Evanston Native Talks 12-Hour World Record Rap

One Saturday last spring, Evanston native Julius Daye walked into the Boocoo Cultural Center and Café, sat down and started rapping. When he stopped 12 hours and four minutes later, he had unofficially broken the world record for the longest freestyle rap, tacking on almost three hours to the previous mark.

The inspired Evanston Township High School alum, whose stage moniker matches his birth name, is now studying audio engineering at Columbia College, crafting music as unique as he, and even has tentative plans to break his own record, this time under the watch of an official Guinness World Record judge.

Recently, Daye sat down with Patch to talk about his Evanston influences, his musical goals and what drove him to rap for hours on end.

Patch: Last spring, you rapped for 12 hours and four minutes without a break. What compelled you to try to break the world record?

Julius Daye: I was in this class called ‘Senior Studies’. You basically get the whole second semester of senior year to do whatever you want. I remember hearing a rumor that [Chiddy of the Philadelphia-based rap group Chiddy Bang] broke the record for longest freestyle rap at nine hours and 18 minutes. I didn’t even know there was a record for that, but I remember thinking that it wasn’t a big deal to me and I didn’t like the fact that people were hyped over it. But instead of just saying, ‘I don’t like it’, I decided to try to break it.

So, as my [Senior Studies] project, I was trying to just freestyle as long as I could. I just made it this huge event and started telling kids around the school, made a Facebook group about it, letting people know I was trying to break the world record. I didn’t do too well in the promotion aspect, but I told a couple people to come around. I rapped for 12 hours and four minutes that day.

Patch: So, do you now hold the world record?

JD: Technically, I don’t, because I didn’t pay the $7,000 you had to pay to get the Guinness Book of World record judge here. You’re supposed to have a judge there, but I couldn’t afford it, so I decided that I might as well do it anyway. For the hell of it. I was going to send [a video of the event] to Guinness, but they only accept video world records if it’s like one minute, so they wouldn’t review a 12 hour video.

Patch: For people who didn’t attend the event, help explain what went on that day.

JD: It started off at 11 a.m. I walked into Boocoo and was one of the only people there. It was just me, my camera and a friend of mine. I sat down, handed her the camera and started rapping. Instrumentals started playing over the café speakers, and I was just rapping along to it. She was recording the entire time. After a couple hours in, a couple families started coming through to stop by and check me out.

I was rapping in the café, but about four hours in, they had to move me to the performance space. I was basically being moved around Boocoo throughout the entire 12 hours, because they also had other events planned that day. So I rapped in the performance space for about three hours, and while I was there, a bunch of friends form the high school started coming through. It was a pretty good turnout. There were at least 20 people there watching me freestyle.

We even got a couple of my friends, who were in a band, to back me up on the drums and guitar. And then at one point I had to be moved into the Boocoo studio. So we were crammed into the studio and I was still rapping. It was a cool feeling, but it was frustrating because it made it more difficult to reach the 12 hour mark. It was really hot in there.

Patch: I have to ask. How did you eat, drink and, errrr, take care of other bodily functions?

JD: I didn’t eat. I drank water. I took sips, but it was to the beat. It’s kind of hard to describe. I just made sure I kept the rhythm. I peed while rapping, so they had to follow me into the bathroom, basically. Mentally, it was tough. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it was worth it in the end. The last hour, that was when Boocoo was packed with about 50 people. There were break dancers, all my friends from the high school. The energy was definitely there. They kept me going. Without them, I don’t know if I could have done it.

Patch: How did you ensure you weren’t becoming repetitive?

JD: The first few hours, it was just whatever I saw in front of me, I would rap about. It was completely spontaneous. As people started coming in, they started helping me out. They would write down a list of random topics, whatever came to their mind. Then someone would walk up and give me the list, and I would go on about each topic until it got old, then on to the next one. We did that for a few hours.

Patch: Your world record isn’t official, but do you consider yourself the world record holder?

JD: In the end, yeah, technically I’m not, but people know. I actually have plans to break it again [this coming summer]. I’m trying to arrange that with Boocoo. We’re trying to make it legit. We’re trying to raise funds to get a judge out there, but it’s going to be a long process. I couldn’t tell you when it’s going to be. I’m going to try to go for 13 hours. We’re trying to go 2012 for 12 hours, 2013 for 13 hours.

Patch: How did you start rapping?

JD: I started freestyling my sophomore year. I was always into hip hop, but I was more into that old school hip hop. De La [Soul], [A Tribe Called Quest], Native Tongues. Everything abstract. Two other of my closest friends were also down with it, so we decided to save up some money. We bought some turntables and an MPC [sampler and drum pad machine] between all three of us, and we just started making music. We were the ones who weren’t trying to go out Saturday night. Just stay at home, make a beat and freestyle. We were definitely influenced by that whole 90s era. We called ourselves The Loneliest Funk. The other two members, they were the ones that were mostly into the whole beat-making process and production. I was just into rapping. I found myself, senior year, I was a decent freestyler.

Patch: How do you think growing up in Evanston affected the kind of music you want to make?

JD: I probably sound cliché saying this, but Evanston is really diverse. You’re bound to find all types of people, and since everyone is so different, it’s easy to come across. We weren’t afraid to be different and put our music out there. I feel like if we were growing up somewhere else, there is probably a dominance of one type of music or one feel, and we would probably be stuck in that trend. The diversity helped our music be different.

Patch: What have you been up to since last year’s event?

JD: Right now, I’m at Columbia college studying audio engineering. My first semester, it was all about sound waves, frequencies, and things I’m not really into. I’m more into how do I get my music sound better, more full, mastered, mix, all that. They’re teaching me more basic things. As I go more into the program, they say they get more into the whole mixing and mastering that I’m looking for. So, I’m sticking with the program. As of now, all I’ve been really doing is making beats. I haven’t really been releasing anything, except for this one song that’s coming out. I’ve just been writing rhymes, recording songs, not releasing them. That’s where I’m at right now.

Patch: It sounds like you want to dedicate your life to making music. Is that true?

JD: Yeah, that’s what I want to do. It always feels uncomfortable saying that, because it’s a huge task.

When I broke the record, I realized that [music] is something I want to do for the rest of my life… My senior year, I realized that I had done it for so long and I was good enough that I decided I wanted to dedicate the next couple years of my life to it. And after I broke the world record, I got so much love. I realized that if I can rap for 12 hours straight, I can definitely focus on this and make it something I can devote a lot of my life to.

Julius Daye continues to make music and has begun performing at Chicago open mics. He recently recorded a song condemning the violence that has plagued parts of Chicago and Evanston.

In early March, Daye was selected from over 130 contestants as one of 12 finalists in Columbia College’s upcoming ‘Biggest Mouth’ competition. For the contest’s final round, Daye and other finalists will each perform and eight-minute set at Chicago’s famed Metro music venue, 3730 N. Clark St. The competition is tentatively scheduled for April 24.

Click here to watch “The Natural”, a music video from Julius Daye’s high school hip-hop group, The Loneliest Funk.