Jake the Snake may look all sweet and youthful, but he has a real passion for local music. Local hip hop music, to be exact. He will host a concert of such musical delights on September 29th at Hemenway Courtyard. Jake recently sat down with Ka Lamakua to talk about the concert, Hawai‘i hip hop, and his journey to becoming a DJ.KL: So, the hip hop groups that are going to play at this concert, are they student groups?
JTS: No, it’s community groups—I don’t think any of them go to UH Manoa. Maybe some go to a community college, but I don’t think any go here.
KL: Are they local hip hop groups in the sense that they are really making music that’s specific to this place or is it that they’re from here?
JTS: Mostly just that they’re from here, live here. It’s funny because Hawai‘i hip hop is seen as so small, and, like, any hip hop done by local artists is pretty underground…it’s just average local people that I didn’t know about, local hip hop and so I started doing my radio show. So, it’s local hip hop in the sense that they’re from here, local artists.
KL: What’s the hip hop like? Is there a dominant theme in terms of what people can expect from it?
JTS: Hawai‘i hip hop is really different from West Coast hip hop or East Coast hip hop just because of our environment. People in Hawai‘i write about different things, you know—you think about different things being in the Hawai‘i environment. There’s a pretty wide variety within Hawai‘i, there are a lot of groups that might be more Hawaiian, you know, there’re different groups like Sudden Rush that use Hawaiian in their music, there’re some that may rap more about the island or the place, the ocean, but there’re also groups that don’t—you can’t necessarily know they’re from Hawai‘i just from their lyrics. So, it’s kind of a wide range but the sound is really different from mainland hip hop. It tends to be more conscious, a lot of times, more positive on the whole. All the groups [that are playing on the 29th] you can listen to online, they all have Myspace pages, and I play their music on my radio show on KTUH too.
KL: Are there a lot of groups that are being formed—is it a really creative sort of environment to be in, or is it just, you know, six groups and that’s all you get.
JTS: I think it’s really growing, the scene is really growing, and there’s starting to be more shows. I’m trying to do shows at UH. I did a show last year at Campus Center, that was the first hip hop event at school that the Activities Council has done for a while. And then I did a smaller one at Hemenway courtyard in January, so the upcoming one is the third one on campus.
There are more events going on now—there’s one that goes down at Detox every last Saturday of the Month, Wormwood, which is put on by Nabahe….There is a lot more Hawai‘i hip hop than most people think, it’s just very disjointed. People don’t know about the music so the hip hop guys all know each other but there’s no real following yet. I think there are a lot of up-and-coming groups and it’s growing but it’s definitely one of the smallest underground music scene here. As far as indie bands, punk bands, ska bands go, there’s a pretty big following, a pretty big scene, but for local hip hop it’s hard. It’s cool because Nabahe invites indie bands to play at the hip-hop shows. It's cross-genre and people are exposed to music that they normally wouldn't hear. So it's not just an indie show or a hip-hop show, but a blend of different sounds.
KL: Why did you start DJing? Why did you feel that this is something you had to do?
JTS: I started on the activities council when I was a Freshman here (I’m a junior now) and I was helping out with the events and we always did Hawaiian music concerts, reggae concerts, you know, Jawaiian music, indie bands or ska. And, I had always been into hip hop, but not real hard and underground stuff—I was just interested and I was like, we should try to do a hip hop event on campus, so I kinda advocated for that and they gave me that chance last November to put together a hip hop show. I was so stoked that I could do a hip hop show and then I was like, oh no, I don’t know any of the local hip hop bands, so I was wondering who I was going to get to perform, ‘cuz it’s not like we can fly people in, you know. So, I had to start researching and to track down groups. That’s how I got into to the local hip hop scene.
I did that show in November and it had a pretty good response, and I met Nabahe and he said, ‘Oh, you’re at UH—you should apply to KTUH to become a DJ.’ And I thought, no, why would I do that, I’m not a radio person, and I wasn’t a real hip hop head, I’m not good enough to do that. He said, ‘No, you should think about it.’ I kinda forgot about it and then I met MillionBillion who’s a hip hop DJ at KTUH and he’s like, ‘Oh, you helped out with that hip hop event in November, it was pretty good, you should apply to be a DJ at KTUH, and I thought that it was weird that two people told me to apply for KTUH. I applied at the end of December, 2005, and didn’t expect to hear back for a while, but they called me about two weeks later to say that they could train me.
I just dove in head-first and tried to get music from anyone I could, and fine local albums which are really hard to come by. Not many people have put out real albums. A lot of music I play is burned, unreleased, like people will send me tracks over email, or burn me a CD. I just got on a regular show the fall, when school started. It’s nice to be able to host a radio show—you can really get a message out there, and so I thought, why not help out local artists because there’s no other place where they can get their music played on the air.
KL: Do you think you’re going to DJ or promote hip hop for a while?
JTS: It’s more just a personal interest or hobby. I’m an engineering major, so that’s my main focus right now, but I’m on Activities Council, and I work for the Board of Publications Advertising program, and I work at KTUH, so I have this interest in more promotional and art stuff, music. I want to continue promoting music as a student, but I don’t know about doing it beyond that. But, definitely at UH, because I think UH should be the epicenter for local hip hop.
Check out this video of local hip hop:
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