If only Branden Lever would write songs about inflation, elasticity and asymmetrics instead of the Saints bounty scandal, Blake Griffin dunks and bin Laden hiding on top of Mount Katahdin.

The Auburn teen would be sporting a tie and wingtips over shades and a backward ball cap.

Rather than taking class notes during his college microeconomics class, Lever wrote rap lyrics.

“I got serious while a student at USM,” he said. Serious about music that is, not grades.

“Whenever I went to parties, people would make me freestyle,” the 2010 graduate of Edward Little High School said.

Lever is taking a break from college, but he attributes lecture halls as the place where he got down to business.

“College is where I developed a love for music. I started writing music every day,” he said

B Leve, as Lever is known in the hip-hop world, was not alone on campus and he believes the next star may be memorizing lyrics rather than polynomial equations.

“There is gonna be a new age of rap. There’s a bunch of kids in college that are blown up right now,” Lever said about the talent he comes across.

Feelings are mutual and the feedback Lever feeds off of has given him hope that his dreams of becoming a successful rapper will come true. “My main topic of rap is becoming famous,” Lever said.

“I’m getting great feedback from local people but I want to move up on a bigger scale. I have been advised to branch out and leave Maine,” he said. “‘This kid has potential,'” is what Lever says he hears on the street.

Lever is looking to return to school in a major city. “It’s hard to make a path to where I want to go,” he said. “There is not a college that I know of that you can major in rap.”

Lever has been a standout athlete from the time he was old enough to throw a Frisbee. He played soccer, lacrosse, track and baseball in high school and was on two state championship ski teams there.

His passion for sports plays into his lyrics. He raps about “sick dunks” on the basketball court and New Orleans Saints paying National Football League players to injure opposing players. Current events and sports are often on Lever’s rap sheets. “Sports and hip-hop go hand in hand,” he said.

Lever connects the stage presence of performing to athletics as well.

“I always told my coaches that I had to look good out on the field,” Lever said. “You have to look good to play good.”

Lever picked up music at an early age. His mother, Michele, dragged him to piano lessons starting in the third grade and Lever fought it tooth and nail. He played the keys through the eighth grade and learned to play by memory rather than reading music.

“I can’t read music. I only play by remembering it. It’s easier that way,” Lever said.

Lever appreciates his mother’s persistence now that he can hear the difference. “Having piano experience definitely helps with making beats,” he said.

“I am just making as many songs as I can right now,” said Lever, who posts songs on YouTube, Sound Cloud and Facebook. “The Internet makes it so much easier for artists to get our stuff out . . . any set of ears can hear it at any time.”

B Leve is upbeat about his hip-hop success. He just put out a mixed tape with Auburn producer Scott Winchell and made it to the top five on America’s Next Top Rapper, a competition held in Boston. “Every song I make gets better and better.”

Lever’s old ski coach couldn’t agree more. “B Leve is in the house,” Tara Eretzian announced to a crowd of parents and students as she cued up her team’s highlight film featuring the Lever rap “Got to Believe.”

“It’s about believing in yourself. That’s what I stand for,” Lever said.