It all began ten months ago in a locker room at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. Roy Briggs (’09) was spitting freestyle rap to an audience of his fellow football players.
“After practice one day we were just messing around,” Briggs said. “Then one of the boys asked me if I ever considered music as a career. I never thought about anything like that. A teammate told me to come by his room because he had a bunch of recording equipment, so that’s essentially where it all started.”
Briggs experimented with recording for a few weeks and with the help of friends and teammates, released his first album, “Castleraps,” to the school. Though the album didn’t receive much publicity, Briggs said it set his music career in motion.
“It was all a progression,” he said. “I recorded one track and then just kept running with it. Since then, everything has been working out like crazy.”
After recognizing he had the potential to further his passion, Briggs switched his focus from sports to music and now plans on pursuing music as a career. Going by the title “That Royal Bandit,” Briggs released his most recent album “Friend Me on Facebook: The Mixtape” Oct. 8.
“Friend Me on Facebook,” which was entirely engineered by Briggs, has received almost 900 listens and over 250 downloads since its release. The album, which can be accessed at www.datpiff.com, features high school friends Demetrius and Ervin Cook (’10). The mixtape was primarily recorded in Briggs’ basement and took the entire summer to produce.
“I would pull all-nighters three days in a row,” he said. “It was just me sitting in my basement with a microphone doing my thing, and by that time I knew where I wanted to go with my music—my style, my image, everything.”
Briggs’ interest in rapping originated at Whitman when he and a few other friends would host Freestyle Fridays, an end-of-the-week ritual where they would come into the cafeteria during lunch periods and start rapping lyrics off the top of their head. Briggs’ lyrics are inspired by personal experiences and childhood. He writes all of his own lyrics and plans to do so as long as he produces music.
“Roy is someone who sings about real stuff,” Demetrius said. “Women and clubbing is all you hear about these days, but Roy brings something different to the table.”
Originally planning to play football in college, Briggs took a post-graduate year at Mercersburg Academy. But after discovering he had a talent for music, his priorities shifted. He started applying to music schools this past spring and was accepted to Loyola University in New Orleans shortly after.
When a motivational speaker came to Loyola at the beginning of his first year, Briggs knew that he had made the right choice.
“He was talking about finding your passion,” Briggs said. “Then he said ‘look at what you do when you study, and look at what you do when you procrastinate. Whatever you’re doing when you procrastinate is probably your passion.’”
Briggs is currently working on his next album, “Lost in Translation,” and hopes that it will be released by early January. Briggs also recently formed the group “ECME” (Eclectic Collective of Microphone Executioners). ECME is made up of five members, including Deven Nettles (’09), who frequently performed at Coffee House. Their music is available on ecme.bandcamp.com.
Briggs said his parents have supported him wholeheartedly in both athletics and music. Briggs’ mother said she always tried to expose her kids to both music and sports because giving them well-rounded exposure helped them discover what they were good at and enjoyed.
“Roy is one in a million,” his father said. “He’s an extremely talented kid and when he came to me and told me he wanted to switch to rapping I encouraged him. He had his football days at Whitman and now he’s doing great with music.”
