Congratulations to Makayla and Dionna! Two of our students placed in the top 100 for the Your Voice is Power Competition presented by Amazon Future Engineer, Georgia Tech, and Yellow. Their song was awarded top honors in music, coding, and messaging by a panel of industry professionals.
Makayla B.
"My remix was inspired by many things and topics including House music and the nature of the song entrepreneur itself. The verses were meant to show the story of a confident black man overcoming racial injustice, someone who wasn't supposed to get far in life but overcame the hardships and pushed through all of the obstacles in his way of becoming successful. My call to action or what I want people to do after they hear my remix is to not give up if they're in a minority, I want people to see that there are challenges but that if they can overcome these challenges they can find their place in the world."
Makayla's SongDionna K.
"In my remix I have a mixture of Ciara, Khalid, Common, Jay Z, and Pharrell. I have Khalid singing, “It’s just a season,” to manifest that eventually there will be equity and that all that is happening now won’t last forever. There are also beats from songs by Common and Ciara incorporated. In my remix I have Jay Z do his four verses that were in Entrepreneur because I felt they had a great and powerful message. I also use beats from Entrepreneur to incorporate more of the original song into the remix and I have Pharrell whispering the intro, “I’m black ambition; I’m always whispering.” He also sings in the background “Black man” repeatedly to kind of portray who the message is for. During my experience participating in this contest I learned how to code music and express my voice through the voice of others. It was definitely out of my comfort zone, but in the end it all came together."