Joining Maye in the video is the woman who lends a voice to the song’s chorus, Melissa Providence, an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.

“She has a really beautiful spirit, really enjoys doing music and performing,” Maye says.

Branching Out

His New York background was precisely what allowed Maye to put his musical interests to good use—specifically, within the prestigious Collegiate School for boys in Manhattan. Described by Maye as “a pretty rich school,” its broad selection of musical equipment allowed Maye to experiment with different sounds.

“I started messing around with the computers and keyboards that they had there, and started sequencing music. That’s basically how I got into it,” Maye says of his early musical activities.

Although he played both the piano and the violin while growing up, his secret musical routine was to imitate the hip-hop songs he heard on the radio, thereby familiarizing himself with the particularities of the genre.

“That’s basically how I got into hip-hop—I wasn’t necessarily bred in a musical house, or around a lot of people who did hip-hop,” Maye says.

Maye says that the musical opportunities he had at Collegiate are not fully met by Harvard’s resources.

“I never really considered studying music at Harvard, simply because I don’t have much training in Western classical music. So I can’t really pursue my interests using Harvard’s resources, except for things like the Quad’s sound studio,” he says.

Maye applauds recent efforts made by Harvard’s own students to supplement the University’s limited musical offerings, particularly the still-in-planning Veritas record label.

“I feel like I personally know a lot of really talented musicians here, and a lot of the most talented ones don’t really have any publicity at all—I could just as easily not know them,” Maye says with a shrug of his shoulders. “So I think it’s a good idea for students to take into their hands the responsibility of exposing their fellow students’ music.”

Maye thinks that the success that Harvard-affiliated musical acts have had speaks for itself.

“I’m glad that people like Justice League have gotten out there and are performing,” Maye says. “There’s a great tradition of music at Harvard—look at Weezer,” he adds.