After coming to the University as freshmen a few years ago, Darius “Byrd The Voice” Byrd and Mikey “Rosco” Blair started the Christian hip-hop group T.E.C., known as The Envy Crew.
Byrd met Blair at Liquid, formerly known as Sky Bar, randomly one night and Byrd said “something instantly clicked” between the two of them.
The two hip-hop artists had previously been making their own music, which both sides contained profanity. It wasn’t until after they met and started going to Cru meetings, an organization about people who explore life and try to find God, that ended up having a major impact on their music.
“I want it to be uplifting music to shine a light on the blessings that you have,” Byrd said. “We have a song called ‘Hallelujah’ which is about real life and what people are going through everyday. It’s what you see and what you feel. It’s OK to live, but the good news is that God saved you.”
After Byrd and Blair started attending Cru meetings, they met staff member of the organization Nick Gillispie who influenced the artists about who God is.
Gillispie said he tried to challenge the two friends to make their own life group on campus, which eventually led to the start of T.E.C.
“I think my affiliation came because I wanted them to be reflected in their art, create music and influence people on campus,” Gillispie said. “Having them experience those things through God, they naturally wanted that to be reflected in what they’re creating.”
T.E.C consists of more than 20 members from the University, such as promoters, engineers, singers, rappers and the group has performed at Grumpy Dave’s, Howard’s Club H and Cla-Zel. The hip-hop group hosts parties so they can play their own music rather than trying to get other DJs to play their music at other places.
Engineer and sophomore Ja’Mario “Jay Wells” Wells uses a software called Pro Tools to mix and edit the songs. He sometimes stays up until four or five in the morning to work on everything.
“It’s something I’ve always done since I was in seventh grade,” Wells said.
Another aspect of the group comes from sophomore and DJ Kyrie “DJ Reezey” Austin. His grandfather was a pastor, influencing his faith in God as a child.
“I try to help write songs and to bring people around,” Wells said. “We all do it together as a group.”
Blair said he thrives off of creating songs that do not contain any profanity and have even had other artists come up to him and say they have respect for T.E.C.
“It makes sense to not use any profanity anyway because this way you can reach all ages with your songs instead of only older people,” Blair said. “Many rappers are afraid to rap about spirituality, but we’re not.”
T.E.C are expecting an album release called “A1 Since Day1” as early as Nov. 8 and are in the works for hosting a charity event near Thanksgiving for people to donate canned food to the homeless shelter in Toledo.
