Becoming a high school rapper seems near impossible, until one man made it happen. Owen Lyons, a.k.a. “Lyon King” has spent countless hours pursuing his dream to make music.

“I wanted to do something different,” Lyons said.

Lyons started rapping with his friends in the eighth grade as a hobby.

“It seemed fun,” Lyons said, as he and his friends would spend all day in Lyons’s basement rapping and creating new beats solely for the enjoyment that music brought them.

“I grew up listening to AC/DC when I was younger,” Lyons said.

He was also influenced by artists such as Mac Miller and Sam Smith.

Freshman year Lyons dropped his first mixtape called “The Basement Project” which became extremely well known among Algonquin students. It got over 1,000 views on DatPiff.com.

Riding off the success of his mixtape, Lyons said he ran into problems in his career. Ideas were running short and he produced less music.

So his sophomore year Lyons decided to collaborate with current sophomore rapper Ali Saeed creating a group called “Straight From The Lab.”

“Starting a group allowed for more ideas to be spread,” Lyons said.

The duo slowly gained recognition as they went on to perform a concert at St. Anne’s church. They also made their music available on iTunes for purchasing.

“As for now, I want to keep making music for the fun of it, but hopefully over time I can go to college and study music,” Lyons said. “But I am a long way from there.”

Lyons has recently branched out to cover wider varieties of music, like singing and instrument use. Listen to his mixtapes at Datpiff and on Sound Cloud @Lyonking.