Raised in West Philadelphia, Bowden spent his young life in an intensely religious community, hearing almost no secular music until he was in his late teens. He had surgery and bounced back, but the experience lit a fire: He was going to speak his heart whether people listened or not. It turned out to be a rare esophageal condition called achalasia. Within a few years, he couldn’t even keep down a sip of water. It started happening more, and more severely. Pink Sweat$, got the strange feeling that he couldn’t swallow. Growing up, R&B singer-songwriter David Bowden, a.k.a.
