Baseball: Lil Clip straight out of Simi Valley’s outfield

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First there was Lil Bow Wow. And then there was Lil Romeo. Now, get ready for Lil Clip.

He may not be quite as famous as his lil contemporaries, but Lil Clip is starting to make an impact on the local music scene. The 14-year-old hip-hop artist’s music is on iTunes and, on Saturday night, he performed at The Airliner in Downtown.

Oh, and I almost forgot -- he’s an outfielder for the Simi Valley freshman baseball team who goes by his original alias of Tyler Freeman.

‘He’s the real deal,’ Simi Valley Coach Matt La Belle said. ‘He’s a classically-trained rapper who writes his own songs.’

La Belle found out about Freeman’s off-field talents when he showed up for baseball tryouts last year. A couple Simi Valley players told La Belle who Freeman was, and the coach half-jokingly asked him if he could create a baseball song. A week later, Lil Clip handed La Belle a CD containing his first-ever baseball-themed composition. You can hear it on the home page of the Simi Valley baseball website.

‘I was totally blown away,’ La Belle said. ‘It’s great.’

I’ll say...it’s the first baseball hip-hop song I’ve heard. And it’s catchy, too. I caught myself singing, ‘here’s another hit, and it’s a home run’ a couple times yesterday.

Check out Lil Clip’s MySpace page for even more tunes.

-- Austin Knoblauch

-- Image from www.myspace.com