Hey r/hhh, my name is Day Topel. I'm from a small town in Northern Michigan known as Gaylord (yes, that's actually what its called). For some reason, there is an obscene amount of really bad rappers in Gaylord, including myself. Like, for a high school of 1,000 or so kids, probably around 25 rappers. I'm not sure if every high school is like this or if we're just special, so I decided to make this post to (1) shamelessly promote myself, (2) bring us all together to laugh of some of the hilarious "beefs", and (3) try to understand why the Gaylord High School rap scene is such a big deal. Sorry if the formatting is a but wack, I'm on mobile.
2016 and The Rise of Kammeyer King
In 2016, at the beginning of my freshman year, I was hanging out with my friend Eric, when he introduced me to a song, Rookie of the Year by Kammeyer King. Apparently, the King was a guy in the grade above me named Tyler Cherry, and he got his name from the trailer park he lived in on the south side of town, Kammeyer. He had a few other songs out at the time, but they've all been deleted since. A week later, the school talent show rolled around. Kammeyer King took the stage with his hypeman, JJ Black, to perform an unreleased song. The performance was fine, I don't remember anything from the song except that the hook was something along the lines of "Ballin like an armadillo" and somethi about Harambe, but it was definitely overshadowed by the 10 minute long argument before the song where the Kammeyer King bitched out the tech guy, Jason, for playing the wrong beat. Kammeyer soon dropped a mixtape, 40/200, but it has been deleted off of all streaming platforms.
Tuesday 08:29PM
Alright, so Kammeyer King stayed quiet for a bit, and didn't really drop much music for a while. But apparently, a few kids looked at him and said "Hey, I can rap better than this white Lil Yachty lookalike", and they got inspired to drop their own songs. The next guy to come up was Great Ape Rico, with his absolute classic song, Tuesday 08:29PM. If you listen to any song in this thread, PLEASE make it this one. It is absolutely hilarious. Rico didn't go much further with music, only occaisionally dropping songs and deleting them a month later, but this song always gets the homies bangin.
The Rise and Fall of Blanco Crew
Some of the jocks got a hold of Kammyer and Rico's music, and decided to start making music of their own. This included Prodi J., Stef, DumbAndBroke, Lil Mac, and a metric fuckton of other guys. They made mediocre music and bought soundcloud plays, and Kammeyer King didn't like that. He worked with them on his second mixtape, Project: Slum Lord, and they all clowned him when he stepped out of the room for a sec. He got pissed, and fucking snapped on a diss track over a beat borrowed from the 8 Mile Soundtrack, The Blanco Crew Diss Track. This is probably the best known song of the Gaylord scene other than Tuesday 08:29PM, as the school was in fucking shambles. Everyone was choosing sides between Kammeyer King, the genuine artist who might not be the best but is making genuine effort, and Blanco Crew, the guys who might be making better music but are also being shady as fuck. This was the beginning of the weirdest series of events in my life. Blanco Crew never responded to the track, and actually broke up shortly after. I think a few of the members still make music, but nobody from Gaylord listens to them after this.
The Beef Between Day Topel and Ethan Bars
Alright, so here's where I got involved. It's late 2018, and I'm hangin out with my friend Salem, and I said "Hey man, this rap shit is stupid as fuck, but it kinda looks fun, u wanna try it out?" That night, we released a nearly word for word remake of Pusha T's The Story of Adidon, known as The Death of Blanco Crew. It's genuinely fucking terrible, I spent less than 20 minutes on it.
Apparently, some guy named Ethan Bars (now known as AP Mellow Boyy), heard my song, and said "Hey, this is fucking stupid", and decided to roast the fuck out of me. He actually did a decent job, dropping You's A Clout Chaser, roasting me for some bars I had in my song, having a meme page on Instagram, having a small dick, having a stupid name, and being a virgin. The last part was wack for a few reasons, as he knew I wasn't a virgin, as he referenced in the lines "Go crazy, go cry like your baby", which called me out for having a pregnancy scare with a crazy girl I was with shortly before.
I had to respond. I didn't give a fuck about the clout or the music or anything, I just wanted to keep the meme going. It was fucking wild that everyone in the school was talking about the drama club kid that made jokes all the time and the weird stoner skater kid. Two weeks later after my Blanco Crew diss, I dropped Just Clout Chasin, my first original song. I used the Who Dat Boy beat, and immediately got flagged for copyright. I decided the most reasonable thing to do, rather than just downtune the beat a step or two, was to lower the audio quality so much that the track was barely listenable. But hey, it passed the filter. I spent about two and a half minutes flexing on Ethan, including the classic opening line, "Ethan Bars got no bars".
