It’s always great to see someone local make a stride at being a professional artist. Denzel Patterson, 17, a student at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School lives in Dorchester and goes by the name Dizzy when on the microphone. This well rounded rap artist wants hip-hop to be known for more than profanity and half naked women dancing in the videos. His style and influences are much different than other artists.

The main influence for his music is not so much another rapper, but his life. Although his favorite rapper is Tupac, he says what gets him hyped about music is the reaction that other people have after listening to his.

The first thing Dizzy ever wrote was inspired by his older brothers. One was a producer and the other was a rapper, and they were constantly making music. Dizzy was young when he first decided to put his pen to paper. “I wrote my first rhyme when I was 10,” he said. Dizzy then decided to stop for a while since he felt he was too young to take it seriously. In middle school he started working with others as a Christian rapper.

He decided Christian rap wasn’t who he was and moved on. He’s all about what he describes as “real music,” meaning music that’s motivated by who he is, more than just the cool kid. He doesn’t rap about drugs or gangster talk because he says it’s not who he is. He even prefers not to use profanity in his music.

In high school, Dizzy didn’t have a great home situation, living with his mom in Boston, then moving to Bellingham with his dad for nine months. In that span of time, he said, he and his dad would go days without seeing each other. So Dizzy would be by himself making his music on his own time.

When he started to record, he built the microphone himself. He placed the microphone in an empty water bottle and wrapped a clothing wire around it.

Dizzy likes to do all his promoting himself and he wants to make it big time by himself. He doesn’t like working with groups much and said he considers himself only a solo rapper.

His first show was at his school, The Burke. Since then he’s branched out doing more shows at Fitchburg State College and smaller venues around Boston.

There’s no doubt that Dizzy isn’t going to give up on his dream. “Music is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he said. He even wants to go to colleges that are good for careers in music management.

His first CD will be coming out soon with the title “The Fresh Prince of Boston.” Check him out at his web page: http://www.myspace.com/617dizzy.