HOUSTON - She's an internet sensation, stars in hip hop videos, writes her own words and has fans around the globe.
Oh, and Lyric Ragston of Fresno, Texas is only 10-years-old and all of this started just 7 short months ago.
But early on Lyric's father Mitchell knew he had a singer on his hands when he was bringing his oldest child home from the hospital.
"On the way home she was crying nonstop. We put on one of the beats my brother and I were using to rap to and she immediately stopped," Mitchell said.
The fifth grader never stopped. She started tagging along with her father when he went to the recording studio.
"One day, I told my daddy I wanted to do it and then one summer, when he was home, he asked did I really want to do it and we started writing together," Lyric said.
That wasn't enough. Lyric, who goes by Lyrikka, started asking to make a video.
It wasn't easy. Mitchell is an insurance salesman with no experience in creating videos.
"The first video wasn't even shot with a camera. It was shot with a laptop computer and we were actually following her around and she was doing her song and she and her friend had a dance routine to it and it's cute and all fun and games. We were like oh, we can put this on YouTube and it'll calm her down," Mitchell remembered.
It was short and simple: edited that night and posted. The family couldn't believe their eyes when the next day, there were 200,000 hits.
More videos, more songs, more practices were to come.
This songstress also hits the books hard. She's been an honor roll student her entire elementary school career. She's also just been inducted into the National Elementary Honor Society.
Mitchell's hobby is hip hop. He is all too familiar with that world. The father of 3 ensures that Lyric's content is clean.
"We definitely have a lot of hip hop artists that may be seen as gangster rappers that want to collaborate with her and we are shying away from that," Ragston said. "Clubs, late nites being around that element is not what I want for a little girl and not what most parents want for their little girl."
Mitchell is a little overwhelmed these days. He's getting constant emails and phone calls. But, it's not like he can ask just anyone for advice.
How many others have 10-year-olds who have more than a million hits online? Everything has happened so fast that Mitchell is taking it all in bit by bit and trying to make the right decisions.
When asked where she goes from here Lyric simply says, "I want to be bigger."
At the end of this month, the family heads to California. Underground Girls of Hip Hop have nominated Lyric for "Breakthrough Artist of the Year". The award will be handed out May 21.
oooooooooo she got mindless behavior posters in the background !!!
alysiamonet 2 months ago 18
@alysiamonet i knew i wasn't the only one who saw!
lollipopismindless 2 months ago 8