Chip Py/The Gazette Donte Reams, known as rapper King Tay, stands next to Brian Zecher, known as rapper Bug Slim, as he performs on Feb. 3 at the Pashion Lounge in Wheaton.

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James Sweet began writing at age 9 as a way to vent, then somewhere along the line put his writing to a beat.

“It sounded nice and it felt good,” Sweet said. “It was like therapy.”

On a Friday night in January, Sweet, known as 27-year-old Silver Spring-based rapper “Tonn,” prepared to perform a few songs with his group “Savage Mindz” at the Pashion Restaurant and Lounge in Wheaton, part of a showcase of about a dozen area rappers all hoping their hobby turns into something more.

“After doing it for a certain period, you ask yourself, ‘What do you want from it,’” Sweet said. “‘Where do you want to go with it?’ You have this talent. So use your talent.”

With the exploding popularity of hip-hop, a genre saturated with aspiring artists who use social media to promote shows and YouTube to host self-made music videos, it’s quite possible none of the rappers at the Pashion Lounge will be signed to a recording contract. But for at least one night they were the center of attention, baring their life experiences and music to a packed room of club-goers.

“You got a lot of these young fellas that really want to try something. We can’t starve. So a lot of these young guys, we try to rap our feelings and how we view life,” said Huwey Kelly, who goes by the stage name “Black Goo.”

Kelly, a Silver Spring native, started the Back Road Music Group with his brother Nahshon Barnett more than a decade ago, then began organizing events at Pashion Lounge to give rappers a chance for exposure. Kelly was the driving force behind the event in January, billed as a celebration of the life of Barnett, who died in a car accident last year, and Silver Spring-rapper Franklin Amobi, stage name “Frank Diggy,” who in December was shot and killed outside of an apartment in White Oak as he went to work. The case is unsolved.

Many of the rappers related stories of growing up in areas affected by crime and violence. Some view music as a way out.

“It’s about making a better way of living than we have been living,” said Chico Kelly, 25, a Washington, D.C. native who met Amobi in middle school and is featured in some of his tracks. “It’s either one thing or the other, and I’m not trying to go to the other. I’ve already been there and done that. Prison, the streets all that.”

About 11:30 p.m., the first act performed from a railing dividing the club’s VIP section, complete with white leather couches and glass tables, from a dance floor and bar below. A group of photographers followed their every move, including Adelphi resident Rasheik Dyce. Dyce has a blog with a playlist of his own music, but he also documents performances from area clubs for the website StampDMV, which features local rappers and musicians in a publicity-building effort.

He hears about performances on Twitter and Facebook or from rappers he has filmed in the past. He has been rapping since 2005, works at Safeway during the day, then goes by his stage name, “Sheik Dyce,” at night.

“A lot of us are talented and we need the exposure. That’s the main goal on top of everything, to make some money from this whole situation,” Dyce said. “At the end of the day, you want to do what you enjoy, to work at something you enjoy. We enjoy this.”

An hour later, Sweet and his partners David Atsebha and Calvin Farmer performed their song “Stronger.”

“They say to get a good job you gotta go to college. With no scholarship you never get up out of this debt,” Sweet rapped. “You see the set up. They hold you down every time you think you ‘bout to get up.”

The group performs at least once a week at clubs in the Washington, D.C. area and in Baltimore.

“We’re not Jay-Z, but we don’t need a million dollars. If we had $75,000 a year just to make music, we’d be living a good life,” Farmer said. “Music is an outlet and it’s easily available to us, it’s easy to relate to. It’s what we feel.”

akraut@gazette.net