With temperatures below freezing, fans lined up along the outside of the Aebersold Recreation Center awaiting a delayed entrance time for the Kid Ink fall concert sponsored by UPB Monday night.
How did students find out about the delayed time?
Attention @Kid_Ink and @KalinAndMyles Ticket holders, The doors will be delayed and now open at 8PM! #UPBconcerts
— SRU UPB (@SRUPB) December 1, 2014
Doors open at 8PM! @KalinAndMyles then @Kid_Ink! #UPBconcerts pic.twitter.com/o1z0qWWIL5
— SRU UPB (@SRUPB) December 2, 2014
The combined tweets totaled over 185 retweets and 583 favorites.
No longer do artists need record labels and multi-person crews to be broadcast to the world to grow their fan-bases. Thanks to Twitter, YouTube, Vine and various other social media platforms, artists can create a personal relationship and connect with fans by inviting them into parts of their daily lives.
But social media is not limited to musicians. It can give all people a voice and is something that can be left behind, comparable to music. Kalin and Myles, upcoming Bay Area rappers and the opening act for Monday’s concert, were discovered online after uploading their song “More Than Friends” and shared their reactions to the first time they saw themselves on the internet.
“Having people I didn’t really know on Facebook being like ‘I heard your song – it was really cool. Keep it up.’ ‒ [My response] was like wow, you don’t even know me but you’re giving me this compliment,” Kalin said.
The duo agreed it’s a great motivator.
After receiving an enthusiastic response from “More Than Friends,” Kalin and Myles began posting more songs and performing onstage.
“July 2011 we performed at the Alameda State Fair,” Myles said. “We only had two or three songs at the time but they gave us a 30-minute set. To fill up the extra time, we really tried to be out of the box and interactive, passing out wristbands, doing some body rolls and Katy Perry,” they said.
Kalin acknowledged that he was wearing the same shoes, a pair of black and red Nikes from the first time he performed onstage, to the SRU show.
Now on tour, Kalin and Myles get increasingly excited and anxious to share their experiences with their fans, they said.
“I think for 18 and up events, like tonight, we’re not really used to that,” Myles said. “We kind of have a younger audience like 13ish to 18.”
“I’m gonna be a little nervous for tonight because older people can be a lot more opinionated,” Myles said.
“I might cry but it’s cool,” Kalin said.
Throughout the show, Kalin and Myles went into the crowd to take selfies on fans’ cell phones and live tweeted their arrival and post-performance.
As for handling mistakes on stage, “I acknowledge it right away,” Kalin said. “I’m a funny, clumsy, rubber-band-looking-when-I-dance kind of guy so I try to make it funny.”
“There was a show that my pants got pulled down and I was afraid there was gonna be some pictures or videos of that,” Myles said. “But it didn’t.”
Before every show Kalin and Myles say a prayer to “make sure everyone is safe and that everybody’s trying to turn up,” they said.
VIP fans, some of whom won their tickets by participating in UPB’s Twitter trivia contests, were able to meet Kalin and Myles backstage prior to the show.
When faced with negative comments on their Twitter account, Kalin and Myles prefer not to respond.
“I think a lot of what they say comes from a deeper place, not just us and whatever they are trying to get at,” Myles said. “You kind of don’t know what’s going on in their life so we try to respect that. We just keep responding to the people who are here to rock,” he said.
Following Kalin and Myles was Kid Ink, a Los Angeles-based rapper known for his unique sound, many tattoos and latest release, “Body Language,” with Usher.
Kid Ink tries to speak to all kinds of people, going through all types of situations, through his music and social media.
“I try to not keep it over-personal but just relatable to different situations people go through day to day, whether it’s stuff I go through or stuff my friends go through,” Ink said. “My purpose is to kind of expose that even in the positions I’m in that everything is regular and people go through the same stuff no matter what type of money you make or who the celebrity is.”
Kid Ink’s ultimate goal is to show people that you can come from being a regular person, follow your dreams and still be the same person that goes through the same things, deals with the same people and has the same mentality, he said.
“It’s a big thing where people expect the switch-ups after becoming famous,” Kid Ink said. “With that is the fight to not change. But I think you still need to be in a position where you can outshine your peers and get that attention but at the same time you still want people to know it’s all good.”
Following the style of a Vine video, in seven seconds Kid Ink gave his reaction to the crowd at Slippery Rock.
“The crowd here at Slippery Rock was amazing, turnt up, wild, insane, fun crowd. I’m glad they waited for me to get here,” he said.
