0:00 I went to uh Head in the Clouds, the guy, right? Oh, that was that's crazy. That guy was on stage. He was on stage. Oh, really? He's cleaning it. He was set up the mic. Yeah. And I had sunglasses and hat on so people didn't know. Ahead of the cloud. [Music] Welcome back to another episode of Careful Boys. We have with us lyrics born today, ladies and gentlemen. So, like there's all this hype about your uh your music now, but like can you take us back to 93 when you were when you were cutting your first record? What was it like and what position were you in life-wise to even be able to do this? Right, man. You know, first of all, the 1900s. The 1900s. What a time. Yes. I remember
0:53 it well. I used to ride a horse. No, it was funny. So, um, yeah. Okay. So, basically, um, when I got to college, I went to UC Davis and when I got to college, I met DJ Shadow. No way. What? Where? We were all at Davis together. Center Quad. Yeah. Right. Latif was there. That's the Latric dude that you're Okay. Yep. Uh, my wife Joy Oarde was there. Uh, you met her that far back. Yep. Yep. college sweethearts. Yep. Um Jeff Chang, who was DJ Zen at that time, the author Jeff Chang. I don't know if you guys know Jeff. Um Joseph Patel, who who went on to produce um Summer of Soul now with with um with
1:45 Quest Love and and and the um the Sly Stone documentary. So all these guys that went on to do all this incredible stuff. So, we all met at the radio station at at in UC Davis at KDBs. Jeff, who who wrote Can't Stop, Won't Stop and uh a bunch of other things, he was a little bit older than us. He had already graduated from Cal and he was like, I got an idea. Okay, LB, you you are working on a demo. Blackalicious, you guys are working on a demo. Shadow, you're working on a demo. Why don't we pull our money together and make a record? You know, at that time, obviously, the internet didn't exist. I mean, think I think email had just started. You know, I'm like 17, right? I think I think he he was the first person
2:35 I known that had an email address. And I was like, why don't I just call you, you know? And so we had so between the five or six of us, I don't know, one guy had $100 from his job, another guy had a few hundred from a student loan. And, you know, we had a little bit of, you know, money from elsewhere and this and that, you know, and we put the money together and we recorded it. We recorded our first record at Danny Automators. Whoa. Dan. Oh ████ Studio, which at the time Dan had just graduated from SF State and we recorded it in his studio, his parents' house, the studio, the basement studio
3:26 that was probably about as big as this table. Damn. And underneath there was a trap door and it was the actual crawl space of his parents' house. So if if that was the mic, everything else was just dirt. You could see the you could see the peers that the house was on. And that's where we recorded uh the first uh 12 in I think I was like that was the vocal booth like you guys had dirt as the acoustics. Yes. Crazy dirt. Dirt and um and I think I was like I think I wrote it that song the song was called Send Them and I think I wrote it when I was like 16 or 17 and then recorded it when I was 18. And then back then you did vinyl and it took months for it to finish, you know, like you'd
4:16 send the tape in and then you get it back from the me the pressing plant the the 12in vinyl like six, seven months later. Damn, that's crazy, right? So it came out I think I was like 20 or 21 when it came out. Oh ████ No way. Like four years later or Well, we I wrote it a long like four years earlier. We recorded it about 3 years earlier and then we recorded it, mixed it at dance, uh, pressed it up and it came out probably about I don't know maybe a year after we had What kind of music was it? It was hip-hop. Yeah, it was very exper experimental hip-hop. Okay. Okay. And so this name of the song was Send Them and it came out in 1993. And I remember when we first got the first couple boxes sent to us. We were
5:08 at this music convention. It was a famous music convention in the '90s called the Gavin Convention. And there's pictures of us. We're on the internet. We went to Kinko's, right? FedEx, Kinko. We printed up the labels and we're sitting there on the street opening cuz they came as white label um 12 in. So blank, completely blank. were sitting there cutting the labels with scissors, peeling back, peeling them off, sticking them on the records, and then we gave them out to everybody um everybody at the at the conference. And I went on that that day. I was we went on they they had all these really awesome like showcase performances and so I went on first at the it was like 6:00 p.m. like who shows
6:00 up at a club at 6:00 p.m. And on the bill, I went on very very first. It was me and Chief XL and and uh my guy Cabbby Kev put us on the bill, but it was I think Nas Cool G Rap. Wow. Souls of Mischief. Whoa. Freestyle Fellowship. Nice. The Far Side. Dang. Apache. Curious. Uh you know, a lot of these guys aren't even with us anymore. Um yeah, that's crazy. Uh I I know I'm leaving Master A. I know I'm leaving some people out, but there were probably 30 people on that bill and we went on very very first and that was it. That day I became a professional, you know, that day I became a professional. So one record led to another. So we basically started a record label in college, you know, out of that radio
