WHO AM I V.S. WHO I AM

WHO AM I VS WHO I AM — THADDEOUS

Who Am I VS Who I Am is my attempt to document a question I've spent years living with rather than pretending I've finally answered it.

I made this album from the space between who people believe I am, who I believe I am, who I've had to become, and who I'm still becoming.

Across nine tracks, I move through perception, trauma, grief, betrayal, poverty, race, faith, philosophy, love, isolation, and the consequences of everything I've experienced along the way. “SUSPECT” begins with the feeling of being judged through my flaws and eventually turns that same examination back toward myself. “DEEP WATERS” takes you beneath the surface, into the place where I spend most of my time thinking, questioning, observing, and trying to build a framework for understanding my life.

“NUMB” is where I stop speaking abstractly and start telling you what happened. Family, death, violence, loss, betrayal, and the experiences that shaped the way I understand trust and empathy. “WHEN THE MIND FALLS” asks what happens when everything you've built internally begins to collapse—and whether you can turn the same mind that became a prison into something resembling a castle.

From there, the record expands beyond me.

“WHAT IS COLOR?” questions the meaning we assign to race, pigment, identity, history, religion, and humanity. “CAN I?” brings the conflict back inward, asking whether I can change, see through the pain, gain strength, and become something beyond what I've inherited. I openly admit that I don't have all the answers. I only have signs, experiences, observations, and the willingness to keep moving.

“TELL ME” asks you to look directly at me and decide what you see. Angel. Devil. Something between the two. I've been perceived differently depending on who was looking, what they experienced with me, and what circumstances brought us together. I'm learning that both the person I have been and the person I am are capable of existing within the same body.

“NOTICE” shifts my attention outward again. I'm watching. I'm taking notes. I'm questioning humanity, faith, language, history, technology, division, morality, and my own perception of the world. I'm not presenting myself as someone who has figured everything out. I'm documenting what I see while acknowledging that my own vision has been shaped by everything I've lived through.

And finally, “THE FINAL MESSAGE” brings me back to the question that started everything:

Who am I vs who I am?

I don't have a final answer.

I've made peace with that.

I believe I will continue to grow, evolve, contradict myself, learn, lose parts of myself, discover others, and become someone I couldn't have completely imagined before. Maybe there isn't supposed to be an ending to that process.

So this album isn't my autobiography.

It isn't a declaration that I've healed.

It isn't an attempt to convince you that I understand myself completely.

It's a document of me trying to understand myself while I'm still becoming.

If you hear pieces of yourself somewhere inside it, then maybe the question was never exclusively about me.

Maybe “Who Am I VS Who I Am” is a question we're all still answering.

Expected release: November 11, 2026