One year ago, Miko Sy was working at a Big Four accounting firm, raking in $65,000 a year and enjoying extravagant business trips on his boss's tab.
Now Sy, 27, is standing in the heart of Turlington Plaza, spitting out rhymes about love, God and his commitment and struggles with his faith.
"I took a $50,000 pay cut," he said. "People thought I was crazy. They said, 'What are you doing? You're giving up such a comfortable lifestyle.'"
But Sy promises he's not crazy.
After gaining campus infamy as a rapping missionary, the only thing he thinks is crazy is the overwhelming response he has received from the UF Student Body.
Brought to UF by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, Sy raps every Thursday on Turlington Plaza.
"This is very exciting," Sy said. "I'm very passionate about my music, and I'm just trying to get it out there. I just love entertaining people."
Sy has been entertaining the masses since he was a child.
"I was 5 years old and, I was already rapping," Sy said. "I just feed off the energy of performing in front of people."
Born in the Philippines but raised in Chicago, Sy would perform his rendition of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" and "The Super Bowl Shuffle" at family parties.
However, Sy's commitment to his faith came to him later in life.
"We were only Christmas-Easter Catholics," Sy said. "I had been raised Catholic, but we weren't actually practicing our faith."
That was about to change.
When Sy was 15, he attended a Catholic retreat, with the sole intention of impressing a girl. Sy likes to think God had other plans.
"It was just this beautiful, fulfilling message," Sy said. "I had grown up around it, but it was finally made personal for me."
While Sy embraced his newfound faith, he hadn't thought to combine it with his passion for music. Influenced by hip-hop artists such as The Notorious B.I.G. and Nas, he noticed something was missing.
"Their musical styles inspired me, but eventually over time, their message just didn't resonate," he said.
He also was having difficulty relating to the hip-hop scene.
"I used to do battle raps," Sy said. "I wasn't passionate about it because I wasn't passionate about putting other people down. I didn't walk away feeling victorious. I just felt bad."
The marriage of his two passions quickly became his trademark, and Sy thinks he's bringing something new to the scene.
"I don't rap about the cheesy messages people sometimes associate with Christianity," Sy said. "I actually rap about my struggles with faith. I write about the joys, the struggles and the tears."
The tears aren't just his.
"When I perform, some people cry tears of joy because a message just really hits them," he said. "People come up to me and say that was the first time that they ever heard the Gospel that way."
For now, Sy isn't hung up on record deals and has no plans to go back to his job as a CPA.
"Hip-hop is such a great way to connect to people," Sy said. "It's the one genre that can really reach the masses. I felt it was a door God put in my path."
