Rhyson Hall puts his hand up in the air and hits the stage, sending hundreds of hands in his audience to follow suit. With a microphone in one hand and the other reminding the crowd where the beat falls, Rhys has a type of command over his audience made clear by their reflexive smiles and laughs.

Around 200 people stood in line early to get into the venue at Rhys’ proposed start time. For a club in downtown Buffalo where anyone on the street before 11 p.m. probably works there, it was quite a draw. When Rhys stood at the edge of the stage during a song, his audience spoke the words right back.

Later, he told me he was surprised, even after playing dozens of shows, that people knew who he was. After all, he’s a University at Buffalo senior who only recently came out with his debut CD on Buffalo’s local DeepThinka Records.

“It’s always funny seeing people that know your lyrics,” he says. “I always feel like I’m not doing enough, but then forget to take a step back and look around.” I looked around. He did more than enough.

Rhys’ story is not unusual in Buffalo, where a bustling hip-hop music scene has grown larger continuously for years. Two record labels, DeepThinka and Baby Steps, have become prominent, each boasting a roster of talented producers, DJs, and emcees. With records being made and musicians getting signed to major labels, Buffalo has the goods to make a name for itself in underground hip-hop.

One great spark could put these artists, and the city they call home, on the map. While most people haven’t heard of the Buffalo hip-hop scene, a growing crop of local scene supporters like Rhys and Tony Caferro, the head of DeepThinka, are set to change all that with one thing in mind: get big, or die tryin’.

In an office at DeepThinka Records’ Hertel Avenue headquarters, Rhys sits in front of a computer full of his classmates’ pictures. Above the computer monitor is a calendar posted to a painting by Norman Rockwell. In several locations around the hallway office are similar calendars featuring autumnal cottages and Halloween photographs. In a gutted hallway of DeepThinka’s home, the label’s name is scrawled in 15-foot graffiti lettering.

Rhys’ bright eyes shine out through his dark braids as he tells me about his day. He sits in front of a computer staring at his Facebook profile in his work clothes: a Boys and Girls Club staff tag hung from his neck and a t-shirt with their insignia emblazoned on the breast.

He’s about as old as I am and is about my size. He’s about average height with a slight build. Not exactly muscular or at all intimidating, but when he opens his mouth, people listen.

Rhys is talking to one of his associates known by the name Gr& (Grand) Phee about the musicians to perform on Phee’s debut album. Rhys suggests someone named Chuck play on the album, but Phee disagrees.

“That nigga just rolls good blunts,” he says.

Upstairs, a bunch of guys sit on couches in a makeshift attic living room talking about Rhys’ album promotion. They are surrounded by novels and used textbooks from the University Bookstore. There are hundreds of books and posters from the likes of Watchmen comics and Chuck Palahniuk novels. Around 20 CDs rest in a plastic tower next to them.

Downstairs, in the office, the air is damp with Febreeze and Isis the dog has been allowed to roam around the studio. Rhys looks different in person than he does onstage.

Last month, Rhys Hall opened up for Ghostface Killah at the Icon on Ellicott Street. Hyped up by his label-mates, he came out among the screams and applause of his audience, well over 300 strong.

He wore a flat-rimmed hat over his braids and had his glasses on, connecting with the audience and forcing them to follow him. Within seconds, the audience belonged to him.

This is just the type of effect Rhys has on his fans, according to DeepThinka Records head Tony Caferro AKA Tone X.

“Rhys is young and hasn’t been discouraged,” Tone says. “His situation is perfect…he hasn’t had to enter the world yet.” Though he swears he wouldn’t have it another way, he admits that he wishes it had been the same way for him.

Tone attended UB in the late ‘90s and was founder of Hip-Hop SA, which, at the time, had a membership of roughly 40 diverse students. He teamed up with many of the musicians he associates with while at UB, but he focused his efforts on a career when he left school.

After a failed relationship and dead-end cubicle jobs, Tone decided the place for him was nowhere near the artificial world of “real jobs.”

“I will never go back to a job again,” he laughs. “I tasted the real world and it didn’t taste very good.” Once Rhys graduates, DeepThinka intends to put him on tour and on promotion permanently. “Rhys will never need a job,” says Tone.

This is the ideology of hip-hop culture. Rather than being overly optimistic, Tone is pointing out a strategy that was always clear to him: fierce determination to succeed. From the beginning, when his studio was his dorm in Fargo Hall, Tone has believed in the power of hip-hop.

Some musicians, however, feel that supporters of the Buffalo scene should be careful not to overshoot the mark.

“Buffalo hip-hop doesn’t concern me,” says A2J, a member of the group JSC and a UB student. He argues that Buffalo hip-hop artists should spend more time working on their music than their community.

“The reason we have a chance is the franchises,” he says. “They can put Buffalo on the map and make [the country] see there’s much more to us.” JSC pride themselves on their honest style and are self-proclaimed suburban artists, adding that if a Buffalo act were to change their style to “make it,” it would be “like the Bills going to the Super Bowl and losing.”

