The areas surrounding central campus Sunday night were saturated with the sounds of local hip-hop group Audio Imagery.
The band played a 10-song set in front of the HUB-Robeson Center to welcome students taking classes during the second summer session.
The performance was part of the group's summer tour up the East Coast promoting its new album Hush.
"We started out as three guys who won Penn State's Battle of the Bands back in 2003," vocalist George Webster, 26, said. "Then, we didn't even have a band, just a DJ. After winning, we decided we should get a band together."
Having risen from an on-campus competition, bassist Ian Callanan, Class of 2006, said several labels have shown interest in Audio Imagery, including !K7 records, Motown and N.E.R.D's label Startrak.
"With the recent release of our third album, we're just really hoping to get signed at this point," Callanan said.
Callanan was also the runner-up in this year's Blue and White Rapper Show contest.
Jackson Siu (senior-mechanical engineering) compared the band to another popular group.
"I'd say they're like Linkin Park with rap," Siu said.
Audio Imagery performed at the Intrafraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon in 2006 and 2007 and has had multiple songs play on local radio stations.
The band has performed at events headlined by Fall Out Boy and Bowling for Soup and may take the stage with Gym Class Heroes in their upcoming Philadelphia show.
"Playing with these national artists is great because it's the kind of stuff we listen to," Webster said. "We get to play in front of their fans and make them ours."
The newest member of the band is drummer Dan Cooper (sophomore- psychology).
Having just been with the band a short time, the Philadelphia show will be his first chance to play with a nationally known artist.
He said the idea was exciting.
"It would be such a thrill to play with someone with such national attention and make it more our own," Cooper said.
