EAST LANSING, Mich. — People have been sharing their Spotify Wrapped results all over social media, and showing everyone who their favorite artists were this year. For a Michigan State University student, 1,400 people deemed him number one.
Music has always had a special place in Trey Mullin's heart.
"I have always loved music my whole life," Mullin said.
The MSU junior, who's stage name is Xotrey, is from a small town in Michigan called Carro.
"You'd expect, like people from my town to like, blow up off country music or something like that, like rap is such a foreign thing," Mullin said.
When he came to MSU, he found a second home and a lot of opportunities.
"Within the first month of me moving to East Lansing, I'm in professional studios like this, I'm playing shows, I'm playing events that are happening in the city," Mullin said.
It's also helped him meet other creative people like his producer Lincoln Perry, whose produce name is Elcee.
"I sincerely feel like the music that me and him have made is the best of my career," Perry said.
As roommates, the two share a love for music and turned their common space into a studio.
"We put two of our beds, like both of our beds in our closets, just so we can have that space for a studio," Mullin said. "We wake up and the first thing we see is the studio. It's the last thing we see before we go to bed."
And so far, the two have meshed well together. Perry focuses on the beats making sure the sound is different and catchy.
"I'm actually looking more towards like, video games for a lot of inspiration like soundtracks from like old video games," Perry said.
Mullin's lyrics focuses on his life experiences, and he doesn't shy away from his issues with mental health.
"People ask what inspires my music but like my music inspires me to live," Mullin said. "I write a lot about my own life, and unfortunately, that leads to me writing a lot about depression and like having mental health issues, stuff like that, and everything like surrounding like that lifestyle."
He says everybody that listens is just in for his life journey.
And so far, he's found that a lot of the stuff he's going through others can relate to as well.
"I have more monthly listeners than the population of my entire hometown. And then, I just dropped my new album. And I have the entire population of my hometown times five off of the album by hitting 20,000 monthly listeners after that dropped. There's 4,000 people living in my town, and that, that's crazy," Mullin said.
Crazy but also a dream come true for an up and coming rapper who's just getting started.
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