The Unheard Story Behind Viral Music Video “Tell Ya”
One year ago the national Pi Kappa Phi organization closed their Penn State chapter but the fraternity was not forced to leave until the end of the semester was over. With the largest punishment already enforced, the fraternity members felt they could do nearly anything they wanted within legal limits, and that is exactly what they did.
Throwing arguably the largest daylong party ever to be seen at Penn State, students and artists Chris Jackson, Doug Right, and Tokes saw it as the perfect opportunity to film a music video for a hip-hop song "Tell Ya" that they created around the same time. Almost immediately, the video went viral with over 60 thousand plays and multiple articles across college blogs over its controversial content.
The song took shots at Penn State's chapter of Kappa Delta Rho (KDR) and their recent controversy and closing due to pictures they posted of passed out girls, but also contained some “questionable lyrics” of their own. A massive amount of hate and criticism was sent to the artists and students in the video. However, fellow students who personally knew them loved it.
The artists believe they were unfairly represented to a much larger community than they intended this song to be heard by. The judgments concluded that these men poorly represented the Penn State community, when in fact, these men are honor roll students, passionate musicians, and are graduating this semester to work full-time. The other side to these artists, being who they really are as people never got to be heard, and the long term effects of that are greater on them than anyone who was offended by a video they chose to watch.
Hear a variety of their music, including "Tell Ya" at Jacksons Soundcloud page below.
