I first encountered Chaz Kangas performing in a rap battle at Upright Citizens Brigade. His mastery of the art form was breathtaking. His rhymes were clearly made in the moment and his wordplay so clever that I was compelled to chat with him after the show to offer my compliments. I was there with HHS Debate students, and the performers had noticed us and dropped several allusions to our presence. One student even rapped in the audience battle segment. I friended Chaz on Facebook and asked him a year later to record a congratulations video for our crew, and its inclusion in the year-end banquet video blew their minds. That generous gesture isn’t just a nice trait, it’s who Chaz is: an unrelenting positive in the universe, and simply one of the most engaging, gregarious people you’ll ever get to meet. And you will meet him, it’s inevitable.
You were born and raised in Minnesota? How would you describe your childhood prior to high school?
It was great. I was an only child, so I had a lot of time to deeply dig into my interests. Any passion I came across I got all-out into. I always tried to be kind, but also tried to stay friendly and true to myself. As long as it didn’t hurt anyone, I marched to the beat of my own orchestra.
When did you start rapping? What’s the earliest recording you have?
So, there’s video of me at age five freestyling that I didn’t know existed until a few years ago. I have no recollection of it, but it’s there. The best part is seeing in my eyes that I was able to rhyme “ants” with “pants.” I’m fairly certain someone had done it before me, but that was the moment it clicked that I realized I put those two together on the spot and was very proud of myself.
I grew up at a time where hip-hop was still a counter-culture but beginning to become omnipresent. Breakfast cereals and afternoon-cartoon bumpers had rapping in them, and the art of it just struck with me. I’d do it off and on, but I remember really getting serious about it with my friends the summer between seventh and eighth grade. We formed my first rap group, then the next year we all went to different high schools and I stuck with it.
Describe your high school experience. What, if any, extracurricular activities did you do?
It went really well. I attended De La Salle high school, the diversity appealed to me and the majority of the teachers I had and classes I took were great. I acted quite a bit (each school year had a two-act play, a one act play and a musical), including taking the State Championship in the one act play competition for an ensemble version of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight Los Angeles: 1992, which I just found out recently is being made into a film.
I also played soccer, was in speech, directed the talent show, played in the pep band, and I think I did more as well I can’t think of and don’t have my letterman jacket handy. I was really busy, and also had a music side project in the middle of all this that was just me and a mid-80s Casio that I’d program and refer to as “a band.” I (and I got so used to referring to my keyboard and I as “We” in interviews that I just had to delete me reflexively typing “we” just now) scored a few local hits with it and it was wild selling CD-Rs at school and making money off of music.
Who was your favorite teacher (at any level), and why?
My junior year history teacher Mr. Sczepanski for a number of reasons. He really knew how to connect and communicate the 20th century, and allow us to express what we’ve learned through creative projects. Even things like knowing who to seat next to leading to harmonious group projects. He also really noticed when his students were excelling in different areas and how to tap into accentuating their strengths. I’m very fortunate to have had him as a teacher.
What went into your decision to go to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts? Did you want to be a filmmaker?
Yes, and a film critic. I got bit by the movie making bug in eighth grade thanks to Troma films like The Toxic Avenger and being inspired by the whole get-everyone-together-and-make-some-art elements. Blending genres, giving viewers an experience, putting things on-screen I’ve never seen before, and so forth. I made a few short films that year and in ninth grade made a feature film dark comedy called Puddin’: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pudding about a guy who moves to the big city and goes on a pudding bender. I was really proud of it and I remember at 14/15 submitting it to film festivals. I wonder if copies are still floating around somewhere, it’s really a bizarre teenage surrealist romp. I edited it by hooking up two VCRs together and it took forever, but that’s analog underground cinema, baby! Junior year my school started a film program and that was my first time with actual computer digital editing software. It was fun. I had a scene in one short that the teacher felt uncomfortable with and made me remove before we screened it, so instead of outright removing it, I threw in a black-and-white “Scene Missing” card a la the Nine Inch Nails “Closer” video, and it made it seem infinitely worse than what it was.
