text: WeStayChill: Midwest-born songwriter combines business savvy with smooth new sound
  Midwest-born songwriter combines business savvy with smooth new sound
  WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA – It's rare for the music industry to have the perfect balance of musician and businessman. More often than not a person is either good at one or the other, but rarely both.
  Not so for U-Sity – a business entrepreneur who not only has seen success as the CEO of Hit The Block Entertainment, but also is one of hip-hop's rising stars. His new single "What A Life" is a testament to the success that can come from hard work and persistence – two things that he both exemplifies in his personal life and in his career.
  "The song explains how I came from nothing and hardships and now I'm taking trips on first-class going to LA and driving foreign cars and at the end of every day it's like, 'What A Life!'" he said. "'Hit The Block' is a name I chose because it means hard work. Everybody hits the block – when you wake up and go to work and do anything it takes to provide for your family, that's hitting the block. You have to get up and go to work and do what you need to so that you can eat at the end of the day. It's a universal saying for a group of people who recognize hard work and what it takes, and now that group of people are able to travel the country and make good music."
  Hit The Block Entertainment started in 2010 when U-Sity first started booking Midwest artists for shows in his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He said growing up in Minneapolis didn't afford him many opportunities to explore rap music. He remembers listening to Top 40 radio and hearing songs from Tupac or 50 Cent or even MC Hammer and wanting to know more about this music form that he was falling in love with. Eventually he went to college and pursued a degree in music business and music appreciation, and upon graduation realized that he had an opportunity to create avenues of expression for other artists like himself right in his own back yard.
  He began promoting and hosting events throughout the city, building a network within the music industry and collecting fellow creatives to his coalition. Applying his own mission statement to the work, he ground out day-by-day the hard work it took to expand his business. Eventually he began to catch the eye of bigger labels and music executives, and found himself being invited to travel frequently to Los Angeles to collaborate on singles and other projects.
  Now seven years later he has a library of his own music that he puts up alongside the archives of songs he's helped other artists produce. "What A Life" is the most recent single, with others such as "Plugged" and "Famous." He knows that when people hear his music they'll see a diverse artist who's bringing a new sound to the world of hip-hop. That's the theory behind his name – an abbreviated version of the word "university," which he uses to describe himself as a universal, "all around" artist who can write all types of records and who writes hit songs for artists all over the world.
  To find out more about U-Sity, fans can visit his website at u-sity.com, or follow him on Facebook or @usity on Instagram. Fans can also purchase some of his new singles on iTunes and Spotify.