During his junior year of high school, Wichita State track and field’s Travon Williams was bored. So, he decided to try his hand at making beats in his downtime.
At the time, he noticed his high school friends freestyling — coming up with verses over beats in the moment. So he began making his own on an app called “BandLab” to inspire his friends.
“I thought it would be cool,” Williams said. “And then I started using them myself.”
Before freestyling and beat-making, Williams had experience playing the piano and guitar. He said making music went well from the get-go and he hasn’t stopped since.
Now a freshman at Wichita State, Williams continues to bond with teammates and friends through his music, freestyling on “almost every drive” or in their dorm rooms, getting some of his teammates out of their shells.
Teammates like Carson Ratzlaff and Kaleb Tesmer wouldn’t freestyle at first, but with some convincing from Williams, now they do.
Ratzlaff said it has been a good way for the two to break the ice together since they met after committing to Wichita State.
“When you just meet someone new, it’s kind of awkward … at first,” Ratzlaff said. “But it (freestyling) was just kind of a way to make things not awkward.”
Williams compared his music to early Kanye West, particularly the “The College Dropout” album, and Polo G, incorporating riffs from the guitar and piano where they best fit.
“For the older Kanye, I’d say there’s … a nice little melody that comes with it,” Williams said. “And then it’s more of a slow beat — you just go off of it. And then Polo G, it’s more instruments, more singing and rapping rather than just rapping the whole song.”
Williams also draws from the works of Eminem, Tupac and even Michael Jackson. Williams noted that he respects Tupac for being who he was.
“I feel like everyone was against him,” Williams said about Tupac. “But, like, he didn’t care. He did what he thought was right. To me, that’s … a big thing because most people can’t keep going on when there’s hundreds of thousands of people in your ear always saying they’re going to do something or you’re not worthy.”
Williams said his beats help him reflect on how he feels emotionally.
“Like if you’re upset, you can go at … a high-intensity beat,” he said. “If you’re sad, you can go … almost a Polo G-type-beat with some guitar in it.”
Ratzlaff agrees, especially when Willams writes lyrics for his songs.
“Through the lyrics and the beats,” Ratzlaff said. “It goes with his personality, you could say.”
While there is no clear, direct correlation between his musical and athletic background, Williams enjoys listening to music both before and after meets. He said it helps get the energy flowing and as a result, he’ll “probably jump better.”
Depending on how well a meet goes, Williams puts on what he calls “white girl music,” songs you can jump around to, laugh with and let the feelings flow.
Williams hinted at releasing a track or an album one day despite not currently releasing music officially.
“Maybe (I’ll) tell you the release date,” he said while laughing.
