Brown Boy

  There’s more to Brown Boy, a newcomer to the world of Chicano rap, than meets the eye.  The first single from his debut album, the title track from last year’s “Livin’ Shady,” was a track about cheating with a confessional tone.  It got quite a bit of radio play on Top 40 and hip-hop stations, but his true breakthrough came with the album’s second single, “Superman,”  which shot up the Billboard charts with a meteoric quality, and continues to grow with each passing week.

  Without a doubt, the California native is turning heads, and without the resources available to artists with major record deals.  Brown Boy’s story is truly a testament to the value of a few good songs.  Fellow rapper Mr. Capone-E, in a recent interview with “Pulse,” expressed his respect for the new kid on the block.  “The thing about Brown Boy…he just popped out of nowhere.  He came with a single, and people started requesting it—where people are putting millions and billions of corporate dollars into marketing to make an artist blow up.  And Brown Boy comes with a good song, and shows that there’s a fan base for it.”

  It’s a remarkable story about a remarkable man, who, early in his career, is taking his role model status seriously.  For some artists, hip-hop is their golden ticket out of a bad situation.  It is the one basket where all of their eggs are kept.  But for Brown Boy, his new career in hip-hop is just one of his paths to success.  I caught up with him and we talked a little about the other side—the little known side—of Brown Boy.

  “I have a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and I was working as a teacher for two years, and I was working voluntarily with the probation department, where I was just hanging out with the kids, talking to them, trying to get them out of trouble.  And trying to get them to stay in school and stay drug-free,” says Brown. 

  Art is a fickle venture, and is generally not one to plan your retirement around.  I was struck by Brown Boy’s grasp of this.  “You’ve definitely got to have a backup plan.  You’ve got to stay focused and you’ve got to live [in] reality.  Tomorrow’s never promised, so you live for today, enjoy today.  But just in case it doesn’t work out, you have something to fall back on,” he says. 

  As a role model, Brown Boy’s primary message is the importance of a good education.  “School is basically the way to go.  Whether you want to do make-up or whether you want to do music—I mean, you’ve definitely got to go after your dreams, but definitely have an education to fall back on.  It’s the key.  Because when music’s done, I don’t want Brown Boy to be working at McDonald’s or working construction.  I want to have some kind of a career where I can use to focus back on the children coming up these days. They’ve looked up to me [as a rapper,] at the same time they can look up to me [if I’m doing] a different profession.  It’s very, very, very important to stay in school.”

  Brown Boy will be performing at the Too Hot, Too Fast, Too Low Concert & Custom Car Show this Sunday at the El Paso County Coliseum. For my full interview with Brown Boy, log on to www.lcsun-news.com/pulse.

-From Pulse
   October 19, 2006

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Mr. Capone-E

  California-born rapper Mr. Capone-E is no newcomer to the rap scene, but his new single, “Don’t Get It Twisted,” featuring Twista, is showing a lot of promise.  Will it be enough to expose him, beyond the niche fan base of Chicano rap, to the larger audience of mainstream hip-hop fans though?  Well, that’s the idea.

  I caught up with Capone-E in a phone interview last week, and we talked at length about the struggle to get mainstream exposure.  “There’s two worlds out there,” says Capone-E.  “You’ve got the Chicano rap fans and then you’ve got the mainstream fans.  Now, mainstream fans, they’re programmed.  The see it on TV, they hear it on the radio all the time.  So, in their minds, that’s what’s the best thing.  Chicano rap hasn’t gotten to that stage yet.  It’s barely breaking into radio.  And now that it’s on the radio, people are going, ‘Oh, now it’s on the radio.  It must be hot.’ But it’s been selling on the streets, the real fans out there have been buying this music for years now.  [Being on the radio] is broadening the fan base.”

  But while many may be unaware of Mr. Capone-E and his struggle to expose the Chicano rap game, his huge core fan base remains loyal.  “I have a strong fan base that’s waiting for me, they’re sitting in the cut, just waiting for me.  [When a station says Mr. Capone-E will be playing a concert,] whether I get played at the station or not, gente from everywhere show up out of nowhere.  I have people that tell me when I do shows that they have come from hours away, states away, to come to the show because that’s the closest show they can find me at.”
  As an artist, Capone-E is beginning to find mainstream success.  As “Don’t Get It Twisted” continues to climb the charts, he still manages to find time to run his label, Hi-Power Entertainment, which has a large roster of up-and-coming Chicano rappers.  “With Hi-Power, basically, I’m the vision behind it.  There are other people who help push [resources] into it.  But with [the label], I’m just doing the street thing and catering to my gente, my fans out there.  [Before, we didn’t] have our own voice, and now we have our own voice.  And I know in Las Cruces, there are a lot of people out there who have been waiting for stuff like Hi-Power to come, and here it is.  It was my dream a kid for something like Hi-Power to come along, and it never happened.  So here I have the opportunity to make stuff happen, and that’s what I’m doing.”

  Through the course of my long conversation with Mr. Capone-E, we kept coming back to his recipe to success, time and again.  Start by building a loyal street fan base, then use the resources that you generate to through CD sales to expand that fan base to the mainstream.  “There are going to be even bigger things in the future,” he says with the confidence of a prizefighter.

  Mr. Capone-E will be taking the stage at the Hot 103 Fall Jam this Saturday at Club Beverly Hills, at 150 Hermosa.  Also on the bill are Lil’ Flip, Marcos Hernandez, and local rappers The Teem.

