Either you’re listening to your favorite country singer or singing along to your favorite One Direction song, everyone has their own style of music. One genre of music that has been increasingly popular among teenagers is rap.The thrill of rapidly recited words over a pre-recorded electronic instrumental background has been popular among teenagers for a very long time. Now, teens are taking time out of their busy schedules and learning to express themselves through self-inspired raps.This is the case for four students at Southwest, who have created their own beats and call themselves “ILLiterate”.
Although the group hasn’t hit the charts yet, fellow peers should keep an eye out for this on the rise group because the next time you turn on your ipod, it could be a song of Southwest’s own “ILLiterate”.
Sophomores Sawyer Like and Trevor Watson along with juniors Zack Rosenkrans and Aaron Rogers have come together to create the rap group. Their unique friendship has taken their little bit of fun to success in just a matter of weeks. They have developed a fan base and created their own Twitter with the hopes of becoming the most popular rap group at Southwest.
The mixed group of sophmores and juniors don’t just connect in the studio. Trevor, Zack, and Sawyer share a common interest of wrestling.
“During our whole wrestling season, the three were always together cheering and supporting one another in every match.” junior Joe Lemieux said. “Ever since they started making songs, their friendship has grown much stronger and I think that what makes them sound really good.”
Their music includes elements of the average teenage guy: school, girls, family, friends and sports are all what inspire the group to write relative and relatable lyrics.
“I just got in the studio last night to work on some new lyrics I came up with earlier that day,” Rogers said. “I was sitting in anatomy class taking a vocab test and something about the test made me come up with a new lyric that will work great in our new song.”
As the group comes out with their third single soon, they do have some competitors or “haters” who think they can out do “ILLiterate” in every way possible.
“After we heard ILLiterates first single, my group “Pokemon Masters” had to come up with a song that was better and more popular than ILLiterates,” junior Matt Penner said.
ILLiterates “haters” are from Blue Valley West, already being a rival school the enemies had to face each other sometime.
“My group also wrestles and since we are competitors on the mat, since we go to Blue Valley West, it’s rightful to be enemies in the music world,” Penner said.
The Pokemon Masters are definitely a competition of “ILLitereate”, but their large group of #1 fans consisting of sophomore and junior girls, fellow wrestlers, and of course support from family is what keeps “ILLiterate” in the studio trying to please their audience.
“We try to give the people what they want, no matter what it is,” junior Zack Rosenkrans said. “Whatever they want is what they are going to get, even if it’s about something we don’t want to rap about. If it’s good, we’re going to give it to them”
Pleasing the fans is the group’s main goal in this whole experience. Because they are a relatively new group, it’s important to gain a larger fan base with more publicity. In order to get more fans, since they are a fairly new group, it is important to get their name out there. Twitter is not the only way “ILLiterate” is connecting to their fans. The group has created a YouTube channel in order for their music videos to be seen across the net.
“ILLiterate” can use Twitter also by being able to Tweet a link to their songs and get more views of songs on Youtube.
“I really want our group to go somewhere than just Southwest.” Rosenkrans said.“Twitter and YouTube can get us out there and keep our fans following us through this blind journey to success.”
