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The story begins like most do in an age of social media relevance; there is a guy named Keith Stanfield and he only has 346 followers on twitter, 287 on Instagram. But here’s where he differs from most: he has the chance to make history and joins the ranks of Eminem and Three Six Mafia as rappers who have won Oscars.

You see, there is a chance that Keith Stanfield’s song, So You know What It’s Like could be nominated for an Oscar for its use in the movie Short Term 12.

Keith had a fascination with television at a young age. He recalls,

“I was just really fixated on this little glowing box. All of the images that were coming out of there were very influential on the way I interacted, the things I did and really kind of influenced me to be who I am — all the movies that I used to watch.”

Among his favorite movies were Lion King, Jason’s Lyric and Menace II Society as young 4 year old his mother often wondered where he learned to say the things he did.

“I watched Jason’s Lyric so much, I would talk to my mom and say what they said in the movie. She was like, “Where did you get that from?!” You know? I would get a lot of my vocabulary and the way that I came off to the world from those early images.”

He caught the acting bug early on in childhood doing sock puppets and voices for his family. Then one day when people started asking him what he wanted to do, he decided to try performing for a living.

“And then I was like, “Hm, I really like to perform. I guess I want to do this.” So I jumped on the Internet and I just started looking up anything that was related to performing and acting and stuff. I must have filled out a whole page of things — 90 percent of them scams — and I filled out this one thing for John Casablancas. They reached back to me a couple of weeks later and said, “Congratulations! You have an opportunity to audition for this movie!” I was like, “Oh, shit! It’s that easy?””

He also believes his passion for performing both music and acting is the reasons he was a failure at other things, saying:

“I was such an abysmal failure at any other thing I tried to do, I think; I just really wasn’t feeling it, I wasn’t in it, it didn’t feel right and I knew I always wanted to perform.”

Well now he’s performing with a Spirit Award nomination and a chance to be nominated for an Oscar. No more working for AT&T and a legal Marijuana shop. It appears that his acting or his rapping is about to pay off.

“I write poetry and I put it to a beat — I mean, that’s what they call rap.”

We got a feeling that Keith is about to blow up!

SOURCE: The Hollywood Reporter