Geoff Sarubbi, the hip-hop artist known as OnCue, was a skinny 15-year-old kid from Newington when he first rapped publicly at Toad’s Place in New Haven.
At home, he’d already started recording his own tracks and collaborating with older musicians through the Internet. “I was very one-track-minded,” OnCue said. “I always knew what I wanted to do … I’ve been recording in the Hartford area — Wethersfield, Middletown — since I was 13, just networking and plugging away.”
Now 26, OnCue lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Last September, after nearly two years of working on it, he released “Angry Young Man,” a full-length album. He’ll return home to perform at Hartford’s Infinity Hall on Saturday, June 13.
Growing up in Newington, OnCue listened exclusively to hip-hop.
“My older brother was that first generation that really caught the hip-hop bug,” he said. “He was bringing home cassettes when I was three or four.” Early on, OnCue struggled to get the attention of older producers and rappers. “These people were taking risks. Imagine if you were an 18-year-old kid in high school and you’re recording a 13-year-old. I was just so damn persistent.”
Later, in college (he ultimately dropped out), OnCue discovered indie rock, a genre that informs much of his current sound. “I was smoking a lot of weed and watching this alternative channel, MTVU, and they were playing a lot of alternative rock. That’s when I caught that bug. It was backwards.”
But back home in Connecticut, OnCue wasn’t getting the respect he felt he deserved. He partied with friends and couldn’t focus on music. In February of 2010, circumstances — family and otherwise — necessitated a move to New York. “I was coming out of a rough breakup, my first real serious girlfriend,” he said. “My heart was broken. I found out she was cheating on me. I said, ‘Screw it, I’ve gotta do this.’ My home situation was not good. I needed to pack my things and move.”
Once in New York, OnCue and his manager immediately released a new project, and the rapper got paid for performing — a first. In early 2012, OnCue linked up with the producer Just Blaze, whose credits include dozens of tracks for Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, Eminem, Drake, Kanye West and others dating back to 1999. “He was an idol of mine,” OnCue said. “I couldn’t believe I was working with him.”
Major labels were calling. OnCue was touring nationally. “Home,” his tribute to the victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy, did fairly well on iTunes. His videos started racking up thousands of views on YouTube.
But work on the album took far longer than expected. “Some of the internal people I was working with were messing up,” OnCue said. It was a rough time. “With Just Blaze’s involvement, I knew I had to step up my game severely, and I’m my own worst critic … I don’t appreciate yes-men around me. I don’t need to inflate my ego. At the end of the day, I just want to make the best content.”
Despite the rough start, the 12 tracks on “Angry Young Man,” titled after the Billy Joel song, drip with frustration and underdog grit; “Way Too Far,” with ambient, frantic beats and strings by Maki and Frequency, opens up into an alt-rock chorus sung by OnCue himself. On “So Much Love,” produced by Hudson Mohawke, he spits rapid-fire lines over glitchy snares and a choir-sung, gospel-tinged hook.
Adam Ross, a frequent collaborator, directed a number of eye-popping music videos, including a one-shot take on the song “The View From Here.” “He thought I was crazy, because it’s a lot of work for the performer,” OnCue said. “We had to shoot it like 30 or 40 times… Something told me to do the most simplistic video ever for this song, and that you need to focus on what I’m saying, the passion in my voice and the passion in my face in the footage.”
The two years spent on “Angry Young Man” was a learning experience for the performer. “There were months when I didn’t have any money to put food on the table, since all of my money ran out,” he said. “But it was a labor of love. It was like I dragged myself through the mud and I came out clean on the other side. Looking back, I almost don’t think I would have it the other way. It was a lot of soul searching and being honest with myself, and it was a lot of late, late nights in the studio, to be sure.”
OnCue has already started on his next project. “It’s coming out great,” he said. “I think I finally hit that plateau where you realize, ‘Wow, I actually got as good as I hoped I could get,’ if that makes sense. I feel like I have that self-confidence… With ‘Angry Young Man,’ if I died in a car accident tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind leaving this earth with that last piece of work. I’m not that dark of a person, but that’s the best way I could explain it.”
The concert at Infinity Hall, meanwhile, is being billed as the first hip-hop show at the venue. OnCue’s live show, he said, is marked by “emotion, passion and energy.”
“There’s no hype man, just me on stage with a DJ,” OnCue said. “I try to recreate the feeling that I was in the studio when I was recording it. I don’t try to do it any different.”
ONCUE performs on Saturday, June 13 at Infinity Hall in Hartford. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $19-$29. Information: infinityhall.com.
