Junior finds passion in making rap music

It’s not every day that students decide early in life what they want to be when they grow up. One of these rare students is junior Nik Aji, who wants to be a rapper.

Aji, going by the stage name “Nick Charger,” recently created his own rap album titled “Behavior Issues” and uploaded it to Soundcloud, a music sharing website.

“Behavior Issues” is a hip hop/rap album with a lot of rap, jazzy samples of music and hard hitting drums,” Aji said. “When I was 13, I heard my first full rap album, and it just drew me in. My friends and I started writing some songs, and I realized I liked it a lot.”

The album deals mainly with behavior issues, as expressed by the title, and how to overcome them, inspired by how Aji was constantly in trouble at his old school. Aji said he used to get sent to the principal’s office weekly, due to constant misbehavior.

This same attitude is reflected in his songs, one being about an eccentric rapper who becomes famous, only to realize fame isn’t everything. Aji said he enjoys writing stories with rap but also just likes to write casually and have a good time.

Since Aji is just beginning his journey as a rapper, he feels he needs to have a local presence first.

“This is one of the things I'm passionate about and good at and basically I had to prove to myself and everyone else that I'm worth checking out,” Aji said. “To get to where I am as a songwriter, I had to write a lot of mediocre songs and experiment with different sounds, but I'm a lot closer to finding my voice.”

Even so, he said the process of making music proved to be one of the more challenging aspects of producing the album. Aji used a lot of music software programs to record, mix and master the tracks as well as sequence them, though he prefers to write with a pen and pad, as it helps him focus better

Not all the songs he made were his own. Aji said some of the beats on [the album] were produced by local producers and musicians he met online, and a couple tracks are remixes of songs.

“There's still a lot I need to learn about producing an album correctly though, and I'm eager to learn more,” Aji said.

Writing a song is something Aji describes as a tedious process, saying that it’s different for everybody, depending on what they’re thinking about, what they want to write about, and what they listen to.

To Aji, it comes instinctually most of the time, but there are moments when he really has to work to force himself to write when he can’t think of anything

At the moment, Aji plans to mature his career as a beginner in the rap industry. He said that as long as rapping never becomes boring for him, he will continue to develop and produce music for people who like his style.

“Writing music can be a nerve-wracking thing nowadays because if it's subpar nobody cares about it,” Aji said. “Honestly, I hope someone can play the album from track 1 to 10 and feel like the album is a really good piece of music and art, and [I have] some real potential.”