6:51 station and um we put that record out and then after that we put another we took the money from that, put it back in and we did an EP for Blackious called Melodica that came out in I think 94 95. Took that money, put it back in. Um then we did the Latics album that came out in like 97. Then took that money, put it back in. That became Black Alicious Nia as the full album. Oh, that's a good album. Took that money, put it back in. Then it became it was lyrics born later that day, my first solo album, and then on and on it went, you know, and that's how that's how basically how we we started. So you guys just pulled it together and just kept upycling over and over. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, at no point everyone was
7:43 like, "Can I get like 50 bucks back cuz I got to go?" That totally happened. Oh, yeah. Man, everybody's like, "When am I going to get paid?" Yeah. You know, cuz meanwhile, we didn't realize it at the time, but we were part of this whole indie movement. Yeah. Because all of our peers were getting signed to major labels. And eventually that happened within our crew also. So, uh, Shadow got signed, then Black Alicious got signed, and meanwhile all around us like Souls of Mischief for getting signed, Jurassic 5 is getting signed. Um, the the movement started to gain gain steam, you know, and Daleic Peoples got signed, all of Hyro, uh, Dan then got signed. Um, and it was a full-fledged movement, you know, and
8:33 meanwhile like, you know, LP and Death J was happening over here with Company Flow and then Stones Throw popped out. Suddenly, there were all these independent labels, you know, but we we were probably one of the first ones, you know. So what's the sentiment like among a group of friends that different people blown up at different times like you know my I look back on that and my undeveloped you know 21 22 year old brain and I think all of us were like the ████ going on what about me you know like there was that ████ you know and then you're you're in rap so it's competitive too you know what I mean so and then an interesting phenomenon started to happen when like when everybody started getting signed to major labels, I put out my album. I had
9:24 number one songs. I was touring the country. You know, I'm the first solo Asian-American artist to play Coachella, the first to play Kimmel, the first to play La Palooa, the first the first the first. You know, I had crazy numbers. Those ANRs that signed all of my friends, sometimes twice, like a guy would get dropped. They get he get resigned, you know, when we were shopping and around and and you know, I had the tame everything, you know, I had everything that you would all the markers that you would possibly want from an artist who's ready to go to the next. Yeah. Cuz you're Asian. You're a student. Still had the all the right
10:16 criteria, the math and the stats. Yeah. What up, guys? Come join our Patreon because there's hundreds of videos dating all the way back to 2019. That's right. If you click on the link down below, you can join our Patreon, join us on the Discord, come chat with us directly, have a fun conversation, and this will help support the channel's growth and new ideas. and also tap into our closer community by joining our Discord and get the opportunity to suggest video ideas like the ones you've seen. Thank you guys. Join our Patreon. Help us out. Thanks. See you guys there. Say hi to me. Those ANRs, those same guys that signed Mike Friends sometimes multiple times. They came to me and they said, "Ah, I don't know. You're a little too hard to market. We don't know. I don't know." Which was really, as we know, code for, "Bro,
11:06 you're Asian." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I had one guy tell me that straight up. He was like, I can't what am I going to do with this? You're Asian. And I'm like, oh, I see what's going on. There was this invisible wall that I couldn't see because, you know, and I' I've shared this and I I only share this because it's true, you know. I only share this because the we're in a different time now, but these are the barriers that we face. The bamboo ceiling. The bamboo ceiling. Thank you. you know, so hot, right? They didn't know how to market us before. Oh, what the hell? But the fact of the matter is they could have just done the same thing with me that they did with everybody cuz we had already done all the work already. Yeah. They don't got to give you anybody. No,
