© 1998-Present Dizazta Area Music all rights reserved

Before the

Flags Flew

Music Videos 

BEFORE YOU SEE WHO SOMEBODY BECAME,

LOOK AT WHAT BUILT THEM

Nobody begins as the finished version of themselves.
Before the confidence, there was uncertainty. Before the anger, there was love. Before the sleepless nights, there was a child who still believed tomorrow might be different.

These stories travel backward—into crowded homes, neighborhood streets, first friendships, first losses, first ambitions and the people whose lessons stayed long after childhood disappeared.

This isn't only about where somebody ended up.
It's about the blueprints that were being drawn before

anybody knew what they were building.

BEFORE THE COME UP, THERE WAS A KID

WITH A NOTEBOOK

The refrigerator wasn't always full. The rent didn't wait. Mama

counted pennies while childhood continued outside the window.
But before the streets became an option, there were other plans.

A notebook. A jar collecting coins. Floors swept at the barbershop. Groceries bagged at dawn. Cousins sitting on the stoop imagining lives bigger than the blocks around them.

Blueprints & Broken Glass goes back before Coming Up

and finds something easy to overlook:

The hunger existed before the hustle.
So did the dream.

RAGE HAS A HISTORY

They weren't born angry.
They were brothers by choice—two kids racing through alleys, selling candy, splitting what little they had and making promises

about the future.

Then the city started collecting pieces of them.
Friends disappeared. Blue lights stopped feeling harmless. Jail changed one of them. Trust became harder. The dream of escaping became harder to believe.

Before the Rage remembers the friendship before grief transformed it.
Because sometimes what looks like anger from the outside

is really love with nowhere left to go.

NOBODY MADE ROOM — SO HE LEARNED

TO BUILD HIS OWN

Long before anybody knew the name DIZAZTA, there

was somebody watching from the back.

Watching who commanded attention. Watching who lost it. Studying the people everybody else was trying to imitate—and

studying their mistakes too.
Then came the microphone.

Suddenly the kid who had spent years observing had somewhere to put the hunger, the stories and everything the city had taught him.
The Takeover Begins is the road toward Make Room.

Not the victory lap.
The moment somebody decides they're finished

waiting for permission.

BEFORE THE COLORS, THERE WAS A CHILD LOOKING

FOR SOMEWHERE TO BELONG

The world often remembers the flag.
It remembers the headline, the arrest, the violence and the aftermath.
Before the Flags Flew asks you to look earlier.

At the absent father. The mother working doubles. The older neighborhood figures filling an empty role. The first friend lost. The pressure to choose a side before a child fully understands what choosing that side will cost.

This isn't a celebration of the cycle.
It's a look at how fear, pride, grief and the need to belong can turn childhood into something a child was never supposed to carry.

BEFORE THE WORLD HEARD THE VOICE, THERE WERE

YEARS OF SWALLOWING THE WORDS

Keep calm.
Keep your hands visible.
Don't give anybody a reason.
Come home alive.

Suffocating Silence lives inside the pressure before I Can't Breathe—a life of watching, absorbing, questioning and writing down truths that felt too dangerous or too exhausting to say aloud.

Eventually silence stops feeling like protection.
It starts feeling like another weight on the chest.
And the notebook becomes more than somewhere to hide the pain.
It becomes somewhere to find a voice.

SOMETIMES YOU DON'T KNOW YOU'RE PLAYING UNTIL

SOMEBODY ELSE IS THREE MOVES AHEAD

It starts somewhere ordinary.
A laundromat. A little conversation. Another encounter

across town. Recognition. Attraction. An invitation.
Nothing looks like a trap when the first move is made.

Pawn to Queen's Trap rewinds Checkmate to reveal the setup—the moments when curiosity becomes confidence and confidence makes somebody stop questioning the board.

He thinks he's reading the situation.
She has already been moving the pieces.
Checkmate begins long before anybody says checkmate.

THE FUTURE MAKES MORE SENSE WHEN YOU KNOW

WHAT CAME BEFORE IT

Before Coming Up, there were blueprints and broken glass.
Before Rage, there was brotherhood.
Before Make Room, there was somebody nobody noticed.
Before the confidence, there were lessons.

Before Blurry, there were warning signs.
Before Gang Bang, there was a child searching for belonging.
Before Haters, there were friends.
Before I Can't Breathe, there was silence.

Before Checkmate, there was an opening move.
Before How Can I Sleep?, there were memories that refused to rest.
And before I Love My Momma, there was a mother already fighting for a child who hadn't opened his eyes.

These aren't just stories about what happened.
They're stories about what made everything afterward possible.
Follow the beginnings. Discover the connections. Then hear the songs differently once you know where they came from.

DIZAZTA AREA MUSIC
Original Music. Original Stories. The DIZAZTA Universe.

SOME OF THE THINGS THAT SHAPE US BEGIN BEFORE

WE CAN EVEN NAME THEM

One story begins before birth.
A nineteen-year-old mother, alone and uncertain, riding buses, counting change and carrying a future she refuses to abandon.
Womb of a Warrior reveals the sacrifice before I Love My Momma.

Another story follows the child into a world of sirens, loss, sleepless ceilings and memories that refuse to become quiet.
No Rest for the Righteous reveals why How Can I Sleep? was never simply about insomnia.

Between them is an entire lifetime:
A mother fighting to give her child a beginning—and a

child fighting to survive everything that follows.

CONFIDENCE HAD TO BE LEARNED TOO

Before the buzzing phone, attention and stories that came

later, there was rejection.

Awkward conversations. A handwritten note that didn't land. First dates. Heartbreak. Watching older people who seemed to understand something he didn't yet understand.

Lessons from the OGs and Becoming DIZAZTA reveal another kind of education—the slow transformation from observer to

participant, from uncertainty to confidence.

Some lessons came from an uncle. Some from an older cousin.
And plenty came from getting it wrong.
The personality people eventually noticed wasn't born overnight.
It was built one lesson at a time.

BETRAYAL DOESN'T ALWAYS ANNOUNCE ITSELF

Sometimes it starts with distance.
A different look. A private conversation. Money that doesn't add up. Somebody who used to celebrate your progress becoming

strangely quiet when you succeed.

Before the Smoke Cleared watches suspicion infect

brotherhood from the inside.

Before the Fall finds another fracture: friends who once shared food, couches and dreams beginning to resent the person

they helped dream with.

Different stories. Same warning.
By the time betrayal becomes obvious, the relationship

may have been breaking for a long time.