How a Boston hip-hop prodigy won $5,000 for college

It all began when the Belly Gang Kushington, a rising Atlanta rapper known for his strip club anthem “Friend Do (remix),” issued a challenge to his legions of followers online. “I want to pay some college tuition,” he declared in a thick Atlanta drawl, sitting poolside in a tropical-looking locale. He invited college women to submit videos for a chance to win $5,000.

The winner of that challenge is Janay Trench-Lesley, a Spelman College senior better known in Boston as the rapper Nay Speaks.

Trench-Lesley is a bit of a Boston hip-hop prodigy, with an album and a Boston Music Award already under her belt at the age of 22. In the video she submitted, she wears a blue Spelman stole and exudes an easy confidence.

“I go to class/ That’s what I call my 9 to 5/ And then I grind from 5 to 9 to build a life that’s mine,” she raps. “I graduate in 50 days/ I’ll say it one more time/ I graduate in 50 days/ So help me cross that line.”

She submitted the video the night before the deadline. The view count climbed slowly, and then faster, jumping by the thousands. Her follower count started ticking upwards.

“Usually when things go viral, I might go up like 1,000, 2,000,” Trench-Lesley said. “But with this video, I was going up 10,000 by the day.”

Spelman graduates were cheering her on in the comments. Rap fans approved of her verses. Something about her story – a first-generation college student about to graduate from a historically Black college – resonated with people.

“Everybody was saying, ‘Nay graduates in 50 days.’ That was the phrase that caught on,” Trench-Lesley said. “So I feel like that urgency, too, makes people be like, ‘Ok, we want to help, we want to be a part of this.”

In April, Belly Gang Kushington came to Spelman and presented Trench-Lesley with the cash. He was won over by her story.

“He said for him, he is also one of the first people in his family to make it out of these generational struggles,” she said. “ And so he related, also, to that part.”

Trench-Lesley grew up in Mattapan in a Jamaican family that instilled the importance of getting an education.

“Growing up I did tennis, dance, gymnastics, swim, paper-mache – anything that my mom could sign me up for, she’d sign me up for,” she said. “But her biggest thing was education and school.”

Getting into Spelman was a realization of that dream. But Trench-Lesley struggled at first. Spelman costs around $60,000 a year to attend, and the financial responsibility weighed on her.

”How can I focus on my schoolwork or projects when I know that this tuition is a burden to my family?” Trench-Lesley explained. “And so then, once the tuition is a burden, you feel like you're a burden as well.”

Things got better when she learned how to ask for help. In January, she launched a GoFundMe to cover her remaining tuition. The viral video gave the fundraiser a big boost, which meant she could put the $5,000 toward other expenses.

“ When I went in, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a lot of money.’ And then when I looked at what I have to pay for, I was like, ‘Oh, this has to go towards needs,’” she said. “ So I put some away for music. I paid my rent, I paid my graduation fee.”

In May, Trench-Lesley will graduate from Spelman College with a degree in English. She is getting ready to release a new EP as Nay Speaks, and plans to pursue music after college. Until then, she’s focused on riding the wave. She knows an opportunity when she sees it. She’s not letting it go to waste.

“This has been, indeed, life changing.,” Trench-Lesely said. “It's also just made me feel a lot lighter as a student because I'm like, I'm covered. I'm OK.”