Jelo The Weirdo

Struggling financially, he pursued being a commercial model and worked as an extra being paid "around 10 dollars a day" at age 15 to help his mom with expenses, while also saving money to go to the studio and for his school allowance.[5][10] He was persuaded to try going to VTR castings, and tested his luck on "every audition opportunity" and was "rejected countless times" prior to landing a role on a Grab commercial, and a few more mostly in cameo, including on a film shown on Netflix.[2] In 2018, Acosta began uploading music under his birthname[3] beginning with "Swerte" in Filipino language that was deleted[11] and "TNLK" that had ten million views and was used in a meme.[12][13]He was then discovered by "Curve Ent", a PARI-certified small record label, who manages Ely Buendia[14] and kakie. They signed him to a recording deal but parted ways with him after one year.

In 2020, Acosta participated in the blind auditions of the second season of The Voice Teens and sang Shanti Dope's hit "Nadarang", he managed to make Bamboo Mañalac and apl.de.ap turn. He picked the latter as his coach.[15] He got eliminated in the Battles after performing "Imposible" by KZ Tandingan with opponent CZ Baylosis, who emerged as the winner.[16] He became the first hip-hop artist to be a finalist across all eight seasons of the local The Voice Philippines franchise.[17] During his stint, Acosta said that he felt grateful to be mentored by the Black Eyed Peas member, "You're a huge influence to who I am and I really look up to you especially how you raised our flag in the international scene".