It was all too surreal… There I was sitting in a bistro in Paris sipping Bordeaux. The reason this meant so much to me was that over the past few years I like to think I’ve taken some steps towards becoming a wine connoisseur and I’ve yet to indulge in Bordeaux in the States. So that in itself made choosing this intimately lit bistro on a rainy night in Paris all worth it. There was a slight language barrier that my server and I had to break through at first, but after ordering my first glass of Bordeaux, all I had to do was let him know for the next couple of hours to keep them coming. As I sat there sipping my wine and listening to the rain make music against the windows I began reflecting on exactly why I was in Paris in the first place. I had a moment where I thought to myself, “I’m really here for a photo and commercial shoot for my own fashion line in the fashion capital of the world”. And that’s when the reality of the situation dawned on me. I mean I knew why I was going, but sometimes when you’re taking care of business you just get wrapped up in executing properly and don’t have time to actually process what’s really happening. So at that moment, right there in the bistro with well dressed Parisians having conversations about things I honestly couldn’t translate, I picked up my iPhone and pulled up Jay-Z and Kanye’s “Niggas in Paris” and started listening to it. For obvious reasons this was my theme song for the entire trip. You know what’s funny, with everything that was going on, as soon as I landed in Paris I did the exact same thing. I mean, I had heard the song a thousand times, but this was different because I had never actually heard it in Paris. And now that I had a select choice of rogue Bordeaux flowing through my veins it made the song mean that much more to me. Especially the line when Jay says “If you escaped what I escaped, you’d be in Paris getting f***ed up to”. That shit just spoke to me so much more at that moment. I thought about how I was supposed to be just another statistic being born to a fifteen year old in Baltimore, Maryland. You know, she was supposed to be on welfare and drop out of high school, and I was supposed to end up either dead or in jail. But instead we’re both college graduates, accomplishing things that are simply mind blowing. For instance, earlier in the day in which I flew out to Paris I watched her complete a TRIATHLON for God sakes! Something that in my mind I wanted NO parts of, yet there she was after months of training accomplishing yet another feat that seemed impossible. And then less than 24 hours later I’m in Paris taking a break from shooting my first feature film, “A Social Love Affair”, to handle marketing duties for my new Fashion brand, Inner Elite. Inner Elite, man that has such a ring to it, especially when you understand exactly what it represents. But more on that later…