Tynan Whalen is a 19-year old liberal arts student from Massachusetts who now lives with his two best friends in a modest Brooklyn apartment. His hair is so long he needs a headband to keep it out of his face, and he wears 2 necklaces at all times: one with a leather pendant complete with an engraved peace sign, and the other a crystal wrapped in wire. His one and only tattoo takes over the entire back of his neck, reading “NOW” in a spraypaint style complete with the “O” in now as a peace sign. His shoes are bamboo Tod’s worn so often that his sock toe peeps out of the front. Tynan is a rapper.
Tynan and his best friend Sam Eckstein have formed a music group they call Technicolor Lenses early last year after meeting at the dorms during their first year of college and realizing Sam’s guitar mends well with Ty’s lyrics. After listening to their erotic noises stirred with lyrics that preach about opening yourself up to the world and mentioning women being goddesses, I felt like I had a sense of what these guys were about. The minute I started talking to Ty in person I realized that I had not gotten to know him through his positive lyrics and voice, he’s much more than that. His energy flows into open space, his entire body emits contagious enthusiasm.
“Things are not the way they seem.” He twirls his hair, carelessly tosses it behind his shoulders with a laugh and adds, “I mean especially with me because I don’t look like a rapper you know?”
I assumed there would be talk about the hip-hop game, how most rappers never even made it to college, how rap holds the stereotype of being only about sex, drugs, and violence, and of course the elephant in the room; most rappers are black. The confidence that Ty carries about these aspects, almost a silent claim that that is all irrelevant, is what makes him different. He doesn’t believe hip-hop is about culture, he believes it’s about expression.
“That’s just how it is, but once I start expressing myself I’m showing you who I am and whoever can get that will understand.”
Technicolor Lenses has not yet stood its ground in the world of hip-hop, but I am aware that they perform at the same venues as some of the most aggressive artists like Immortal Technique. Ty writes his own lyrics, lyrics that make him seem like he innately knows something that we have all yet to learn. His biggest influences are Eminem, and the Dalai Lama.
At twelve years old, Tynan wrote his first rhyme inspired by the rocky atmosphere in his house caused by a divorce between his parents. It was an aggressive piece, he says, somewhat like the way Eminem sounded when he first started. He learned about hip-hop as a form of expression from his after school counselor, someone he still keeps in touch with to this day. He doesn’t curse in any of his current music, the only mention of women is their beauty, and violence seems too far of a concept to fetch. As he speaks about the way he got started writing rhymes, raps, and poetry, it becomes obvious that this isn’t anything except a way to take heavy thoughts out of his head and make them heard.
When he first started, at 12 years old, he was raging with frustration. Now he wants people to know that those aggressive outcries can transform into a consciousness that will change their lives. Tynan uses his own experience as an example of how drastically things can change in a positive way through his personal hero, Hip-Hop itself.
“Hip-Hop means awareness. It’s an awareness movement. ‘Hip’ means awareness, ‘Hop’ means movement. If you’re aware of what’s inside of you and you use the movement to express it, it can be a really powerful tool.”
When he’s not performing, he goes to local hip-hop shows to hear what other rappers have to say constantly meeting people along the way. Or doing homework, of course. His hope is that the world will prove itself to be less superficial than it seems. Tynan is something different and he seems to be just as aware of it as I am, as he greeted me with a huge smile while placing his arm on his partner Sam saying,
“Yo! We doin’ something y’all ain’t neva seen before!”
“I’m trying to reach out to people who are seeking something, and can receive it through the music I’m making. And that goes anywhere from the highly intellectual individual to someone who hasn’t been exposed to the things that are most important in life. It’s not like I’m an educator or a teacher, I’m more just sharing.”
“Amongst dark skies are seen stars from river-side benches of your urban avalanche; As roaring mechanisms travel from nowhere to no where to we don’t know where; What and why do I know it; Smoking poetry smeared on street signs indicating direction; As grafitti communicates universally on these old walls.”
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