photo courtesy of Allison Rabel

by Kelsey Haugen

Allison Rabel is slightly disappointed that Amy Heidemann (of Karmin) beat her to the punch in becoming Nebraska’s own pop singer/rapper darling. But there’s no shame in being second to stardom, as Rabel, who describes herself as a spunky, outgoing, "little white-girl rapper from Nebraska," tries to make it big in Los Angeles with her jazzy, pop/rap songs and mash-ups.

For someone who never even dreamt of making a career out of performing, Rabel hit the ground running when music producers found some of her YouTube videos and started sending her Facebook messages about flying out to California.

"I’ve been asking myself, ‘Is it ridiculous that I maybe want to pursue a career as a rapper?’" says Rabel, a senior history major and journalism and gender studies minor at Nebraska Wesleyan University. "And then I decide that it is ridiculous, but I still want to try it out."

In June, Rabel received a message from Lawrence "Ready Red" Mcintosh, the president of A&R at The Senate Music Group, a Los Angeles production company with a stable of Grammy Award-winning producers and songwriters.

"All of a sudden I was in L.A., songwriting and doing demos, and (The Senate) offered me an internship and said I might be able to make a career out of it," Rabel says. "I had never recorded or even written a song before, but I learned a lot."

This first trip to LA came as a surprise to Rabel because until recently, singing and rapping had merely been hobbies for her. She said she has always loved singing, but she hasn’t been uploading her song mash-ups to YouTube for very long and discovered her talent for rapping only in her last year of high school.

"I was a senior doing a history project about three amendments, and I decided to make up a rap about each one," Rabel says. "(Students) loved it, and old-ass professors just ate that shit up. I got all A’s for my raps."

Years later, Rabel said she is still able to recite many of these academic raps she wrote in high school, as well as some of the more current ones from college. Rabel said she even breaks them out at parties and everyone loves it.

"Now it’s just a thing I do," Rabel says. "I rap battle people, and they never expect it based on the way I look."

Rabel sometimes participates in shows at The Bourbon Theatre for small crowds. But she doesn’t care about the size of the audience, performing is a means of relaxation for her.

"I just like to sit on a stool and perform — usually jazz music and pop/rap covers — in a laid-back atmosphere," Rabel says. "I get anxiety sometimes, but when I’m performing, I don’t even worry about that. I’m just in the moment."

This summer,