By Inasia Woods
The Trendsetter Tour made a stop at Central on Thursday night for a free Bryce Vine concert. The show was a special edition of Devil’s Den brought to students by Central Activities Network.
Touring is Vine’s favorite part of being a musician,according to the artist.
“Getting to do the tour: seeing places I would never get to see and meeting people I probably would have never met,” said Vine.
Bryce Vine fell in love with music when he convinced his mother to buy him a guitar at the age of 13.
“I didn’t realize I wanted to do music until I was 13, I didn’t know I was good at it until maybe like a couple years later,” said Vine, who thinks the guitar sets him apart. “Well it makes me a musician instead of just a rapper. People recognize that they’re not used to seeing a rapper who can play an instrument, especially seeing a DJ who can play a trumpet. We’re musicians, and then we just found this and its our own way of doing it.”
Students got taught a thing or two by rap-artist Professor Lyrical who opened the show with his sidekick, a DJ and Rapper named Scott. The crowd took up a little less than half of the theatre. Of course, when the performer is a new artist there aren’t immediately arms waving side to side, or girls screaming at the top of their lungs. The Crowd began to warm up a little when Professor Lyrical asked the crowd to talk back to him with his phrases “When I say Hip Hop, you say music.” One thing is for sure, these two got the crowd going by throwing t-shirts and giving out mixtapes and albums. With Professor Lyrical spitting his educational and intellectual rap lyrics, it drew the crowd into yearning to hear more. I have to admit, his lyrics gave me chills.  He left the crowd with chilling words and a final statement before walking off the stage.
Bryce Vine’s DJ came out and the crowd had already began to scream for Bryce as the DJ began to set up. When Vine came out the crowd immediately started screaming, so it was quite obvious that he had a good following. After his first song he started introducing himself to the crowd. During his second song “Guilty Pleasure,” it seemed as though the crowd knew more of the song. He introduced a new single that he performed for the crowd; although no one knew it, people were still bobbing their heads along. He then played his single “My Holiday” from his new EP Lazy Fair, which was definitely a crowd pleaser as everyone began to sway their arms in the air, left and right, along with the artist and the DJ.
Many bands have influenced Vine’s music.
“Kid Cudi, Steven Jenkins, Third Eye Blind, Rolling Stones, Beetles and like half of the songs Tupac Wrote. Blink 182. We like to perform carefree. I just try to combine everything that I listen to and I just try to figure out what it is about it: is it the writing, is it the lyrics? It’s so intricate and different. I think my favorite writer is Third Eye Blind, which is random to someone like a rapper but he is so specific with things that he talks about in his songs that it’s really easy to hold on to his songs, and I understand,” said Vine.
The remainder of the concert maintained the same energy. During the last song, fans ran to the stage and danced as the DJ played the trumpet. The show came to an end as Vine danced and sang to the DJ’s trumpet, at the same time giving attention to the group of fans in front of the stage.