Hip Hop Show is Not About $$$
By Cory Forsyth
A&F Associate

"Life has to be about more than bitches and money," one of the members of Karmacy, a South Asian hip hop group told a crowd of nearly 350 during a spoken word piece in their set last Saturday night. Karmacy was brought to Claremont McKenna's McKenna Auditorium by a collaborative effort of Pomona's Asian American Resource Center (AARC) and Scripps's Asian American Student Union (AASU), That band member's statement set the tone for "The Otherground," a socially conscious hip hop show, billed as "an Asian American hip hop groovedown" that steered clear of mainstream racist and sexist notions in hip hop and rap. Joining openers Karmacy were emcees Kiwi and Bambu and the high-profile independent hip hop group Visionaries, recent openers for both the Roots and Pharcyde.

"We chose a hip hop show because hip hop is a popular medium used by people to convey messages," Chris Kao '03, one of the concert's organizers, said. "We wanted something that would be fun and entertaining and also had something meaningful to say." Explaining the choice of the show's name, Kao said, "We chose [the name] for a few reasons… We felt … we were bringing in some of the top underground hip hop… we were also bringing in Asian American groups. When people think of hip hop, they usually don't think of Asian Americans." Thus the idea of "other" artists bringing "underground" hip hop led to the show's title, "The Otherground."

Karmacy, a group of several South Asian emcees backed by a drummer and a violinist, extended the boundaries of hip hop both by their style of music-which included a violin solo and sitar backup on one of their tracks-and their message. Nimo, one of Karmacy's emcees, told me after their set, "It's all about communicating how we feel. It's all about spreading the word." He explained that Karmacy's upcoming release, "The Movement," described the way they felt about their music. Their goal, Nimo said, was to continue to expand the boundaries of hip hop. He cited the group's "multi-lingual lyricism"-one of the tracks Karmacy performed featured Spanish and Gujarati, an Indic language spoken by approximately forty-four million people, in addition to English; another cut from their new album features Hindi and Punjabi lyrics as well-as just one example of the new directions Karmacy is taking hip hop.

Karmacy rounded out their set with "Euphoria," a high-energy track reminiscent of Outkast's "Bombs over Baghdad," and left the stage to make room for Kiwi and Bambu.

Kiwi and Bambu, two South Asian emcees, came on stage and, backed by DJ Jedi, continued to rock the auditorium with a brand of hip hop strictly antithetical to the bitches-and-blings style that's so popular in the mainstream media. Cynthia Parker '03, with whom I tagged along to the show, told me afterward that she was surprised that the two masculine-looking emcees could get up there and seem so comfortable supporting feminism.

At one point, Bambu told the crowd, "If being a playa means disrespecting women, then I'm a playa hata." The duo also led the crowd in an anti-war chant at one point, and to finish their set, Bambu parodied Jay-Z's "Girls, Girls, Girls", rapping about minority women leading protests and involved in other forms of social activism.

The Visionaries continued to bring the activism, as it were. The five emcees-and one DJ-took the stage yelling "self-sufficient, independent." A few songs in, they too led an anti-war chant: "When I say 'no more,' you say 'war.'" The Visionaries, described by the concert promoters as a "multi-cultural underground super-group," hail from Los Angeles and are currently at work on a third album.

The Otherground was the first part in a two-part series on Politics and Pop Culture. On April 2 there will be a follow-up panel discussion on pop culture as a medium to convey political messages. "I hoped that students got a good show out of it and left with some new ideas on hip hop," Kao said of the event. "We wanted to [break] stereotypes about hip hop artists; I think the show came off really well."

To find out more about Karmacy visit www.rukusavenue.com, and to find out more about Kiwi and Bambu visit www.poorhouseprojekts.com.