11:56 we had done all the work. Meanwhile, you know, you got guys sitting like, "Oh, I don't feel like recording." Yeah. Maybe I'll put out an album next year. Maybe I won't. What was Did you have an actual rebuttal for when someone told you I don't know how to market you? Like what was your actual verbal like response to that? The the response was, "You don't need to." Yeah. Look at my numbers. You don't need to. I'm already doing better than a lot of the folks that you have just signed. You know, and my lawyer at the time was with a big firm, you I mean, they represented Ludacris. They represented Timberland. They represented They represent I mean, the list goes on and on. And my lawyer was like, I can't figure this out. I'm I'm I'm He said, I'm going through. He said, you again, you have all the markers. The only thing that I'm
12:47 deducing is if you weren't if you were not Asian, I'd have a deal for you tomorrow. you know, and so finally I I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to build the machine myself. You know, nobody was going to come save my ████ ass. You know what I mean? What year was this and how long had you been in the game by this point? This was probably 2004, 2005. So, it was probably 11 years after I had made that that 12 in that I was telling you about where we were sticking the stickers on the labels. I remember having that first revelation when uh like you know on MTV there's like music videos. Yeah. And anytime something was like featuring Neptunes, the Filipino guy is way in the back. Yeah. Chad forel's like all up in the front. I'm
13:37 like why don't they bring that Asian dude closer 50/50. He's always like way back there and I'm like he's like I see I see what's going on. You know it's it's um but Thankfully everything has begun to turn you know and I again I give a lot of credit to the internet you know because we suddenly were not dependent upon you know this guy sitting behind his desk you know to issue a contract or something yes or no you know what I mean like did you ever have the uh cuz I know a lot of artists at that time too were like let's just go back to bring this act to Asia did you ever think about doing that? I tried. M you know I tried and they're like you're too American. Well, there was a at Okay, here's here's
14:27 what's interesting. Particularly in Japan at that time, New York hip-hop was really really big and so it was really hard to get any looks. Uh I mean I still toured Japan and we still sold records in Japan, you know, pretty regularly. But as far as like taking off, there was definitely at that time there was definitely a very strong uh taste for New York style, East Coast style um hip-hop. So, but I distinctly remember like walking into labels, advertising agencies, booking agencies, management companies, um, promoters offices. I never saw a single agent for like 20 years. Wow. Not
15:18 ████ one. For like 20 years. So, I realized at that point I was like, I don't have any cultural leverage. All right. In any of these places. Did anybody ever did anybody ever suggest like you know how like this was happening a lot with with Asians trying to break into industry where they'd be like I got the solution? No, nobody got you know like what is that? They wear like sunglasses and ████ to not be as Asian. Oh. Did anyone ever suggest to you like some kind of like self like betrayal like you know what I mean? No. And Okay. So, think about it like we're we're 1993, 1994. Where do I get the information, the road map to say, "Oh, that's how you become an Asian-American rapper with a 30-year career in this industry." You know, where was that reference? Oh, yeah.
16:09 Nowhere. You know, nowhere. So, I'm like, "Okay, I'm out here with the shovel, you know, just kind of digging a tunnel on my own." You know what I mean? And that's how it was, man. That's how it was. We had a um late night like DJ out here on 92.3 and his name was Theo and none of us knew he was Japanese. We thought he was a big strong black man with a with a deep ass voice. A sexy ass voice guy. Hey yo, this is Theo. And then there were rumors like, "Oh, I heard he's actually not black. Oh, I heard he's Filipino." What? He was featured in like Fresh Prince. He was on Moisha. Moisha. Moisha. That's what it is. But then later article came out. He's full Japanese. Yeah, he was tight, too. But see, radio is where you could have been not black because they're not
16:59 listening. I They're not seeing you. It's all listening. And like, damn, this DJ always shows up on time, too. What the ████ That's messed up. I remember a lot of DJs just went late. Let's get all Let's get all the DJs to be Asian, dude. I remember Play commercial. Play a commercial. That was where Asians could get in was music production and DJing behind the scenes. Yeah. Or where you weren't necessarily seen scene, you know. But they crushed it in that like Cubert and all that like you know music producers. All Cubert's whole crew. Yeah. That's cool that you never felt like pissed off about being Asian and you were more like aware that they had the problem. Oh, I was pissed off about being about being Asian. No, no, I was pissed off that I was routinely having the the door closed like the situation. But you weren't like self-hating the way like some people respond to that. No, more than the rest of us.
