The man behind the control booth handed him a microphone, adjusted his headset and pointed to the empty, makeshift stage.
That’s when music education major Born Foster took his cue.
A crowd began to gather as he sang rapper Jay-Z’s song “Hey Papi.” They looked on as Foster danced and swayed to the scratchy hip-hop grooves and raucous bass-driven rhythm.
When he was finished, out of breath and exhilarated, he walked away with a professional music video of himself performing the song by the hip-hop heavyweight.
For a moment Wednesday afternoon, the University of Memphis senior was a star.
“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “I’m going to show it to people, but I’ll watch it myself, mostly.”
The video was produced by Preferred Entertainment, a national organization that specializes in providing corporate and college entertainment acts across the country, including live comedy shows, speakers, magicians and musical acts.
Their biggest success, though, is their “Making Your Own Video” feature.
“It’s definitely our number one show,” said Buddy Williams, president of the fledgling organization, in between duties at the control booth. “It’s a big hit on colleges all over the country.”
Preferred Entertainment visited The U of M Wednesday, sponsored by the Student Activities Council. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., they turned students into music video performers.
“Basically, students can either do lip-sync or karaoke to video images that we have,” Williams said. A table was set up in front of the stage, where students could look through notebooks and pick out a song they wanted to sing. A costume wardrobe was situated to the right of the stage.
“My friend signed me up to do Britany Spears,” said Kristen Davis, a student at The U of M. “I don’t know though; they’ll probably laugh.”
A group of students took the stage after Foster, and sang the Memphis Bleek song “Is That Your Chick,” and most of the crowd swayed and sang along with them.
“We had a very good response to the event,” said Kathy Walker, a graduate assistant with SAC. She estimated a crowd of about 200 people had gathered to watch at one point.
The event has been an important part of the success of Preferred Entertainment.
“We’ve been doing this since 1993,” Williams said, before announcing the next student act. She sang the Alicia Keys hit “Fallin’,” with a black hat tipped to one side and a small blue board substituting for a keyboard.
“Girl, that ain’t no piano,” someone playfully shouted from the audience.
