Thoughts on Charlie Chase and Cyprus Hill

Ahhh... I've finally made a connection between my first experiences with hip hop and the early roots of the genre. It was 1994. I was 13 and had no idea what real music was about. Up until this point I was listening to a burnt out old tape of Phil Collins (No Jacket Required) and the Miami Vice soundtrack. I was young but still knew that a lot was going on social and politically in the US. We were dealing the aftermath of the first Gulf War, and the LA riots. This particular summer saw the death of Curt Cobain and the OJ murder trial was beginning to take shape. All of these things set the tone for one of my most formative experiences, the discovery of real music.

My sister was a little older than I was and had her fingers on the pulse of the music scene. She exposed me to Nirvana, Beck, and the Pixies for the first time that summer. I was also exposed to a little hip hop group called Cyprus Hill.

Now up until this point the only thing white america knew about hip hop was how evil and destructive it was to our youth. Tipper Gore was all over the air waves several years prior telling us how bands like 2Live Crew were destroying our youth. Other groups like Public Enemy and other early rappers were making a break from hip hop to hard core rap. Their reputation only solidified that image in the minds of my parents.

My parents knew about the 'evils' of rap and forbid us from listening to any of it. So 'white music', Beck, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam could be listened to freely. But we knew that Cyprus Hill had to be played at night, with the head phones on, always watching our bedroom door with our fingers on the stop button just in case mom or dad came calling after hours.

I didn't understand it at the time, but the disdain my parents had for this new breed of hip hop wasn't new in the eyes of the artists, especially the chicanos and other latin hip hop artists. Just as 'white music' is by white musicians for white people, so to was early hip hop seen as a blacks only affair. Although some of the first graffiti artist and hip hop party goers were latin, to be a DJ you had to be black. Or so the stereotype went...

Now, a new comer breaks onto the scene of hip hop in the form Charlie Chase. A skinny, mustached Puerto Rican kid with slicked back hair trying to make a name for himself in the arena hip hop dominated by black men. Charlie's first DJing gigs were successful due, in part, as Juan Flores describes in "Puerto Rocks", to him being in the back in the DJ booth, behind the MCs. As his popularity grew, he was able to take the stage, but the crowds weren't able to accept that the skills they heard on the turntable were that of a latino. Some were even shocked to learn that some of the fresh breaks they were dancing to were cuts from salsa music, incorporated into mix by Chase.

Charlie Chase went on to break ground for other latino's in the hip hop world. As the second wave of b-boys carried with them a substantial number of Puerto Ricans, latino's began to gain acceptance in the hip hop world. Around this time Charlie Chase began to make it big with his band 'The Cold Crush Brothers'. They were signed and toured Japan for a while, spreading hip hop across the globe.

Although this was the beginning of latin rap in America, the scene really took off as the latin population in LA began to experiment with their own brand of calo-rap. California, as Ragan Kelly explains in "Hip Hop Chicano", has a rich history of latino musical innovation. This was due, in part, to the huge latino population in southern California. In fact, the latino population is so overwhelming in the area that, since the 1940's, latino trends in California have been followed by blacks and whites alike. From dances like Hully Gully and the Corrido Rock, to low riders, latino culture took center stage. So its no surprise that this area embraced the budding latino hip hop scene and added to it some of its most famous artists: Mellow Man Ace, Kid Frost and yes Cyprus Hill.

Is interesting to me to see how blacks in the Bronx used hip hop as a racial identifier to separate themselves from what they might have perceived as the oppressive white culture. Then, within this hip hop culture, they suppressed another group, abet not very long, the latinos from taking an active role in shaping hip hop music. This is a reminder to all of us that, although races of people might use their culture for self identification, as Charlie Chase put it "to me, rap is color blind, that's that!"