As a fair-haired hip-hop artist from Minneapolis, Minn., Tisch junior Chaz Kangas has endured his share of unflattering physical comparisons. His appearance - likened to Napoleon Dynamite, Chucky (the homicidal doll or the rugrat, take your pick) and the brothers Hanson - is an easy target during rap battles. But name-dropping Carrot Top is seldom successful at unnerving the three-time champion of SinSin's Off-the-Head Game Show battle.
"In battles, it's all in fun," Kangas said. "I've performed at Zulu Nation meetings, I've performed at Black Watch, a large west coast movement. And so if I was doing something incredibly wrong based on my appearance, I would have been stomped out for it several times by now, which I haven't."
A two-year absence from the barber's chair has given Kangas plenty of time to build his track record on the open-mic circuit. When the 20-year-old cinema studies major is not working on his third album, which he hopes to release independently later this year, he's building his reputation at open mic nights and battles across the city. One of Kangas' career highlights includes opening for Louis Logic, J-Zone and The Juggaknots at CBGB's final hip-hop show before the legendary Bowery venue closed because of skyrocketing rent costs.
Other hip-hop artists say Kangas' potential is evident.
"He has that spirit that hip-hop was born with," said Conscious, a New York-based emcee who founded FreeHipHopNow.com. "I think he's confident, he's got a lot of skill and talent, and I think he's just going to get better as he continues to do it. He's the kind of person who's trying to work on getting better and being better, because it never ends - as an artist you will continue to grow, and I think he realizes that."
Outside of the clubs, Kangas is part of group of rappers who are taking their performances to an unorthodox venue: the subway. Trains, platforms and stations have long been home to panhandling musical acts, but the Hip-Hop Subway Series goes for something more "organic" and doesn't look for handouts. Responding to the commercialization of hip-hop, Beatboxer Entertainment began organizing bi-monthly gatherings in which up to 50 hip-hop artists board the rear car of train and freestyle with feverish enthusiasm as the train crosses different boroughs and takes on new passengers. The artists usually represent elements from the full spectrum of hip-hop, including emcees, dancers, beatboxers and singers.
Kangas said he's been participating in the series once a month for about a year because it highlights an important yet overlooked facet of hip-hop. "There's plenty of open mics or different spots for just rapping around the city, but [the Subway Series] is really one of those last bastions of just getting together and just freestyling," Kangas said. "It's being able to, for lack of a better word, improv and work off of things another person has said, and just keep it in that constant momentum. You have all elements represented - I've seen people break dancing on trains. I've seen people do graff writing on the train, but not in a matter of vandalism. I've seen people beatboxing on the trains. It's really hip-hop in its purest form, and it's what draws me to it."
Freestyling in the compressed space of a subway car enhances the intimacy between artist and audience, Kangas said.
"They're really a one-of-a-kind, and each one is different, too," he said. "It's such an addicting one-of-a-kind thing, and the beauty of freestyling is always that spontaneous reaction from the crowd and the fact that [it's] this crowd - I mean you're on a subway, they're not going to be looking at anything else except for maybe the new Metlife ad, which really is not that much of a source of entertainment."
Whether on the subway or the stage, Kangas said he just wants to build his foundation and do his part to help hip-hop, which he said is lagging behind other genres.
"One rap album that came out last year went platinum within the 12-month span of 2006, where by comparison Dane Cook went double-platinum," he said. "Something's not adding up."
In the future, Kangas hopes to be able to influence new rappers to look to their past. "I'd love to form some sort of label that would have a concentration on re-releasing classic, out-of-print albums," he said, "because one thing that hip-hop's been really criticized for is that we're a genre of music where kids don't often look back to what's come before and they just focus on the now."
Kangas actually credits his Midwestern hometown for grounding him with a diverse understanding of hip-hop.
"The beauty of Minneapolis is, when I came up, our hip-hop scene was still, like, really forming," he said, which brought a diversity of acts to the city's first hip-hop generation. Kangas said listeners can detect this background in his own music. "I'm not comparing myself to Prince at all like this - which is easy for somebody from Minneapolis to do - but I see myself in sort of the position where he was 25 years ago, where I'm just a student who studied so many different areas of recent music for so long that I find that it allows me to really create something truly unique."
Fellow hip-hop artists say that one thing that Kangas has on his side is respect for the genre and craft. "He's a good dude, and I think he has hip-hop's best interests in mind," Conscious said. "He doesn't claim to be the definition of hip-hop. He just says he's a piece of the puzzle, just like Conscious is a piece of the puzzle."
Chaz Kangas will perform at NYU's Gentlemen of Quality Talent Showcase on Friday, April 13 at the Kimmel Center's Shorin Auditorium, room 802. Admission is $3.
Chaz Kangas will be going on tour this May with Louis Logic and The MINDSpray Crew.
Real underground hip-hop
Beatboxer Entertainment, a New York-based production company, organizes the Hip-Hop Subway Series in an underground venue. Literally.
Twice a month, usually on Sundays, about 50 hip-hop artists pour into the last car of a subway train and showcase their talents, which could be rapping, beat-boxing, break-dancing and anything in between. The performers don't look for compensation, just a new audience and opportunity to change dominant stereotypes about the genre.
Conscious, who works with Beatboxer Entertainment, said the Subway Series aims to change the misconceptions surrounding contemporary hip-hop.
"We have a culture that's being called dead, and we have a lot of things going on to change the way people perceive us, and this is way of doing it in the spirit of hip-hop, of making something out of nothing," Conscious said. "Why not show another face, another side, and use it as a springboard for artists - to give people a chance to network with each other? It's creating a progressive energy, and it's not trying to get commercial approval or get bank or anything for it."
Before boarding the train, organizers urge the crowd not to respond to antagonism from commuters, though they stress that such reactions are rare if anything.
Bill "Mr. Freespirit" Malpartida Jr., a 31-year-old computer technician, participated in his first Series event on March 25.
"This is a very positive thing going on that shows hip-hop can't be all negative," Malpartida said. "We get together, have fun - that's all that matters."
Commuters enjoyed the show as Malpartida and about 45 other artists performed on the Bronx-bound D-train that night.
"It's the way it's supposed to be without all the negative elements going on," said Brian Ellis, 36, a Lower East Side resident originally from Harlem. "This is what hip-hop is supposed to be: just rhyming off the top of their heads and laying beats. And it's every nationality: You've got from Asian to Middle Eastern and white. It's not just out in the hood, it's world-over. ... This is what you call a hip-hop melting pot."
- Barbara Leonard, staff writer
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