By MIAO OLIVAR

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Before Hip Hop

Because I am the product of two baby boomers, a deep appreciation for hip hop did not come naturally to me. As a child I listened exclusively to RJ100.3 on the radio. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Dave Clark Five, The Shadows, The Ventures and a slew of Motown and Stax Records artists comprised the foreword to this romance saga that is my love affair with the genre and its accompanying culture.

With this solid pop, instrumental, soul, and R&B background, you’d have thought that I was a shoo-in to be a born and bred hip hop enthusiast. You’d have also been badly mistaken.

The First Time We Met: Legit Misfitz – “Jabongga (1994)”

Like most middle class, post-colonial, post-EDSA revolution, post-Generation X children in the Philippines, I caught the OPM rock fever with the release of the Eraserheads’ “Ultraelectromagneticpop!” debut album. I was 10 years old and struggling to find my identity in a school that didn’t seem to appreciate my natural capacity to be a shy, quiet nerd with a penchant for stuffy, old-fogy music. So, it happened that my inner nerd concealer became OPM rock. It was fresh, it was new, and best of all it was something I liked that everybody else seemed to like as well. I saved my lunch money obsessively, and in between buying Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High books, I bought cassette tapes and song hits. From  RJ100.3 I switched to LA105.9, and along with rock bands like Rivermaya, Teeth, The Youth, and Yano, I was exposed to heavier and louder music in the forms of Dahong Palay, Tame The Tikbalang, Kabaong Ni Kamatayan and other acts that I’m sure had even more colorful names.

A year into my OPM rock-induced nerd cover-up operation, I heard “Jabongga” for the first time. I was 11 years old, the song was about sex, and it had a catchy and ambiguously worded chorus. Of course, I loved it! It was arguably the “Otso Otso” of our generation – you heard it everywhere, and even though everyone knew it was bastos, they let kids listen to it anyway. “Jabongga” became the first honest-to-goodness local hip hop song that I loved and let seep into my consciousness. More of a novelty than an actual appreciation for the genre, this was nevertheless my first real introduction to hip hop music. (I’ll be honest, though, and admit that this wasn’t really the first local hip hop song I was exposed to – that dubious honor goes to Andrew E’s take on Cash Money’s “Find An Ugly Woman,” better known as the now-classic “Humanap Ka Ng Panget.”)

I bought Legit Misfitz’s Sons of Flip Hop album and Francis M’s Freeman album a year later. Although already making overtures, hip hop didn’t really bring out the big guns at this point (hanggang ligaw-tingin pa lang), as my then favorite single off Freeman was still more of a rap/rock effort (“Baw Waw Waw!”).

Our First Kiss: Run-D.M.C. – “Walk This Way (feat. Aerosmith) (1986)”

The beginning of my love affair with hip hop came right before high school. The first kiss, if you will, happened one summer day while I was listening to Aerosmith’s “Get A Grip” (one of my favorite albums of all time, by the way, regardless of genre). My brother mentioned offhandedly that band had collaborated with Run-D.M.C. in the ‘80s. Unimpressed and unwilling to believe this bit of trivia, I was nevertheless blown away when my brother actually had me listen to “Walk This Way.” Hard rock mixed with hip hop? What a mind boggling, impossible notion! By this time I was already a couple of albums deep into Rage Against the Machine’s beginnings of rap metal, but the converse (rock music vocals over a hip hop beat, I suppose) had never really occurred to me as a possible successful alternative. I mean, this was AEROSMITH.

There's A Party In My Pants And Hip Hop Is Invited

And so I walked that way, talked that way, and went to first base with hip hop. I borrowed Run-D.M.C.’s “Tougher Than Leather” from my brother and J.J. Fad’s “Supersonic” from my sister, and started from there.

Where Hip Hop Is Me: KRS-One – “Step Into A World (Rapture’s Delight) (1997)”

From first base, I gave hip hop the cold shoulder and we broke up after that fateful summer romance. “It’s not you; it’s me,” I said. I needed some time and space. I was in high school and I finally grew out of all the little insecurities that weighed me down as a nerdy, pimply, chubby glasses-wearing prepubescent girl. Better yet, in my weird high school for weirdly smart people, I found it almost refreshingly normal to be different. People shared interests, sure, but everyone had their own little things that nobody else quite understood – and that was okay! And so I was the weird kid with the weird, eclectic taste in music. Going back to my leanings towards older music and influenced by hip hop’s fondness for cross-genre sampling, I discovered The Police, The Cure and Blondie, who would all become musical mainstays in my life.

