Getting hyped up

In his dark basement studio on Waynesboro’s Main Street, Andrew Hypes bobs his head up and down to the music, his face lit up by the warm, electric glow of his laptop computer.

“This is the moment,” he says, taking his eyes off the YouTube video for just a second. “Check it out.”

His head swings toward his laptop screen just as the familiar baseline for Michael Jackson’s hit “Thriller” booms out of the speakers. On stage in the grainy video, Hypes is in a club in Atlanta. His buddy, Brandon Kate, is behind the camera. Things, as Hypes says, are about to get interesting.

“When the beat comes in,” says Hypes, quickly stopping the video for a second and adjusting the volume, “Brandon just blacks out. He starts going crazy.”

The music stops and in comes a computerized voice that rings out, “A Student C exclusive.” Then the beat kicks back up, the crowd goes crazy and Kate, never seen, screams “That’s my boy,” as the club breaks out into cheers, hoots, hollers and head bobbing.

Hypes keeps bobbing his head up and down as he sits back in his chair behind his keyboard and computer equipment. The video plays on. The music still holds the 21-year-old in its grasp.

“That’s what it’s all about,” he says. “Getting that kind of reaction from the crowd.”

He smiles, his teeth reflecting the blue glow from the computer.

More than just hype

Andrew Hypes is a music producer and remixer. His goal is to make it big someday, have guys like Jay-Z on the speed dial of his cell phone and ready to travel to a studio at a moment’s notice.

The soft-spoken, modest Waynesboro High School graduate hasn’t quite made it yet, but his name is getting out there. Need proof? A YouTube search on Hypes produces plenty of “shout-out” videos where up-and-coming rappers give the newbie his due and veteran hip-hop household names do the same.

But Hypes makes no bones about it: Until he scores his first placement, he considers himself underground. (A placement, by the way, is when you submit a remixed track to an artist, they like it and they buy it.)

And it has nothing to do with where his studio is located — under Waynesboro’s Main Street accessible by some blink-and-you’ll-miss-door between Sam’s Hot Dogs and Touch of Love shop.

It’s dark, it’s dingy and when he’s not playing music from his computer through an almost overpowering sound system, the ambient noise can be frightening at times. His college-boy refrigerator kicks on and off (“I got to fix that thing,” he says after apologizing for the noise) and the pipes creak and pop.

Either way, it is Hypes’ home away from home with countless hours spent hunkered down over the computer and mixing instruments and common noises into danceable beats.

“Here,” he says, fiddling with his computer and adjusting the sound system, “check this out.”

It’s a groovy number mixed when he heard his friend’s cell phone dialing up. Hypes quickly recorded the tones of each number and reworked them into a song that sounds like a cross between 1980s Herbie Hancock and modern hip-hop.

It’s raw. It’s grainy.

It still makes Hypes bob his head up and down. It’s infectious. Listen to it and you’ll soon be doing the same.

“If I like a sound, I go with it,” he says, taking a sip of iced tea from a Styrofoam cup. “It makes people move and nod their heads, it’s all good.”

It has gotten him some looks. Hypes spent some time at Murder Inc.’s studios in New York City (home to such acts as Jay-Z and Ashanti) and met hip-hop and R&B producer Irv Gotti.

“It was intimidating because Irv Gotti is a very picky guy,” Hypes says. “If you play him music he does not like he will tell you to your face. He’ll say, “That’s garbage.’

“He can be a little harsh.”

But when Gotti listened to his CD, Hypes said, the veteran producer began to nod his head to the beat and started smiling.

“You know,” Hypes says, “he was liking what he heard.”

Hypes leans forward and with a few keystrokes, another song pumps out of his speakers.

“I like this one,” he says, before he starts moving to the beat, his hands bouncing up and down.

A Student C production

Hypes’ lips open up into an embarrassed smile when you ask him where “Student C Productions” came from. Even with a last name that screams hip-hop (at a Philadelphia beat battle he won, Hypes is even asked if that’s his real name, which it is), the 21-year-old turned a negative connotation into a recognized name on the underground producing circuit.

Caught in the concert choir controversy at Waynesboro High School in April 2005, Hypes was one of the shirtless male Waynesboro students that posed in photos with a former choir director. The photos made their way online and Hypes says he found himself labeled as the bad guy.

“None of the photos were bad,” he says.  “None of us were worried about it.”

Hypes, a minor at the time, was referred to as “Student C” in a story in The News Virginian. The name stuck.

“I have jeans and T-shirts with Student C production on them,” he says. “A few of my friends even wear the hoodies.”

He says stories of him wanting to get anybody fired are false and unwarranted.

“We were seniors,” he says. “We weren’t coming back. Why would we care?”

He lets out a sigh and plays another one of his remixes.

“Right here,” he says, throwing his head back and soaking in the sounds, “that’s got to get you moving.”

A musical background

Through it all, Hypes constantly thanks God and his family for the support. Hypes started praying hard, he says, to help him reach a decision to leave Full Sail University, an Orlando, Fla.-based school that specializes in media arts.

“It took a lot of praying,” Hypes says, “because Full Sail is not cheap.”

He spent some time in Florida trying to network and eventually made his way to Virginia Beach where he lived in the back of a store where there was a music studio and a cot for him to sleep on.

“I didn’t tell my parents right away,” he says.

His parents have been a driving force behind Hypes’ love of music. His father, Randy, has been playing drums since he was 6, still dabbles with local bands and exposed his kids to all the genres.

“Except for country,” Randy says laughing.

“Andrew amazes me,” he says, admitting he may be a little biased. “When he’s got it working, stuff falls like the rain and the next thing you know he’s working on something else.

“Andrew has strong convictions about this and he prays about it a lot,” Randy says. “He thinks for sure that’s going to be what happens to him in life. He’s following his heart and his head. It’s going to happen for him.”

Andrew smiles, bobs his head to the music and leans back and stretches his arms over his head.

“You know,” he says, “[my parents] are very supportive. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know if this would have worked out.”

Oh, what a feeling

In November at a small club in Philadelphia, one of Hypes’ remixes won the iStandard Producer Showcase. He watches the video on YouTube and shows off just a hint of a smile.

Despite the success, Hypes says he’s not even close to being where he wants to be. There’s still plenty of work ahead.

“I want to get noticed,” he says. “I’m hungry for this.”

The November win got his name out there even more, though his feet remain firmly planted on the ground. To make money on the side he baby-sits until 4:30 p.m. each day and then heads to his downtown studio where he’ll sit in front of his computer and keyboard working until 3 or 4 in the morning.

“A lot of work,” he says. “But I love it. It’s awesome. It’s what I want to do and I’m on the right path.”

He’s not doing it for the money now, though he can’t wait to get paid for his work. Instead, he does it for that feeling.

“Watch this,” he says, finding another video of his work on YouTube and turning up the sound system.

The music blares, in the video Hypes toggles between jumping up and down to the beat and slapping hands with an enthusiastic crowd. He never takes his eyes off the computer.

“It’s amazing. To have people moving to your music, there’s nothing like it,” he says. “It’s almost like a roller coaster ride. The climax is building and building and, once it drops, it’s just crazy.”