LIL ROB STREET SOLDADO

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IM A BIG CHICANO RAP FANLIL ROBS BIO"I'm still around, I still put it down / Fuck, I ain't goin’ nowhere / Ese Lil Rob’s back continuing to drop the neighborhood music / As long as you're there / Something to play loud, be proud of / Something to bump to, get drunk to / Something to Fuck to, make love to / Even got a lil' something for the clubs, too / All in all, it's feel good music / Real good music, REAL HOOD MUSIC!" - Lil Rob (from “I’m Still Here”) Just subtitle this west coast rap king’s latest album “Lil Rob Takes a Road Trip!” Hip Hop’s favorite Chicano – known for ‘reppin’ his hood to the fullest and keeping his rhymes real – hops into his Impala for a funky fresh spin…but on a mission: to take his music, and his people, into some bomb new directions on Twelve Eighteen (his fifth CD and third for Houston-based Upstairs Records). "You can only say so many things about the neighborhood on the same album,” Rob states. “I'm proud to be Mexican - a Chicano - and of where I'm from. Some styles of my music may be new, but that doesn't change who I am. I've got some west coast beats and some sped-up oldies. And for my old fans, I still kick some original oldies samples.” "Summer Nights," the first single from Twelve Eighteen, has already succeeded in blasting down barriers for the barrio superstar. The song went Top 10 in the nation on Billboard Monitor’s radio chart, which made Upstairs Records only the second independent record company to penetrate that portion of the chart in over a decade! Though Rob has sold over 400,000 of all his previous albums combined, his roots remain in the underground of Latin rap. However, with “Summer Nights” being so passionately embraced by Top 40 stations, Rob now has his first official crossover pop radio smash. No one is more surprised than the bad boy himself. “One of my producers, Fingaz, thought all I did was rap over oldies. He played the beat for ‘Summer Nights’ and asked me if I could rap over it. I was like, ‘Yeah, bro’ and wrote the first verse right there at the studio! We recorded it a few days later.” “Summer Nights” sets a precedent for much of the rest of Twelve Eighteen. Splitting time between producers Fingaz (from Corona, California) and Moox (from Austin, Texas), Rob cut 26 tracks, then selected the12 best for Twelve Eighteen. A few of the unique new beats brought the freak out in Lil Rob. “I've got some nasty songs on this album,” he says grinning slyly, referring to “Playground” and “Bring Out The Freak in You” - “some music for the strip clubs!” Another standout of the new songs is “Rough Neighborhood,” a sequel to his earlier hit “Brought Up in a Small Neighborhood.” For this one, Rob samples "Mannish Boy," the Muddy Waters classic as covered by The Newcomers. “I rapped over some blues, bro,” he says with pride! “Some rappers stay in one style. I rap over any music that I like, which usually makes for a different type of song. On ‘Rough Neighborhood,’ I talk about seeing the druggies on the way to school and my gang bang days…but with a message at the end. It's about doing stupid things as a kid, being older now and reminiscing.” Lil Rob was born Robert Flores and raised in La Colonia, a section of Eden Gardens in the North County of San Diego. “It was rough in a sense,” Rob remembers, “but if you grew up there, that was just life.” Rob’s life was wall to wall music - in a combo-nation of styles. “My brother Pete DJ’d under the name “Whiskers” at house parties. We grew up with all the break-dancing music. I was in 3rd grade doing The Windmill! My dad sang and played bass in an oldies band, and my Grandma sang rancheras.” Though Rob was a shy kid, Pete let him tag along to some of the parties. “He taught me how to blend records, scratch and transform. Back then, Spanish Fly, Kid Frost and Lighter Shade of Brown were all out, but I was already writing my own raps. When I was 12 – too young for my brother to take me to certain parties - I'd stay home, mess around with the turntables, rap into a cheap lil radio, or loop oldies on a double deck box (dual cassette) to make a lil' song. Then my brother would go around town playing it real loud with his homey and embarrassin’ my ass. I was just starting to catch the beats.” By 1992 when Rob reached 16, though, he was no joke. Rob was doing more than merely catching a beat when he dropped his first street single on the hood - "Mexican Gangster" b/w "Oh, What a Night" – which quickly started a buzz. He followed it up with a joint for San Diego’s Group Car Club called “Do My Thing.” His career appeared to be on its way, but the streets had another kind of lesson for Rob to learn. “We used to gang bang if you want to call it that,” Rob begins. “I saw my brother go through it, then me and my friends went through it up against the same dudes. We didn't even know who they were. That's when it stopped making sense. We were hating them because they're from another town…because we were ‘supposed’ to.... At 18, I got shot in the face. I had to air-lifted out in a helicopter. My jaw was wired shut for seven weeks! They did a tracheotomy on my throat and cosmetic surgery on my lip. There were bullet fragments lodged in my spinal cord. I'm lucky to be walking, let alone alive. Everything was expensive. I was really skinny back then and every time I wanted to leave the house, I'd see my mom crying...on the phone with the insurance company that didn’t want to cover my medical bills. We could have lost the house….” It was during this time that Rob started writing again, pouring all the stories of his life, his neighborhood and its people into