Original Music by G*Natural

In the Game (For Real)
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Move (What's Next)
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Behind the Music

If you viewed a Making Your College Search Count or Making College & Career Count presentation at your school, you might remember the short video that played at the beginning. We thought you’d like to learn a little more about the songs featured in these videos, which you can download for free on this page, so we went straight to the source and chatted with Making It Count speaker Jelani Greenidge, aka G*Natural, who wrote and performed them.

A professional musician for the past 10 years and a Making It Count speaker since 2008, Jelani says music has always been a part of his life. "I come from a very musical family. I grew up singing a lot with my family in church." His love for singing in church helped him become a worship leader at several churches in various cities, including the church he grew up attending, which he says has been "kind of a privilege."

In addition to singing, Jelani also plays keyboards and is adept at digital programming. "I do a lot of digital arrangement and drum programming. I grew up around a lot of electronic music, especially drum machines and that kind of thing."

Even though he enjoys working as a musician, Jelani was also interested in honing his skills as a public speaker, which led him to Making It Count. "Prior to [joining Making It Count], I had a couple of opportunities to speak in church and in front of people at a couple of different jobs I’d had. So, when I first heard about Making It Count, I thought it’d be a chance to build that skill. I mean, you know, I’d taken some classes in college, but that’s not the same thing as actually being out there and doing it on a regular basis."

Recently, his two passions – music and speaking – came together when he was asked to collaborate on the songs that would be featured in the opening videos for Making Your College Search Count and Making College & Career Count.

After several brainstorming sessions in which Jelani and the Making It Count staff discussed ideas for the songs’ lyrics and music, Jelani went off and worked on developing the two songs, building upon key themes he took from his conversations with the Making It Count Team. He says he wrote the lyrics and music at the same time, relying on a Yamaha Motif ES keyboard and Cakewalk Sonar digital software to compose the latter. He also used a variety of samples in the songs, which he says came from a sample collection he had purchased but hadn’t found a use for until this project.

Jelani says there were several drafts of each song and with each draft, there was "tweaking of the lyrics, mostly, but the music stayed pretty consistent," which he says he was glad about because music is typically more challenging to change in a song than the lyrics. Eventually, Jelani and the Making It Count team came to an agreement on the final versions of the songs and they were used as the inspiration for the graphics created to go with them.

Jelani says he enjoyed working on this project, particularly the collaborative aspect because, "some of my best work comes from collaborations with other people." He hopes that the songs inspire students, and will get juniors to say to themselves, "I want to be in the game" and prompt seniors to wonder what’s next after high school.