By Camille Kelly | Reporter
When Hannah Lee, Shelley Keller Zych and Katie Whitmire Keil created the “Kappa Rap 2” music video for Kappa Kappa Gamma recruitment in 2011, they never expected it to still be trending across social platforms and on college campuses nationwide 15 years later.
The video now has 1.4 million views on YouTube, a legacy that has recently resurfaced in the lives of the three women in ways they would never have anticipated.
The idea was born when Keller Zych began experimenting with GarageBand and writing original songs. The three friends wrote the original “Kappa Rap” during their sophomore year at Baylor shortly after joining the sorority. They released the first “Kappa Rap” music video with their sorority sisters’ help, solely for recruitment.
According to Lee, the three took a lot of inspiration from Kesha when producing the lyrics.
“I think the ‘Kappa Rap’ started initially out of boredom,” Whitmire Keil said. “We had just become Kappas, and we were in our dorm room quite a bit. We were so excited to become Kappas, and we were like, ‘Well, we should just make a song about it.’”
“Kappa Rap 2” was created and released the following year on YouTube with the help of their videographer friend, Bailey Eubanks, who was a member of Alpha Tau Omega.
“The guy who made the music video put it on YouTube, and that is when it took off unexpectedly,” Keller Zych said. “We never made it to put it on social media. We made it specifically so it would be shown in a room to 100 girls on one day. We had no idea, and I think the night that he put it up, we woke up and it had about 20,000 views.”
The fame only continued, and all three shared stories of being recognized not only by fellow Baylor students and KKG members but also by people all over the nation.
Whether during their time at Baylor or after they started new jobs, the “Kappa Rap” girls would often be recognized as just that.
“I ended up working at Baylor in athletics for a time, so I knew that it was still being used in rush, just because I was in the college world a little bit,” Keller Zych said. “But TikTok wasn’t a thing then. It didn’t feel like a big thing anyway, but cut to today, I am living in Waco again, and then getting married and having three kids, suddenly they know the ‘Kappa Rap.’ It’s back, fully back in my life within the last year.”
According to Keller Zych, the Wall Street Journal has even reached out to the three about covering them for a story within the past year, although it has not been published.
“Every rush season, we’re getting TikToks sent to us by all of our friends with people using our song,” Keller Zych said. “I put it on Spotify on a whim in 2019, and the streams have gone way up because of TikTok. Nothing has really changed in my daily life, but we are getting asked to now do things 15 years later.”
On Jan. 11, the three were asked to visit Baylor’s KKG chapter and speak at the sorority event before rush.
“Even my girls now love it,” Keller Zych said. “Literally, my daughter has said, ‘Do we have a music video, and Taylor Swift has music videos?’ and I’ve had to explain, it’s not the same. It’s crazy, and I’m not the one showing her.”
Although they have stayed close friends, the resurgence of the “Kappa Rap” popularity has brought the three back together in new ways.
According to Whitmire Keil, she, Keller Zych, and Lee are working on new projects together that will be released in the next six months.
Many aspects of the music video continue to impact culture today, with not only the clips from “Kappa Rap” circulating on TikTok and Instagram, but also the term “Kappa Arms” for the dance move in the video, now a popular GIF.
Despite the resurgence in fame of “Kappa Rap,” the personal lives of all three have changed significantly since their college days, though they remain close friends.
Lee lives in New York working as a professional live event painter, Keller Zych lives in Waco with her husband and three children working in marketing and Whitmire Keil lives in Dallas with her husband and two children, also working in marketing.
According to Lee, the biggest thing she has learned from this experience is “to be weird and be whoever you are without caring what others think.”
Keller Zych said that, above all else, friendship is what really matters.
“We spent all of our time in college laughing,” Keller Zych said. “We found hilarious friends, and we just were weird and laughed all the time. Friendships stand the test of time if they’re built on the right things.”
