• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

By Anthony Quinonez

Daily Bruin Contributor

While most commercial rappers today are only focused on the green, Scarub sees his music in different colors.

“Colors can really change my moods and ways of thinking,” the rapper said in an interview at UCLA. “When I play songs in my head, I associate them with colors. One song may be red, angry, and another song might be blue, cool and calm, so I’ll put a song in between them that’s purple.”

A product of Northeast L.A, Scarub has been a part of the underground rap scene for years, along with his crew, the Living Legends.

Scarub’s most recent release, “Heavenbound,” is a vivid musical journey. Far from the “bling bling” aesthetic currently popular in mainstream rap, Scarub’s third solo release represents his maturity as an artist, tackling issues such as relationships and sharing philosophies of life.

The album also features Scarub as producer on 10 of the 18 tracks.

“I had done a little production on the first album, but it was just me playing with things,” the rapper said. “That playing around made me find out I really liked it, and I decided to do more of it on this last album.”

One word comes up several times while talking to Scarub: quality. It’s an attribute that comes out in the music because he truly loves it, yet it’s something he takes seriously.

“At first music was something we did for fun,” he said. “Once we realized that we could make a living from it, we focused on it even more.

“I had a high school teacher who told me ‘find a way to get paid to do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life,’” Scarub added. “I just apply that to my daily life.”

This attention to making high quality music hasn’t exactly translated into astronomical record sales among fickle hip-hop fans. Nonetheless, it’s a role with which Scarub is comfortable.

“I see myself as a small pebble with a lot of potential,” he said about his place in the music business.

For Scarub, happiness is not measured by money.

Like many underground artists, Scarub is well known outside the U.S. but is a relatively obscure artist at home. This dynamic, however, has its advantages.

“I kinda like it,” he said. “You can go to a different city and get the key to the city, be the main attraction. Then you can come back home and blend in with the crowd, walk around UCLA with no worries.”

Scarub also noted the differences between hip-hop fans here and abroad. “In Japan, people had me autograph their shirts, even their Walkmans. In L.A., they’d be like, ‘Why are you writing on my shit?’”

“Here people are more flashy, more material,” Scarub said, acknowledging L.A.’s hip-hop scene. “But on the whole they know quality. It’s just a harder crowd to please.”

While Scarub won’t go out of his way to please anybody, he is always trying to push musical boundaries. “I like making things sound fresh,” he said. “I do my hip-hop thing, but I also do other things. I’ve been experimenting with different music lately. It’s not techno, or drum and bass or jungle, it’s more of my own style.”

Along with his three LP’s (“Heavenbound,” “A Fact of the Matter” and “The Answer 2wo the Meaning”), Scarub has started his fourth album and is finishing up a project called “Afro Classics” with fellow underground hip-hopper Very. “It’s not Afro as in ethnicity necessarily; it’s just classic things that happen in the community.”

Exactly what Scarub will bring to the table remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however: his future is bright.

“I see myself in a caterpillar stage,” he said. “The metamorphosis hasn’t started yet.”

MUSIC: “Heavenbound” can be found in local record shops or on the Web site www.llcrew.com.