Hamline alum Robb Miller, also known as TrueConceptMusic, and music artists Young Suave and Vinny Santana from COOLIFE ENTERTAINMENT performed at Anderson Center on Nov. 13 during convo hour and afterwards socialized with Hamline students and took pictures with them.

“It feels good to be back. I always use Hamline as like, my practice area,” Miller said. “Some people afterwards said they really liked it and that’s all I want to do right now.”

Miller was on Hamline’s baseball team from 2010-2014 as he spent a year redshirted due to injury. He also pitched in the 2011 MIAC Championship game when the baseball team won the title. Along with playing baseball at Hamline, Miller has been no stranger to use Hamline as his platform to share his other longtime passion since the eighth grade, music.

“I can’t not make music,” Miller said. “Ever since I first heard hip-hop it’s what I breathe.”

During convo hour on Nov. 13, he returned to Hamline and performed his hip-hop tracks through a capella style. He said a capella helps him connect his lyrics to a live audience.

“Once I’m on a beat I feel like people get lost on the beat and they don’t hear what I’m really saying,” Miller said.

He said it also gave him the opportunity to emphasize important parts of the story by changing his rhythm and voice on certain parts of the song.

“I can pause in the middle of the song and I can just let people mull over it and let the stuff that I said sink in,” Miller said. “I kind of want to mix that in more performances.”

Following his performance, Suave and Santana performed their original hip-hop tracks to see if they could find who’d be interested in their music at Hamline University. The two artists were brought together by Founder and CEO of COOLIFE ENTERTAINMENT Kilo Gotti and are scheduled to have a concert at Fallout in Minneapolis on Dec. 6.

“We came in to get people to hear our music to see who would really like our music,” Suave said. “We kind of got that feedback today and it was good feedback. All feedback is good feedback coming out the gate.”

Santana said their goal isn’t to necessarily be the most popular; it’s to find people who can connect with their music. He says that’s what played a big part in their early success to making music.

Suave elaborated.

“I feel like people in today’s society select what good music is from what’s playing the most right now,” Suave said. “What I’m saying is you need to step out of the mainstream and come down to that underground. Right now I consider us underground [although] people know who we are.”

Something Miller and COOLIFE ENTERTAINMENT’s rap artists’ have in common is that their stage names mean more than just how it sounds.

Santana said COOLIFE stands for: “Consistently Overcoming Obstacles Living In a Fake Environment.”

“We ain’t just walking around saying we cool,” Suave said.

Miller said his stage name TrueConceptMusic is based off the remedy of “keeping it real.”

“Music is me, that’s my music. I take what I feel and I try to put it on the track and let other people interpret it,” Miller said. “I try to take everything I feel and amplify it and give it to you like this is my raw emotion…this is my life basically.”

Miller said the reason music is so important to him is because it helped him discover who he was.

“I tried to find what my music was, but I didn’t know what my music was because I didn’t know who I was. The more I found who I was the more true my music was. I always try to keep that to heart. I didn’t know who I was until music and that’s why it’s a part of me – I can’t get rid of it now,” Miller said.