Rising Star of Centralia High School

By: Annika Kirtley, Contributing Writer

Centralia High School is still buzzing from Tneli$’s performance at the Winterwarming game. Tneli$, otherwise known as Jay Caballero, senior at Centralia High School, is a young up and coming rapper.

Dr. Matt Smith initiated Tneli$’s halftime show during the girl’s varsity basketball game. “He is a really talented young man and one thing led to another and we set him up to perform at the game,” Dr. Smith said during an interview about Tneli$. 

Caballero is grateful for Dr. Smith and all his other supporters. Some of Caballero’s biggest supporters are his father and Abby Kable. Even though not everyone is a fan of Tneli$’s music, that does not slow him down.  “Success is the only thing that drowns out the haters,” Caballero comments.
 
Although the Winterwarming performance was a huge success, Caballero struggled during the pep rally performance the day before. Due to technical issues Tneli$ was unable to perform during the pep rally. When asked about the technical issues Caballero said, “Well, we looked at the system and agreed that it was not good enough for another performance. We chose to instead lip sync at [winterwarming], which turned out to be extremely successful.” 

This is only the beginning of Tneli$’s success. Jay Caballero is a verified artist on Spotify. His first priority is to further his career by booking gigs to perform. Caballero is also coming out with a collab EP on March 4th. He gets most of his inspiration for his songs from paintings, life experiences, deep conversations and political struggles. He is also inspired by different artists such as MGK, Mac Miller, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Suicideboys and Lil Peep. 

Caballero believes that what makes up a good artist is connecting deep emotions to their music. “Someone who puts heart into their music, their music should make you feel the emotions that they’re trying to bring across,” Caballero later states. With up and coming new music and live performances to look forward to it is safe to say that we will be hearing great things from Tneli$.