V.S. rapper talks struggle and healing

From Flatbush, Brooklyn, to Valley Stream, from depression into hopefulness — rapper Jesse “PicaSso Sight” Ulysse, 34, cannot be labeled, but aspires one day to own a record label while empowering those around him. After he moved to Valley Stream at age 12, he remembers students envying his Brooklyn upbringing. Many of them were captivated by the romanticized culture of rampant drugs and violence plaguing his home borough. In reality, walking its menacing, resource-deprived streets was an altogether different story.

“You might meet someone when you’re walking and not know what [that person is carrying] in their big clothes,” Ulysse said. 

In a world where any show of emotional vulnerability or self-expression was looked down upon and punished, the young Ulysse formed a tough exterior. “If you share what you feel, you’re marked, you’re a target,” Ulysse said.

He took to rap and hip-hop as his outlet for release.  “I was always into hip-hop without knowing I was into hip-hop . . . Being born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, you’re kind of born into it, whether you ask for it or not,” Ulysse said, resonating with the rap songs of Jay-Z and Nas.

But though he was long interested in writing raps, he wouldn’t do so until he and his family moved to safer, friendlier Valley Stream — where, for the first time, Ulysse felt he was able to let his guard down, to “take off my armor.”

“Coming to Valley Stream, I saw all it afforded me,” he said. Ulysse recalled getting serious about writing rhymes at Central High School, showing his close friends his verses who encouraged him to keep writing.

After leaving school and becoming more established as an artist he would reach out to reconnect with his seventh grade English teacher Lee Camilleri on Facebook, who told him he should share the song "4th Marking Period Flows" publicly. 

In his song “4th Marking Period Flows,” he harks back to Camilleri and honors his old health teacher Stephanie A. Ginsberg, an influential teacher who passed a few years after his graduation, singing:

“She was just a health teacher/ Tryin to reach another soul/ Man she hit the lost and found/ Told me to take it for the cold/ I never forgot it, after hours sat in ya class/ Forever with guidance /This is from the capillary/ Challenge from Mrs. Camilleri.”

After the initial culture shock of leaving a survivalist mentality and adapting to Valley Stream, he began to open up about his experiences in hopes of helping others going through similar situations and feel seen. “Hip-hop and rap gave me the ability to express and explore [different topics]. My mind was like a prison. I didn’t allow myself to process things…whether it’s breakups, fallouts with friends, things with family, things with life, those points of contemplating suicide, and all of that rap was the only thing that was constant and stayed,” Ulysse reflected.

Surrounding himself with like-minded individuals who wanted to spread positivity and share their personal stories, he started the Unsung Warriors, a collection of creatives and activists that sometimes perform on tracks collaboratively. His friends, Gabrielle Thomas aka Chéri Yielle, Nathan Thompson aka HumanBien and recording studio editor M.J. aka Dope Luke also started another group with a similar purpose called The Collective. It’s at M.J.’s recording studio “Inspire Studios” in Hempstead that they all congregate and talk rap, share their stories, and help one another grow musically and emotionally.  

The goal of these two groups is to “free people from the burdens of their minds,” Ulysse said, harkening back to the origin of words invoking positive change. “Words are very, powerful…The slaves had spoken word,” Ulysse said. Additionally, Ulysse is confronting difficult issues about masculinity and engaging in important conversations, “like [me] being a heterosexual male and [trying to understand] rape culture.”

Over the past generation, self-reported suicide attempts rose nearly 80 percent among Black adolescents from 1991 to 2019, according to the latest research. Ulysse’s therapist Lynn Van Every, whom he saw from 2007 until she died in 2013, was a pillar in his life who helped him understand himself in relation to his environment. Fighting his mental battles, struggling with anxiety, depression and contemplating suicide, Every helped him realize what it means to be alive.

“I’m winning [my mental health battle]. Not only am I still here, but I love people…I’m trying not to be a product of what was done to me or what I experienced because we’re actually bigger than that,” Ulysse said.

Every died before she could hear his first album, but Ulysse keeps her memory alive by publicly promoting her efforts and, in a more personal sense, by having her name tattooed on his arm. “Her memory keeps me going because I won with her. She saved me,” he said.

In Ulysse’s song “Unsung Hero 2,” he raps in her honor: “Lynn’s office often said it/ Learn where my head is/ Change where I’m headed/ Switched up lanes and I’m ready.”

Seeking out a medical professional not only enhanced his life but has made him a better rapper, giving him a confidence he didn’t know he had before.

“I never used to believe in myself at all... and now that is lifted out of my head, now that all these ideas I had about myself, these misconceptions [are gone] ... I know a lot of it was a lie and I bought it, and now the chains are off.”

In the past, Ulysse has performed at numerous New York City venues and at the 2013 Valley Stream Community Festival hosted by David Sabatino. His songs can be found on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, his Facebook and Instagram @swoosh_james.