But as much as film making, I was drawn to the historian/analyst/criticism side of things so I went into Cinema Studies instead of an outright film-making program. This was 2004, YouTube was still a year away so the only way to really see a lot of rare movies was either eBay bootlegs or a place that had very deep archives like the NYU Film Library. The access to resources and the variety of classes really appealed to me.
I assume it was at Tisch that you met Donald Glover. He gave you a feature spot on his 2008 self-released album Sick Boi on the song “My Hoodie.” There’s also a great video clip of the two of you freestyling over the guitar part from “Back in Black” on YouTube (dammit why is the camera so close to the guitar amps?). Did you have any clue what kind of career he would have?
We actually met in our dorm before I’d ever stepped foot in the Tisch building. We were the two kids that rapped in the Goddard Hall dorm and in the days prior to meeting we’d heard of each other from the other students. When we finally met it was super quick and felt good to connect. Then that very night rapping in the dorm is where that clip comes from. But yeah, he hustled hard. He was doing sold out shows at UCB with his comedy group while being the RA at a freshman dorm full of art kids. That either kills you or makes you Lando.
Would you say your race and appearance have been a net advantage or disadvantage for you in rap as a performer, journalist, and disc jockey?
First and foremost, white privilege definitely exists. I’m certain there’s a number of performance spaces, meetings, professional opportunities, stages and more where my appearance has made them more accessible. Whether that’s rooted in a first impression being a curiosity or a novelty or any number of other aspects, I’m sure it’s adjusted life’s difficulty level in my favor on those occasions.
In the summer of 2005, I saw Minnesota rap legend I Self Devine (who many might be more familiar as one-half of Tha Micranots) perform an album release show at The Fine Line out here. He said something that really stuck with me. It was something to the effect of: “Those of you who have privilege, don’t run from that. Use it to build.” I took that to heart and thus, whenever I’ve been placed in a position in a platform where I’m an ambassador for hip-hop, whether it’s in a teaching capacity or on-air or in print, I’ve tried to help bring as many black voices and faces into those conversations. A number of the places I’d write for from 2010-2015 fell back on their regular white music writers to cover hip-hop, a number of which didn’t know the culture or the scene beyond the most famous names and maybe one or two prominent local artists. I deliberately made an effort to give these names who’ve gone unsung, underrated, and undercovered for years a proper spotlight promoting both their latest endeavor as well as their catalogs. That goes for subcultures like the rap battle circuit and the graffiti worlds too. It’s a practice I continued when I was promoted to editor-in-chief of the hip-hop side of things at GoRadioMN.com in 2018. There’s so many talented writers and photographers of color in the Twin Cities scene who I couldn’t believe weren’t hired more often, so once I was in a position to hire, I brought them into the fold.
Has my appearance made some things more difficult? Absolutely. During my New York years there’s a few artists I helped get their foot in the door who, once they started having a buzz, seemed to deliberately distance themselves from me because I didn’t look/sound more conventionally “hip-hop” or whatever, and I guess they thought it’d help their image to not have me around. There would be commercials or residencies I’d audition for where they wanted “a gifted freestyler” where I know I’d be the absolute best person on the mic, but they went with someone else for “aesthetic” reasons. Early on there would be battles I’d sign-up for to enter and they wouldn’t even call me up to battle because of how I looked. It’s very rarely people rooted in the culture or with a long-term presence in the hip-hop world have treated me like that, and I’ve had a few over the years come back around and apologize. I get it. It’s really hurtful they did that, and I wouldn’t have done it, but we have different values. I’m happy sleeping at night knowing I was always true to myself, and being authentically me has allowed me to have a really enjoyable lengthy run. I grew up seeing the artists who were truly themselves, the ones who kept it the most “Real” were the ones with the longevity. A constant has always been real recognizes real, and especially in New York people will see through posturing with the quickness. It’s really helped being a student of the game.
You actually funded a lot of your college education through competing in freestyle rap battles. Since we met through your performance in a rap battle a few years back (which you won, naturally), I have a few questions about this. First, isn’t it a risky proposition to invest in travel to compete, or were you just that good that it wasn’t really much of a gamble?
