That One Tuesday Night When I Hung Out with Felly
By Lauren Brose ‘15
Chris Felner—stage name “Felly”— doesn’t enjoy school. The 20-year-old from Trumbull, Connecticut, admits he’s never been totally captivated in his classes because he feels it hinders his ability to create. The technicalities with pitch, tone, specific chords and notes being played isn’t a calculated process for Chris. Instead, he feels the music and goes what what makes sense to him. That’s what’s worked for him since he started to write music at the fleeting age of 14.
Until this interview, I’d never hung out one-on-one with Felly. We’d often cross paths at parties due to our mutual friends and from what I was able to gather during our short interactions, I thought he was an exceptionally interesting person. To be honest, I had no idea how impactful of a musician he was until I had to do the standard pre-interview research.
Felly currently has 40K followers on SoundCloud as well as 13.9k followers on Twitter and Instagram. He opened for DJ Carnage earlier this month. The freshman dorm room where him and his friends convened—2273— is the namesake of the collective formed by Felly and his friends. Last month, Felly sold out a show at Dragons Den Social Lounge—and nearly broke the floor to the second floor due to the crowd’s non-stop jumping. According to Chris, he had to send out a friendly PSA to the crowd, asking them to dance with care. After the crowd cleared out, him and his team were able to see a distinguishable enclave in the middle of the dance floor. Currently, Felly is enjoying his downtime after having performed in Connecticut and Arizona these past few weeks.
On a mission to highlight the most talented and fascinating innovators at USC, I sheepishly asked Chris last spring if we could get together some time. I really wanted to pick his brain. Not only did I learn a great deal about the brilliance behind Felly’s craft, I ended up having a really relaxing night where I’d like to think I went home having made a handful of new friends.
About ten minutes in, Chris asks me when the interview was going to start. I laughed a bit because I forgot to clarify to him the way I wanted to interview him. I am all about the freedoms that come with editorial writing. I explained that my phone has been recording this conversation since I arrived and the organic material I gather from our hangout is the interview.
I sat down in his bedroom, observing the abundance of posters and paintings that covered his walls. He paints. Lately he’s been burnt out since his latest EP, This Sh_t Comes in Waves, was released two months ago. It totally makes sense because everything that has happened in his life until this EP release has been narrated in his music—namely This Sh_t Comes in Waves. The next step for Chris is to simply live his life. In the mean time, he explores alternative art forms to stimulate his creative flow.
When asked what he enjoys doing in his free time, I was provided with the most original response to date. Felly likes water. In fact, he drinks a lot of water. He told me “If I don’t have anything to do I will drink a ton of water because it makes me feel amazing.” Laugh if you want— I think it’s brilliant because water is fantastic and did you know our body is made of 73% water? He also enjoys painting, reading philosophy books, experimenting with beats, yoga, lying in the sun on the roof, playing on his keyboard. In addition to hip-hop (with the exception of Big Rings by Future & Drake—he hates that song) Chris loves listening to Atmosphere and Bob Marley.
He sits down and begins to play a melody on his electric keyboard and says to me: “I made a beat yesterday— it sounds similar to this.” Curious to see how well a series of notes on a keyboard sounds when adapted into a full-blown beat, I was eager to hear the outcome.
This is when Hayden, Felly’s roommate, walks in.
Hayden is a character himself. He’s missing a tooth—apparently an incident at the dentist’s office led to this travesty but, fortunately, he is going to get a gold tooth. But they all have an admirably positive outlook on life’s misfortunes and triumphs. A firm believer that everything happens for a reason, they embrace the turn of events that have brought them to where they are today. At first, I thought that was a stressful way of looking at life because that meant there is so little within my control. I had to sit on this one for a day or two but it became clear how freeing this outlook on life is. Just sit back and enjoy the ride—life is going to run its course regardless so why get worked up and stress the small details?
What came next was totally unexpected; I experienced my first live free-style not just from Felly but also from Hayden. What I found even cooler was the fact that they rapped to the beat Chris had made the previous day. I stupidly asked if they had come up with any of the rhymes beforehand and wanted to test it out for fun and they laughed at me and said this is their typical process. By just doing it, experimenting on the spot, and seeing how it sounds is how they are able to explore their creative limitations and determine what works and what doesn’t.
This isn’t the case for everyone in Felly’s collective. “Hayden grew up on heavy rock and metal, Tim was classically trained to play the guitar for the President, and Carson is a Red Hot Chili Peppers groove dude. When the band works together, they’re holding it down and they’re looking at each other, like, ‘is that D sharp?’ and I’m like ‘Word let’s get these people going.’ And I am a hip-hop hybrid of reggae and when we all get together it just works.”
When asked how, he compared the dynamics of his band to his friends and how they are all a need that’s fulfilled. Because he doesn’t have that classical element, Tim is able to facilitate that. Felly has a crazy stage presence that others may lack.
Last year Felly performed exclusively with the band but this year he works alone. He is currently prepping for a December show at Middlebury College in Vermont. He plans on hitting up a new city each month with his roommate, Hayden, who is also known by his stage name Gyyps.
It’s an exciting road ahead for Felly. He continues to work on his craft as he hits up new cities in the US and completes his degree in Thornton. I definitely would recommend checking him out as he develops into a hip-hop artist in his very prime. Personally, I haven’t had a chance to see him at a concert venue, but I have seen him perform at a couple Ski House parties and a party Justin Jay threw last spring. Follow his social media channels!
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