Kareem Washington

February 12, 2009

Newspaper Article

Future Hip Hop Acts in the School

No one can say Penn Wood doesn’t have talent in the arts. How many times
have you heard the faint sounds of the band practicing or walk into the auditorium
hearing someone playing the piano? Or how many times have you heard guitar club
announcements or seen YouTube videos of Penn Wood rappers? Truthfully, there’s a
variety of musical acts that walk amongst us, including vocalists, instrumentalists,
lyricists, producers, and so forth. When it comes to the term “musically talented”
here, the majority everyone is thinking of the band, rap groups, or maybe guitar
club. This issue I decided to take a deeper look at just a few of the acts from more of
a hip hop perspective. I wanted to see what’s behind these artists and what drives
them.

Surprisingly, just in my 7th period lunch I was able to interview artists like
Devon “Dev-Nasty” Gordon, Basil “Drama” Simms, Jessica Wimbley, and Michael
“Rare” Thorne. I was also able to get a few words from Nervaly “Jay” Kernizan, and
Calil “Lilz” Hamilton. After speaking with the bunch I sensed a deep passion for
music at an early age, with Jay starting as young as 7. Both Drama and Jessica
corresponded at around 4th or 5th grade. Rare said he began at about 14. After
asking what inspires each on them, they generally responded, “life”. Rare had no
problem saying that he raps about women, money, the streets, and basically his
real stuff that goes on in his life. Drama boldly stated “myself”. Jessica gladly
admitted she draws inspiration from Kanye West, yet she consciously avoids just
copying his style. She admires his subject matter, his positive content in music, and
she tries to do the same by staying away from the whole cars and girls type scene.
Dev can be quoted in his latest song, “The Grind” that he “pledges allegiance to the
streets, struggle, the muscle, on the block all night, the money, the grind”. In
general, they pour out what’s poured into them, taking everyday, real experiences
and sentiments into the studio. For the sake of it being a school newspaper and my
own interest I asked “is there any type of relation between your music and school?”.
Most of them were on the chord that while school is a priority there’s no real
correlation. Jay did make the relation of the people he produces for and school in
that most of them are from the Wood itself. He included some of his acts as “Vince,
June, Dev, LiL, K-Black, Mike, Jizz, and Milton”. Nobody was in the dark about where
they’re headed after high school. Rare, a junior, plans on getting signed, buying a
couple cars, and houses. Drama, a junior, plans to release a mixtape soon. Both
Jessica, a senior, and Jay, a senior, particularly planned to attend college to become
sound engineers. Jessica specifically mentioned throwing a couple of concerts and
Jay an internship at a record company.
 So, there you have it, just a few of the many musical artists at the school. Not
even to mention VC, June, K-Black, Jizz, Milton, Blazer Ham, or J-Nichole. And outside
of the Hip hop aspect there’s the talented and well known band affiliated students
like Darielle Brown, Andrew Humphrey, and Dexter Johnson. And even further,
outside of the students there are plenty of musically inclined teachers here. What
else to say but, Penn Wood’s got talent!