Right before spring break I had the chance to sit down with our Campus Celebrity, The Rapper: H (aka Harry Ehrlich), and found out a little bit about IC’s very own rapper.
So tell me a little bit about yourself.
I’m a junior TVR major in the Park school and I go by The Rapper: H on stage. I’m 21, grew up in Sharon, MA and a couple summers ago I moved into downtown Boston.
How did you know you wanted to rap and how did you get started?
I first started rapping during my freshman year of college when I met a kid by the name of Russell Williams. Russell was a freestyle rapper, meaning anybody could beatbox and he could come up with rhymes off the top of his head to rap over the beat. I had tried my hand at freestyling back in high school with some mixed results, but once we started hanging out, I got to be better at freestyling, which eventually translated to me writing songs. Once I wrote a couple and recorded them on my laptop’s GrageBand Application, I knew that I wanted to record them in better quality with an actual sound production engineer.
Who are your biggest influences?
As far as musically, my influences vary across the entire rap spectrum. I grew up listening to a lot of Eminem and 50 Cent. By the time I was in high school I started listening to a wide variety of rappers including Notorious B.I.G., Kanye West, Nas, Ludacris, and Lil Wayne. But when I got to college I really started to listen to a lot of Mac Miller, and in that, I saw that perhaps there was a potential market for white rappers. Mac really hit it big during my freshman year and the entire country took note because of online music blogs and YouTube. Once I started getting into the music blogs I was finding tons of new songs and artists every week. My influences are changing every day. There can be a single song that really sparks some ideas and concepts about a future project, so I try to keep my ears and eyes open to new influences all the time.
What cans fan expect for the future (near/far)?
Dynamic Inkline. As part of their web series “Louder Than Words”, we recorded a track and recorded a video for it that is now on YouTube.
I have been working on material for several months; however, I haven’t been able to record my music and therefore don’t know when exactly the next project will be coming out. However, I want to try and release it before the end of 2013, so I’m giving myself some time.
Check out The Rapper: H’s music and stay updated on upcoming appearances: