Loyalty & Love was sponsored by the Easley Group Agency, Dewey’s Pizza, and Day Air Ballpark.
“We’re trying to change how they look at music and rap and the image of how they look at youth in the community,” yTank said. “I was basically an example of a person that was on the negative side. But just because you may have a rough start doesn’t mean you’re not going to have a great finish.”
Around 9 a.m. May 16, the students filed into the gymnasium during yTank’s soundcheck. Backed by a live, six-piece band, yTank checked his vocals which reverberated off the cement and hardwood floor of the open room. He wore a white graphic tee that read “ice cream,” while his band wore all black. The decibels of the excited voices in the room were comparable to those of the music.
The students sat on the two-tiered stone bleachers that border the gym. After opening remarks around 9:30, the students were called to the front of the stage, which was draped with a homemade “Loyalty and Love” banner, to form an audience inside the three-point line of the court. As the lights on the gym floor went down, the basketball hoop obstructing the view of the stage went up.
yTank and his band entertained the students of City Day for half an hour, with words of wisdom intermittently interjected. The show also doubled as a music video shoot, hence the sea of uniform yTank shirts.
Although it was difficult to make out the vocals, with the poor acoustics you might imagine in a non-soundproofed gym, his intentions were clear: this was an event for the kids who might need inspiration. It didn’t matter what he was saying, rather that he was saying anything.
Born Darrell Thomas and representing South Street Portsmouth, Virginia, by way of Dayton, Ohio, yTank waded through a fierce and troubled lifestyle. In search for an outlet to unleash the anger of watching his mom struggle to make ends meet, he discovered his passion for music around the age of 13.
But that lack of inspiration in his youth is what inspired yTank to give back now.
“I wanted to give them a live performance, to give them something different than just seeing somebody rap over tracks,” he said. “It can inspire a kid that might want to do music, inspire a kid that might want to do journalism, might want to be a videographer.”
One of yTank’s long term goals is to help create youth rec centers, to help “keep them out of trouble.”
One of the students stepped on stage toward the end of the performance. yTank gave him the microphone, and the floor, to rap. He got a few lines out before getting nervous. But by his side, yTank showed him how it was done and handed back the microphone, giving the student the courage to take a full verse for himself.
It was a moment of “look at this thing that I can do that you can do, too.”
“In lieu of everything that’s been going on, as far as all the fights in schools, we really want to give a different insight to the community image,” said Reggie Morgan, yTank’s guitarist and CEO at Loyal T Entertainment. “What better way to send them out, after hearing all this negative stuff, than with something positive like this.”
The lights on the gym floor turned on, illuminating the crowd with the same intensity as the spots on stage. And, as if blurring the line between performer and audience even more, yTank stepped onto the court, too, putting everyone on the same level. It was an exponentially poetic and affecting moment of “look at this thing that I can do that you can do, too” — but to the whole school.
Brandon Berry writes about the Dayton and Southwest Ohio music and art scene. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
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