NYU student hosts a concert ‘Realize the Rise,’ headlined by Highclass Hoodlums, Mari and Khary

In late April, the ComeUp: Realize the Rise concert to promote up-and-coming artists took place at the Highline Ballroom. Organized by then NYU senior Chika Ogele and his team, artist-booking platform ComeUp’s inaugural gig comprised of three acts: Highclass Hoodlums, Mari, and Khary. 

There’s no line when I get to the Chelsea venue. Upstairs, the room is still filling up, with patrons gathering in the leather booths and bars on each side of the stage. A mere fifteen minutes later, the room has already grown fuller and more electric.

DJ ForTunes plays a set and hypes up the crowd before the first performers come on.

DJ ForTunes mixes at Brooklyn bars on weekends. “I played all my songs and my EP. People fucked with my music,” ForTunes tells me after his set, satisfied. The University of Harford junior says he enjoyed being able to “reciprocate with the crowd.” The NYU community made a great impression: “If this was a reflection of NYU, I fuck with them 100%.”

The first performers are Highclass Hoodlums, a duo out of New Jersey. Highclass Hoodlums’ music is both futuristic and in touch with the present. Their symbiotic stage presence is accompanied by playful improvised skits in-between songs, and breathtaking visuals playing in the background. Throughout the performance, the vivid 3D graphics of a golden skull and a gothic church spin to the beat on the screen behind the DJ.

Proda (left) and Infinitee (right) briefly improvise to transition from one song to the next.

The visuals were designed by one half of the duo, Infinitee, with the help of an Experimental 3D professor at the Tandon School of Engineering. His other half, Proda, minored in Integrated Digital Media at NYU. He tells me: “It’s cool to be in college and make music at the same time, but shit is hard. Being a student and being a musician is like, you got a show till 3 in the morning and a 10AM class.” Infinitee, then a Bloomfield College senior, one-ups him: “You still got homework for that 10AM class.” In addition to being full-time students and full-time recording artists, the college grads threw in that they are both on the Dean’s List.

Some of the 3D visuals playing during Highclass Hoodlums’ show.

The two childhood best friends, 22-year-old Proda and 21-year-old Infinitee, are snacking on Wendy’s burgers and fries when I meet them backstage after their set. Growing up, the two were neighbors: “We used to live on a block called South 6th Street, and our older sisters were best friends,” Infinitee says. “He was born first and I was born 7 months later. From there, our sisters used to take us on playdates, and we just grew to fuse with each other.” Proda adds: “So I don’t remember ever not knowing this man.”

Proda of Highclass Hoodlums during his show.

Highclass Hoodlums hand out multimedia packs they call “Loud Packs” to their fans during shows. The thumb-drives in gold wrapping store tracks and teasers to videos, making the artists’ music available not just online, but “hand-to-hand.” Inspired by notable producers like J Dilla, RZA and Kanye West, “pioneers in the sampling game” who would “take records, chop them up and flip them,” Proda shares his approach to producing: “I don’t want to say too much about [my process] to give it away, but we just be on YouTube typing in random letters and finding the most obscure sounds to incorporate into our music.”

Highclass Hoodlums’ Infinitee during his show.

As for next moves, Proda jokes that his group’s summer plans consist in “pretty much world domination and taking shit by storm.” Highclass Hoodlums will be playing at various venues. As Proda advertises: “Come see us live, because we shake shit.”

Infinitee gets close to the crowd.

Mari performs second, making ComeUp at the Highline Ballroom his biggest live performance to date. His bars have you hanging on every word, every image, every punchline. With a sound that falls somewhere between Childish Gambino, Chance The Rapper, and J. Cole, some of Mari’s beats and melodies are dance-friendly, while others are dreamier.

Mari during his rendition of “Mask Off” by Future.

Mari met Chika a year and a half ago. “We just really hit it off organically,” he tells me.

Mari’s music makes us feel things because he felt—and feels—a lot himself. Raised with a sister his elder by eleven years, Mari is no stranger to solitude – “I would sit at home and think to myself a lot. I was an honors student in school. I’ve always had a way with words.” 

“I’m really good at being myself,” Mari tells me. “I use my well-rounded life experience to tap into a range of emotions.” He continues: “I just kind of let things move through me. I let life move through me and I put that on the stage.” He certainly makes being oneself seem so effortless and easy. That night, Mari plunged the room into an abyss of emotion, from joy to sadness—and anger, too.

Mari in front of his animated logo projected on the screen during his show.

Halfway through his show, Mari called for a moment of silence for all victims of police violence. “A lot of people don’t know that the police were implemented into this nation for slave patrol,” the artist says. For the Chicagoan, the “racialized history of police force” is “so ingrained into the system” that “you’ve got to start to think about how people are pitted against each other, and how certain neighborhoods become policed…A lot of those areas with crime happen to be black neighborhoods, because black people have been stripped of so many resources.”

His music celebrates moments infused with the exhilaration that too often goes unnoticed amidst distorted images of the ultra-violent American ‘inner city.’ “There’s a lot of depression in the hood,” Mari says. “But there’s also joy there.”

Mari dances during one of his songs.

In his song “40 Flavors,” Mari raps: “Goddamn I wanna save souls / I don’t rap a lot I just rock out / And Jimmy Brown on these lame hoes.” With everything in the world feeling as though it is falling apart, I ask him about what he means by “saving souls.” He tells me – “I think it’s the artist’s duty to address the things that are going on in society and to be hyper-aware of the environments that we live in and how it affects people, and how it just kind of torments our souls.”

I catch up with Chika after the concert. “I thought the event went great,” he tells me. “Managing the concert the day of was hectic as hell, but it was very rewarding. My team really stepped up to take up responsibilities before I could even notice the problem myself.”

Chika (center) and ComeUp staff members pose on stage after the show.

He also shares his impressions about the performances: “Whenever I had the chance to enjoy the show, the energy from both the crowd and the performers was amazing.” Chika admitted being surprised by the crowd’s effervescence, “considering they didn’t really know the artists performing.”