"I used to be a serious backpacker, keep-it-realer type MC, and I thought pop music was basically just sellout crap. I still think that’s the case for most. But being on tour with Dido made me realize that it’s not a bad thing to actually communicate to people,” Pete Miser explains. Miser was the tour DJ for the singer/songwriter at the time of her Eminem-assisted rise to stardom, and the experience changed his outlook on hip-hop. “I’m not rapping just to hear myself rap. I’m rhyming so that people can connect with the ideas.” Originally from Portland, Oregon, Pete Ho, a.k.a. Pete Miser has been b-boying, bombing, backspinning and battling since hip-hop took seed in the Northwest. As lead vocalist in the live hip-hop band 5 Fingers Of Funk, he helped bring rap out of hiding in his hometown and into the limelight. When 5 Fingers dissolved, he moved to New York in 1998 to pursue a solo career, ending up in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn and, eventually, on Dido’s 2000 No Angel tour. His latest solo venture, Camouflage Is Relative (Coup De Grace), picks up where 2002’s Radio Free Brooklyn left off, exploring issues as diverse as gentrification, lost love and American politics with a serious sense of humor and funk-for-your-trunk production. Pete is a graduate of the DJ Premier school of hip-hop, and he lists Native Tongues, early Ice Cube and Public Enemy as his influences. Though, he may not have come up in the same hood as those innovators, he keeps their sense of exploration alive. “I think hip-hop is more interested in people’s skills than their background,” he says, putting his own spin on the old adage: It ain’t where ya from... it’s how ya rap.

Save This Page

Digg This!