NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Rapper Dee-1 knows how to keep student loan servicer Sallie Mae on his good side. Not only did he repay his student loan, but he wrote a catchy song about it.
Dee-1 used part of the earnings from a 2015 record deal with RCA Inspiration to pay off his student debt and wrote "Sallie Mae Back" as a celebration of sorts. He posted the video on YouTube and Facebook, where it has garnered more than 1 million views.
"For those who doubted me, yeah this is payback," Dee-1 raps. "No sir and I don't drive a Maybach. But guess what I did? I finished paying Sallie Mae back."
Dee-1, born David Augustine, graduated from Louisiana State University with a business marketing degree. He taught middle school in Baton Rouge before landing the record deal. The song even caught the attention of Sallie Mae on Facebook.
"We're all in the office singing along with you! Love, love, love the hook. Congratulations on your success!" the consumer banking service wrote in a comment a post of the video.
The song is a refreshing break from the often serious rhetoric about student loan debt that has hobbled millions of borrowers. Today there is more than $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loan debt nationwide. A growing number of borrowers are defaulting on loans because they overestimated their ability to repay, underestimated the amount they'd owe or simply didn't understand the scope of their loans. Lawmakers and presidential candidates are calling for reforms.
