Words can be a beautiful thing, especially if used to their full potential, and for senior Joe Wistrcill, a love for the English language has sharpened his skills in rapping.

“I started out as a poet—a lyricist—focusing on the language, and then I got into the music,” Wistrcill said. “So for me the music is almost partially like secondary, whereas the meaning of the lyrics and what’s going on in the words is more deep and meaningful to me.”

Wistrcill said he tried out a couple of rap aliases before deciding on one that he thought would stick: Reverse Mechanic. He has since released an extended play that includes seven original songs.

Through the use of an online music distribution service called TuneCore, Wistrcill now has all of his finished works on major music platforms across the Internet.

“I upload my stuff to them. They upload it to iTunes, and then from there they collect all your royalties—all your money—and don’t take a cut of it, and I get to keep all that,” Wistrcill said. “So from them, I can distribute my stuff to them, and they’ll hook up with iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Rhapsody, all those places.”

Wistrcill said that music business professor Steve Cole’s class taught him a lot and changed the way he views the music profession.

“I’m a professional musician. I tour around the world. I make records—I still call them that,” Cole said. “But when I’m out on the road and when I’m performing and when I’m touring, I’m experiencing the real music industry. That’s what I want my students to experience as well.

Since the release of Reverse Mechanic’s first EP, local companies have started to notice his talents. Wistrcill was recently hired by PreferredOne, a health insurance company, to do a commercial that ran twice a day during March.

“PreferredOne, the company, was like, ‘Hey make us a song.’ I was like, ‘For sure,’” Wistrcill said. “So I made them a song, and they started putting it out. They paid for getting it on KDWB and doing stuff like that.”

Cole said the most challenging step for any college student trying to make a career out of music is fully committing to becoming a musician after graduation.

“He actually kind of pulled the triggers on some things. He went and found someone to do production and created a video and posted it,” Cole said. “It was pretty bold about the whole thing, so I think it was pretty admirable.”

Joey Anderson can be reached at ande9008@stthomas.edu.