Jacob Dove Basker was born in 1970 in the Bronx. He didnt really grow up in New York , more like all over the northern U.S., including
places like Moscow (Idaho) and Chicago; But he feels most at home in Seattle. Jake was 14 when he played his first
show ever in Spokane with his freshly formed College-Punk combo out of Pullman, Washington.
Jake left America in 1990 to get a different perspective on the first gulf war, started by the first Bush. He arrived with 500 dollars, which
he managed to stretch over six months using his exotic charm, Henry Miller style.
He then discovered the Hamburg Art College (Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg) and stayed there until he emerged with an officiallooking
slip of paper from the state, officially extolling him as a bona fide artist. This enabled him to become a New Media trollop for a
stint, although Jake has always been more of a jack of all trades. Trades like comic artist, tattoo artist, animator, niceguy and wiseguy.
But the music has always been the vehicle to propel him down the endless one way street that is life. He played in several bands, including
a Sonic Youth-like artpunk band in Hamburg for years (always with a different name), and was the first singer of "Ninos con Bombas" (who
threw him out due to excessive vocal weirdness but still remain friends).
Jake started rapping in 1992 as his alter ego M.C. Eye, at a time when white rappers were still pariahs (with very few exceptions- ones
like MC 900 Ft Jesus hmm, does anyone else see a spiritual likeness between these two?), first under the patronage of the tough
gals of drum and bass, Die Patinnen, then with the Jonas Schoen Sextett and as the leader of the Jazz rap combo M.C. Eye
& Blind Jazz.
But it was in the Hamburg hiphop training camp Trainingslager that Jake learned to freestyle from his mentor/buddy/adopted son
Mad Maxamom. The cross-styling also started soon thereafter, also with Max and with beatboxer Mark Boombastik in a band called
No Berlin No, a trashpunkmetalrap band that made it a rule never to practice and still managed to entertain guests on stage like
Peaches, Gonzales, and Maxwell from the Meteorites. Mark is seen again with Felix Kubin in Jakes other band, Anaerobic
Robots (Gagarin Records)
