Mari

Harlem-based rapper, Mari, released the official music video to "All-Amerikkka", just in time for Election Day. Originally released on July 4th, 2016, the song was intended to drive conversation to important issues that too often fall upon deaf ears. The drop of the music video on the week of Election Day affirms the longevity of Mari's socially aware song, and the relevance it's maintained over the course of several months. The timely release is designed to push back against the presidential debates and election coverage that ignored the internal racial tensions present in the United States today.

Mari is known for his lyricism, and it shines through in "All-Amerikka". Within a week of its debut, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed by police in Baton Rouge, LA and St. Paul, MN respectively. Mari's prescience comes through in his almost prophetic first verse:

The type of shit we do to numb our feelings
Cause we know that you train cops to kill us
And that King's dream ain't the same Pac was living
It ain't got fulfillment

Mari's powerful foresight speaks again in his second verse, as he addresses the potential for a violent response to police brutality, three days before the murders at the hand of a lone wolf sniper in Dallas Texas:

Coretta Scott met
Beretta Glock
Pockets picked
When the pickets stopped
Pick your poison
Patience for better times
Or a icy watch

"All-Amerikkka" is intended to expose the condition of a racist and classist system, and challenging absolutist morality by offering drug use, protest, and monetarily-fueled violence as a means to escape a systemic oppression. Artfully, Mari manages to both echo and criticize the current discussions on race and class in the United States, with his hard-hitting lyrics, and his explicit message.

To learn more about Mari you can like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter. You can also listen to his 2015 EP Living Colored where he weaves his various experiences Chicago, attending college in New England, and working a finance job in Buffalo, NY. - Popdust

Mari, "All-Amerikkka"

"Don't call me conscious my nigga/this here is real life," raps Mari on this track, acknowledging that, while it may sound like a conscious rap song, calling it one is reductive. This is about his actual, visceral reality. The New York-via-Chicago emcee flexes his pen throughout, drawing comparisons between Martin Luther King Jr. and Tupac Shakur, creating wordplay on Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. At the beginning of the song he accents the first word in every line, but on the final one, he shifts the weight to the last word, emphasizing the urgency of his message. - The Village Voice

“There were a couple of times where shots were being fired and I had to run for my life,” Mari recounted for us while talking about his upbringing on the South Side of Chicago. Growing up in those circumstances, there unfortunately isn’t really a whole lot of hope for escape and prosperity. The street life sucks kids in like quicksand, suffocating any opportunity and leaving their dreams gasping for air. Some people just don’t have a choice but to conform. Others do. Mari adheres to the latter group.

Within the first five-minutes of our interview, it’s no surprise that Mari isn’t only surviving; he’s thriving. It takes a special constitution to be able to convert a depressing environment and dark circumstances into life fuel. With the help of attending a private high school, a bulletproof faith in God and the inspiring words of Lupe Fiasco, Mari was able to transcend his situation and not fall victim to street life’s asphyxiating abyss. Mari comes equipped with powerful lyrics, colorful production, gold accents and a remarkably bright, deep mind. His music without question aided his escape, but his intelligence is cementing his future.

Williams College is currently listed as the best liberal arts school. Their 16.8% acceptance rate makes them one of the most sought after schools, allowing them to admit only the most attractive applicants. Thanks to his impressive scores and resume, Mari found himself in the company of this 16.8%. College is a once in a lifetime experience and it’s imperative to seize every opportunity, due to its fleeting nature. With a major in Psychology and a concentration in Africana studies, a spot on their football roster (linebacker and running back) and track and field team, and developing a music career, I’d say Mari took full advantage of his time at Williams. He put out his first mixtape, Higher Edukation Tape, during his final semester, but at the time, music was more of a hobby than career.

