boston progress radio

As an unapologetic hip hop nerd and dilligent troller of mp3 blogs, I have recently noticed that CHOPS has had a hand in a lot of noteworthy remixes – mostly unofficial – for artists like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Pharrell.

It’s all coming full circle. Using this online forum to write about CHOPS is vaguely reminiscent of my first meaningful interactions with online communication when I was in college. I am aware the Internet existed well before 1999, but no regular people knew how to use it until about then. Some younger heads may have trouble believing this, but when I was finishing up my freshman year in college in 1997, we were still figuring out how to use e-mail. In 1997, I did not own a CD or DVD player, and I certainly did not know that by 1999 you would be able to listen to CDs, watch DVDs, and surf the Internet all on the same machine. Up until that point, computers were just typewriters that didn’t require Wite-Out. (If you’re interested, you can ask me about the day I saw wireless Internet for the first time in 2002 – talk about an experience…)

But as a 20 year-old fan of hip hop, aspiring writer, and burgeoning API activist in 1999, I was exploring this newfangled Internet for some confluence of all three interests, and I somehow found the Mountain Brothers, a Chinese American trio of emcees representing Philly. I couldn’t figure out how to get my hands on a copy of their independently-released CD Self: Volume 1 in Boston, so when I visited Washington DC in anticipation of a summer internship, I made sure to make a trip to the Tower Records in I Street to see if it had traveled the 2 hours from Philadelphia to Northwest DC. Lo and behold, two copies sat on the rack; I scooped up both.

Of course they could flow. Styles Infinite had that lazy/cocky delivery down to a tee, like right after the last line of his verse, he was about to yawn real big. Peril-L had the unique angles with his content and delivery, making comments that were familiar but new. CHOPS had a real distinctive voice, clever jokes, and handled all the production; more impressive, all instrumentation came from him – no samples. I’m understating the skills here, because I really don’t have the words to describe how much I dug this record. Almost every track was certifiable, and a few – especially the minor hit “Galaxies” (I’ve included the Chris Chan Lee-directed video above) – stood out as some of the better hip hop songs of the year by any artist.

The MBs were signed to a major label at one point, but put out their disc independently because they weren’t willing to dress as ninjas and come out of vats of sweet and sour sauce on stage…or something. Anyway, they did end up doing commercials for Sprite and Nike, and there was definitely a buzz about them underground. And by underground, I mean on the Internets. There was no way I was hearing about any non-signed non-local rap artists anywhere but online, and as far as Internet stars go, the Mountain Brothers were some of the brightest. You should have seen the love they got on the boards back then. If the Internet’s infancy could have launched a lasting music career, the MBs would have been one of the first. (Did this paragraph make sense? [Does it matter?])

My favorite MBs song didn’t actually appear on the first record, but on a compilation put out by APISA in 1999 called Elephant Tracks. The song was “Community,” and each member took two verses apiece talking about different issues facing API communities: sweatshop labor, parental pressure, racial profiling by police, lack of communication between API men and women, alcoholism, and hate crimes. As much as they kept the “just having fun” vibe pretty strong on the album, they took this opportunity to get serious and created a classic, a track that sounds even better today than the first time I heard it. And regardless of their drama and frustrations with the music industry, they never lost sight of what was truly important, as Styles demonstrates with lines like “Listen up, Ms Vincent, keep your Chin lifted/I know your Mister’s lynching got you in an irate state…/ makes an Asian want to go uptown, hand out buckdowns and break shit/ take it in our own hands…” Trying to support a member of our community at the same feeling helpless themselves, the Mountain Brothers wasn’t just a group that you wanted support because they looked like you. They were you: mad at the system, but still likely to get jiggy when appropriate.

They ended up dropping one more in 2003, Triple Crown, which was also strong, still one of the better releases of the year, but lacked the sharpness of their first CD. A few short years later, they’ve broken up. From what I hear, Styles is a doctor now and Peril is a pharmacist; much love to them for doing what they do. But CHOPS is still doing his thing, and he’s doing it hard. He’s released two CDs on which he’s recruited some of the biggest names in hip hop – like Talib Kweli, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Raekwon, Paul Wall, and The Game – to drop vocals over his beats, while making sure to include the lesser-known emcees that he’s been connected to for almost a decade, including Bahamadia, Planet Asia, and Rasco.

So I’m wishing them all the best of luck in everything they’re doing. I still have hopes for a Mountain Brothers reunion at some point, and I’m sure legions of 25-35 year-old API hip hop heads are thinking the same thing.

Oh, and as some anonymous blogger said on some hip hop nerd website: Can somebody please give CHOPS’s phone number to Jay-Z?

Last 5 posts by giles

• Love or Something or Other - July 15th, 2008
• Hollywood? - July 9th, 2008
• That's All You're Good For... - June 25th, 2008
• Apologies to My Man - June 20th, 2008
• Sublingual - June 10th, 2008

Tags: Appreciation, Commentary, Video.