Rise On Me: buffetboyjohn Isn’t Coming Off the Bench Anymore

buffetboyjohn had never touched a basketball in his life until his mom forced him to try out for the freshman team at West Orange High School. The experience can be defined by one word: “Embarrassing, I deadass embarrassed myself. Basketball was not for me.”

West Orange, New Jersey is home to Thomas Edison’s laboratory where he perfected the phonograph in 1887, revolutionizing the way people consumed the wavelengths of sound and creating the commercial music industry we know today.

What the history books miss though is the legacy of the people that came after. Elliot Cadeau, starting point guard for the University of Michigan, has emerged as one of the most compelling stories in college basketball this year as a doubted transfer to Most Outstanding Player in the championship game. PlaqueBoyMax is redefining the bridge between content and music becoming the first streamer to earn a Grammy nomination.

Over a century later, those same wavelengths Edison released into the world from the suburban township in Essex County were bouncing off the hallways of West Orange High School, where a group of kids were turning lunch room freestyles into something real. “Max and I went to the same high school together so the music was everywhere,” buffetboyjohn says. “When I was 16, he had this channel called ‘Basement Boyz’ where everyone would freestyle during school and that was going up. Then I started seeing other people hit 50k and 100k on their songs. I started thinking to myself, ‘why not me?’”

Instead of the basketball court, buffetboyjohn spent his time in high school being a “cheerleader” to the people making the music. When he turned 19, buffetboyjohn finally stepped out of the stands. He, PlaqueBoyMax, and others from the same circle went on to create the group 5$tar Buffet Boys. “[PlaqueBoyMax] my brother man. That’s the thing about West Orange, we all know each other, grew up with each other. It’s just crazy to see everyone from the area doing their thing.”

While PlaqueBoyMax took the name 5$tar in a different direction, buffetboyjohn has been stepping into his own lane. At 23, buffetboyjohn has amassed 28,000 monthly listeners and released six projects in the past year including his newest project “PG1.” It’s his biggest statement as a rapper – a coming of age moment letting everyone know he’s arrived. A point guard in basketball has arguably the hardest job on the court, they’re the leaders of the team who control the offense and call the plays, making the tough choices under pressure. To call yourself PG1 is to say something about who you are. For buffetboyjohn, the title didn’t come from a place of certainty. “I was doubting myself before I made the project. I was just like ‘what’s the point of this?’ Then something just snapped in me and I just knew this was my lock in tape.” 

Lock in. Do something different. He rarely hops on loud beats, gravitating toward the more atmospheric side of things but PG1 was about switching it up and most importantly having fun with it. Standout tracks like “the man,” “sum 2 lose,” and “scorin” showcase buffetboyjohn at his best and in control of his own sound, the basketball language intertwining within the music as if it was two ways of saying the same thing. “Music is like basketball. If you want to get better, you have to keep practicing. For me, I just have to keep making music and keep dropping.”

“truth” is another prominent song on the project. Produced by booghead, the beat was sent to buffetboyjohn by his longtime collaborator and producer ripsodivine. If you fall into the rabbit hole to discover the identity of this moniker, you’ll find the name…Elliot Cadeau.

Yes, that Elliot Cadeau, the highly-touted point guard who the sports world thinks they know everything about – and doesn’t. While the national media was focused on his 19 point performance in the NCAA championship, Elliot woke up the following morning and immediately texted buffetboyjohn to finish a song they were working on. “When Elliot sent me the beat for ‘truth,’ I was hesitant since that wasn’t something I would hop on,” buffetboyjohn says. “The beat was too soft for me but he forced me to record on it and it came out fire. That’s the thing about Elliot, he pushes me to get out of my comfort zone and be better.”

After the championship game, head coach for the Michigan Wolverines Dusty May praised Elliot Cadeau saying, “He’s a savant. He’s brilliant. He’s made us better coaches." He was talking about basketball but you could say the same thing about the music. The same blueprint that built a champion was quietly building something else too. buffetboyjohn is part of a new group hailing from West Orange called Ready 2 Die, alongside artists Tracy Margiela and GL, Elliot Cadeau, and up-and-coming Twitch streamer Saucekill (Elliot’s older brother Justin Cadeau). The way it came together was never about business – it felt more like a family affair with the Cadeau brothers orchestrating everything. Saucekill and buffetboyjohn had known each other since they were 5. Tracy was already a given, a brother long before any group existed. GL earned his spot after one studio session in New York made the answer obvious. Elliot made the Instagram page and just like that, it was real. 

For buffetboyjohn, the best part of being a part of this is simply being at Saucekill’s house with the guys, making music and catching up in the moments between, the kind of time that gets harder to find when everyone’s been busy. They have plans of releasing a group project soon with every song produced by Elliot. His producer tag as ripsodivine asks the question: “Why do you keep saying you’re ready to die?”

“To me that means I’m ready to die for them, I’m ready to die for my brothers,” buffetboyjohn says. “It’s only us in this. Especially coming out of a place nobody really knows about, everyone’s focused on cities like Atlanta so if we get people to talk about us and wonder about what we’re doing, shit’s going to be crazy.”

buffetboyjohn never made the freshman basketball team. He embarrassed himself, walked off the court, and never looked back. But the point guard was always in him – it just took a few years to find his game. West Orange has always been this way. It doesn’t announce itself. It just keeps working, keeps building, keeps putting people on until the world has no choice but to pay attention. The man who never made the team is now running the offense. “I can talk a lot about where it all started and how everything has changed but at the end of the day, I’m a regular person. I just want people to know that they can do it too. Even a guy from West Orange.”