17:49 I feel like when when we started trying to get into entertainment, the door was kind of open because there was already like at least in comedy there was Margaret Cho, Bobby Lee, and all that. And then but a reason why we got onto YouTube was because it seemed hopeless to try to do mainstream. Yeah. So then YouTube was a big blessing for our generation and our community. Yeah. And then these guys going on ABDC was like, "Oh, Asians are actually cool." That's ████ dope. Right. That is dope. Yeah. And I think all those little slices eventually make a loaf. And no one now knows that. They don't know the struggle right now. That's right. But that's that's that that means we did it. That's right. Yeah. And I I have to keep that in mind is like you we we wish we could
18:39 have existed in a world where we didn't have to consider those things, you know, like my son does not see I mean I tell him and he's like what really you know and you know I you're lying. So I went to um I went to uh Head in the Clouds the 88. Right. Oh that was that's crazy. That guy was on stage. Yeah. Oh yeah. He was on stage. Oh, really? He's cleaning it. Yeah, he was set up the mic. Yeah, I had sunglasses I had on so people didn't know in the And and it was such a great feeling for me to be able to see that, you know, because again, for many many years, I just felt like I was out on an island, you know what I mean? So, here's here's an interesting story to that point. So when Blackious got signed to MCA, right,
19:31 Quest Love, they were also on MCA. Quest Love was obviously one of the most renowned music heads, producers that maybe our culture has ever seen. You know what I mean? He was a big blackious fan. He goes to MCA at that time and he goes, "You need to sign these guys. You need to sign these guys." And he had everybody's ear at that time, you know. Who the ████ am I going to go to? You know, I mean, ████ George Teay, you know, right? He's got no pool in hip-hop. I'm like, George, can you go talk to Russell for me? Russell Simmons. Pat Marita. Did you know Pat Marita? Who am I going to talk to? Pat, big hip-hop guy. You know, like we we just didn't that's that's my point is that we we
20:22 just didn't have any cultural leverage at that time, you know? We didn't have anybody's ear. there was nobody of influence that could um that could actually bridge that gap. That's right. You know, that's hard. And uh you know, Randall Park, who's a great friend of mine now, who you know, we talk about this all the time and he has been so him and thankfully I have a lot of friends now in the business, but they and they understand they've been through the same process and the same hurdles and the same struggles. Were you friends with him back when he was rapping too? Like before his acting? No. I saw him like freestyle for like five minutes straight. Yo, that was a nasty freestyle. I was like, "What the f███?" Did you watch Always Be My Baby? No. He He's in that with rattle park. Oh, you were in that movie. That movie's dope. He They caught me. That's cool. You
21:13 know, and that was like And for me at that point, I knew the world had changed when that happened. I knew the world had changed cuz I show up on set Asian director. all Asian cast. You know, this was just after Crazy Rich Asians, too. So, we're kind of like, it was a turning point in culture, right? That was one of the biggest turning points, I think. Crazy. Well, we're still kind of feeling that wave, I feel like. You know, and um wait for Shani, too, baby. About ride that momentum. Um and and and and what we say within our friend group is like, "Wow, aren't you glad we stuck it out, you know, so that we can participate now, right?" But also, I think I think before too, a lot of people that just weren't talented, they use that as an excuse. And I seen it all the time in the Asian film festivals and stuff, and I'm like, "Man, you guys just blame white people. You
22:04 just suck. Like, you're just not good." Like, you had to have whack rapper people, dude. They're all They're like the most like they don't want to get us from the label, bro. Right. And I'm just like I think you just suck. You and me, right, pal? It's cuz we Asian. I was looking at him. I don't know, man. You You're hard to market. I don't know what to do. Well, you can't market whack. That's true.
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