Rough upbringings feed Filipino group's hip-hop music

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Apr 3, 2006 | by Todd R. Brown, STAFF WRITER

In the cluttered garage of a ground-floor apartment on E Street overlooking the BART line in Colma, five young Filipino men stand in a loose semi-circle facing the wall.

"The boxes are our audience," says George "Geez" White, pointing to a stack of cardboard containers with his practice microphone, a screwdriver. "We've got Sunkist in the house."

Two more young Filipinos, DJs Daniel "Daniel-sun" Caceres and Anton "Ant-1" Ayson, cue up some records, and a booming beat by J Dilla fills the air. One by one, the rappers of Elemnop switch on a dime from casual chit-chat to spitting hot verses from their song "Still Water."

As the DJs cut from one disc to another, morphing rhythms from funk to reggae, classic rock to hip-hop, the five MCs roll right with the changes, delivering solo flows and joining voices for an uplifting chorus of "Get'em up high, high."

"I'm sorry it's not good," White says after the Wednesday rehearsal. "It will be by Saturday."

There's no need to apologize, though. Even during a casual run- through of the group's show, the voices are passionate, the lyrics pointed and compelling, the stage presence fierce and commanding. All of it will be on polished display at the "Bay Flavour" hip-hop showcase at 10 tonight in StudioZ, 314 11th St., in San Francisco.

'From the Ground Up'

The group formed in 1997 at South San Francisco's El Camino High School. As Elemnop (pronounced either Eh-Lem-Nopp or L-m-n-o-p), Colma's Charles "Ceerock" Ubungen, South San Francisco's Vince "Tiki" Cruz and Dexter "Element XP" Paulino, and San Francisco's Eric

"E-massin" Subido and White say they create "conscious rap for real people."

Elemnop cut its first mixtape, "Groundwork Radio," in 2002 and opened for hip-hop stars Obie Trice in 2003 and Method Man in 2004, both at the Fillmore. Other local gigs have been in clubs in the Mission district and Berkeley.

Up to now, the rappers have made music for their own pleasure and to make a name for themselves. Their songs are available at http:// www.elemnop.com as free MP3s, but Ubungen said the group is getting ready to shop for a record label to put out its first commercial CD about being first-generation Americans on the Peninsula's meaner streets.

"There's so many things you could get caught up in," said Subido, 24, who plans to graduate from San Francisco State University in May with a degree in child adolescent development. "Our environments provide us with nothing but unhealthy stuff."

Subido, whose mom was born in Manila, Philippines, and whose dad is from San Francisco, listed alcoholism, drug use, plentiful junk food, poor schools and American materialism as some of the woes among the Filipino community. But he said it isn't easy to discuss those problems with strangers.

"We're kind of subconsciously trained not to talk about it and not let other people know," he said. "We don't want to be perceived as oppressed."

When Subido steps to the mike as E-massin, though, it's another story.

"With my lyrics, I'm totally

spilling it out there," he said. "I don't hold back at all."

Case in point, the rapper's a capella intro to "City" from Elemnop's latest self-produced mixtape, "From the Ground Up":

Them planes flying by, you can't hear a person talk

Them pathways between Greendale where all the tenants walk

Them two 7-11s that was built on one block

South'Sco, how you think I got the flow that I rock?

Chicanos and Chinese and there's Filipinos mob

From Gellert Boulevard to the Hillside fog

The only place in U.S.A. where the FOBs call shots

Daly City, where you think I got the flow that I rock?

Several of Elemnop's members described hardships growing up and making ends meet. White, 25, an account executive for Nextel in South City, said his father died when he was 9, and his mother, who emigrated from the Pangasinan province, worked as a live-in home nurse, checking on her children once or twice a week and giving them money.

"I had pretty much a rough upbringing'cause I had no parent at the house at all," he said. A tall, lean man today, White said having to feed himself made him overweight during his youth: "There's a McDonald's across the street."

Cruz, 23, the sole West Coast rep for a Swiss biotech company, also was raised by a single mother. He enlisted in the Marines right after high school, rising to sergeant and spending a year in Okinawa, Japan, then eight weeks in Iraq, a few miles west of Fallujah. He extended his four-year commitment for six months to bring home extra money for his wife.

Cruz said the group's parents by and large support Elem-

nop's music, even if they don't relate easily to the American idiom, because it's what their children love doing -- and keeps them out of trouble.

"We didn't turn to selling drugs," he said. "Even though we were on the street, we were doing something more productive. We're making people surround us not for crack ... but to fiend for music. They fed off of our music instead of violence or whatnot.

"It was a pretty positive thing for our parents because none of us were really the greatest students in the world, but here we come - - just five ordinary Joes came together and actually did something productive."