  To hear my full-length interview with Mr. Capone, point your browser to www.lcsun-news.com/pulse.  It’s worth checking out.

-From Pulse
   October 12, 2006

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Overlooked

  I’m tired of being overlooked.  It hasn’t always bothered me, but lately it has really gotten under my skin.

  I’m sure we all have our stories about someone, somewhere not knowing that New Mexico is one of our fifty United States.  “Oh, your English is very good,” they’ll say.  I have received music in the mail from New York with customs documentation, citing the United States as the country of origin. 

  Always the quiet neighbors, it’s easy for people to forget that we’re here (unless John Walsh reminds them).  And I think it’s time to start making a little noise. 

n         n         n

  An acquaintance of mine recently said that Hip-Hop has become the new Rock and Roll.  Like it or not, this doesn’t seem far from the truth.  It has been 24 years since the Sugarhill Gang hit the charts with “Rapper’s Delight,” and 22 years since Grand Master Flash’s “The Message.”  In terms of credibility and staying power, Hip-Hop is not a passing fancy; it is a force to be reckoned with.

  Hip-Hop is more than the music of the streets, it’s life on the streets.  Not since The Blues have we seen a genre of music so intertwined in a lifestyle.  Okay, the surfing music of the Sixties comes close, and it was Fun Fun Fun while it lasted, but that safari didn’t last long.  

n         n         n

  It’s not just the Land of Enchantment that’s left out of the Hip-Hop equation, it’s the entire Southwest.  The East Coast is well represented.  The West Coast is well represented.  And the “Dirty South” is well represented.  But the area between San Antonio and San Diego, from El Paso to Denver, is generally ignored by Hip-Hop magazines like Vibe and The Source. 

  In recent history, there have been a few hotbeds for Hip-Hop: New York, L.A., and Atlanta.  With the popularity of Reggaeton on the rise, Miami is now breaking out as a breeding ground for hot new talent.  (Reggaeton is a mix of Reggae, Salsa & Hip-Hop, with lyrics that alternate from Spanish to English, and back again.)

  Chicano Hip-Hop flourishes in this area, and while it is covered in mags like Lowrider and Street Customs, music magazines pay little attention to the Latin rap game.  National artists like Baby Bash, Gemini, NB Ridaz and Lil’ Rob—many of whom have recording contracts with national labels—get virtually no love from the national media.  And that needs to change.

  Furthermore, these artists have enormous followings.  The market is ripe and should be tapped. 

  I’m afraid I don’t have any answers.  You don’t have to be a Hip-Hop fan to get the feeling that we are forgotten.  We need to find a way to work the threads of the Southwest into the fabric of American Pop-Culture.

 -From Pulse
   November 18, 2004

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Caliente 505: Behind The Scenes

  I won’t lie to ya.  I’m getting anxious.  I’m not really a “hype” kind of guy, but Saturday’s gonna be a big day.

  Las Cruces hasn’t seen a hip-hop concert in about a year.  The last rap show to come through was last Halloween—The Hot 103 Halloween Jam—with Lil’ Rob.  Another one is long overdue. 

  As music director for Hot 103, it’s my responsibility to work closely with the artists and the record labels to organize the Caliente 505 Concert, going down this Saturday night at Club Fusion.  All the bases have to be covered—venue, hotel, transportation, ticket printing, sound and lighting, artist fees, dressing rooms, ticket outlets, radio advertising, contracts…and the list goes on.  If any one of these things isn’t handled, the show can’t go on. 

  You can pay $16 and see a great concert.  You can see what’s happening on the stage, in the spotlight.  But you rarely see the months of preparation that goes into that one night.  We’ve been working on this concert for two months.  But the payoff is amazing.

  Seeing a thousand people show up and have a great time, knowing they got their money’s worth, makes it all worthwhile.  And it’s doubly rewarding to bring Las Crucens artists they love.

  And the artists love Las Cruces.  Ask any of the guys in NB Ridaz, and they’ll tell you that our city has treated them well.  They feel at home playing The Whole Enchilada Fiesta, the 4^th of July celebration, or Club Fusion.  Every time I talk to them, they always ask when they can come back.

  Lil’ Rob loves the people of Las Cruces, too.  He always makes it a point to stop through on autograph and concert tours.  I know for a fact that there are girls walking around town with his autograph tattooed on their bodies.  How could you not love that?

  Chicano hip-hop artists recognize our city as a hotbed for the art form.  Oftentimes record labels use Hot 103 as a barometer (or thermometer, perhaps) for what is hot.  We help them decide what will do well in larger cities that are predominantly Hispanic.  We help them break new Chicano artists.  And it’s an exciting time to be playing that role.

  Over the last year or so we have seen Chicano hip-hop break into the mainstream.  It’s a slow process, but artists like Baby Bash, NB Ridaz, Gemini, and Lil’ Rob are beginning to see success on a national level.  Virtually every hip-hop station in the country played Bash’s “Suga Suga.”  And at the rate they’re going, NB Ridaz have the potential to achieve the same status with their latest single, “Pretty Girl.”

  This is your chance to be a part of it.  Don’t miss out.  Get out there, get those tickets, and come check us out Saturday night at Club Fusion.  They’ll be talking about it on Monday.

-From Pulse

  October 21, 2004

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