Isaac Lucas aka Relaye was destined to immerse himself in music and sports since his father Aaron did the same. The inventive rapper’s father Aaron ran track at the University of Kansas, where he met his wife Dorothy. The couple formed a reggae band. “I was involved in music and sports at a young age,” Lucas says. “I really didn’t have much of a choice since they both were always there. My mother taught me how to play piano when I was 5 and I started playing soccer around the same time.”

Like most athletic boys, sports became a focal point. When Lucas wasn’t running track (the sport that inspired his moniker Relaye), he was honing his basketball skills.

Off the court, Relaye could often be found jamming with his family band playing keyboard or trumpet, and when the young renaissance man was alone, he penned poetry. “I didn’t match up my poetry to music until I was in high school,” Lucas says. “I would make up melodies and flows to sing along to existing songs, but in high school I started getting into beat making and attaching those original melodies and lyrics to empty beats. The first beat I made was with an app on my phone called ‘beatmaker.’ I used that app to make dozens of beats and bought a boombox to bring on the basketball team bus for away games that i’d play them on. The whole team liked to freestyle so we would spend long bus rides freestyling to what I came up with.”

Music was just a hobby until Lucas entered college in Los Angeles. “I studied architecture but it didn’t allow me to be as creative as I thought it would going in,” Lucas admits. “My older brother studied mechanical engineering in school but I just didn’t want to go into that world. I didn’t even realize that music was even a possibility until I was a year into college. Given my parents experience in the music industry, they were skeptical of my pursuing it at first, but I went for it anyway since I knew it was what I wanted. They wanted me to pursue a career with a little more job security, but once it was obvious how serious about it I was, and how passionate I am about music, they were on board. Especially once they heard what I had been working on and realized that I can make music.”

Relaye’s album ‘Oddity’ is out now.