First, tell us a bit about yourself!

I grew up in Seattle and lived there my whole life until I came to Emory.

I’m a senior at Emory in the business school, and I’m studying marketing. The music got me into digital marketing because I was trying to learn how to get myself out there and find new fans, so that sparked my interest in marketing as a major.

I make rap music. I never know quite how to describe it because my style doesn’t fit any of the big categories out right now. I have a lyrical focus inspired by the rap of the 2000s and early 2010s, but sonically, it's modern like I’m rapping over trap-inspired beats.

 

When did you start rapping? What got you into it?

I started rapping right at the end of my senior year of high school. My life was changing a lot at that time – I hurt my right shoulder and didn’t play summer baseball that year for the first time since I was 13, so I had all this new time on my hands that I didn’t really know what to do with. I also went through a pretty rough situation with a girl that I liked a lot, so I had a lot on my mind, which looking back, set the stage amazingly for writing songs. I had always been a big rap fan, but it didn’t really occur to me that I could be a rapper until I heard an independent rapper from Connecticut named Witt Lowry. I related a lot to his music, and it was the first time I saw myself in a rapper, and subconsciously I guess I just decided to give it a shot. Once I started writing, I loved it so much. I just kept doing it, and now I’m here.

 

How did the pandemic influence your creative process or work? Did you make anything interesting during lockdown?

The silver lining of the pandemic was that it was amazing for making music and building my business. I had all this time on my hands, so I made tons of songs and watched hours and hours of music business videos.

 

Can you describe your process for making new music?

For me, the music is all about telling stories, so it usually starts with some kind of experience or a thought or emotion that’s on my mind which sparks the inspiration for a song. I’m constantly listening to beats, so usually, once I have an idea, I’ll know immediately which beat that I’ve heard in the last few weeks I want to rap on. I’ll sit down and play it on repeat and write as many lines as I can, just getting all my ideas down. Usually, I come out of that with most of a verse and an idea for a hook and maybe some extra pieces that I can later flesh out, edit, and turn into the final lyrics. From there, I put it in my queue for recording, bang it out, and work with my mixing guy to get it ready to release.

 

What purpose does music serve in your life?

When I first started, the music was a way for me to process my emotions and think through things, because at the end of high school and going into college, I was confused about a lot of things, and the music helped me sort through it all. Now it definitely still serves that role, but it’s also become a lot more than that for me. It’s been something to challenge me and motivate me, and it was through trying to figure out how to get better at rapping that I learned discipline and consistency and the power of incremental change. It’s directed and motivated my studies because my desire to build a business

around my art led me to marketing and entrepreneurship. And it’s opened the door to so many social circles and led me to meet lots of really cool people. Most importantly, it’s a way for me to tell stories and connect with people who relate to the stories and the thoughts and feelings and mindset behind them. At the end of the day, that’s my favorite part of it: the stories and the people.

 

What do you hope listeners take away from your music?

I want young people like me to feel like they can win the right way and have a role model for that. There’s an underlying message in most popular hip-hop music right now: that the way to be successful is by taking from others, extracting, dominating in a negative way. I think that influences young people a lot, especially young guys, who see these rappers with everything we want and think, "well shit, I guess I have to be like they are in order to get it." When I was younger, I definitely struggled with that, and for a while I felt like you had to choose between being a good guy and getting what you want. I now understand that this is 100% not true, and that you can win even bigger by doing it the right way: by being honest, genuine, disciplined, helpful, hardworking, skilled, etc. But it took me a minute to see that, and that’s what I hope my music helps young people not only understand, but also feel like they have an example that shows them it’s possible. That you can win by adding value rather than extracting it. And that’s a big motivator for me, because even though I’m proud of how far I’ve gotten along those lines in the last three years, I have a lot of work to do before I’m dope enough to serve as a role model like that, so that keeps me on the grind trying to get there.

 

As a senior, how do you plan to incorporate creativity into your life after college?

My goal is to do this full time as soon as possible, so if I pull it off, then creativity will be my life after college. I have a solid foundation and an amazing team of people that I’ve met, so I’m really excited to see what we can do in the next couple years.