Asian Hip Hop Coming to a Blog Near You

Okay. After weeks of mulling over my two new projects...(no...no...not cleaning my room and losing weight) I have finally come to a decision to go forth on two new blogs. I will be starting a U of M blog ...but today's focus is going to be how I'm going to take on a new identity (I might be using the street name V-Dawg) and research/learn/understand/promote Asian Americans and Hip Hop.

I have been interested in hip hop for awhile...but I could never really identify with it. After going to the Hip Hop Race and Politics Panel several months ago, I couldn't stop thinking about how apathetic I was being. The discussion was stimulating because I like the hip hop culture. I love self expression. Mixing art with a political statement. Meaningful lyrics. Though I like black hip hop and Latino hip hop...I just wish I knew more about what my fellow Asian Americans are doing.

I got my kick start this past week when I met Melissa Giles. It was so interesting listening to her talk about Soulfrito - an urban latin music festival (founded by Melissa) and also the work that she does on marketing and targeting Latino teens. I thought...hey...when was the last time I heard about an Asian American Music Festival (and why is it that Latinos just sound so American...but I feel the need to differentiate Asians and Asian Americans - maybe it's my fob paranoia?) and how come no one is marketing this information at me? I guess there is some information that I'd like spoon fed to me!

To prove my point. This information is hard to find. Even with the help of my friend google.

When typing in the words: Asian Hip Hop

I find the following:

1) http://www.asianweek.com/111298/coverstory.html
An article by Oliver Wang from 1998. I like his articles and all...but c'mon 1998? And he says everything is up and coming...but I'm in Minneapolis...so either I'm just oblivious to everything that's going on or this information is not reaching me. Which upsets me big time <---see above.

5) http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/042503/music_cover.html
So I now know that there was an Asian Hip Hop Summit in California, but this is old too - from 2003.

7) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4126877
Yeh! This makes me happy - news on Jin - a rapper who speaks Cantonese. I heard about him through my brother and cousin.

Not happy with the search results. So tonight I typed in: Asian Hip Hop Summit

2) http://www.hiphoparchive.org/research/conferences.htm
This link might be promising...by typing the word "Asian" in the search box, I had several returns on Asian and Black Race Relations/Music

4) http://www.modelminority.com/article360.html
A good article...but still I think it came up just because it was on the modelminority.com website. It mentions Jeff Chang and Oliver Wang and their thoughts on hip hop...but not much about Asian hip hop

10) Link
Russell Simmons statement on behalf of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. One thing he seems right about - hip hop does rest on the work of a lot of black people who have made it big.

So all in all, I read somewhere today that Hip Hop is American. And I would like to center my focus on what Asian Americans are doing with hip hop. At this point, I realize two things 1) people are always going to disagree with me and claim that hip hop is black music and Asian Americans are wannabes yadiyadiyah...but I just don't think it's about that (andn quite frankly am going to go forth with the new V-Dawg blog anyway) and 2) that currently I'm not interested in the hip hop movement in China/Korea/Taiwan...I'm not sure how I'm going to make that fuzzy line more clean...we'll see how that goes...so for now the focus is on Asian Americans.

In my new blog, I hope to explore all the disciplines of hip hop: music, spoken word, emceeing, djing, grafitti art, and breakdancing. I hope I can solicit dotnic to help me (if/when needed) if I can find legal mp3s/links to post so that everyone can sample the music too. With law school coming up, this might mean that I will just post articles of interest. I just feel that there needs to be one place where all this information is and I'd like to at least try. At least for me...and my new (or return of) V-Dawg self.

If you find information that may be of interest to me, please e-mail it to me or comment on this blog entry.

Finally.

I got that off my chest.

I feel such a deep sense of relief.

The Great Leap of Faith

I remember in the movie Clueless, when Tai was sitting on the railing at the second floor of the mall and flirted with two guys by asking, "If I fall, would you guys catch me?"

That line always stuck with me. In life, how many of us can count the number of people who would catch us if we fall? From a bad breakup? From tough financial times? From a bad mood?

Who can you actually count on?

And when you do make that great leap of faith...who will be there to genuinely support you?

If the world was black and white (figuratively) and people were diamonds or cubic zirconas, I wish that I could hire a diamond expert to examine everyone around me and let me know who the real gems are...and who are the cz's posing as the real thing.

Last night, as I was painting my future with my dad over the phone, he said that he would support my endeavors...and I felt so blessed...having such a wonderful dad.

I told my mom once that if I were to be reincarnated and I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to be human again, I would still want them to be my parents. The same goes for my brother too.

And I'm thinking...I feel lucky because I have faith that if I fall, one of them will catch me.