Rappers come from the east coast, the west coast and major metropolitan areas, right?

That’s what most people would think, but one local musician may just prove that theory wrong.

Chris Taylor does not fit the mold as a traditional rapper. Besides being from right here in Durant, Taylor is also one-half Choctaw and one-half Chickasaw, making him very unique in the genre as a Native American rapper.

The 19-year-old has just completed his first CD, having written and performed 19 original songs for the album.

He began “freestyling” at the age of 12, after listening to his brother and his friends rapping at their home.

“My older brother and his friends used to do it for fun, messing around, and I would watch,” Taylor said. “I remember thinking, ‘Man, that’s cool.’”

Like many musicians, his first inspiration to write came from a relationship with a girl when he was 15.

“I didn’t really start writing my own music until around 2005,” Taylor said. “My first song was a love song about a girl.

“I wrote that first song, and everybody seemed to really like it. Of course, that’s going to give you a boost of confidence and make you feel good about yourself.”

The song is one of the 19 on his first CD.

Taylor has recently had his first two live performances, in October at Club Mix in Ada and more recently at the Rose Bowl Event Center in Tulsa.

“I just went to Tulsa to watch another Native American rapper, Litefoot,” Taylor said. “When we got there I talked to the event organizer and let him listen to the CD.”

Evidently he was impressed, because he asked Taylor if he wanted to go on and perform some of the songs from the album, telling him he could have 15 minutes or so in front of the crowd.

“We weren’t really prepared to do that, so we just picked one of the songs and did that one,” Taylor said. “I actually came on and performed right before Litefoot.”

There were approximately 200 people in the crowd and Taylor was pleasantly surprised at their response to his song.

“I didn’t know what to expect because the guys that were on before me were more blues and rock,” Taylor said. “But the crowd was very supportive.”

“Everybody that hears him … they’re amazed,” said Phillip Perkins, who offered to pick up Taylor earlier this year as his first client for his start-up entertainment company, Kidrez Entertainment.

Perkins works full-time for the Chickasaw Nation as their head of loss prevention, but has always been a music aficionado, and the first time he heard Taylor he asked for a meeting.

“I was walking by my son’s room one day and heard some music he was playing,” Perkins said. “I asked him, ‘Who is that,’ and he said that it was a friend of his on MySpace who lived right here on the east side of town.”

“I listened to some more and told my son that I wanted to meet with him.”

From that meeting came the decision to manage Taylor and shortly thereafter the two of them were looking for a place to record.

They found a studio in Plano and Taylor impressed the producer there by laying down nine tracks in an hour-and-a-half without any of the music or lyrics in front of him.

“The guy told me that he had been in the business for 25 years, and he had only seen two or three other people do what Chris did that day,” Perkins said.

“He told me that Chris was going to be a star one day.”

There are big plans for the new CD, as Perkins has already set up a deal with the Chickasaw tribe and the Choctaws to carry the album in their travel stop stores throughout Oklahoma, and was meeting with Hastings last week to try to get the CD in their stores.

“Our goals for next year are to get the word out, get him some more performances and enter him in the Native American Music Awards in the best new artist category,” Perkins said.

“With Chris’s talent, dedication and desire to be successful, we think that he’s got a good chance to be a successful artist,” Perkins said.

Taylor will be at the Fifth Annual Choctaw Casino Resort Powwow on Saturday, Nov. 28, promoting the “Mix Tape” CD from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.