Fresh out of school and hungry to put his degree to use, Mari took a great job at a Buffalo-based bank. At first, it was an attractive opportunity—a respected position, solid salary and the ability to dress to the nines. But after about six-months, he felt empty and lacking purpose; trying to squeeze into someone else’s shoes and walk someone else’s life path. Thanks to some divine intervention, Mari traded in the Wolf of Wall Street lifestyle for a position at a New York City production studio, making jingles for commercials. It was a liberating opportunity for him, as he was able to utilize his creative, musically inclined mind. And while he really is appreciative for the job, at the end of the day, it was adjacent to his dream—not a perfect match. He quit his studio job to chase his music ambitions of rapping and producing. Thank God he did because Mari is an incredibly talented musician with a very bright future.

Do me a favor: go to Mari’s SoundCloud, press play on any track and I guarantee you will start bumping your head back and forth saying, “Yoooo this shit’s hot!!” He combines intellectual lyrics with extremely vibrant production to create a truly unique, fun experience. From his beats to his album artwork, Mari exudes a colorful, artistic persona. Some tracks employ horns; some adhere to traditional Hip Hop beats; but no matter what, each song has a distinct texture and is a certified jam. The production off the first Mari song I heard, “Bliss,” immediately drew me in. Lines like: “So many questions unanswered, Like is it the air in the hood causing asthma and cancer uh, And why my nephew six with Bronchitis, Can’t touch the air that kill us, Yet still gotta fight it uh,” forced me to plunge into his catalogue.

In addition to his rookie project, Higher Edukation Tape, his other official mixtape is the seven-track EP, Living Colored. On this album, Mari takes us on a piggyback ride through his life and allows us to perceive the world as he does: we witness the duality of life’s joys and hardships, and how navigating both can lead to a prosperous life. Each song is great, but the one that caught my ear the most is “Colorful Living”—a prime example of his horn instrumentals. His most recent project however isn’t a cohesive entity, rather a collection of singles dubbed, Mari Mondays.

I said it before: Mari is a smart dude. He surrounds himself with a team of likeminded individuals who have his best intentions at heart and want to see his music dreams realized. He and his team leveraged the Mari Mondays project—11-singles released on successive Mondays—as a marketing tool to simultaneously increase his awareness and demonstrate his skills. Standouts include: “Bliss,” “Up" featuring Taro, “Paper Game” (just recently made Spotify’s US Viral 50 playlist, debuting at #10), “All-Amerikkka” and “40 Flavors.”

The stories of those who don’t make it out of the hood greatly outweigh their successful counterparts. It’s a sad, harsh reality. But Mari escaped; he’s prospering; he’s thriving. He’s combining his intelligence and talent to position him for success. Trending in a great direction, I’m not worried about his future—I’m worried for his competitors. His upbringing in the South Side of Chicago tested his resilience and strength of character. Congrats, Mari, you passed. - ZeusWolf

New York residents Mari and TARO connect on "Up."
After releasing the uplifting summer jam "Bliss" for last week's installment of #MariMondays, Chicago-born Harlem resident Mari returns this week with a snarling cut that will be getting us through the cold months ahead. It's called "Up," and features an impressive NYC spitter by the name of TARO.

Mari produced the track himself. The beat features a less aggressive, more stoned and wacky iteration of the garbage disposal bass Mike WiLL Made-It deployed on "Move That Dope." Despite the beat's vaguely hungover vibe, Mari is not fucking around. "'Mari, like Povich?' No bitch, like po', rich!"

If you're feeling "Up," follow Mari on SoundCloud.

Quotable Lyrics

Violence, I don't condone
I put stories in my songs
I got rights to show the wrongs
She got rights to show her thong - HotNewHipHop

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 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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 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.

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.”

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.”

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.” - The Tab

Chicago's Mari continues his ‪#‎MariMondays‬ with the juke friendly track. - Mass Appeal

Making his HNHH debut, Mari checks in with introspective track "The Dilemma," a vintage throwback with a distinctive NYC-in-the-'90s feel. Shit's illmatic.

Big L affiliate Lord Finesse lays down a fine piece of jazzy smoov boom bap production, setting the scene for Mari's philosophical reflections. A NYC resident by way of Chicago, Mari contemplates what constitutes the good life, framing the moral quandry in religious terms. The song is most easily read as his wondering how he should approach his music career, as he is bound to the hustle and the pursuit of wealth but also seeking personal artistic fulfillment.

