Luke Taleno, a Cuban-American rapper born in Havana and raised in Hialeah, advanced to the semifinals of season 21 of America's Got Talent (AGT) after a performance in the quarterfinals that moved both the audience and the judges of the NBC show.
His story is as powerful as his music. According to Billboard, Taleno -whose real name is Luis Rojas- arrived in the United States at the age of three with his mother, who worked nights cleaning buses to support the family.
At the age of six, the woman found a CD player with an Eminem album inside. "Before I even spoke English, I was already learning that I loved rap," the artist himself said during the program.
What came next was an even tougher trial. At the age of 13, he was diagnosed with leukemia and spent almost two years undergoing treatment at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami. "I didn't believe there was a future. Writing songs gave me hope; that was what kept me going," Taleno stated during his presentation before the judges.
After overcoming cancer, he started a family and began rapping on the streets of Miami to provide for his son. "When I started, it was an empty sidewalk, and then it turned into a crowd," he recalled. That perseverance brought him to the AGT studios, where he had sat in the audience the previous year. A year later, he fulfilled his dream of performing on that stage.
In the June audition, he performed "From Seat to Stage," an original song that tells that very story. Howie Mandel awarded him the Golden Buzzer, sending him straight to the live rounds.
In the quarter-finals, broadcast on August 18, Taleno took the stage with a new original song titled "You got to fight," a rap that encapsulates his entire life in just over two minutes.
The lyrics blend Spanish and English to speak about his Cuban childhood, leukemia, his mother's battle with cancer, and his role as a working father earning minimum wage: "I came from an island at a young age and without enough knowledge / My mom worked at night while fighting cancer / But she kept showing up."
Her performance earned her a spot as a semifinalist in the first round of the quarterfinals.
While sharing videos of his performance on social media, Taleno wrote: "Dreams do come true... but you have to fight for them."
Before stepping onto the stage for the quarter-finals, he made his motivation clear: "This time, being able to do this in front of my son makes me want to fight harder than ever. It's my whole life in a two-minute song. I'm so close to that million dollars. We're going to fight to win it all."
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