MGM Boyz, a musical collective of SF State students, originally gained fame from throwing parties in a Parkmerced townhome. Now their music is about to take the spotlight.
MGM stands for “mandatory get money.” The members of MGM Boyz are Jacob Shur (Jawaavess), Isaiah Corona (Bluzayy), Kenneth Cason (KCShmoney), Jordan Braithwaite (Shottajordy) and Isaiah Rice (Foreigner).
The members wear distressed denim and sportswear accompanied by sneakers with colored soles and gold jewelry.
MGM Boyz came to life when the members met through mutual friends and parties. Shur ran into Corona during an SF State orientation and they decided to be roommates, which blossomed into a friendship and sharing music.
“He’s one of the first cool people that I met here,” Shur said.
The crew’s friendship and love of freestyling motivated them to start their collective.
“We just figured that we should take our talent to something that could get us money,” Shur said.
The MGM Boyz were inspired by each other’s talent. Cason comes from no musical background, but after he met Corona and Shur, he started to take rap seriously.
“Our sounds sound good together,” Cason said.
Shur came from a singing background in high school but he didn’t start rapping until last year.
Corona had some musical experience that was influenced by his brother, who would release rap songs and eventually let Corona join him and freestyle. Corona then started to make music of his own.
Each artist will be releasing their own individual albums in the next two months under the umbrella of MGM Boyz in a group SoundCloud profile that they will be creating.
However, it’s been taking some time to write and record their albums. For Cason, it’s taken a couple weeks to write his album, while Shur’s album is almost done. Shur has been working on his album for a month. It’s taken Corona a month and a half to finish his music for the album.
Each of the MGM Boyz have a different process for making their music.
“I just like to listen to a beat, find a beat that I like,” Corona said. “When I finally find one, I freestyle on it and see how it goes. If I can freestyle easy and I like it, then I’ll start writing.”
Shur agreed. “I think we all like to follow that a little bit.”
Shur likes to watch music videos and artists like Travis Scott and Drake perform so he can envision himself in their shoes, although he wants to show his own style in his music.
“I wanna rap or sing in a way that shows me, and not something that sounds like somebody else,” Shur said.
Cason’s musical process is more natural. When he hears a beat when hanging out with friends he’ll start writing lyrics.
The songs MGM Boyz will release are about life experiences, family and women.
“We got stories,” Cason said.
The members of MGM Boyz enjoy being creative and having fun with each other. They said they hope their audience will have fun listening to them as much as other artists. They want to bring a new type of rap to the music world.
“I feel like it’s not about the bars and lyrics anymore [in mainstream rap],” Shur said. “With us three, we try to have the sound and the lyrics, too.”
Though the MGM Boyz are all students at SF State working toward degrees, they hope their music will take them to a new level of success.
They hope to perform at SF State and elsewhere once their albums are released.
“There’s nobody that I would get into this with besides these two right here,” Shur said. “They’re my brothers for life.”
