Barlito has faced many of life’s harshest circumstances while growing up in High Point, a city adjacent to Greensboro. Instead of becoming a product of his environment, the 23-year-old harnessed the negatives and turned them into positives. He channeled the experiences, the angst and emotions into a music career.
“What inspired my music the most was my childhood. A bunch of shit that I seen early that I wasn’t supposed to see or that I was too young to see,” he explains when recapping the hurdles he’s had to overcome. One of the harshest incidents from his adolescence includes him and his mother being held at gunpoint in their home while assailants forcefully pressed his father’s hands on a fire hot stove in retaliation for a street caper. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only dark time he experienced firsthand. “I done been through a lot. Parents not being there. My momma getting locked up in prisons plenty of times. I spent years in foster care. I done seen people get shot and I’ve been shot two or three times. I’ve seen my brothers die in front of me.”
“It’s not very many people that can say stuff like that or live through that,” he continues. “That’s why I feel like it’s big for that to be on my resume because ain’t too many people that’s gonna be able to say ‘I done got shot’ or ‘I done been with my brother and they done got shot. He didn’t make and I made it’ type shit. Ain’t too many people gone be able to say that.” A normal person might fold facing similar circumstances. Lito not only survived, he thrived in the face of adversity. Even in the darkest of days, nothing could shade his optimism. “I try to think of what could’ve gone different and thank God it didn’t get worse than what it was. It’s simple as that.”
The fact Barlito, affectionately known as Mr. Say It Two times to fans, persevered through endless predicaments before arriving where he is today deserves equal highlighting, if not more, in fact. He has a warm and jovial personality. He pairs his words with infectious positivity and laughter. Barlito’s high school teachers would say he was silly, but also a smart, auditory learner capable of cutting up in the back of the class with friends while simultaneously catching enough of the lecture to the tests in his honors courses with ease.