And then came “Step Into A World (Rapture’s Delight).” By the time this song came out I’d already accepted that hip hop was a real and tangible part of my existence. Time stood still when I first saw the music video of this song one afternoon on MTV. Blondie’s “Rapture,” one of my favorite songs of all time, was in a hip hop song. Hook, line and sinker, I fell for hip hop again. That song on MTV was the equivalent of John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler holding up his boom box outside Dianne Court’s house. There is no defense for a romantic gesture of that magnitude.

Going to Second Base: 2Pac – “California Love (feat. Dr. Dre & Roger Troutman) (1995)”

When I said that I fell for hip hop again, I neglected to mention that I fell for it hard. After the silent treatment I gave it following our long cooling-off period, the floodgates burst open and I was exposed to 2 years’ worth of grieving for 2Pac. You have to understand that at this point I knew of him, but I didn’t really have an understanding of how important he was. I know this now, but I didn’t back then: he was our Kurt Cobain. Today, I feel that everyone else’s April 8 is our September 13, but in those days I didn’t know jack shit. Everyone told me he was a genius, killed at the height of his career, was potentially the greatest rapper in the history of ever, yadda yadda yadda. A least, that’s how it sounded to me. There was no significance gleaned until I actually took the time to listen to his music and learn about his life.

I found myself smack dab in the middle of a culture in mourning; it was like I walked into a king’s funeral just in time for the eulogies. Perhaps driven by everyone else’s grief, I scrambled to find out exactly why this man was spoken of with such deference and respect. It felt like this ignorance bordered on blasphemy, and I got tired of the accusatory glances I got whenever I spoke up and asked, “Why, what happened ba?” Yes, I started out as stupid as the next kid, but I did realize right away that I needed to catch up and research on what happened to hip hop in the years between “Walk This Way” and “Step Into A World (Rapture’s Delight).” I mean, it was obvious that I couldn’t proclaim my love for hip hop without knowing anything about it.

Sadly Not A Costume

More than just a club hit requested by every balikbayan on every hip hop night I went to during that period in my life, “California Love” was the door through which I found out more about 2Pac and hip hop culture as a whole; and effectively leveled up my appreciation for the genre. Score 2 for hip hop; we went to second base that year.

When Hip Hop Deserved Better: The Pharcyde – “Passin’ Me By (1993)”

Sometime shortly before high school graduation, I fell back into the habit of putting myself down and being insecure. This was brought on by the inexplicable pettiness of teen politics coupled with my overly dramatic, post-pubescent mood swings. Spurning what I interpreted as the ordinary, lackluster version of me that I assumed everyone took for granted, I arbitrarily chose to focus on my “foreign” roots.

With my birthplace (San Francisco, California) as a point of reference, I looked up colleges that I could get into and read up on the West Coast, hoping for a fresh start at a foreign university after high school. Looking back, it was an overwrought, over-thought “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m going down the garden to eat some worms” phase that went on far longer than it ever should have.

“Passin’ Me By” was a perfect song for me during this time; I did feel that everyone was just passing me by. I was honestly kind of a drag to hang out with. The undue emphasis I placed on my birthplace – resulting in my misguided preference for West Coast hip hop – was obnoxious and annoying, apart from being illogical. Hip hop deserved better; the tail end of high school brought out the crazy in me, but hip hop didn’t give up and just went along with it patiently (sort of like Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon, I like to think).

Soul Searching With Hip Hop: The Notorious B.I.G. – “Hypnotize (1997)”

If the West Coast had 2Pac, the East Coast had Biggie – everyone knew that. (And “if you don’t know, now you know!”) And yet prior to widening my horizons, my exposure to the Notorious B.I.G.’s music was limited to the background music in that scene in “10 Things I Hate About You” where Julia Stiles gets drunk on tequila shots and hits her head on a light fixture while dancing on a table. Yes, that was “Hypnotize” – a song that I will forever associate with Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, however odd that may seem.