Thoughtful yet playful, "The Dilemma" is a compelling description of what it feels like to stand at a fork in the road... - HotNewHipHop

Mari’s Living Colored may very well be our favorite mixtape on this list. Mari, who put together this project during his vacation days from a 9 to 5 finance job, sounds incredibly polished delivering lyrically rich raps with a versatile flow and knack for melodic choruses over smooth, spacey instrumentals. Perhaps, he’ll switch careers soon to work on rap full time—we sure hope so. - The Music Ninja

Chicago is easily one of the most important cities in hip-hop, but this isn’t exactly news to anyone. From chipmunk soul to drill music, the city has pretty much always been on the cutting edge of rap music. It only seems fitting, then, that a tribute to one of hip-hop’s most important cities and richest cultural pocket of the past fifteen or so years. Mari’s “Birth of a City” lives and breathes Chicago, referencing not only the city itself but some of the most important tracks and artists to come out of the city pretty much every other bar.

His love for the city is very real, and this comes through sincerely in both the video and the song. There’s no better starting place than making your own city proud, and “Birth of a City” certainly does that in spite its short running time. Chicago deserves all the love it gets, and it deserves someone like Mari to do it justice, too. - Pigeons and Planes

Though most student rap in the ‘Cac has been concentrated at Wesleyan and Tufts, a senior named Demarius (Mari) Edwards has been getting attention at Williams for dropping a tape out of nowhere the other week. Ever since “Mari.edu” started playing a few shows with friends last year, students have been drawn to his smooth beats and soulful voice (it’s more spring-chilling-on-the-quad music than rage-face music), and for his first collection of songs Mari drew on his Williams experience to produce a reflection on academics, activism and his sense of self at college. We exchanged a few emails about his drop, but wisely I let Mari do most of the talking. Grab the tape here on Soundcloud, and give the title track a listen below. - In The Cac

Completely agree. Especially now, people need to be aware of the differences in backgrounds when they engage with their peers. Taking that into consideration would definitely help campus discussion flow more easily. That being said, how has the balancing of work and making music been?

Over the past years, I had really no time to make music because I’ve always been participating in sports. I would work on beats every now and then. My good friend Nate Saffold (producer of Higher Edukation, the song) would make beats to keep me writing and engaged with music. I would work on my beats when I got free time or just didn't feel like doing work. The work load at Williams College doesn’t allow much free time. You have to create it. However, since majority of this mixtape was created over spring break, it hasn’t been so hard balancing. When school resumed after spring break, I had to sacrifice school work to clean some things up and do the mixing and mastering for the songs, putting on the finishing touches, rounding up additional vocalists and instrumentalists. It's been a great balance. The rigorous work load makes me appreciate music a lot more. So I take greater care, but also relax when I'm working on the music. - Her Campus

“Used to wanna tote guns for dollars.
But quoted books from scholars.
And now I’m graduating college (true).
They’ll never take away my soul.
They Already took control.
Took away the gold.”

I heard about Mari.Edu a few weeks back when he first dropped his mixtape Higher Edukation. However, I never really listened to it. I though to myself, every college kid in America is doing the same thing, everyone’s a rapper these days. And it’s true, everyone can be a rapper these days, thanks to social media, Soundcloud and RapGenius. However, not everyone can be good, and that’s where Mari.Edu is different.

This tape sounds more like a debut album than a mixtape put together by a college kid. The track we’re highlighting with this post, “Higher Edukation,” is easily the best track on the project. Mari’s sound is reminiscent of Kendrick Lamar and Chance The Rapper throughout the song. He also shows that he can tell a story when he raps. Anyone can pick up a mic and spit some nonsense about the nonexistent 0’s in their bank accounts, guns they’re swinging around and the fast cars they drive. Mari talks about real problems, and not in the stereotypical hip hop form, this is refreshing and new. From start to finish this is the best 3 minutes and 48 seconds I’ve heard in a few months, maybe even longer than that. Give it a listen below and let us know what you think. - SmoothWaves