It is, but the travel isn’t just about the win, you know? New York City has access to so many ways to travel around the east coast, and entering rap battles is a great excuse to visit. From the major cities to the holes-in-the-wall, I got a lot of great experiences and met a lot of cool people, really getting the feel for wherever I went and getting the valuable experience to performing in front of vastly different crowds. I very frequently won, and this was still very early in the YouTube era before the whole battle rap scene changed so I was probably one of the last real road warriors who would travel for battles like that. It was a fun journey.
There must be an incredible amount of practice and preparation to get your skills to that level. My guess is that you’ve essentially got a rhyming dictionary in your head that you can access pretty readily, perhaps even a few dozen favorite go to rhymes? Is it basically a muscle that you need to keep in shape?
Yes, but it’s at the point where it’s largely instinctual and almost subconscious. I very rarely remember whatever it is I rhymed on stage. I remember audience reactions, that’s what really burns into my brain, and that’s what really sticks, but for the most part I get into kind of a flow state. In 2016, I was diagnosed with OCD, which I think has probably played a part in my freestyling. I have what’s called “hyper-awareness,” which picks up on everything around me at any moment and a vivid catalog-like memory. The benefits of this in a rap battle is, let’s say someone stands in front of me on stage – I immediately can tell you seven debatable things about their appearance, what they resemble and words that rhyme with all of those things. Then I just let my instincts take over and trust it will all work out.
Some people who engage in rap battles go particularly low brow, but I got the sense that wasn’t your style. What rules do you have for yourself in terms of content? What lines would you not cross?
When I first started, as with, I think, most who enter battle culture first assume, you adopt kind of a “either everything is OK or nothing is OK mantra,” like it’s the corner of the music world that’s the lyrical equivalent of French anarcho-satire comics. Eventually, most of us learn that’s not the case. What ultimately dictates winning a rap battle is winning a crowd. Even if it’s a panel of judges determining the winner, the goal of the craft of rap battling is to elicit that jubilant “OHHHHHHH!” from the audience. It depends on the crowd, but if you can read the room of course you won’t cross it. Once a rap battle crosses the line, the mood quickly turns from a party to that awkward vibe when a couple fights during a group-hang.
The line I never cross is mocking someone for something that they can’t help or can’t change. I’m glad I started true to that, the only line I’ve ever regretted was in 2008 I called someone’s tattoo generic, but in retrospect I just said “that tattoo is a tattoo that a number of people have” so I don’t feel quite as guilty about that any more. But yeah, I’m proud that I’ve never dropped any sort of racial/ethnic/gender/sexual-based slur in a battle and never budged on it. Never felt right.
I kind of hesitate to call some battle content “low-brow” or insinuate that mine is “high-brow.” A dope rhyme is dope whether the MC is working blue or a blue stocking. Accessibility to a crowd and rocking a party kind of has to pull both from high-brow and low-brow, making a sort of unibrow.
When you’re freestyling, how much planning can you do in the moments before it’s your turn versus just trusting that you’ll come up with something in the knick of time? What tricks do you have if nothing comes? I mean, you were part of a 28-hour freestyle marathon, so I have to believe at some point you had a few duds in there.
Really, the trick is to just keep rhyming and eventually some magic comes out. If every rhyme was pure tenderloin, you’d miss some of it because the crowd reaction or a general dilution. There’s a natural build to it that comes from reading the crowd. If someone’s rhyming before me, I usually just use their last line or penultimate line as a springboard for something creative and really maximizing what was created in the moment – it’s the closest hip-hop comes to jazz in that moment. In battles, I’ll try to analyze what the two or three biggest reactions my opponent got, and then somehow address those to try to capitalize on their momentum. Those sorts of rhymes make their verse more memorable, my verse more memorable and the event more memorable and the audience could have only heard or experienced something right there with the stars aligning in that moment.
You’ve also done a considerable amount of recording. Can you talk about how different writing lyrics is for a recording versus what you do when freestyling? Do you go through multiple drafts, tinker with just a couple of words, or what? What do you use for creating your beats?