This was really a period of soul-searching for me; in keeping with my musical journey, I listened to anything and everything people recommended. The days of selfishness and self-loathing were over; I have hip hop a break, and like a good girlfriend I asked, “What about you, love? Tell me more about yourself. What do you like doing? What interests you?” Hip hop breathed a sigh of relief and loosened up, showing me all the wonderful things about him that I’d missed or ignored initially.

I began making friends in #fliphop on mIRC, and they played a big part in this crash course on hip hop from the East Coast (and elsewhere). There were so many artists that I discovered simply because I was willing to take the time out to listen to some random mp3 some random person sent me over the Internet. This was also when I first met and joined up with about half a dozen people to form what would eventually become Illdef Productions.

They're Going To Kill Me

Third Base (Making Beautiful Music Together): Wu-Tang Clan – “C.R.E.A.M. (1994)”

Hip hop and I went to third base in college and started making beautiful music together (quite literally, in fact). Illdef went into full production mode and we started composing songs, performing at events and recording our music for a compilation album. This was also when an online forum called Urbanpinoy was at its most active; I met so many MCs there who constantly challenged me to be a better musician. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration for me to say that without Urbanpinoy I probably would never have progressed enough to eventually create hip hop music entirely on my own. Some of the people from Urbanpinoy eventually went on to form Turbulence Productions, one of the most successful independent hip hop crews today.

What Am I Wearing And Why Didn't My Gay Friend Stop Me

This was a golden era for me. For the first time, it was truly more than just the music that drew me to hip hop. It was the whole package. There were so many things that I noticed for the first time – the hi-hats accentuating 16^th beats in an instrumental, the slight shuffle in time that contributed to the head bobbing quality of a song, the lyrical setups containing multisyllabic rhymes and punchlines, and the beauty and elegance of turntablism as a standalone art form. There were also other elements of hip hop aside from rap and turntablism, I learned; break dancing and graffiti were part of the culture, too, as well as beatboxing (or what they called the “5^th element”).

Ultimately, I left Illdef because of artistic differences but I continued to make music. Calling myself a “renegade femcee,” I made the rounds and collaborated with more than a dozen different artists online. (If you look hard enough, most of these collaborations are still on the Internet.) This was the pinnacle of my self-confidence, and I have only hip hop to thank for this boost in my self-esteem. The freedom to say whatever I wanted to say in my songs was exhilarating! One of the first songs I composed, arranged and recorded by myself was called “One Note Symphony;” its chorus quickly became my philosophy for the next few years. Don’t ever let anyone else tell you you’re not as special as you think you are. It had been a while since I fell for hip hop, but it was only then that I really started to fall in love.

Irreconcilable Differences: Syke – “Sa Mundo Ng Mga Walang Kapiling (2000)”

Of course, like most good things, this blush of first love didn’t last long. College took a backseat, and hip hop took over. However, now that I was actually living and breathing hip hop on a daily basis I started noticing things that really irked me and contradicted my recent self-confidence boost.

I received a major label contract offer, with the stipulation that I would have little to no creative control over my music, lose 40+ lb. and allow an image consultant to “advise” me. I turned down the offer and never told anyone because I was so embarrassed about the weight issue. Funnily enough, my weight wasn’t a problem for the various hip hop beat producers and rappers who thought that I would be receptive to their advances. Maybe they thought that weight was inversely proportional to self-esteem and intelligence. While it was sometimes flattering, when the attention came with empty promises (or worse, threats to discredit my name) it ceased to be amusing. For my honesty, integrity and discretion, the local hip hop scene rewarded me with lewd and rude messages left on my answering machine, persistent mobile phone stalkers, and rumors that I gave free blow jobs to anyone who promised to give me a break.

It felt like I had given everything to hip hop, and asked for so little; and in return hip hop took advantage of me. I knew it wasn’t fair to blame the genre for the dumb people who happened to be part of the same scene, but I did. In time, the thrill of performing, making music and meeting artists and musicians that I idolized no longer made up for the exhaustion and stagnation that I felt because I had neglected my studies and my personal life just to further my existence in a local scene that I felt no longer respected me for who I was at the time.

