 "Photo: The Current")
He has big dreams, and is willing to go a long way to achieve them.
Fred Diezil, a first-quarter student at Green River, eventually wants to end up there with what he calls "the greats," and for his music to last forever.
"I know it's a long shot, but I want to be up there with The Beatles or a Nirvana, or even a White or Rob Zombie," he says.
"I want my music to be that powerful. I know that it is already - that it's capable of being it. The only thing that's left is exposure."
As far as music goes, he seems to be on his way. Diezil, 27, has opened for the Ying Yang Twins and Twista, and his two mixtapes have together been downloaded over a million times.
He was recently awarded a meeting with the record label of his choosing after he beat thousands of other contestants to win the Open Bar contest, a competition put on by rapper MIMS and producer Erik Mendelson.
But he didn't have a meeting. To retain autonomy over his work and to be able to finish his education, Diezil turned down the conversation with a label in favor of doing more local shows and spending more time with his three-year-old-son. He has a built-in studio at his home to make the latter easier, too.
Instead, he adopts a more unconventional method of marketing himself – free everything.
He shares all of his songs and mixtapes at no cost, often through an organization called Coast2Coast, a website that offers hip hop, rap and other urban music fans the chance to download up and coming artists for free.
It also helps beginning artists start off their careers and gives them the opportunity to collaborate and work together, which they often do on mixtapes.
Diezil himself has been in such a collaboration, the "Real Life Click." It's named after the self-invented type of music he writes and produces: "real-life music."
He describes it as songs that are both pleasant enough to play in the background at a barbeque and yet meaningful enough to pick someone who is having a bad day up. "For me, music is medicinal. It is the key to releasing emotions in a healthy way."
It is also important to him that his music will last – in 70 years, when he no longer has the rights to his music and is likely to be long forgotten by most, it must withstand the test of time.
The exposure part of his plan is where Green River comes into play. Even after having gotten an Associates in Business and a certificate in Entrepreneurship at Pierce College, he's attending college to learn more. As with all the other things he chooses to fit into his tight schedule, this is for a reason.
"Nothing gets anywhere without the media, it doesn't matter what it is," he says.
Diezil has a weekly show on KGRG, the campus radio station, and is going for a certificate in Broadcasting, something he hopes could land him an internship with a larger radio stations and an additional entrance into the music industry.
Next to writing and recordings songs, Diezil works as a freelance DJ three to five nights a week.
Due to his busy schedule he can only take one in-person and a couple of online classes every quarter. But he is fine with that. He doesn't see himself as a regular, nine-to-five guy, and prefers some of the chaos his current life brings along with it.
With big dreams come big commitments, and often very little sleep. But for him, it's all worth it.
"It's easier, getting out of bed, when it's something that you want to do. And this is what I love to do.
"That's my motivation – to leave my mark on music, like the rest of the greats did."
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