The Next Big Thing: A Look Inside College Rap
By Ade Coker
Visualize the perfect setting for an underground hip-hop concert: 50 people crammed into a dingy frat house basement, a neon blue light cutting through a suffocating cloud of smoke, and a pair of undergrads giving it all they’ve got. Kevin Hegedus, one half of Mouth’s Cradle, pops the collar on his red suit jacket. He grabs the mic and spits tracks from the duo’s album, “The Next Big Thing.”
But Hegedus isn’t the latest urban success story. With roots as suburban as they come, this wire-framed student from Allentown, Pa. is the life of the party. He is Syracuse University’s very own Asher Roth—the latest product of hip-hop’s transposition from poor urban communities to the lips of privileged young men on college campuses across the nation.
“Asher Roth opened the door for white college rappers, and college rappers in general,” says SU rapper Kay Con, who asked for his real name to be concealed. The tall frat boy grew up in the suburbs of D.C., spending most of his time in the northwest section of the nation’s capitol, next to numerous elite colleges. Unbeknownst to his parents back in suburbia, the sophomore emcee sings, raps, and even produced about half of his newly released mixtape, Invisible Bricks. Much like an urban hip-hop artist rapping about the struggles of his environment, Kay Con uses his own background for inspiration. “Mainly it creates a parodyabout how people build their image off of bullshit. And how you can be whoever you want to be,” says the young rapper.
The spike in suburban rappers is no surprise to Birgitta Johnson, a SU professor in the Arts and Music Histories Department with a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and a concentration in African-American music. Speaking about hip-hop with reverence, Johnson recounts the genre’s evolution since its origins in the late 70s. According to her, rap’s campus-wide spread is viral. She emphasizes the fact that students from Northeast and Midwest cities would bring the mixtapes of their friends back home onto campus.
“Of course it would be on college campuses!” she jumps. “That’s where the young people are.” This resurgence in the synergy between hip-hop and college is very apparent on the hill. “The model would not be, ‘I go to college and know how to be a rapper,’” she said. “The model should be, ‘I was probably rapping before I got into college. It was something I did on the side.’”
In the past 12 months hip-hop heavyweights such as Drake, Mac Miller, Big Sean, Wiz Khalifa, and J. Cole have all blessed the mic on or near SU’s campus, creating the perfect storm for SU’s college rappers to release their own original projects. Since Mayfest 2010, at least eight different Orange students have dropped mixtapes. Among them: Diverze, Mouth’s Cradle, Jay Foss, Indo, IMG, Kay Con, Bradford Hester, and Bosa.
Hegedus, aka Mouf, of Mouth’s Cradle, is Professor Johnson’s definition of a late-blooming emcee. Hegedus began rapping in 2008 when he got a Macbook and realized how easy crafting music was. “It was like a scary and exciting world that I never knew existed in music,” he explains.
While he maintains traditional urban influences like the Wu-Tang Clan and MF Doom, Hedegus’ take on hip-hop is far f.rom typical. More pop than hip-hop, Mouth’s Cradle's music uses the art form differently. Hegedus credits M.I.A. as the album's largest influence. “The first hip-hop album I heard was Arular by M.I.A.,” he says. “It just blew my mind, and to this day I still consider her my favorite musician.” Hegedus’ looks are better suited for a chemist or a librarian—not a rapper. His speech is rushed in excitement and his voice is semi-robotic. But that doesn’t matter anymore. The beauty of college rap is that musicians can express their sense of belonging, regardless of personal background. “M.I.A. showed me that hip-hop can be for anyone,” says Hegedus. “It’s just not for the urban black male.”
This confidence helped elevate Mouth’s Cradle to one of the most popular musicians on campus. They’ve performed with headline acts like Passion Pit and Lupe Fiasco, and their music video for “Demon” has attracted almost 81,000 YouTube views since June 2010. On the other end of the social spectrum, there’s Indo. While his goals are in line with Kay Con and Hegedus, his history harkens to a more traditional rapper’s tale. Indo, aka sophomore Marcus Neal, came from a rough neighborhood in Newark, NJ. As he puts it, his life was a healthy balance of guns, violence, drugs, and even hipsters. When he was seven, his mother was sent to prison and is still serving time. His father is a complete stranger.
Staying within the sanctity of his home, Neal developed musical aspirations. “I had so much time on my hands just from not being allowed to go out or anything because of guns or violence in the neighborhood,” he says. “I was just exposed to my family a lot, which drove me to become creative musically.” He started acting on his aspirations as a high school senior. Three years later, Neal is a rapper and producer on campus with his own original tracks.
Professor Johnson discredits claims that rap was intended for only a few. “When people started saying ‘Okay this is something attainable…this is actually for everybody and I can express myself,’ you have that growth,” she says. “You get people as fans coming in and people exploring it as a means of expressing themselves.”
Hegedus grew up in suburban Pennsylvania, Kay Con grew up in an affluent neighborhood in D.C., and Indo was raised by a group of relatives in a hostile environment. Yet they all chase the same dreams of stardom and success in the music industry, fueled by their passion for the game. While Neal, Hegedus, and Kay Con compete and collaborate within the same arena, they have different approaches. As a new musical platform, campus hip-hop is without a breakout star, which has created a sense of urgency for these musicians to be the first to break out of the SU scene. “Soon we’re gonna see a clear number one,” says Kay Con. “And who that is, I can’t tell you, but there is nobody sitting at the throne right now.”