A Cincinnati musician asked high school students one question. Their answers became a rap album.

CINCINNATI — Brandon Isaac puts on headphones and pulls the mic stand away from his basement wall.

“Mic check,” Isaac said. “Mic check, one-two.”

He starts rapping. And when he’s done, I ask him what he'll do with the recording. He laughs.

“Throw it away,” Isaac said.

Then, he plays me something else. Something he never wants to throw away. The song starts like this:

What’s the story of this high school hallway?

“I think this is a part of history,” Isaac said. "Telling the stories of these kids."

It's a project that started with a microphone and honest conversations in a hallway at Aiken High School.

"We don’t give kids a lot of credit," Isaac said. "But they have a lot more to say than you think."

That's why he used those conversations as inspiration for a new album and book that's now on display at the Contemporary Arts Center. Something he hopes will show a different side of young people in Cincinnati.

“I feel like that’s part of my story," Isaac said. "Changing the narrative.”

WATCH: Meet the artist who turned hallway confessions into music

At Wordplay Cincy, a nonprofit storytelling organization, Englyn Logan pulls out a box of colored pencils and starts drawing. She doesn’t know what.

Isaac sits in the corner and watches. He tells me Englyn has the ability to put emotion into everything she does — even if it's just a picture of seemingly random colors. It’s why her artwork became the project's album cover.

Because when Isaac asked her to draw something with emotion, she drew her home. In the 17-year-old's picture, smoke billows out of the chimney. Pink, purple and blue fumes. Outside, a young girl walks toward the street.

Trying to get away.

"That's me," Englyn said.

Keith BieryGolick

Isaac remembers showing it to his friend, and the response was immediate.

“That's the album," Isaac said. "Home is what matters most.”

Englyn tells me she doesn’t talk about her emotions much. And even Isaac is surprised when she describes what her drawing actually represents. All kinds of emotion exploding inside a house.

Her house.

You can see Englyn's artwork and the rest of this project at the Contemporary Arts Center until Sept. 27. For more information, click on this link.