Get off work around 12 a.m. Walk home, and immediately retreat to the bedroom studio. Record music until sunrise, then crash until it’s time to go to work again. Rinse and repeat.

This life may sound monotonous to you, but to an artist it’s the best way to hone your craft and chase the life you want to live.

Kaeyl Downey, 2017 MHS alumnus, does this constantly. One time, he went three days of nonstop recording without sleep, and ended up crashing for an uncertain period of time. All his friends thought he died.

Downey is a local rapper known as Bigg-K, and he’s currently preparing for his upcoming first concert. On Oct. 19, Downey will play at the Fubar, at 3108 Locust St.

Downey will be rapping against other local rappers as part of The Showcase Tour, which exhibits a variety of local acts from each city it travels to. At each city, audience members vote for their favorite artist, determining who gets to perform at the next date. The show is all ages and doors open at 7 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.”

Now, Downey sells his albums for $10 apiece, and the songs that don’t end up on his albums go to 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.

Downey said that ultimately Bigg-K is sort of an alter-ego, and an outlet for him to express darker emotions.

His biggest inspiration is Tech N9ne, and he said he hopes to live like him one day, because he’s able to balance his rap life with tending to a family.

“I wanna be famous and known, but I realize that could make a lot of things harder to do,” he said. “Like, I wouldn’t even be able to walk to work anymore.”

As for the concert on Oct. 19, Downey is both nervous and excited. He’s excited to show off his skills to the audience, but he’s concerned that some of them won’t fully understand the songs due to their personal nature. 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.”

Downey said he’s worked hard on his setlist for the show, and he’s been listening to it repeatedly and wants it to be perfect.

“Nobody understands, except for an artist, the effort you put in leading up to everything,” he said. “I’m putting my heart out for this concert. I’m gonna perform with my heart on my sleeve.”

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. While he hasn’t been featured on a track with Downey yet, he is going to featured on his upcoming album Legacy, set to be released in February.

Paolicchi was one of Downey’s first friends when he moved to St. Louis, and Paolicchi said their working relationship is strong and collaborative.

“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.”

The pair didn’t start with a serious mission, instead doing freestyles in Downey’s garage when they would be hanging out with others. Downey noticed that Paolicchi had an especially smooth flow, and got him involved in his writing process.

Paolicchi’s style is ‘90s influenced, derived from artists like 2Pac and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Despite this difference in style, 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 (Downey said he wants his first concert to be his own), Paolicchi will still be going to the show, and plans to perform with him in the future.

“I really wanna go to support Kaeyl because he’s a very good friend of mine,” he said. “He’s done a lot for me, and I think MHS students will really enjoy it.”