Healing Through Depression:The story of Rodman Lavalais

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” -Proverbs 4:23
Rodman Lavalais, also known as “ILoveYouRodman,” is 22 year old senior here at Southern University, majoring in Marketing. Rodman is well-known for his musical beats he makes and promotes over social media. Just recently, Rodman put out his first song entitled, “Take Me Down.” Although he is seen as a happy person all the time, there is a story behind it. “Behind this smile it took a lot to get here,” said Rodman.
As a young kid from the Uptown Calleiou, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Rodman always knew he was different. He spoke on how typically where he is from a lot of young men are products of their environment. He noticed at an early age that no one really knew how to deal with their emotions, which in turn led them down a dark path ending with jail time or death. Growing up Rodman was considered the sweet kid, the weird kid, and even “girly” at times, simply because he never wanted to hurt anybody or bully anyone. Hearing that along with dealing with being bullied led to a huge confidence drop for him.
At 12 months Rodman was diagnosed with a disease called cellulitis in the eye. This caused all the mucus to go to his eye instead of his nose, leaving his eye very swollen. He endured many surgeries. The last surgery taking place at the age of 13 left his eye to appear cross-eyed. Being bullied from that made him not even want to look people in the eye, but that still did not stop him from introducing himself to somebody he felt was genuine. He believes that life is all about “loving and being loved.”
Through everything that he did, Rodman felt like he did not have any friends and his family were nowhere near as close as they are now. He even referred to his family as a “tough family.” Even though they didn’t have the best of things, they always made sure their children knew how to be a “good person”. To “escape,” instead of turning to drugs, alcohol, or the streets like many people did, Rodman turned to video games. “On the game, you can be anyone you want to be, no one knows your struggles, no one knows your life, no one knows what you are really going through.” For much of his life, Rodman was a big gamer up until high school.
During his high school life, he started to get better. Since he went most of his life being bullied, he went into high school with the mindset that nobody was going to bully him. Since he had been so unconfident for so long the way he was perceived came off as rude. “Somebody would ask me my name and I would turn my head really quickly and say Rodman.” Not wanting to look people in the eye was still a major part of Rodman’s life. In no way does he blame people for feeling the way they felt. He was so excited when people spoke to him, however, that anxiety always seemed to take over. His senior year is when he started to become more of the Rodman we all know now.
Rodman’s plan never was to go into music for himself. The main goal was to help his brother build his platform to make it as a rapper. His sophomore year at Southern, his older brother went to jail. At this point his little brother was making plans of going into music. Like any other supportive brother, the oldest bought him a piano from jail. Rodman says for a month the piano sat there untouched so he decided to see what he could do with it. As soon as he touched the piano, it was over.
Rodman’s main goal in life is to end racism, depression, and help people through their problems. He realized that everyone likes music and that was a great place for him to start reaching people. He started to mix music with his personality. He also has a clothing line called, UA3, and the hype from his beats helped the sales go up. This is truly when “ILoveYouRodman” came into play.
After a few years of making beats, Rodman felt as though the world should know that there is more to him than just making beats. A couple months ago, he was placed in quarantine. This was the perfect time to start working on his first song. The song speaks of his battle with depression as the song goes on to speak on how he has healed. “Depression, depression, you will never take me down,” says the lyrics. The song has a great message within it. For a young man trying to make it in the industry, Rodman took an unusual approach with this song. Instead of talking about guns, sex, clothes, cars and drugs, Rodman lets everyone know that it can and will be okay. He took his life and was very transparent in letting people know that everyone goes through things rather you see it or not. The goal here was to show that, “even the happiest people go through things.”
When asked if music helped him cope through everything, he answered with a swift “no.” The music he makes will help the people. The things that have helped him is God, staying true to himself, family, true friends, and love. He understands and knows that he has people behind him that will love and support him through anything. As for using the word cope, he doesn’t believe in it. He sees cope as a word to get through it, hide it, but for him he is truly healing. However, healing takes time, it is always a work in progress.
. “It is okay to go through stuff, but how you heal is what’s important. The stronger your relationship with God and the more you start to live in the now, the better off you will be.” With that being said, we can definitely be on the lookout for more music and clothes in the near future from Rodman. He is not going to stop until his goals are achieved and even still, he is going to keep going in a positive way.
“They say in life the tables turn and they do turn. Just because I am the happiest right now, doesn’t mean I’ll be the happiest tomorrow. The thing about them tables turning, no matter how much them tables turn, if you’re always treating everybody right, you’re going to always be in a good position.” – Rodman Lavalais