CHRIS returns to his family roots with Maroon Culture Lab concert

For his debut full-length, GODSPEED, released in 2025, the rapper CHRIS knew he wanted to tell a series of stories centered on Columbus, lyrically embracing his hometown in the same way that emcees on the coasts have done for decades.

“I love hearing my favorite artists talk about where they’re from, naming a certain mall or the streets that they would drive down, and I thought it was something only people from New York or Los Angeles could do,” said CHRIS, born Christopher Hearn 29 years ago. “All of us know the names of these different streets, boroughs, neighborhoods, because they talk about them. And I wanted to bring that to GODSPEED, where I could talk about Easton or Northern Lights, because selfishly I wanted to hear that. I wanted to hear about where I’m from.”

CHRIS, a sixth-generation Columbusite, has deep family roots that will be on display when he performs this week at the Maroon Culture Lab (formerly the Pythian Temple) in the heart of Bronzeville – a neighborhood his grandparents once called home. 

“That’s the place where my grandparents really started to lean into art and creativity,” said the rapper, who will perform GODSPEED in its entirety at the Culture Lab beginning at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 2. (The show will also be recorded for a future live album release.) “My grandmother is a poet and a painter, and then my pawpaw is a bass guitarist and also a painter. And they were doing all those things back when [the neighborhood] was having festivals on the plaza and art shows, and there was Ace Gallery and all these places. … But then it got quite wicked in the ’80s, of course, and drugs started coming through. And the climate was just different, so my grandparents moved to the North Side, because my mom was a baby at the time.”

This kind of generational homecoming is precisely what Maroon Arts Group (MAG) had in mind when it finalized the purchase of the Pythian Temple in 2023, viewing the historic, 100-year-old theater as a potential artistic lynchpin in the resurgent Near East Side neighborhood. 

“I think that’s the exact kind of connection we’ve always wanted, and I think this space has provided us that opportunity,” said MAG cofounder Marshall Shorts. “I’ve had the honor of meeting CHRIS’ grandparents and mom and family, and his story is not unique when we hear about people from this neighborhood, this community. I didn’t grow up in Columbus, but I grew up here as an adult, and … I’ve always been drawn to the richness and the history of this community, and the story of Bronzeville and the self-determination this community has had. And now, it’s where I live, and it’s where I work and play. And I’m just honored to be in a position to platform and advance that story.”

While not quite a homecoming, this upcoming concert serves as another point of reconnection for CHRIS, who returned to Columbus after spending his college years in New York City and then logging a three-year stint in Los Angeles. These distinctive eras were front of mind for the rapper as he wrote and recorded the songs for GODSPEED, allowing him to reconcile the numerous ways in which he had grown.

“I was reflecting on the person I was prior to leaving Columbus, the person I became during my travels and experiences out in the world, and then the person I returned to the city as,” said CHRIS, who will be supported in concert by a live band, in addition to all of the collaborators who appear on the LP, including TrigNO, N’Shai Iman, and ayelookitsBRADY, among others.

These excavations had a number of impacts, with the musician coming to appreciate the wide-eyed nature with which he approached the creative process as a younger man, expressing a renewed desire to make art that comes from a “less strategic” place, imbued with the excitement and passion that accompanied his discovery of the form. There also exists within GODSPEED a deeper spiritual examination, which CHRIS traced to the fracture that developed between his family and the church when his mom conceived him as a teenager. 

“And prior to that, my family was deeply, deeply involved in the church. My grandparents led the youth group, and my mom was in the choir, and she was … in training to potentially go into ministry. … But when they found out she was pregnant, they basically shunned us from the church, which was heartbreaking for my family,” CHRIS said. “And obviously this was all prior to when I arrived. And I say all of this to note that I came up in an environment where there was a deep connection to God … but there was not a specific structure that had to be followed. And I think that piqued my interest [in religion], because I wanted to learn all the different ways people approach connecting to God.”

These kinds of in-depth, faith-based conversations are commonplace between CHRIS and Shorts, who has undergone a spiritual evolution of his own, having grown up with a pastor father in a Pentecostal church from which he has since distanced himself.

“I’ve probably been running from that my whole life,” said Shorts, who viewed a degree of irony in the way his life has come full circle, in a sense, positioning him as the co-leader of an organization whose new building looks suspiciously like a church, and which over the last decade has built what could be described as a congregation – a description that drew a laugh from Shorts. “A congregation, exactly. So, it’s somewhat serendipitous, but also at the same time deeply spiritual and not something that is just a job for me. I always say my business is my business, but this is my work. And I’d probably be doing this whether I was getting paid or not.”

In preparation for the concert, CHRIS said he has been rapping the album’s songs while exercising and also during full-band rehearsals, working to develop and expand his breath control and sharpen his delivery. He’s also taken to visualization, using each practice as an opportunity to envision himself onstage in the historic theater that his grandparents could have visited as patrons decades ago. “And I’m looking out at the crowd the same way I’ll be looking out at the crowd at the Maroon [Culture Lab],” he said. “It’s all about putting yourself in that place.”