A-plus - The Rapping Sensation

Over the years, I've been given many a nickname, each one with an interesting story behind it. Today, I'm going to share with you the nickname that stuck the longest, and which some people still refer to me as today: A-plus.

The genesis of this alias was at the beginning of my junior year in highschool. I had this friend, Germaine, who happened to be a brotha (aka a black dude) that I used to call "G." Well, he being the clever brotha that he is, and as many brothas do, having a talent for creating cool word plays, began calling me in response, not 'A' (which sounds stupid anyways), but "A-plus."

Now this was an incredible nick name for a few reasons.

1. It gave me high school "street cred" to have brotha's hollerin at "A-plus" in the halls.

2. It was a differnt play on the typical first letter or double letter nickname (ie. "RJ," "CT," "JR," "AJ" etc.).

3. It was incredibly appropriate since, in high school, I was a stellar student.

I started rolling with it. How could I be uncool with a name coined by a brotha? Around the same time I also started getting in to writing rap, so this became my sort of "rap name." Yes, you probably didn't know this, but I have been known to bust a rhyme or two in my day. I still have some of the first raps I ever wrote, in a box somewhere.

Coincidentally, my high school popularity started rising exponentially at this time. I mean, how often do you see a chubby honor-roll kid writing rap with brotha's, singing in the hallway at lunch with "little samoa" (even though every one of those guys was huge), and giving speeches for the newly inducted honor roll students.

The name "A-plus" however really took off after my English teacher heard through the grapevine that I was into doing rap. She then decided to assign the coolest assignment ever! We had to get into groups and perform raps for the class.

My group consisted of me, already named A-plus, my friend Colt, whom we nick named "C-average", and Jacob Farkas, also known as just Farkas, thus nicknamed "F-minus." Together we were the Grade School Rappers (I know, not the coolest name ever, but I thought it was funny!).

After this, people in my classes knew me as Arun AND A-plus. My senior year though, the name exploded!

Segway a moment. I'm reading through this and I realize that this nickname actually doesn't seem that cool, but it's hard to accurately reflect its coolness in writing. You're just going to have to trust me that it was amazing! (I promise)

Anyways, when it was decided I was participating in the eagerly anticipated Lip Sync Contest there were flyers posted all over the school that read, "Come see Arun aka 'A-plus' perform as the King of Pop: Michael Jackson! Well, that performance ended up being pretty popular and with it, A-plus and Arun became synonymous.

That wasn't the end though. Soon thereafter, I found out I received a tennis scholarship. They did an article in paper about me titled "Rapped up in Tennis." The writer wanted to highlight things I did in addition to tennis. My tennis mentor at the time had told him previously that I had been known to rap here and there under the name "A-plus."

Well during the interview, he made me perform a couple of raps. Sure enough, when the article appeared on the sports page, he spent two paragraphs talking about "A-plus" and including lyrics from the rap that I performed for him.

When I went to college, the name was left behind. Truthfully, my two year stint as "A-plus" was plenty, and it was time to move on. To this day though, a lot of my high school friends still call me "A-plus" for fun.

I know you now have doubts, but I assure you: I really was cool!