WPGC Host Sean Kingston Concert at McKinley

By Ashley McBride

Sean Kingston, who had one of the hottest songs this past summer, "Beautiful Girls," recently performed at McKinley. The 17-year old has combined music styles such as Rap, Reggae, Pop, and Doo-Wop. More than that, he makes great music without the use of profanity in his lyrics.

Kingston sang several songs from his self-titled album. The concert was sponsored by WPGC and was the long-awaited reward for many McKinley students who participated in a contest over the summer. This past August the radio station held a week-long contest for area high school students in which they were to text the name of their school to 97421. At the end of the week, the school with the most text messages won a free Back-to-School Block Party.

Each night some of the high schools would send in as many as 1,500 text messages. With much advertising through social networks like Facebook and MySpace, at the end of the week McKinley pulled ahead of high schools like T.C. Williams and Westlake and won the competition with 45% of the messages.

The block party was supposed to include food, music, and other entertainment. But months after McKinley won the contest, there was no block party. It was rumored that one of the administrators told the station that McKinley wouldn't host it. Yet unbeknownst to the student body, the administration and the radio station were planning a concert for the students as a replacement reward for the block party.

"Originally we were going to have Bow Wow," said Ronald Fryer, school resource officer. "But at the last minute a scheduling conflict arose and his schedule didn't fit in with the day they wanted to do the concert for the kids."

Still, the radio station and McKinley administration didn't give up. They decided to bring Kingston, "He is really cool and down to earth," said Michael Dean, another school resource officer. "He is very talented for his age and I like what he's doing with his music."

After Sean Kingston performed, the radio station personalities led the popular music game called "Name that Song." In this version of the competition it was the boys against the girls.

"We won because the boys are just so much better than girls," said Jevon Knight jokingly. "It was a lot of fun though, the chicks were fierce competition."

By Anna Kinsman |  December 18, 2007; 9:56 AM ET News
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