Hip Hop & Me - In so many ways (Pt. 1)

It has been a while since I've written an article on LinkedIn (say, 2 years?!?), so I figure I'm going to write something different, and hopefully it will of interest for you out there.

For those that knows me, it doesn't take long before you know that I'm into hip-hop, and I mean as in I AM REALLY into the culture. Now, you might think, so what? And what does that have to do with anything with work, being professional or worthy of an article on LinkedIn? Well, today I am going to break that stereotype, and to say that hip-hop has EVERYTHING to do with my career path and as a passion, it has been a guiding path in my life journey and no, I'm not going after the Pulitzer Prize.

This will be a multi-part stories and today I'm going to start with the beginning and background...

So here goes....

Part 1: The Beginning

My passion for hip-hop started at the most unlikely of places in the world: suburbia Melbourne, Australia. Australia never really have a strong hip-hop or urban music scene, as most of the urban music came from America. For me, it was contemporary R&B in the early 1990s that led me eventually listening to hip-hop. My late 80s music experience were mainly Michael Jackson ( I met Michael in 1996, but that's another story for another time), Guns 'N Roses, Bon Jovi, Prince and the likes but At first it was just a few tracks here and there, like LL Cool J's 'Mama Said Knock U Out', or it could be something from Hammer or TLC and a bit of N.W.A.

Soon I was doing hip-hop / R&B music radio show at Monash University with a couple of university school-mates and 3 of us ran the show for about half a year. It was fun to do, and back when Internet was just so new, we were still asking people to tune in on radio (still remember what a radio is ?). It was quite fun and we got some good feedback. It was my first time going 'on air', FM95.7 Monash 3MU Radio (some things you just never forget)! It was great because people cannot see you when you are on radio and you can afford to f** up a little bit every now and then.

2. Hip-Hop cultural influence

My first west coast hip-hop experience was probably through Snoop and Dr. Dre. Their sound was infectious and at the same time I was drawn to the culture very quickly. Soon I was getting onto 2Pac, Warren G, Nate Dogg and the whole G-Funk era. I would read the content inside the CD sleeves so I could learn the lyrics, the record labels that rappers were in, the visual design and most importantly, 'trying to rap along the verses'.

Anyhow, over the 90s, that behavior became habitual and soon I was getting into Fubu, Karl Kani, Phat Farm and yes, oversize cloths in general. In return, knowing that I can't afford them, meant I was hitting the cloths market in Manila for Fubu t-shirts and oversized jeans.

Eventually I entered the workforce and into the corporate world. I thought damn the fun is over. But I had other thoughts, as I would dress up my work cubicles with Snoop and Pac posters. My work-mates probably thought I was a little out of place, however there was no rules against putting up posters of Snoop.

The culture and music was starting to slip into my other aspects of life, such as work. I think it was healthy because it helped to create conversations too! Mind you, back then there was probably only one or two workmates that were interested in the urban music scene but that bonded our work and friendship.

The influence manifested itself using during end of year Christmas work functions and parties, where I would probably be the only few jamming on the dance-floor, not too aware of many senior management members of the banks were at present ( to be honest I didn't really care that much).

3. The 2000s

If the 90s was my formative years in getting to understand hip hop, then the early 2000s was about growing up and maturity. Life continued to be work and life in Melbourne and Sydney. No longer wearing oversize Fubu t-shirts or baggy pants (see pic on right), work had kept me in-check. However with Youtube, Google and then Facebook became super platforms/portals and also part of our daily lives, I was able to access hip-hop music and culture from the USA much faster and it felt closer. I basically didn't listen to anything else other than hip-hop music.

More importantly, it helped and inspired me to solve work problems, whether it was a piece of SQL that I got stuck on, or rushing to finish a business requirement document for a CRM implementation scope submission. All I needed to do is to put on my walkman/disc-man (remember those??) and I was churning out words and codes as if there was no tomorrow. It gave me that focus and energy.

4. The Continual Impact

In a way, it started to change the way I saw things, such as family, work and my career path going forward. I became more focussed to further improve myself, and ultimately also changed the way I view my career. It also made me wanting to learn more too, and the music was definitely there during the late night study hours during By the time I left the banking world, I wanted to experience different industries. Conventional thinking (and wisdom, as wise-men would say) probably would have told me to stick to banking and further improve my skills, but I knew I was not quip as a hardcore programmer and my passion was always in Marketing.

5. The Year it was: 2009

Big changes took place in 2009, I decided to move from Sydney back to Hong Kong. The decision was not tough, but the subsequent year was. The Great Financial Crisis took me on, I, along with a couple of APAC marketing colleagues, were made redundant.

It was also the year that Michael Jackson passed away, in fact, on the day I left Australia (6/25). A brand new unknown chapter of my life officially kicked off. Things were not looking great on the job front in Hong Kong back in 2009, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, the endless day of looking up at jobsdb.HK, going to pointless interviews and pre-interview sessions were not doing much. Amongst all that, I was just churning through a lot of hip-hop music videos, documentaries, interviews and concerts online.

I began posting and venting on Facebook, I began writing rhymes and rap verses. In that tiny 200 sq. feet split apartment, the manifestation of my creativity was starting to surface, I was writing verses day after day, I was looking around to find anything hip-hop related. I was learning the underground scene. I was like a hip-hop researcher on overdrive. Eventually I found a few young rappers and promoters, next thing, we were running a weekly online radio program called 'Hehehehehahahaha'. Again I found myself venturing into an unknown territory: doing a talkshow in Cantonese ( https://soundcloud.com/freeman-chiu ).

While the stress of not having a job (or a career at that point in life) was pretty damaging, I found a haven, a safe haven, called hip-hop music. It gave me more than just a piece of mind. It gave me believe. We were getting quite good responses and the boys were able to string up other rappers, graffiti artists, DJs and producers/beatmakers to come onto the show. Suddenly I found my soul again, I learnt that, even during the financial crisis, living in HK without any sort of income is freaking hard! Maybe I still needed to have that 'income' so that I could eat, but at least for a brief moment, every week there's a couple of hours where I got to do and share to the public...

This concludes Part 1 of my article. Next time, I will talk about the adventures from leaving Australia in 2009 and beyond. Again, touching on how hip hop continues to be helping me, time and time again. thank you.

TO BE CONTINUED...