Rap music has an increasing presence in the music industry. With this movement, people have been inspired to follow. Many have begun creating rap music themselves, such as senior Emmanuel Kamara. During the school Black History Month celebration, Kamara performed the rap from the song “Glory”. He is talented and has a strong love for rap music.

Kamara makes his own music, from writing to producing. He got into creating rap after a friend told him to join his rap group. It is particularly impressive as most rappers do not produce their own beats. Many choose to find them online or hire someone else to produce them. Kamara sometimes takes beats he likes off the Internet, but many of his songs are completely original, completely done by him. When he is not producing, he is coming up with ideas for lyrics.

“I just take things I see everyday, real life situations and write about them, like if there’s a guy asking a girl for another chance, or something like that, you know, anything that’s real,” Kamara said.

Kamara writes all his songs, taking inspiration from everyday life and putting it in his music. Many rappers choose to have other people write their songs, nicknamed “ghostwriters,” who write the majority of a song but are uncredited, however Kamara wants to send messages through his music. He does it for fun and sends the songs he makes to his friends. Kamara’s favorite song he has written and rapped is a song he performed at the school talent show about the rap industry and the state of mainstream rap. The song essentially poked fun at the state of popular rap and how much of it is incomprehensible or just not about anything at all. Kamara is not a fan of “mumble” rappers and the trap music played on mainstream of radios.

“I like rap that makes sense, or that says something,” Kamara said. “I like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole because they rap about real things, real issues.”

Kamara said he is inspired by Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole because of the way they write their songs about society, issues in life and things that have real meaning as opposed to rappers who only talk about money and material things. His favorite rap lyric is, “rapping is a gift, not a curse don’t abuse it, if you don’t know how to rap, it’s cool, don’t push it.”

“His music is really good! He’s also really good at the piano, which I don’t think a lot of people know. I like that he is passionate about the messages he sings about,” senior Hailey Laubscher said.

The song “Glory” is about the Civil Rights Movement, from the movie “Selma”. Kamara had not performed beforehand, so the experience of rapping in front of a crowd was new for him.

“I was very nervous before, but then I just started rapping and once I started it was ok,” Kamara said.

While Kamara does not see rap turning into a professional career for him, he said he would not mind being a producer, as he does produce some of his own beats, but he knows this is highly unlikely as well. For now, he seems fine with simply having fun with his talents and sharing them with his friends.

“I’m just doing this for fun. I don’t see this happening as a career or anything. I’m just having fun with my friends and enjoying putting my thoughts out there as music,” Kamara said.