This Gay Friend Helped But Let Me Wear A Silly Hat

I gave way and was replaced immediately by a gaggle of ledge dancers dressed in skimpy clothes and red thongs (because we all know that red thongs get you in the club for free – if you show them to whoever happened to be at the gate). I stopped prioritizing music and started going back to school. Hip hop and I broke up for a second time due to “irreconcilable differences,” meeting occasionally for tuna fettucini and bottomless iced tea during Encomium’s open mic nights to talk about the good old days. How was I ever going to repair this damaged relationship?

It was around this time that I met Syke, whom I had idolized ever since I first heard “Sa Mundo Ng Mga Walang Kapiling,” arguably the best Tagalog-language Filipino hip hop song ever. His dedication to the craft, even after years upon years of challenges and obstacles (because really, if someone as talented as he is has only had 1 album in all these years, there’s got to be a problem), was really an eye opener for me. Morose and depressed, I listened to “Sa Mundo Ng Mga Walang Kapiling” constantly, in the hopes that Syke’s skills and knowledge would rub off on me.

Fourth base: Jay-Z – “December 4^th (2003)”

Sometime between 2002 and 2003, I met Los, who would eventually go on to form the Out of Body Special with his college friends. It was after a particularly terrifying gig that I played at Mazzo, subbing for their regular performer, the amazingly talented Artstrong. I don’t know if Los knows this but he was the “bridge” that got me and hip hop back together for good. (Incidentally, the the gig was actually called “The Bridge.” Haha. Thanks, Head On Productions!) Hip hop and I had a lot of differences, and we weren’t really compatible, but at the end of the day I loved hip hop and hip hop loved me back. Slowly, Los and I went back to the basics and uncovered all of the things that brought me close to hip hop in the first place – the music, the beat, the lyrics, the story. It felt like coming home.

And then, Jay-Z’s “Black Album” came out. At the time, the hype surrounding it was unbelievable. It was supposed to be his last album (hah!), and the high point of his career as a hip hop artist. I bought the album during the first week of its release and listened to it nonstop for months. It got me thinking: here’s someone who’s done so much for the genre that he’s ready to quit (hah!), and here I was – walking away from hip hop after our first big fight. I was better than that.

Early in 2004, I started planning for what would eventually be called Katipunera, my 6-song love letter to hip hop. I listened to everything: from The Temptations to Wu-Tang Clan, from Janis Joplin to Erykah Badu, from VST to SVC. By this time, hip hop and I had reached a new level of being; I finally understood the point of hip hop after all those years of trying to figure it out. Hip hop is about having your own voice, and making it count.

Out With The Silly Hat, In With The Silly Top Goddamnit -- Also, Los

Hip hop and I went to fourth base that year with the release of my independent EP.

The Goal Ain’t Revolution But To Revolutionize: Lil Miao – “Fine Line (2004)”

Although I never got my video on MYX or MTV and my songs were on the radio for only a few months, I felt like I’d done enough. This was my voice, my message and my music.

And just like that, I got it. I got that it didn’t matter how long or how short the journey was; I could have gotten into hip hop at five years old or just after college and the effect would have been the same. If you keep things real and are straightforward about the things that you do and do not believe in or appreciate – if you don’t compromise your intrinsic worth – then you’ve made it. Hip hop as a medium is at its most powerful when the message resonates within you; if it tells a story that you can relate to, or it evokes strong emotions through the intricacies of lyrics or instrumentals, then it’s done its job. Hip hop is about passion and honesty, pure and simple.

That, I realized, was what was missing. I had forgotten what it was like to connect with the music and the music alone. I just got so distracted by tangential issues that the music couldn’t get through to me anymore. Simply pretending isn’t going to work. This is my dream, my wish. And it DID come true. So I’m taking it back to where it belongs: with people who truly appreciate it for what it is.

MC Pale Pilsen Said, Put Your Right Thumb Right Through The V

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Miao Olivar is a hip hop artist in hiding. These days she spends her time immersed in Nintendo DS games, playing board games with her friends, and finding out what it means to be a newlywed.

She currently works for the government, and writes for The Philippine Online Chronicles and various other publications in her free time. She also maintains a personal blog consisting of playlists,  illustrations, video game and comic book reviews, and the occasional actual life update