Hip-hop found a home in Fountain Square on Aug. 29, 2015.
The Chreece hip-hop festival takes all elements of the genre, and puts it on display for everyone. Backpack rappers, DJs, dancers, trap, battle rap, gangsta rap, hip-hop bands and a sprinkle of R&B.
Some call it “Rap Christmas.” Sean “Oreo Jones” Smith, the mastermind behind it all, named it Chreece.
“Chreece is trying to show people that in your backyard, you really have phenomenal artists here,” Jones told Mirror Indy.
People have said it turned artists like Flacoisbored, Sirius Blvck, Drayco McCoy, Pope Adrian Bless, Mathaius Young and Ejaaz into city legends. And it’s looking to introduce a new class of homegrown talent each year.
Who is the average Chreece festival-goer? It’s a person who would be classified as a hip-hop head or just a lover of music.
Over a decade and seven festivals later, attendees have watched hundreds of local artists perform on a warm Saturday. Admission used to be $10 with a few free stages. Now, tickets start at $20.
A small team made up of Jones, Jamil “Jay” Brookens and Jane Sun Kim organize the festival. They’re all artists and music nerds first, so planning one festival bleeds into the next one.
The trio has felt the love and accepted the hate including a laundry list of conspiracy theories. They’ve heard it all: Chreece isn’t independent anymore after selling the festival to Austin City Limits, funded by the government. And somehow, the Illuminati has played part in its success or lack thereof.
“The perception of your festival is bigger than the inner workings,” Brookens said.
Now, in their mid-30s and early 40s, they could be looking for a successor soon. One person is on Brookens’ radar, who he isn’t ready to reveal, that would allow the team to transition into the elderly statespeople of Chreece.
Jones said Chreece isn’t the “Oreo Jones fest,” it’s the city’s festival and it’s bigger than the growing pains.
Live music events, both large scale and tiny, come and go but the “little festival that could” in Indianapolis somehow remains. Here’s a timeline of the Chreece hip-hop festival.
This history of Chreece is an ongoing conversation. If you have anecdotes or photos you’d like to share, please reach out to arts and culture reporter Mesgana Waiss at mesgana.waiss@mirrorindy.org.
2015: Cheers + Peace = Chreece
Chreece derives from a playful combination of the words “Cheers” and “Peace,” coined by Jones. As reported by IndyStar in 2015, he mixed the words together while making a toast during an episode of “Let’s Do Lunch,” his former online video series, and it just stuck.
In the early 2010s, he was living in a house with multiple artists in Fountain Square. With a few hundred dollars in his checking account, the Warsaw, Indiana, native set out to create his own hip-hop festival in six months in the midst of a growing DIY music scene. Artists were known for playing house shows in Fountain Square, a neighborhood on the brink of gentrification.
Jones said it was hard to convince venues around the city to host hip-hop-only showcases.
“Hip hop. I feel like it is an art form that is seen as, kind of like the scraps of high art. Some people don’t even consider it music,” he said in an Aug. 5, 2025, interview.
However, by 2015, Jones had performed shows across Indianapolis and was able to build a rapport with venue owners and promoters, including HI-FI Indy, which opened the same year.
The first festival served as a fundraiser for Musical Family Tree, a nonprofit that connects artists and audiences in Indiana. Chreece saw the neighborhood’s many music venues as an opportunity to stage several music shows at once, much like Cataracts Music Festival, Fountain Square Music Festival and Tonic Ball.
“I thought it was just perfect,” Jones said. “You stagger the schedule, sprinkle different sounds and different artists, rappers, producers, DJs, in these different places and people can just kind of chart their own path.”
On Aug. 29, rappers, DJs, and bands performed at Fountain Square Plaza, Pizza King, Joyful Noise, General Public Collective, White Rabbit Cabaret and HI-FI.
2015
Brookens, creator of Jay Brookinz Battle League, served as the stage manager, and said he and Jones were learning in “real time.” His role was to corral and assist all of the artists including their first headliner, Chicago emcee Mick Jenkins. Brookens was faced with a peculiar dilemma of where he would park Jenkins’ tour bus in the neighborhood.
The first Chreece was a sold-out success, with over 1,500 people attending. Rapper Flacoisbored, 37, remembered when the festival was only a whisper six months earlier, a sold out festival was something he hadn’t even imagined could happen.