easy-flowing rhymes about cruisin’, lovin’, partyin’ and survivin’ that would rep for La Raza through the streets of San Diego and beyond. In 1997, Lil Rob dropped his first CD, Crazy Life, which sold 60,000 copies according to Soundscan…NOT counting what was bootlegged! Rob took his time and dropped another bomb on the hood in 2000 with his sophomore release Natural High: High `Til I Die. Again, with no radio airplay, the CD sold 90,000 copies thanks to word of mouth on the street about joints like “Wicky Wicked,” “Natural High” and “I Remember.” NEVER posturing, Rob just rapped honestly and humorously about the world around him. This led to Lil Rob’s signing with up-and-coming independent Upstairs Records, where he consistently kicked out brisk selling street heat beginning with Lil Rob: The Album in 2003 (featuring “Brought Up in a Small Neighborhood” and the tender “Linda Mujer”) and Neighborhood Music in 2004 (featuring “Can We Ride” and “It’s My Life”). The higher profile resulted in Rob embarking on his first eye-opening concert tours. “Being in San Diego my whole career then touring and seeing all the fans packing the places has definitely been a highpoint,” he states. “I did a retail tour of Las Vegas, then all over Texas and Arizona, and had thousands of people lined up for me at autograph signings. They all looked like me and dug what I'm saying...'cuz no one else is sayin' it!” Rob has come a long way since Latin rap was looked upon as a novelty at best by the industry. “Being who I am and the way I look,” Rob continues, “it was hard to even get on the radio and do all the things that I've done. People would put me down when I visited the radio stations, call me ‘vato’ and ‘ese.’ They'd make fun of the way I talk, say things like, ‘We don't low ride here,’ then play a track about Snoop rollin' in a 6-4! They didn't understand that there's a hell of a lot of folks who look like me - who walk and talk and crease up their pants the same way as me - needing somebody to listen to that they could identify with.” In the end, Rob sees that the early adversity only served to make him stronger. “I admit maybe I wasn't ready for radio back then. I'm glad it's happening now. I have more back bone and back myself up with my skills. I've got things to write about - good times, bad times. And I've got hot beats!” While most of Twelve Eighteen is party joints, over a few key beats are some sobering thoughts Rob hopes penetrates the minds of the new set of young people he sees coming up behind him in La Colonia. “I don't think you can go wrong by putting La Raza first and trying to talk just a little sense into them. I have a song called ‘No Future in It’ aimed at kids thinking they want to experiment with drugs - smoke a lil' weed, snort a lil' coca. I talk about how I used to stay out late and hustle spray paint, bangin' in my homeboy's Maverick. You can't preach to somebody if you've never been through it. That way, at least they have to respect you. My last words on this record are: ‘If you've got a ****ed up mentality / You're gonna get a ****ed up reality, check!’ I have 12 year-olds coming up asking me where I'm from and saying, ‘We put it down for whatever, man!’ I think, ‘These kids ain't gonna be around for long.’ It might not be the coolest thing, but I have a conscience. I don't wanna get too gangsta-gangsta with them because, to me, you have to live up to that ****. A lot of rappers glorify the gang stuff. I mean, we all did it, but that's my past now. I don't want to have to go to shows with bodyguards, a posse of fans and have to watch my back all the damn time. I want to be able to come home and chill - be alone or kicked back with my girl.” Don’t think for a second that Rob has gone soft, though. One listen to “I Who Have Nothing” – bitter words for a well-known backstabber – will assure you of that. Rob has been burned too many times by artists he no longer gets along with that still put his collaborations on their CDs - something he would never do. "Those guys have no pride, man. They talk **** about me on DVDs, yet still use my song. In order to keep that from happening again, I don't collaborate much anymore. Those songs are like bad tattoos that never go away." For Rob, paying the bills means rockin’ the stage – solo or with just a DJ – on shows with big names like Nelly. Rob has made stellar appearances in movies such as Party Animal (2004), Dirty (with Cuba Gooding Jr. slated for later this year) and the acclaimed short film, Chuco. He’s also expanded his musical horizons with Voltio on the club hit “Bumper” from the top-selling Reggaeton mix tape series. And, in true Hip Hop fashion, he’s even contemplating a clothing line. That brings us to the title of Rob’s latest album, Twelve Eighteen, which is actually quite elementary. “L is the 12th letter of the alphabet and R is the 18th letter,” he explains. “Twelve Eighteen is another way to represent Lil Rob. I doubt dudes will want to wear anything that says ‘Lil Rob’ on it. Girls maybe, but I know I wouldn't!” Surveying the rap game today and the progress he and Chicano rap have made over the years, Rob nods, “I can feel the respect now. I'm seeing people changing all around me. It's a good feeling.” It’s a feeling that allows Rob to continue to be his natural-born self. “Any where on the map / It doesn’t matter where I’m at / I’ll be in the Camino / Posted up with my people / In a rag top / Pancake on the black top / Imagine this back dropped / The lifestyle I can’t stop / Hinas, homies, liquor and oldies / Can’t leave the pad, the juras waiting for me!” - Lil Rob (from “Back in the Streets”)

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