“They want to rap right now.”
As the lyrics from their newly released single declare, it’s time for hip-hop duo BEDROC to step into the scene.
Composed of John Carroll sophomore Mike Brownyard (right) and Marcell McCollough (who went to JCU last year but has since transferred), the duo’s roots go back to middle school, where they found their beginnings in the town of Spencerport, N.Y., near Rochester.
What began as expressing a love for music developed into the creation of Brownyard and McCollough’s own demos and performances at shows during high school. Once at Carroll, the duo reinvented their image, changing their name from “The East Coast Kings” to “BEDROC” (dropping the K to denote Rochester) and creating new material.
With a style that is a combination of hip-hop, R&B and pop, McCollough’s smooth vocals and Brownyard’s catchy hooks are what have given the duo the chance to book numerous live performances and aquire a fan base that has exceeded the local level.
Since McCollough left John Carroll and transferred to Monroe Community College near Rochester, there is distance between the pair, but according to Brownyard, the positives have outweighed the negatives.
“Marcell being in Rochester has been a positive because he can grasp the attention of 16,000 students Monroe has, while I’m getting the word out to 4,000 students here at Carroll,” he said. “Together that’s 20,000 people, so it’s creating a wider horizon for us.”
A full-time student majoring in business, Brownyard has found parallels between what he’s learning in classes and the marketing aspect of his music, something that leaves him wanting to pursue more.
“I’d like to take it to the next level, and I think Jay-Z and P. Diddy are two good examples of artists that grew up as big recording artists and took it to a whole new level,” he said.
Beyond those artists, he looks toward Eminem and Drake as representative of the image he aspires to hold– one that is real and doesn’t conform to the industry’s stern expectations.
“[These two artists] have broken the barriers, yet have always stayed true to themselves,” he said. “They speak the truth and they don’t try to gain any attention by it, and that’s pretty inspiring to me.”
The stage and the crowd brings an adrenaline rush to the two performers. It is one they hunger for once they see the crowd getting into their music.
“If you can’t convince the fans, it’s hard to convince yourself,” he said. “So when we’re at a live show and notice that the crowd is getting into it, it makes the show that much better. It’s a heaven for me, and I can’t compare it to any other feeling.”
Among their most recent projects were performances at Rochester’s Water Street Music Hall, a Haiti benefit performance for WDKX radio as one of the top ten Rochester artists, and a charity event at Rochester’s Club Tribeca.
Manager Bruce Pilato, whose large list of experience involves working on the voting board for the Grammys and being a journalist for various music industry magazines, has pushed BEDROC closer to success and taken them to the next level.
“[Bruce] is so extremely knowledgeable, and Marcell and I believe that he is the biggest key to getting us to the level we want to be at,” said Brownyard.
With tracks such as “Rock Your Body” and “Terrible” already available on iTunes, a remix of Kesha’s “TiK ToK” on YouTube with over 45,000 views, and a mix tape in the making, it seems like the duo is unstoppable.
Brownyard and McCollough set a goal of two objectives for 2010: book shows and put out a mixtape, and it looks like they’re over halfway to reaching that goal.
The mixtape, entitled “Pay Per View” will be coming out in late March/early April and will consist of a combination of remixes and original songs.
As for performances, BEDROC is looking toward taking a portion of North Eastern America and booking shows to make different colleges aware of who they are.
“We’re going to try and make an I-90 tour, which is a stretch of four to six hours that’s convenient for us to visit different colleges to perform,” he said.
In addition to tours outside of Rochester and Cleveland, BEDROC has upcoming performances at John Carroll. They will be performing after Seth Meyers’ stand-up comedy act, as well as at Relay for Life in late April.
Still, they say they will be content with doing 20 to 30 shows by the end of the year, hopefully stretching out to ten different cities by the end of 2010.
“That’s another goal is getting more of a following in rare places,” he said. “We’re always looking toward expanding our horizon.”
