On March 11, junior Austin Edwards was preparing for his first live concert. It was 48 degrees and the concert would be held outside at Lakeside Park.

Edwards uses MediaFire, a Texas-based app that promotes file sharing and storage, as a platform for his music.        

Edwards currently works with a friend, PHS graduate Cameron Lee, to produce his music.

“I recently built a music studio in my house, and when I heard he released a mixtape I asked if he would want to use my facilities,” Lee said. “Currently I am mixing and mastering his recorded music to make it sound more professional, but in the future, he plans on making the beats [on his own].”

Edwards has been rapping since he was 13 years old.

“I just have periods of time that I go without writing, but recently, I [started again] because it’s fun to me,” Edwards said.

Every two weeks Edwards has been releasing three new songs.

“I always come up with the lyrics first and then the instrumental part. This works better for me,” Edwards said. “I have moods where I just want to write a dumb party song and I also have moods like ‘I’m going to slow down and take it more serious’.”

Edwards is not the only student that raps at PHS.

Senior Kamree Simmons also known as YWNKamryn on screen and senior Anthony Basauri also known on screen as YWNAmbino have been rapping and making music on Soundcloud — an online audio distribution platform headquartered in Berlin, Germany– for about two years.

“I started the summer of 2016,” Simmons said. “I knew [Basauri] but we never hung out [until] he texted me about rapping”

Simmons encourages students to follow their Soundcloud account, @DFK/YWN [the finesse kids].

Making music includes songwriting, arranging, tracking, editing and mixing.

Simmons and Basauri use an at-home studio to mix their music.

Simmons said writing music is harder than it seems.

“Sometimes, I’ll have my verse done and Basauri won’t have his done,” Simmons said. “I can record mine, but I still have to wait for him.”

Writing a song, for Simmons, can take anywhere from three days to a month.

“We’ll record and then spend days working on it,” Basauri said. “Sometimes even weeks, just depending on how long the song is and how good we actually want it to sound.”

They promote their music through Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Soundcloud.

“We [will ask snapchat followers for their input] and we’ll post a little snip of a song and people will be like, ‘Yeah, drop it,’” Basauri said.

As for the actual music, they use their experiences to rap.

“Music to Anthony and me used to be just a thing just to pass time, but as time passed we grew to love it,” Simmons said.

Simmons and Basauri, will have shows and music videos coming out within the next month .

“Usually we drop songs every couple months,” Basauri said. “We want to make it big. Everyone does.”