A Long Beach artist’s journey through music, poetry and self-discovery

Anyone who passed by Micah Bournes’ childhood home, depending on the time and day, would hear either his mother singing gospel songs, his sisters playing Mariah Carrey, or his brothers bumping hip-hop.

“There was always music playing in my house,” said Bournes, a poet and musician born and raised in Long Beach.

It’s apparent that the diverse music influences Bournes grew up with had an impact on his creative career from the way his work jumps from genre to genre, releasing albums of folk, blues and hip-hop songs, as well as spoken-word poetry set to music.

At the same time his brothers were familiarizing him with rap and hip-hop, there were multiple Long Beach locals making a name for themselves in those genres. Bournes would rap along to their lyrics, his young voice becoming accustomed to the cadence of rap.

“Being from Long Beach, I had so much pride at the time of me growing up,” Bournes said. “A lot of the most famous rappers in hip-hop were from our city, you know? That was dope, to see like Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Warren G, all these cats, they’re rapping about places that I’m familiar with.”

Bournes’ newest album, “De-Tox,” is a message to his teenage self, and uses rap and hip-hop to unpack many of the toxic ideas he learned from those same genres as a boy. He said that although there is misogyny in many music genres, hip-hop was how he was personally introduced to unhealthy ideas about women and masculinity. 

“Every single song on that album, my audience is teenage Micah, like 15-16 years old, walking around thinking cripping was cool,” Bournes said. “Like, how did that kid think about women? How did that kid think about guns or what it meant to be strong, both physically and spiritually, what it means to be a leader? What does 16-year-old Micah think it means to be a man?” 

While Bournes played around with writing love poems in high school, he didn’t seriously start writing his own work until his freshman year of college in Chicago, when a friend interested in music production asked him to help make songs for practice. Bournes would rap over beats they downloaded from the internet, and his friend would polish and produce the final version. 

After showing their peers the finished product, the positive feedback they received encouraged Bournes to pursue music.

“I just find the poetry all around me, I find the music all around me. As cliche as it is to say ‘stop and smell the roses,’ it’s true.”

Micah Bournes

In his junior year of college, Bournes came back to visit his hometown. During his trip, a friend drove him out to LA to watch his first spoken word poetry open mic. Bournes was intrigued by the art form, and sought out similar events once he was back in Chicago.

Bournes describes the Chicago spoken word scene as being more cutthroat than the local scene here, but it’s what pushed him to grow as a poet.

“They booed you off stage if you was wack,” Bournes said. “You’ve got to come with it. And so it was different from like, ‘Oh, you know, like, thanks for being brave.’ It’s like if you wack, we’re gonna pull you off stage, but we don’t want you to stop. We want you to come back next week with a better poem. And so growing up as a poet in the Chicago scene, I feel really made me sharper, very quick, because it was like, ‘Yo, I’m either gonna get good or I’m gonna cry and quit.’”

Bournes strives to live life at a slower speed while deeply observing his surroundings, which in turn inspires his music and poetry.

“I don’t find anything more or less inspiring than anything else,” Bournes said. “I’ve written poems about the most random things […] a woman’s foot, a bottle of shampoo. […] My eyes are open and I’m listening. I’m looking, I ask a lot of questions. I’m a very curious person. And I just find the poetry all around me, I find the music all around me. As cliche as it is to say ‘stop and smell the roses,’ it’s true.”

His spoken word poem “Normal Hair” was inspired by a shower he took at a white friend’s home, where he noticed a shampoo bottle that was labeled as being for “normal hair.”

“My hair was normal to me. Like what does this even mean?” Bournes recalled thinking at the time. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s weird’ and just took a shower and kept pushing, but I got out the shower, and I kept thinking about it. And I was like, ‘With all the different hair types and textures in the world, how can any shampoo be labeled for normal hair? What does that even mean?’” 

“So I ended up writing this poem really about white supremacy, and how it’s kind of an insult in both directions, because to the people it’s formulated for it says your hair is just normal and regular and average and boring. And for the people who don’t have that type of hair, it says your hair is some type of abnormality. It just doesn’t even make sense,” Bournes said.

Bournes is working on a new book of poetry about love and grief titled “Stay.” He also provides guidance for others looking to create their own poetry and music, either online or in-person, for $60 an hour.

To keep up with Micah Bournes, follow him on Instagram @micahbournes, or visit his website micahbournes.com. To contact him, email contact@micahbournes.com.

“My hope is that I am courageous enough to create something honest,” Bournes said. “And I believe no matter what I create, some people will love it. Some people will hate it. Some people will be indifferent, shoulder shrug. Some people will be challenged by it. Some people will be healed from it.”