Rise of a Prodigy

I bolted upright in bed, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. The Notorious B.I.G. poster on my wall stared back at me – the same one I'd taken down in 2008 when I'd renovated my mother's house. But that hadn't happened yet. None of it had.

My hands trembled as I reached for my Nokia phone on the nightstand. The blue-lit display read "6:15 AM - MAY 15, 2002." I closed my eyes, opened them again. The date didn't change. Thirty-three years of memories crashed through my mind like a tidal wave: record deals, studio empires, neural interfaces, quantum production algorithms – a billion-dollar music empire that didn't exist yet.

The morning sunlight filtering through my bedroom window illuminated posters of artists who were legends in my memory but still rising stars in 2002. Beyoncé, still with Destiny's Child, her solo breakthrough months away. Kanye, unsigned and unknown. Drake, still acting on Degrassi. The walls of my teenage bedroom were a museum of what was to come.

I swung my legs over the bed, my movements feeling strange in this younger body. Gone were the designer suits and executive presence I'd cultivated over three decades. Instead, I wore oversized FUBU jeans and a white tank top – the uniform of a kid from the Bronx with dreams bigger than his bank account.

"Marcus!" My mother's voice carried up the stairs. "You're gonna be late for school!"

My mother. Maria Johnson. In my other life – my future life – she'd become CFO of our global empire, managing billion-dollar acquisitions with the same fierce protection she'd once used to keep me away from the streets. But now, in 2002, she was still working double shifts at the hospital, raising me alone, wondering if her son's obsession with making beats would ever amount to anything.

I caught my reflection in the mirror: seventeen again, but with fifty years of knowledge burning behind my eyes. The face looking back at me was smoother, unscarred by the industry battles ahead, but my eyes held the weight of futures unlived. I knew what was coming: the streaming revolution, the AI integration, the neural interfaces that would transform music production. I knew which artists would rise, which labels would fall, which technologies would reshape the industry.

The question wasn't what would happen. The question was: what would I change?

My production equipment sat in the corner – primitive by 2035 standards but revolutionary for what I knew how to do with it. An MPC2000XL, a stack of vinyl, and a Gateway computer running Fruity Loops. In my previous life, I'd sold my first beat for $500 at the Battle Circuit tonight. That same beat would become the foundation of a platinum single in 2004.

"Marcus!" Mom called again, her voice carrying a note of concern I'd forgotten she used to have. "I'm not playing!"

"Coming!" I called back, my voice cracking slightly – another reminder of this teenage body.

I grabbed my backpack, heavy with textbooks for classes I'd forgotten I'd taken. But before heading downstairs, I sat at my production setup and pressed the power button. The familiar hum of machinery filled the room. My fingers hovered over the pads of the MPC, muscle memory from two timelines merging into one.

I had thirty-three years of future music in my head, every hit, every innovation, every revolution that would transform the industry. And it all started here, in this bedroom, on this morning, with this equipment.

Time to change history, one beat at a time.