Jay Gatz

Its Febuary 2003 and Trenton is in his room, on punishment yet again, this time for receiving 6 F's on his report card. He turns down his radio to listen to what was on the TV downstairs. It was B-Rabbit in the final round of his freestyle battle on 8 Mile. A day later,after hearing the movie, Trenton and his friend decide to playfully rap over instrumentals for fun. But what started out as just a joke soon became a dream.

Over the next couple of years Trent experimented with freestyling over hundreds of instrumentals and recorded himself on a tape recorder his late great-grandmother left behind. He would listen to himself, dotting the T's and crossing the I's of his raps. He then ventured into writing religiously, everyday, mostly during class lectures while others copied notes from the overhead. At this point Trent was building himself to become a good MC, but felt he could never last in an actual battle. He soon tested himself, afterschool when a fellow track team member was ciphering. Trent inserted himself into the situation, but turned it into a battle to see if he could stand tall, which he did by a landslide.

More years pass and Trent has began to record songs, but prefers not to include choruses in them.
He was looking for a rap name, stubling on one after another. "Ebonix" was a definate choice, but members in an online chat room that he freestyled in would often think he was a black female pornstar. After failing English his junior year of high school, Trenton was forced to attend the American nightmare, known as summer school. Days went by in class as he either zoned out or slept, knowing summer school was passed mainly by attending. One day his teacher had him copying notes about the story they were currently reading called "The Great Gatsby." As the teacher began breaking down the story, Trent began to have an epiphany; this was the story of his life, set in a different
era. The main character was known as James Gats or Jay Gatsby, and the plot was simple; boy meets girl, boy obtains the finest things to impress girl, girl still doesn't love him. The teacher also taught the class a new vocabulary word. Nuevo Riche, meaning new money or someone who is eager to be rich. By this point Trent had an idea figured out. He'd go by the name Jay Gatz, which could have a double meaning (a character and a gun reference), and he would develop a rap group called "Nuevo Riche".

Senior year of high school proved to be a roller coaster events for the newly established Jay Gatz. For starters, he was entering the school year with a beef with a rap group who were fellow students of his. He spent the whole semester fueding and freestyle battling with the opponents until the day of his high school pep rally. Gatz was set to
perform a song about they're rival school at the pep rally, but things didn't go so smoothe. Due to bad sound quality in the mic and watered down lyrics, his first performance included him being booed horribly. After the rally, he decided his rap group would not continue to be beef with their rival rap group. Ironically, a few days after he made this decision he recieved a call from the leader of that group, and they settled their differences. Gatz also decided it was time to release a mixtape with his group, and so it was called "The St. Valentines Day Massacre". After the release, the group started to disband and he was back to square one.

After high school, Gatz put rap on hold for a year while working two jobs. In this lyrical timeout a co-worker suggested that he should watch Jay-Z's movie, "Fade To Black", mainly for entertainment purposes. Gatz wasn't too fond of Jay-Z, citing his loose wordplay as a main reason. But as he watched the movie, he became intrigued by how the fans reacted to the performance. All types of races and genders came together, packed in the great Madison Square Garden, gripping on to every word and knew every lyric by heart. Gatz decided to do a little homework of Jay-Z. He gathered every album, from Reasonable Doubt to The Black Album, and as he listened he began to understand Jay-Z's life and vision. He watched as a young mafioso rapper go from drug dealing to becoming a world renound hip-hop mogul in the course of 7 years. Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer passed, and Gatz was steady studying Jay-Z, slowly but surely becoming a fan. After being released from a detailing job, he decided to go to college, another thing he originally wasn't too fond of.

It was now September 2008, Gatz had a new job, and was set to start college in the Spring of 2009. Yet, Gatz still had a feeling of incompleteness. With dumbed down lyrics and ringtone raps seeming to be the way to go this day in age, Gatz was confused about what direction that he wanted his music to go in. On a random Tuesday night, Gatz was playing Grand Theft Auto 4 and checking out various instrumentals to rap over, when he stumbled over a very different s