As far as losing goes, Tone sees none of that in DeepThinka’s future. “Hip-hop is taking over the world,” he says. “People will go to see different [shows] and think ‘I don’t have to be afraid of this.’”

Tone is onto something. The majority of American popular music is hip-hop. In the past four years at UB, hip-hop and R&B artists have trumped all other genres in popularity. When Kanye West performed “Gold Digger” at this year’s FallFest, he sang in front of a crowd that looked like UB’s annual International Picnic.

On top 40 countdowns for the past half-decade, urban music has overtaken alternative rock in most of the top ten spots. On last week’s iTunes top ten most popular downloads list, six of those songs were hip-hop or R&B. To say that these are pop songs goes without saying, but if it proves one thing, it’s available marketing.

“Seventy-five percent of what makes a hit is the beat,” says A2J. “Ratings have little to do with content.” Therefore little attention is paid to lyrics when radio programmers choose them. It’s only after the song is released as a single that those lyrics are observed.

This type of commercial success is nothing to strive for, however, says Josh Brown of Buffalo locals Pseudo Slang. As primary focus of the Baby Steps record label, Pseudo Slang have become one of the premier groups in Buffalo specializing in jazz and soul beats. Their style and professionalism has gained them acclaim from critics, and they have recently signed to a New York City label, Fatbeats.

Brown, also known as Emcee Sick, puts his time into making sure his group constantly challenges boundaries. “Baby Steps is different than other labels because we have a higher standard,” he says. ”People have to be humble and they have to learn to be fans first, musicians second,” At the same time, however, Sick offers more than enough club dates for everyone’s voice to be heard.

Each Thursday, Baby Steps takes over Broadway Joe’s to allow local and national hip-hop acts to showcase their skills. Last week, Maspyke played and just as Sick predicted, “anywhere the needle touches on that record is going to be great.” Pseudo Slang is slated to play the Center for the Arts with hip-hop veterans De La Soul on November 16.

Sick started Baby Steps in 1998 with a group of local hip-hop artists that included DeepThinka’s Tone X. After about a year or so, Tone decided to break out and start his own company.

“I want to represent the beauty of this city,” Sick says. “My interest has spurred over the years. I’ve met some of the best people I’ve met in my life.”

It’s difficult to say, though, that a correlation exists between the status of a city and its music. “If your family is in jail or your mother’s a drunk, you may have a completely isolated view of the world from your community,” he says. On the same plane, Sick thinks a lot of people who write about being broke and living in the ghetto. In time, some of these artists become famous and rich, leading to what Sick refers to as fake.

When I lived there, Brooklyn was still the home of Biggie Smalls, Coney Island, and mobsters. Even more than its fellow boroughs, Brooklyn was dilapidated houses and crime. Somehow, in the past ten years, undesirable neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Dumbo have become the Mecca for art, music, and style.

Greg Dimitriadis, a professor of education at UB, agrees that hip-hop is of course affected by its environment, but doesn’t thrive through suffering. “Buffalo is a very inhabitable city that is full of creative people,” he says. “It’s a society where you can work a low-paying job in and have an apartment.” However, he says, art—and creativity in general—are simply not enhanced by living in poverty and depression, he contests.

Tone X sees the issue differently.

“I think economic depression and terrible weather positively results in good art. The fact that there are no jobs, no money, and no public transportation is ideal for hip-hop,” Tone says, adding that although he’d wish nothing more than for Buffalo to have those luxuries that other cities take for granted, nothing helps along a music scene like a bunch of guys “smoking weed all the time.”

Buffalo’s hip-hop scene has developed not only out of a love for a style of music, but from a love of one’s city. “Beauty is a word people don’t use too much in hip-hop, but in Buffalo, I think there’s something very beautiful,” says Sick. “I still see the reverberations of the scene that we once had, but I’m not a mind-reader.”

As for Tone and the DeepThinka community, their dedication is to the place where they live. “My goal, which distinguishes us, is that we’re committed to Buffalo. We’re not looking to outsource,” he says. “We want to let companies know, ‘we’re here, just send us the check; we’ll spend it down the street.’”

Tone’s goal with music is to bring money back into Buffalo by showing the country that Buffalo has citizens that are serious.

“I don’t know if we can save Buffalo,” he says, “but we’re going to represent it.

Rhys, sitting with his legs apart in his Miles Davis t-shirt, is already late for class.

“Buffalo doesn’t have a lot for people to be proud of,” he said. “That’s why the hip-hop scene is such a blessing. Buffalo is so segregated, but DeepThinka is a label of people from all areas and walks of life working together.” Rhys sits back in his chair and looks up toward the ceiling.

“I think Buffalo is at a turning point,” Rhys says. “Along with the mayoral race, it looks like something is going to happen in Buffalo, and I think hip-hop is part of that.”