North Carolina artist Barlito has experienced a lifetime’s worth of hardships, the kinds that would crumble the average human being. He faced many of life’s harshest circumstances while growing up in High Point, a city adjacent to Greensboro. Instead of becoming a product of his environment, the 23-year-old harnessed the negatives and turned them into positives. He channeled the experiences, the angst and emotions into a music career. 
 “What inspired my music the most was my childhood. A bunch of shit that I seen early that I wasn’t supposed to see or that I was too young to see,” he explains when recapping the hurdles he’s had to overcome. One of the harshest incidents from his adolescence includes him and his mother being held at gunpoint in their home while assailants forcefully pressed his father’s hands on a fire hot stove in retaliation for a street caper. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only dark time he experienced firsthand. “I done been through a lot. Parents not being there. My momma getting locked up in prisons plenty of times. I spent years in foster care. I done seen people get shot and I’ve been shot two or three times. I’ve seen my brothers die in front of me.” 
 “It’s not very many people that can say stuff like that or live through that,” he continues. “That’s why I feel like it’s big for that to be on my resume because ain’t too many people that’s gonna be able to say ‘I done got shot’ or ‘I done been with my brother and they done got shot.