By Cassidy O’Neil, Online Editor

He was looking for complete silence, and when he finally reached college, he found it. Now he sits in his dorm room all alone, far from where he started, staring at his computer screen, headphones plugged in, meticulously making sure his voice is clear and that he’s on beat.

¨Peace out, First Flight High¨ is how local rapper Byrde Wells, who goes by Byrde on SoundCloud, ended his single ¨My Life¨ that he dropped on the night of his graduation. Now he’s back with his debut mix-tape, “Be Well Sandy.”

“It was always in the back of my mind,” Byrde said about making a mix-tape. It’s just the next step in a journey that really began in 2016 when he asked his longtime friend, First Flight alumnus Mack Doebler, if he could come by to record music.

“I was already interested in making music,” Doebler said. “I thought he was just joking when he asked and then he came over and blew our minds.”

Wells began to release singles sporadically over the next year, generating some buzz from fellow classmates on social media.

The next logical step in Byrde’s mind was to drop a full-length mix-tape, but with the stress and time constraints of college applications, the dreams of doing so were temporarily placed on the back burner.

As Byrde’s senior year was coming to an end, he once again gathered back in Doebler’s bedroom to record what would soon become his most played song to date, “My Life.”

“The track was the first song I made in a year, and I realized when I finished it that it felt like a personal anthem, it was a beginning to this whole thing,” Byrde explained.

The following summer consisted of non-stop writing and recording: “I would work a 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift, then record till 2 in the morning, wake up and do it all again,” Byrde said.

With his late-night recording times, Wells had to resort to using various unconventional recording locations.

“I recorded from Mack’s bedroom, a kid’s playroom, my house, then I went to my friend Josh Healy’s, where I finished most of the mix-tape, and then I went to my friend Cory Harris’ house, where I almost completed the mix-tape, but I ran out of time,” Wells said. “Then I came to college and finished the tape in my dorm room.”

Leading up to the release date, Byrde promoted his mix-tape on various social media platforms in an attempt to generate excitement from his fans, including blacking out his Twitter, changing his username to the title, and releasing the mix-tape cover picture.

In the final 48 hours, Byrde fine-tuned the project along with recording the skits that would tie together the whole concept of the mix-tape.

“ ‘Be Well Sandy’ is not only a play on words, but Sandy is a metaphor for an overprotective, controlling and ambition-less girlfriend who represents the Outer Banks and the complacency that comes with it,” Byrde said.

At 9:15 p.m. on Sept. 2, it finally dropped.

“I was freaking out in my dorm and everyone else on my floor was just chilling, but I felt like just won the Super Bowl. My phone was blowing up and it felt like pure bliss,” Byrde recalled.

Twitter and Instagram began to flood with posts promoting and congratulating Byrde on the piece.

“My twitter was just going off, a lot of people reached out to me and said some extremely nice things,” Byrde said. “That keeps you going. If people respect whatever you’re doing that much you know you’re doing something right.”

Even though Byrde is not on the beach anymore, he still feels the support of his boys back home.

“It’s amazing to hear someone from First Flight doing something like this,” senior Nick Goldberg said. “If you think about his lyrics and comprehend them, it’s a story and you can relate it to your own life or someone’s life you know.”

Byrde now is attending school at the University of South Carolina, where he continues to write and record, working on what’s next for the aspiring rap star.

“I’ve been trying to make it out the 2 5 (2)” Byrde famously said on “Highlights,” and on Aug 22 he successfully did that.

• Twitter: @byrdewells
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byrde_wells/
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/bwells-3

Junior Cassidy O’Neil can be reached at o’[email protected].