Life & Work with Rio Tha Great

Well to start my name is Rio Tha Gr8 the one the girls love love and haters love to hate. Highland Park’s own. Please say “The Great” when addressing me! The future Mayor of HP.

I was born in raised in Highland Park. The poorest city in the US according to The Census. HP was literally all I knew until I attended high school at Cass Tech, which was a real culture shock coming from where I was. I was always the smartest kid in the class, always had good grades, my family collectively raised me well given my environment. I was the only kid from my district to be accepted into Cass that year. The learning environment was more intense then college. It challenged me in ways I had never been before, while back in HP a lot of my friends didn’t even finish high school.

After high school I received an academic scholarship to Kentucky State University where I attended from 2008-2013 before receiving my bachelors in Liberal Studies.

I’m super grateful for the HBCU experience. I met lifelong friends and built relationships with people from all across the country down there. It opened my eyes to a much bigger picture, bigger world.

After college I explored different career paths from Social Work to the Fashion Industry. I even gave a crack at being a firefighter at one point.

Music was something I always had been around, always enjoyed but never had the courage to take seriously. Until one day I finally did, it was like everything just clicked and made sense.

That was a lil over 2 years ago. Since then I’ve released 5 albums, countless music videos, I’ve thrown my own shows. I even put together a festival in my hood over the summer. It was called HP Fest and featured artist exclusively from our neighborhood. I’ve worked bigger named artist like Rio Da Yung Og, Doughboy Quis & recently Tae Wall. I’ve helped other upcoming artists to get their music out and heard. I really fell in love with the journey of it all. I can feel all the hard work being put in leading to something GREAT!

Not at all, I’m The Great so I just make it look easy.

But being serious, honest and open the biggest challenge I had in my journey was finding myself, accepting who I am, and standing tall on it. I spent so much time in my life doing what “people told me to do” or “thought was best for me”. It took years for me find the comfort, that peace, that calmness with in myself to say this is who I am and this is what I want to do. Once I found that, I found my love for creating music shortly afterwards. It’s been up ever since.

Im great at everything I do, whether it be rapping, basketball, parking cars, hustling, teaching whatever I’m go be Great at it!

My advice would be to reach out to people who align with the things you like, the things you do, and the principles you stand on. Don’t do something cause someone else did and it worked out for them. Align yourself to do things that are truly meant for you!

If you gotta question it’s ok to ask, don’t be afraid to reach out.