College Sound: Hip-hopping in Austin

Shane O'Byrne broke his back lifting weights when he was in high school and changed his life plan of wanting to be a football player.

"I was planning to go to (the University of Southern California), be star linebacker on the team, just outrageous little kid stuff," said O'Byrne. "That's when basically everything changed."

O'Byrne then made the decision to begin a hip hop career and now goes by the moniker Pro-Gres. When he's not creating music, O'Byrne is studying communications at ACC.

"I've been doing it for about a year and a half now and things are finally starting to take off," said O'Byrne.

O'Byrne hopes to change how hip hop isn't one of the more popular music genres in the Austin music scene that is mostly dominated by rock and Americana.

"(The hip-hop community) is really trying to focus on bringing (Austin) hip hop mainstream because when everyone talks about rap, it's all about New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Houston even. In Austin, there's no market for hip hop," said O'Byrne.

Hip-hop and rap have notorious reputations for being "thugged-out" and promoting violence and derogatory lyrics. Examples of this can be seen in past situations such as a brawl breaking at the 2000 Source Hip-Hop Music Awards and the local 2009 shooting in front of the former-Spiro's nightclub after a hip-hop show.

Despite this reputation, O'Byrne debates that not all violence is confined to hip-hop.

"I've been to so many shows. I've probably performed at about 40 shows and been to about another 400 shows. I think only about three times there were ever anything violent breaking out," said O'Byrne. "It's funny though. The more rock shows or the more punk rock shows that I've been to, that's where I usually see more craziness happen."

Looking past whether hip-hop promotes a violent mentality's never-ending debate, O'Byrne focuses his lyrics on his real life situations and emotions and avoids writing about violence and bling.

"I don't have any bling. I'm broke. I'm a student. I got a pair of Versace glasses that I bought three years ago and that's what I rock," said O'Byrne. "The last thing I want is to be is that cliché. ‘Oh yeah, I got a big old diamond, but at the same time I owe the government $15,000 in back taxes.'"

In one song of his in particular, "Not Sorry (For That)," O'Byrne's raps about past experiences of getting in trouble, selling drugs and dealing with what he says were bad decisions.

The lyrics such as "I'm out of control. I can't make sense of itself, so I smoke every day cause it mellows me out" were inspired after a conversation with a high school friend who he lost contact with.

"I was just ‘Hey man, I just wish that things would have been different between us because we were really good friends, but I can't really say that I'm sorry for anything that I did because if I did that, then I'm not really being honest with myself,'" said O'Byrne. "Yes, I was really wrong to do it, but I can't apologize for it because it made me the stronger man that I am today."

O'Byrne currently has several projects in the work that he hope

s to release in the upcoming year.

"My main focus is putting out my mix tape right now," said O'Byrne. "It's probably going just be an online drop. Put it on iTunes, Amazon and all that."

He hopes to release it on New Year's Day, with a backup plan of releasing it on Jan. 11, which will be 1/11/11.

Additionally, O'Byrne has a plan to release a super remix track with the who's who of Austin hip-hop artists. He already has about 14 artists to contribute to the 20 minute long song.

"It's like this is a taste. This is all the best of us, and this is our best stuff on a really good track," said O'Byrne.