NOVEMBER 10, 2011
\nBy Allison Davey ’14, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
As a college student, having 15,000 subscribers and 1.5 million views of your work can be considered quite a difficult and impressive feat. For Blake S. Campbell, a sophomore business major, this feat is reality.<\/p>\n
Campbell, one of Furman\u2019s \u201cYouTube Stars,\u201d has quite a following on his channel, and his satirical raps have shot him into the realm of fame. Yet, for Campbell, \u201cIt is definitely strange. Having to respond to emails and fan mail adds an interesting twist to what I thought was just making videos. It\u2019s hard to grasp the idea that people from the other side of the world see me as someone notable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell began writing and recording his own raps two years ago.\u00a0He credits Bo Burnham and Lonely Island as his main inspirations, and also points to the support of his friend Max, who appears in many of his videos.<\/p>\n
Campbell claims, \u201cI\u2019m not a rapper.\u00a0I make YouTube videos,\u201d and says\u00a0that while he wants to continue to pursue entertainment,\u00a0music is not his passion.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not that good at rapping,” he says. “If\u00a0I was, I ironically wouldn\u2019t have the fan base that I do today. People find my awkward rapping about weird topics endearing.\u201d<\/p>\n
His\u00a0\u201cCasey Anthony Rap<\/a>\u201d received more than\u00a0300,000 views and was featured on radio stations across the country. Another\u00a0of his videos, \u201cAutotune Rehab Rap<\/a>,\u201d was filmed on Furman\u2019s campus. His success has led him to meet people such as Nolan Smith (Duke basketball player) and John Basedow (fitness celebrity).<\/p>\n Furman is also the home to another YouTube star, Katie McLean. McLean is a junior psychology and philosophy double major who began recording videos at age 16. She\u00a0is primarily self-taught musically,\u00a0although she\u00a0took guitar lessons briefly\u00a0after she became interested in playing.<\/p>\n McLean has been featured on YouTube\u2019s homepage, which\u00a0she considers one of her biggest accomplishments since beginning her musical career.\u00a0\u201cMusic is a fun outlet,” she says. “It’s something I always want to maintain in my life. However, profiting from it is not a goal I will most likely pursue.\u00a0Then again, you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n McLean\u2019s page features acoustic covers of popular songs, along with some original works.<\/p>\n Campbell\u2019s work can be seen\u00a0at\u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/blakescampbell<\/a>, and McLean\u2019s\u00a0at\u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/acoustickatie24<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NOVEMBER 10, 2011 As a college student, having 15,000 subscribers and 1.5 million views of your work can be considered quite a difficult and impressive feat. For Blake S. Campbell, a sophomore business major, this feat is reality.<\/p>\n Campbell, one of Furman\u2019s \u201cYouTube Stars,\u201d has quite a following on his channel, and his satirical raps have shot him into the realm of fame. Yet, for Campbell, \u201cIt is definitely strange. Having to respond to emails and fan mail adds an interesting twist to what I thought was just making videos. It\u2019s hard to grasp the idea that people from the other side of the world see me as someone notable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrative","category-student-life","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy Allison Davey ’14, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n