Denton rapper Bryan “Infidelix” Rodecker has spent the past couple of years promoting his music on city streets across Europe. He’d quit his job as a waiter, cashed in his life savings and crossed an ocean to pursue his dream of sharing his lyrical art.
Now he's gone viral.
Rodecker, who went overseas in 2014, started popping up online in videos performing with other rappers, first when he was in Berlin and later in other cities. Last week, a video with Rodecker performing in the underground Berlin metro garnered over 100,000 views.
"Holy fuk [sic]," Rodecker wrote in a Sept. 2 Facebook post. "Is this video going viral right now as well? What's happening to my music?"
He didn’t upload the video, though. The stranger who performed with him published it. Her name is Silvia Rodriguez, and she's a singer/songwriter from Barcelona. She performs under the name "Elland-M."
Rodriguez wrote in the description of the video she posted on Sept. 1 that she was getting off the subway when she heard Rodecker rapping. So she turned around and walked towards him.
“After listening to him killing it in a couple of songs, I couldn’t help myself from wanting to sing with him," she said. "This is the result. It was great.”
When the Observer last spoke with him in January 2015, he’d overcome fear of the unfamiliar in Spain, recorded hip-hop in London, worked on an eco farm in Scotland, taught kids to rap at a youth center in Ireland and resisted the urge to return home to Texas while he was in Amsterdam.
"Hip-hop to me is like a lifestyle," Rodecker said, shortly after he bought his one-way ticket to Madrid. "It's far more than just making your music and putting it out there. It's about going and showing it to people in different countries and learning about their hip-hop."