Anderson Burrus, a sophomore in first year college, comes from a family that listens to country music. It took until middle school for him to hear his first rap song, Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” and he said it blew him away.

“Somehow [rap] really kind of clicked with me. It engaged my creativity. I’m terrible at school, but I’ve always loved being creative,” Burrus said.

Now Burrus writes his own rap songs and performs them live on-stage at ven ues around North Carolina and Virginia. He’s currently working on accruing a fan base in Raleigh, and says he’s doing any kind of show he can.

He’s also working on his upcoming album, which will be called “For the Record,” and which should be coming out in eight to nine months, though he will be putting out several EPs in the meantime.

Burrus wrote about how he began rapping in one of his songs, “I love Hip Hop,” in which he sings about how he listened to clean versions of Eminem songs and had free style rap battles in the back of the school bus until practice started to make perfect.

“Naturally, being a middle-schooler, I wanted to rebel and hear Jay-Z and Eminem and these people that were apparently just tear ing society apart, ac cording to my parents and my environment,” Burrus said.

Eventually he started writ ing lyrics and composing songs at home.

“I started out with a tiny little microphone from Tar get, and I just kept on saving up and would upgrade when ever I got enough money to get to the next level,” Burrus said.

By now he’s made his old room at his parent’s house completely into a recording studio. The walls have sound-cancelling foam and he’s got a speaker system and whole array of microphones.

Thematically, his music is a divergent from popular rap.

“I didn’t want to do any thing fake, and I had a very calm life, so I wasn’t going to rap about how I’m a ganster or sleeping around,” Burrus said.

That’s why he doesn’t go by a stage name – he just likes to be introduced as Anderson when he performs.

Instead, his songs explore concerns from his own life.

“I’ve struggled with se vere depression for a while now, and I never hear rap songs that talk about over coming depression, or deal ing with stuff like suicide, or dealing with stuff like losing relationships,” Burrus said. “I think that’s something that would have really helped me, if there were just rappers talked about real issues that real people struggle with. My main goal is to just really relate to one person. With that big of a crowd, there’s one or two people that also struggle with depression.”

He also said that his de pression can give him an aggressive, angry demeanor, and that rap helped him overcome that.

“I was able to be creative, but it was also a release for me,” Burrus said.

Burrus also makes each of his songs sound unique. For example, in his song “Break it Down,” he wanted to use instruments not generally heard in rap, and so he took inspiration from bluegrass songs, including a harmoni ca riff in the background. In the same song he again draws from his own life by talking about growing up in North Carolina.

His sound is also different from popular rap because he doesn’t swear in his songs. He said that he doesn’t cuss when he speaks normally, so he sees no reason to include it in his music.

“I have two little sisters. And so from day one, I made a rule for myself: I’m not go ing to write anything I don’t want my little sisters to hear,” Burrus said.

Burrus doesn’t plan to stop rapping anytime soon, and hopes that he will be able to make it into a career.

“I want to see how far I can take it,” Burrus said.

Burrus says that he believes that rap can be influential on society, especially on younger kids, and he that he wants to be an artist that will help change his community for the better.

“Rap reaches mainly the kids that have it really tough in life. And so it should be this tool to really help kids and steer them in the right direction,” Burrus said.