Music for me played an essential role in my life ever since childhood. All started out in the Philippines (Olongapo City, Zambales) where I was born, the city use to have an American Naval base, the Subic Bay Naval Base, and this meant that American music was being brought to the city. The Philippines was the earliest country within the Southeast Asian countries to get a taste of Hip Hop culture, and among the earliest cities to hear this new sound was Angeles City and my hometown of Olongapo City. But as a child growing up in the city, hip hop wasn't as big as it is now, the only Hip Hop artist I knew then was Andrew E. Instead of hip hop I was listening to an eclectic mix of Motown (The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross...etc), Classical Rock (Styx, Led Zeppelin...etc) as well as Disco (Beegees and such). This mix was what my parents were listening to, so it was basically what I was listening to.
I didn't get into Hip Hop until the mid-90's; this was when I left the Philippines for Long Beach, California. The first thing I heard when I arrived was "California Love" by Tupac and Dr. Dre (ironic right?), my uncle was bumpin it in his car when he picked my mom and me up from LAX. The next time I was really exposed to Hip Hop was from my hommie Gerome, who introduced me to Bone Thugs, and that opened my eyes to Hip Hop, I was only eight at the time. After that, my middle school years was when I was more into R&B and that’s why I started singing, but this is where I started to learn how to write lyrics. Then in high school, that’s where I really got into Hip Hop and R&B.
My high school, Long Beach Poly, was filled with a vast amount of tallent, there were rappers, singers, and very talented musicians all around. It was during my freshman year when I was told about a singer that went by the name of Passion, this got me into the whole R&B/ Acoustic sound, as well as groups such as Legaci. The thing they had in common with me was, not only the love of music, but they were Filipino. I don't know about yall, but being Pinoy it's hard to get into the music industry, only a few Filipinos have made it into the music game, but these artist gave me hope. So I started making beats my freshman year with this program called Magix Music Maker, I saw it as I was walking through the isles of Target and I decided to get it. The hommies and I decided to mess with the program a little bit, we made a couple beats, made a couple of aka's for ourselves and made ourselves a group name...many many group names. But the hommies lost interest in it, but I stayed stagnant in my musical aspirations.
It was my sophomore year and I met my co-producer/ hommie Chris aka C-Note. We started taking classes on song writing and basically started this group called DiVerse. Chris built his home studio and it just took off from there . But after a while, we were on hiatus for a bit, due to a busy high school schedule. So after graduating high school C-Note is now going to school in Virginia, and I'm still chillin in Long Beach, but the group is still going. Recently, I've gotten back to making my own beats as well...and I have hopes and aspirations to finish my 1st album by August of 2008...the rest has yet to be written
