PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY, Va. — High School senior Jared Fallin grew up in Prince George County, and he loves “and bleeds green for it.”
That pride is evident in the song he wrote and performed in a video with a group of friends.
The lyrics riff on Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind but the concrete jungle has been replaced by cornfields, so to speak.
Prince George, County formed from legends in the past.
There’s nothing you can’t do
Now you’re in Prince George, George
These fields will make you feel brand new
These people inspire you
Let’s hear it for Prince George, Prince George, Prince George
Credit for getting the band together, so to speak, goes to drummer, and PG junior Darius Mathews.
Darius inadvertently put things in motion when he signed them up for a talent show hosted by the Music Biz Club, which is a club within 4-H that celebrates music and talent.
One tiny speed bump — there was no song written to perform.
That’s when they also decided to bring in singer Sade Ferguson, who has since graduated on to VCU, where she majors in theater.
“At this point I still needed to write a song for us to perform and we were a brand new group, so we had no previous chemistry,” Jared says. “It was tough without rehearsing but we winged it and took the talent show.”
That was in March. In June, the group was invited to Virginia Tech for a series of 4-H workshops called “Congress.”
The footage in the video is from that performance, and they knew they needed to track their homage to Prince George County.
“We set up a recording studio and went to work to make a professional sounding version of the song,” Jared says.
Then this week they sorted through the footage and edited the video together.
“I am a little familiar with the process of editing but Josh Maclin did the main portion of it, with small tips and suggestions from the group,” Jared says.
It’s evident each of the teens has talent, and though Jared dreams of a career in music, he says “unfortunately it is a risky field.”
“I want to spread a message of clean rap while addressing controversial topics such as culture, religion, racism, poverty, and much more,” he says, and doesn’t hesitate to pitch his mixtape (his lyrics set over beats). “I plan on doing music until I die and if it could ever become a career I would take it without question.”
He says his biggest takeaway from this process “is the knowledge I gained from the shows and discovering how much 4-H and the Music Biz Club care about these kids and young adults.”
