@malbmusic
• Other: Waging War on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/69KZyZCUbMhT88AYXU4my7?si=wDSgnlDpQG27HDt1M68UOw Waging War on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/waging-war/1708401264