In May 2012, Lee Amir-Cohen, a UCLA graduate student majoring in psychobiology, decided to post a rap song he created called “Fly Away” on YouTube. The song was drawn from a real event in Amir-Cohen’s life: the death of his ex-girlfriend’s mother.
“The whole song is really about (my ex-girlfriend) and about (me) watching her go through the struggle and dealing with the loss and all of these emotions. … It’s a story rather than just a song about something that doesn’t exist,” Amir-Cohen said.
Being a rather young artist in terms of age and fame, Amir-Cohen did not believe that the song would garner much recognition, if any at all. He was quite shocked, then, when he checked back just two months later and discovered “Fly Away” had already received almost 90,000 views.
This surprising success was just one of many great triumphs for Amir-Cohen, who has aspirations not only in rap music, but also in acting. He says that though he’s passionate about both of the arts, acting is his primary outlet as far as expressing himself. One of his recent acting achievements includes being the lead role in “Triple Standard,” a film directed by William Branden Blinn that focuses on a homophobic former basketball player who discovers that he is actually gay.
The short independent film, which was released in 2010, eventually went on to be featured in the 2011 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, one of the oldest and largest film festivals in the world to focus on lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transexuals.
“That was kind of like my big turning point. I got a lot more notoriety for that than other things in the past,” Amir-Cohen said. “I’ve done much smaller projects prior to that.”
Amir-Cohen has more film and music projects in the works, but he was reluctant to reveal many details since he does not want to spoil anything for his audiences. However, he did reveal that he was planning to collaborate with several other rap artists soon, and that he was currently working on an Israeli movie about a family and the struggles they go through in order to stay together. While he wasn’t willing to say much more about the premise, he did express great excitement at being able to work on the film.
“The film reminds me a lot about my family. Obviously I’m Israeli and my parents were both born in Israel,” Amir-Cohen said. “It was one of the films that really touched me. I couldn’t believe that someone in America hadn’t done it already.”
Despite Amir-Cohen’s relative lack of experience in movies and music, the hopeful artist has taken great strides to ensure that he is ready to take on both fields.
Marcello Robinson, UCLA alumni and Amir-Cohen’s current manager, said he quickly realized there was something different about Amir-Cohen when the young man approached him a year ago and asked if Robinson could be his manager.
“When (Amir-Cohen) showed up to the meeting, he had all of his professional photos done, he had his resume done, he was already in the top acting school in Los Angeles,” Robinson said. “He had actually been accepted into Howard Fine, which is a very difficult acting program to be accepted into, especially as a new face with not a lot of professional experience.”
Though Amir-Cohen is highly devoted to acting and music, he said he still values his education. He said that while he will definitely continue his work in the arts, he wishes to return to school later on in his life and continue studying, preferably in the field of medicine.
“I could be the best rapper in the world or the most famous artist of all time, whatever it is, but at the end of the day, my education is what’s important. … No one can take your education away from you,” Amir-Cohen said.