Some doodle in notebooks. Some text under desks. Some write lyrics for their next rap song. Junior Adam Aune, under rap name DurAAceLL, and freshman Landon Campbell, RapperLC, are two of PHS’s aspiring rappers.
RapperLC has released three tracks on iTunes, and Aune has two albums on his Sound Cloud.
“I do it for the adrenaline rush,” said Campbell, who began rapping at talent shows in elementary school and has performed in front of crowds at basketball half time shows.
Aune says his motivation comes from his friends’ encouragement and his goal to spread positivity through his music. His newest album from September, Swervin’, features a song titled “Happy”.
“The song asks, are we really happy in life?” junior Zane Haney said. “At the same time, it’s encouragement to be happy.”
But these two aspiring rappers have learned that rapping is more complicated than simply creating music and uploading onto YouTube. Like anyone who has put themselves out there on the internet, Aune and Campbell face the haters—negative, vicious people who try to discourage them from rapping.
“I’ll have feedback about [my music], that they hate it, and ‘you’ll never be a rapper,’” Campbell said. “Why I rap is for the haters. By them telling me not to or I can’t, it just makes me want to do it more. I just get a kick out of it.”
One of Campbell’s songs is titled “No Need to Hate”, in which he urges critics to stop discouraging others from pursuing their passions.
In the song, Campbell said, “haters say the Black Eyed Peas can’t even rhyme. Selling millions, they must be doing fine,” acknowledging that even successful rap groups have haters.
All rappers face haters, as one can hear on the radio. Rappers throw around the word—thanking haters, bashing haters, saying haters love them. Aune says he faces haters who are not used to his different style from mainstream rap. Haters also criticize Aune because he is from Piedmont.
“The whole ‘rap game’ thing, it’s generally from people of [different backgrounds from mine],” he said.
Aune and Campbell have brushed off the criticism, and even embraced it to move forward with their rapping careers. Though the two rappers have the ability to manage the comments on their songs, both Aune and Campbell said they purposely leave the hateful posts. Aune said it would be weak to delete the comments because everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Campbell said he will take the constructive criticism into consideration, but simply converts the hateful messages into motivation.
“I don’t want to be known as the rapper who stopped because of the hate,” Campbell said. “I want hate to be part of my stage name. I want to go hard and go through with everything I do.”
Along with the hate, however, also comes praise and encouragement that the two rappers feed off of. Campbell receives emails every time a person purchases his songs on iTunes, and has also received encouraging emails from fans.
“I think it’s really rewarding just from kids coming up from school and saying ‘whatsup DurAAceLL, I love the new track,’” Aune said. “That alone, that in itself is just a really rewarding feeling. I put something out there and I’m getting acknowledged for this publicly.”
