If Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had picked up the mic in college, they might have looked something like Jarell Perry and Brandon Contreras. But later this week, like so many things that change after graduation, the dynamic duo of the Bruin music scene will part ways.
Perry is the tall, clean-cut one rocking a blazer and singing that deeply soulful stuff, while Contreras is the one skipping around with an open backpack hanging off his shoulders, rapping about acute angles and reciting the kinds of puns that make English teachers giddy. Together, the two fourth-year students formed a yin-yang partnership of humor and class, of hip-hop and R&B.
“The chemistry between the two of them performing, I think it’s dynamite,” said Jonny Jew, a second-year cognitive science student who played alongside Perry and Contreras at Spring Sing last month.
Contreras and Perry met during the Academic Advancement Program’s Freshman Summer Program, but it wasn’t until their second year that they joined forces musically.
Contreras sent Perry a beat he had downloaded, asking if Perry could come up with a hook. Contreras had his answer eleven minutes later, and it became their first collaboration, “Groove With Me.”
In 2008 they formed the group 3:26 with a few friends and took on Spring Sing, where they took home the Best Band Entry award for the plaintive “Undo.”
This year Perry and Contreras were back, bringing a new band, FDR, and rocking Pauley Pavilion with a genre-bending performance. And there, the streak will end.
For Perry, a political science and communication studies student, a life after graduation means making a career out of his voice. He started singing in gospel choirs as a teenager, and although he didn’t come to UCLA with his mind on music ““ he majored in political science and communication studies ““ he began experimenting with a cheap RadioShack microphone in his first year. He soon found himself on MTV’s “Little Talent Show,” a short-lived reality competition where he won his episode.
From MTV he moved to the Internet.
“I’ve been releasing tracks online and maintaining a YouTube channel that has helped me gain a good amount of international exposure,” Perry said. “The positive feedback is really what lets me know that I’m doing something right, and to keep going.”
In 2007 he joined with classmates and floormates to form JP and the Ambassadors. They took home the best band entry award at Spring Sing that year, and less than a year later they released a four-song EP of jazz fusion, titled PerkElation.
In his solo work, he headed more toward soul and R&B, combining an array of influences, and anchored always by his voice.
About a year and a half ago, Perry decided there was only one way to go forward.
“I would forever regret it if I didn’t explore my potential as an artist to the fullest extent while I had the chance,” Perry said.
“I could have wild success, be completely mediocre or fail miserably, but at least I could say that I tried and that I didn’t stifle my own destiny prematurely.”
This is not to say that Contreras’ plans have anything to do with stifling destiny.
He’s never been one to put music and career in the same category. His so-called “fling” with rap was fun while it lasted for everyone involved, but it was never meant to turn into anything serious.
His first track was a gift to his girlfriend during his senior year of high school, which led him, like Perry, to entry-level RadioShack recording equipment.
“Those first two years, I was constantly writing, producing and recording the most random songs my friends and I would come up with,” Contreras said.
At this time though, in a very different part of Contreras’ multitalented brain, another passion was brewing.
He majored in applied mathematics and minored in education studies, and when it came time for decision-making, his direction was definitively academic.
In the fall, he will return to UCLA for the Teacher Education Program, a two-year path to both a master’s degree in education and a teaching credential, after which he hopes to teach math at his old school, Carson High School in Carson, Calif.
“I’ve worked all my life, but I’m very aware that I’m a product of everyone who helped me get here,” Contreras said.
According to Contreras, Carson is the kind of high school where plenty of kids need help getting somewhere like UCLA.
He can think of only about four teachers from his years in grade school who really cared about their students, which is something he wants to change.
“Every teacher should earn that compliment, especially at underprivileged schools. I’ll approach teaching like rapping ““ I plan to study and learn everything I can to be the best I can be,” Contreras said.
So while the fellowship is splitting for now, the future is still up for debate.
“Both of us have big dreams, they’re just on completely different levels,” Contreras said. “It’s been a pleasure sharing the stage with Jarell over the last couple years. If he makes it big and asks me to spit a verse on one of his songs, I’d be honored.”
As the two part ways, we are left with a collection of memories. A music video for a version of Perry’s song “Change Your Mind,” produced by UCLA’s resTV, features the singer and a crowd of partiers trading turns on the dance floor. Perry carries the song admirably, but something feels incomplete ““ and then, out pops Contreras, grinning like a schoolboy and rapping about integrals, and in that moment all seems right with the world.