On Sept.11, Kaeyl Downey, known as Bigg-K, local rapper and 2017 MHS alumni, will play his first show at the Fubar, at 3108 Locust St. Downey will be performing along with others as part of The Showcase Tour, which showcases a variety of local acts and takes votes from audience members to determine who moves on to the next city. The show is all ages and doors open at 7 p.m., but Downey will take the stage at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12.

Downey began rapping in Minnesota, before moving to Missouri in 2015, with a group of friends as an outlet for their personal problems.

It began as something they did just for fun, but they eventually got serious about it and pooled together $2,500 to build a studio in one of their basements.

“We’d spend everyday at his house,” Downey said. “And on weekends, we’d stay from Friday night all the way to Sunday night.”

Downey’s output has only increased since moving, and some of his work can now be found online on his Soundcloud, under the profile name Bigg K.

“I rap a lot about what I’ve done in life and where I am because of it,” he said. “I rap about stuff I don’t talk about with people, like my inner demons.”

One specific track Downey recalls in regards to this is “Opiates,” which is about his previous battles with drug addiction.

He also raps about more positive subjects, however, such as the hard work he’s exhibited throughout his life.

As for the concert on Sep. 11, Downey is both nervous and excited. Despite these mixed feelings, he’s confident he’ll put on a memorable performance.

“It’s gonna be lit,” he said. “I’m going to wreck the stage.”

He said MHS students in particular will enjoy it because they can relate to the fact that he went to the same school as them and went through a lot of the same experiences.

“I was an outcast there, and now I’m out here performing,” he said. “And [other students] can do it too. It’s about having a dream and following the risk in hopes that they’ll pay off.”

Alex Paolicchi, senior, writes verses with Downey and raps with him on occasion.

“Me and Kaeyl will be Snapchatting each other and trading lines back and forth,” he said. “We’ll basically be finishing verses with each other.”

Paolicchi’s style is more ‘90s influenced, derived from artists like 2Pac and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, while Downey is more horrorcore-derived. Despite this, Paolicchi said  he and Downey have a lot of chemistry on the mic and mesh together well.

While he won’t be performing with Downey, Paolicchi will still be going to the show.

“I really wanna go to support Kaeyl because he’s a very good friend of mine,” he said.

Also performing on the same night, 30 minutes prior to Downey, is Jeremy Slobodzian, junior, and his band The Underground Lemon Experience (ULE).

What sets this apart from past ULE concerts is that this is their last show with their original lineup. Their drummer is moving to Colorado for personal matters, and the future of the band is largely uncertain. However, Slobodzian says one thing is definite: the band will never be the same again.

“There are two roads we can go,” he said, “We can either continue with a new drummer, or we can radically switch around our lineup and play a new style of music.”

Slobodzian said he is leaning toward the latter, and that this concert will likely be the last time you can hear the band’s original repertoire of songs.

“We want to evoke more emotion in our style,” he said. “We want to maintain some energy, but we also want to bring out more feeling in the way we play.”

Slobodzian said this change will be evident in everything from their lyricism to their instrumental style. He hopes to switch to slower, more doom-metal inspired stuff with rapidly changing harmonies yet consistent chord progressions, to create an illusion that everything in the song is changing yet remaining the same.

The sound is also going to be fuller, as they now have two guitar players and a bassist. Plus, they’ve been rehearsing more than ever before to ensure that this is the tightest they’ve ever played.

This change in style comes from Slobodzian’s own changes in his personal life.

“Some things happened to me a while ago that made me realize I need to focus on my own happiness, and less on the happiness of others,” he said. “I don’t want to go out of my way to upset anybody, but if I have to do it to make myself happy, then by all means I will.”

It’s sentiments like these that define ULE as a concept: energetic and ultimately fun-loving, but only in the most LaVeyan sense.

“If I’m not happy, what’s the point?” Slobodzian said.

On top of this new style, Slobodzian said this show will also be the biggest audience turnout of any ULE show, and that the band has some special effects and surprises in store to make this show truly memorable.

You can catch both these MHS-affiliated music acts at the Fubar, located at 3108 Locust St. on Sept. 11, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 at the door.