He’s been a part of every Chreece except one. His only regret was not getting a chance to play the Pizza King. He loves to reminisce about his memory of rapper Poindexter’s infamous set.
“You saw kids hanging out the windows, like the DJs, everybody’s shirts were off. It was so crazy,” he said.
Jazmine K and Ariana Beedie, co-founders of Face A Face Collective, a local alternative art and news publication, were also inside the Pizza King, but as spectators.
“It was packed wall to wall, bodies on bodies, sweaty, beautiful, Black people. People were standing on tables,” Jazmine K said. “None of us knew what we were witnessing, but it was so cool.”
Chreece made her want to write about music so she began to chronicle her yearly festival experience in a journal.
2016-2018: ‘Drinking the Kool-Aid’
Chreece made waves. More fans, more artists. The fourth Saturday in August in Fountain Square had become a family reunion for artists in Indy.
With all of the success and notoriety the festival gained, it had not become profitable for its founder.
Jones said he did not make any money from the first three festivals. He said all proceeds went to Musical Family Tree, General Public Collective and the artists who performed. Jones described himself as an amateur fundraiser.
“I really had no idea what a festival really was. I was just trying to fly by the seat of my own pants. I didn’t even consider payouts or anything for myself,” he told Mirror Indy.
2016
In 2017, Ron Miner, also known as DJ Indiana Jones, joined Chreece to help with its business development. Jones said the team benefitted from Miner’s mentorship and experience working in the local and national hip-hop and DJ scene.
“He instilled in us, ‘You can go anywhere, use Nap as your home base, and really nurture the community here and kind of show how important and special it is,’” Jones said.
During these years, Miner and Brookens ran Chreece Presents, the festival’s promotions company, to help bring national hip-hop acts to Indy. They also created the G-Note panel, a workshop for local artists to learn more about the music industry. The first notable guest speaker was Indiana University alum and Fake Shore Drive CEO Andrew Barber, who is known for his coverage of Chicago rappers like Chance The Rapper and Chief Keef.
2017
Chreece also landed a few brand partnerships with Live Nation and Red Bull. Sun Kim, an artist and the partner of Jones, started photographing the festival in 2017. She said she started “drinking the Kool-Aid” and joined the leadership team in 2018.
Sun Kim said she was interested in helping Jones get paid and making Chreece sustainable.
Listen: More from Jane sun Kim
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During this time, Jones had taken a backseat from selecting artists for the bill. The team leaned on Sun Kim to choose new headliners. They even came close to booking Doja Cat, one of Sun Kim’s suggestions, to headline Chreece 4.
Doja Cat had recently gone viral on the internet for her meme song “Mooo!” But the team went with Valee and Black Moon Saturday instead.
“Her rate was doable for us now, but in 2018 we were like, ‘Oh my god,’ this is the most we would have ever paid for a headliner,” Sun Kim said. “And then, like, two years later, we’re just like, oh dang, I just should have not paid rent for a year.’”
2018
2019: The ‘We’re Here’ moment
Talib Kweli and east coast hip-hop collective Griselda Records, composed of Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher and Conway the Machine, headlined the sold-out event on Aug. 24.
Jones and Brookens said this was Chreece’s “we’re here” moment.
“I remember going out and seeing people, standing in front of the HI-FI and people pulling me aside, like ‘Man, I need tickets,’” Brookens said. “I remember trying to hook people up with tickets, which I probably did because I’m a softy, but it just was fever pitch that year.”
It was also a full circle moment for Jones, who had opened for Kweli at The Vogue in 2012.
2019
It was the first year Chreece felt less DIY and more professional, according to Jazmine K and Flacoisbored. In partnership with Chreece, FAF Collective created a spread and wrote about every artist on the bill.
Jazmine K said Chreece was no longer undergirded only by fans of the local rap scene or family and friends. People were coming to the festival from every corner of the city.
“I saw what Indianapolis could be, because we’ve always kind of been a flyover state. People leave Indy, they go to Chicago, they go to Atlanta, if they’re really cool, you know, they go out to LA, New York, whatever,” she said. “There’s been so many local artists who’ve come and stayed and continue to grow the culture and the scene.”
2020-2022: Loss and lost during the pandemic
As with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on everything, including live, local entertainment.
There was no Chreece between 2020-2022.
While venues were closed, Chreece’s organizers were battling a personal and professional tragedy. Miner, who ran business development for the festival, died of a heart attack at age 50 on Dec. 4, 2020.