Hurricane Vs. Day Topel
In the following months, I stayed away from rapping. Ethan never directly responded to my song, so I had no reason to. But as I listened more closely, I noticed that Ethan and his friends G-Brewah and Hurricane had been sneak-dissing Kammeyer King and myself. Kammeyer King called out Ethan on multiple tracks, and they had a short lived, not very public beef. I decided to come out of my retirement, and dropped The Three Stooges, an all-out assault of Ethan, G-Brewah, and Hurricane. I mocked their own songs, referencing Brewah and Ethan's song Racing, Brewah's song Games (now deleted, as it was fucking terrible), and Hurricane's Hurricane Batman.
Ethan and Brewah never responded, however Hurricane was fucking pissed. I had no clue he had even heard the song, until a week later, when hanging out with some friends, someone pointed out that he dropped a song called Death Day. I didn't even think about it possibly being about me, until I saw the cover art of my Grandpa Bob's tombstone. I was fucking livid, that's absolutely fucked. At the end of the song, he referenced how I nutted in 37 seconds when I lost my virginity, and I still don't know how he knew that. I spent the next five days writing, asking people for shit on him, and assembling this song. I learned pretty quickly that people fucking hated this kid. A girl offered to suck my dick if I could make him cry with this song, which made me put 1000x more effort in. His ex girlfriend sent me a cringey voicemail he left her in middle school, which I immediately showed to everyone I knew. Fuck dude, I feel bad for how badly I ripped this poor kid apart. This track was the fucking definition of cyberbullying, and I'm proud of how hard it is, but goddamn it's fucking harsh. The final product was the one take Grandpa's Revenge, and ripped him to shreds for his alcoholic and abusive dad, his brother's fucking suicide, our shared ex girlfriend (I actually wasn't aware they dated until I was making this song), and the voicemail I talked about before, which I chopped up and left as a skit at the end of the track. I definitely went too far, but in my defense, he brought up Grandpa Bob. The literal fucking day after the track dropped, Hurricane came up to me at school and said "Fuck dude, you murdered me. Thanks for not saying much about my brother. I deleted my track, you win. I just wanna be cool, and maybe do a song together sometime." We never did the track, but we're still cool.
The Post-Beef Scene
Over the summer, everyone stayed pretty quiet. Ethan changed his named to AP Mellow Boyy. A newcomer, Auuto, started rapping on songs with G-Brewah, and somesolo songs that are actually really fucking good. G-Brewah and I were cool again. My laptop broke and I couldn't afford a new one, so I didn't make music. I wanted to, as making Grandpa's Revenge was actually a lot of fun. There was probably only like 5 songs that dropped all summer. I was still writing, and everyone else was working on coming up with their sounds. Shit didn't really happen until G-Brewah dropped Won't Let Up, featuring some of his friends from out of town, and it relatively blew up. There has been some controversy on whether or not they bought plays, as it just seems a bit sus, but we didn't look too much into it.
Hearing Won't Let Up made me wanna drop some shit, so me and the boys pulled up to our friend Jon's house, got stoned out of our fucking minds, and freestyled. I cannot freestyle. It's just not my strong suit. I can come up with bars on the spot, but never flows. Maybe it was the insane amount of weed that night combined with the fact that I rarely smoke, but for whatever reason, I could freestyle that night, but only about sucking dick. I decided to drop a joke song about gay shit. Originally, I wanted to use the Accordion beat, but then realized it's nearly impossible to flow on. Our homie Christian said "hold on, lemme pull up sum", and pulled up a "Clown Type Beat" on Soundcloud. I knew this was the one. Christian threw it into audacity, added sound effects, and slowed it down, and it was ready. He looked like fucking Metro Boomin tryin to line that shit up perfectly and it was fucking hilarious. I jotted down a few of the bars I was freestyling, and I was ready. I honestly do not remember recording, listening to, mixing, or releasing the song at all. The song ended up being Clownin Around, and my biggest song. I got fucking FLAMED when I came back to school, but it was worth it, that shit is fucking hilarious.
Present
Everything since Clownin Around has just been good fun. We're all workin together, just making fun music. We all get better with every track, and all havin a good time. We're planning on hosting a "Gaylord Grammy Awards" ceremony complete with a cypher sometime soon, and we all have plans to keep dropping songs. Thanks to anyone that read all of this, or listened to a few songs, its just a funny music scene that I thought r/hhh would like.
EDIT: sorry im uncultured havent seen 8 mile or listened to much mobb deep, apparently blanco crew diss track uses one of their beats
EDIT 2: ok this shit gettin more attention than i thought so imma plug my song i dropped over the weekend, stream Work On It
FUCK BLANCO CREW
i also just remembered that JJ Black got arrested for dealing meth in the school parking lot, in case that makes this any funnier
