Interlude.

How my father, Stevie Wonder, and a pair of headphones taught me to listen with my heart.

Music has been my oldest companion, faithful in ways words could never be. It has walked with me through every season of my life—an unseen friend shaping joy, softening grief, and filling the room when silence felt too heavy to bear. After years of carrying these moments quietly, I decided to finally set them down in stone and share them with anyone who finds the same kind of companionship in music that I do.

I still remember being a child and hearing Knocks Me Off My Feet from Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life for the very first time. It felt as though the song had uncovered a hidden part of me, something both fragile and deeply alive. My father played it every day because I couldn’t get enough, and he laughed as he explained how surprised he was at my love for that particular track. It wasn’t one of the popular ones, he told me—it was a “B-side,” the kind of song most people skipped past. But that discovery gave me a deeper connection to music. It taught me to look beyond the hits on the radio or the videos that played endlessly on TV, and to search instead for the hidden treasures—the art tucked between the lines.

When I got my first iPod, that lesson followed me. While other kids in third grade were loading theirs with Ciara and Chris Brown, mine held The Ohio Players and David Ruffin. My father insisted that I learn to appreciate the old before I could fully enjoy the new. He used to say he was “training my ears,” and he was right. He shaped not only my taste but also my way of listening—teaching me to hear the story in every note, the heartbeat in every rhythm. Everyone called him “B,” which is why The B-Sides means more to me than just the flip side of a record. It is more than these words I write; it is the way I listen, the way I carry each day.

This is my first true dedication to music. To the companion that has never left my side, to the father who taught me how to hear it, and to the hidden songs that shaped the soundtrack of my life.