“I didn’t even want to think about hearing the word ‘Chreece’ for a long time,” Jones said. “I feel like essentially it was the world telling us to take a step back when we had crazy momentum.”
In grief, they took a break to strategize on how the festival would make its official comeback. The team said they had to fall in love with music again. Chreece also launched the DJ Indiana Jones Scholarship to support young, aspiring DJs and music producers.
Concert and festival-goers tendencies had also changed, Jones said.
After a period of temperature checks, masks and contact-free streaming became part of event planning, when people felt it was safe to return to venues, patrons favored matinees and shows with early hours.
Jones, Sun Kim and Brookens had to reestablish the festival. The team looked for artists who were still actively playing shows.
Booking fees for artists to headline festivals increased as well.
“Right after the pandemic, because there was all of this pent up demand, you had all the artists trying to tour and play shows,” said HI-FI Indy owner Josh Baker. “For those guys to be able to put on the event and have good sales, which they do, that says a lot about the organizers.”
2023-2024 Chreece’s triumphant return
Leadership roles at Chreece became more clearly defined: Jones focused on business development, Sun Kim led as festival director and Brookens scouted new talent and headed up its curatorial team.
Many critiques have been levied at the Chreece organizers over the years. From unhappy performers that don’t get to be part of the festival to musicians upset with the venue they performed in.
But none quite hit home for organizers like the critique of not having enough female rappers represented on the bill.
Wildstyle Paschall, artist, author and activist, said hip-hop historically has been a male-dominated field. He noticed the disparity as well, but he said Chreece got it right in 2023.
Sun Kim selected rapper Kari Faux and R&B singer Jordan Ward to headline alongside 9th Wonder, redveil and Pink Sifu in 2023, for the first festival since 2019.
2023
2024
Ward’s inclusion was an opportunity to extend Chreece’s reach outside of the hip-hop genre. In 2023, the festival organizers also introduced two pre-performance series: the Last Shot Competition and Chreece In Transit.
There was also an effort in organizing pop-up events year-round through Chreece Presents like NAP City The Basement during NBA All-Star Weekend, No Rap on Sunday and more local hip-hop shows.
U.S. Rep. Andre Carson honored the trio with the Downtown Indy Arts and Culture Visionaries Award in 2024.
2025 Ready for the millions
Ten years later, Chreece is the festival Jones envisioned. Smino, MAVI, Audrey Nuna and 81355 are set to headline, with over 70 local acts including Slum Baby Family, Zakiyah, Foxd’legend, Rhetoryk and Kween Juice.
Newcomers like Deven Cruz, Foosie and Last Shot competition winner P.S. Maldonna are looking to leave their mark on the Chreece legacy.
“I think the times have changed, and people are more open and more welcoming, considering that (hip-hop) is a big part of our culture, especially Black culture,” Jones said. “That’s what we built this country on.”
If you’re heading to the Chreece for the first or eighth time here’s a pro tip from the team: Come to the festival with an open mind regardless of where you fall on the musical genre spectrum.
And when you do, they said you just might find an artist on the ticket who’s on par with anyone in your Spotify playlist. Or better yet get converted at “Rap Christmas.”
Chreece’s mission to highlight local hip-hop talent in Indianapolis was fulfilled. It’s what keeps Flacoisbored coming back every year.
“It’s the seed, some f*cking kid is going to come to this and using the tenants of Chreece and make their own sh*t,” he said.
Every year, Sun Kim said, Jones contemplates whether they can bring the festival back. It’s the mission that fuels their passion to keep working, regardless of the hiccups that come their way.
They have had to make sacrifices. For Brookens, it’s time with his family. For Jones, who has several music projects with various bands as well as solo, it’s stability. Sun Kim said she’s struggled to find a personal artistic identity outside of Chreece.
But they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Now, the organizers are looking for sponsors and partners who are willing to invest big money over the long-term, so they don’t have to raise funds every single year.
It’s unclear how much money it takes to run the festival. The organizers didn’t want to say. But they did say they’re reluctant to increase ticket prices.
More financial backing would free up the team’s capacity to focus on developing younger artists.
“If we get millions, we will change the face of the city,” Jones said.
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Mirror Indy reporter Mesgana Waiss covers arts and culture. Contact her at 317-667-2643 or mesgana.waiss@mirrorindy.org.
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