I have both a rhyme book for writing verses and a Google Draft for just stray lines I realize rhyme that maybe want to use later. I’ll hear something in conversation and my mind will pair it and I’ll save it for when I hear a beat I think it will fit on. For instance, and I just opened it to check, at some point I heard “chipped the enamel” and my mind went right to “rip in the flannel,” “switch in the channel,” “flickering candle,” “Christopher Daniels” and I typed it all so I have that to work with at some point.
Diabetic camel, I get it! Let’s talk about teaching a bit. For seven years you taught a music and music history course to high school sophomores and juniors at the Liberty LEADS Program at the Bank Street College of Education. This program is focused on students mostly from Harlem, Washington Heights, and the South Bronx, kids from underserved communities. Can you tell me about that experience?
It was great! I landed the teaching position right after graduating NYU when the person teaching the class, proGrammar aka Graham MacKenzie, was moving away. NYC was approaching a teaching freeze, and he reached out if I’d be interested. I sat in on a class, met with the staff and it seemed like a great fit.
I loved getting to teach a music class. Getting to make a Hip-Hop Academy curriculum where, instead of a sweeping “this is how hip-hop happened” where you inevitably miss some major chunks and contributions, I got to focus each week on individual artists and movements. From there it jumped into other elements of music history, citing the artists who these hip-hop artists sampled then what artists influenced them, eventually crossing all genres through the year. The goal was never to make everyone love every kind of music, but rather give them enough information and examples to, whether they loved or hated it, have a well-informed opinion of it.
Additionally, the class also taught music production, using an MPC workstation so they could have hands-on learning, and lyrics writing. Getting to help guide so many different perspectives to find their voice is something I really enjoyed.
What were your greatest challenges in the classroom? Do you miss it?
I think the greatest challenge might have been a by-product of the era I started. My first semester teaching was in late 2008, post-recession Bloomberg era New York where budgets kept getting cut, spaces were confined and not everyone everywhere had the internet access or even phone access they’d have even four years later. Trying to maintain that balance during a turbulent tumultuous time in a difficult transitioning era of a city that’s always in transition was a struggle.
I really miss it. I miss getting reactions to classics my students may have never heard before, or seeing that boost of confidence in their eyes when their classmates react positively to something they were nervous about sharing. I’m very, very fortunate to have had that experience.
You did some guest speaking and lecturing at New York city colleges. Same subject? How different was the experience with a different demographic?
Yes, it would be either hip-hop history or music journalism related, and there were certain similarities in terms of passion. The years of the music program I instructed were high school sophomores and juniors, an age where one really is just beginning to figure out their passions and what really interests them. Discussing that same subject in a New York college classroom or auditorium, you have a dedicated focus on that passion and get to go more in-depth in the discussion and help offer guidance beyond instruction. It’s the difference between teaching someone how to hold a tool and teaching someone your best tricks and techniques with it.
During this same time (and ever since) you’ve also been a journalist, writing for The Village Voice (let’s pour one out for the Voice, sniff), L.A. Weekly, City Pages and many others. Do you see your writing as an opportunity to share your passions with similarly-minded people, a chance to turn folks on to things they haven’t been exposed to, both, more?
More so the latter. My favorite thing would be to either break new artists or put a spotlight on overlooked works of artists from yesteryear or lesser-discussed aspects of the biggest artists today. I’ve never been one for echo-chamber writing or snark-for-snark’s-sake, pandering for cheap clicks and comment engagement always seemed to exploit music more than anything.
What I loved about writing for local weeklies like L.A. Weekly or the Voice was getting to cover the hyper-localized elements of hip-hop or the music/film scenes. For a city that hip-hop was birthed in, Village Voice was doing very little hip-hop coverage in 2010-2011, and the coverage they did was mostly the detached hipster meta-rap that had very little actual connection to what was happening in New York on the verge of an influx of major talents that would come to have a big impact on a national level. I loved helping shine a light on these cornerstones like Freestyle Mondays, End of the Weak, Legendary Cyphers that would really be the motherships for so many exciting and innovative sounds.
Two of your greatest interests, at least based on what you post about on social media, are professional wrestling and the music of Prince. What about each of those resonates with you?
Let’s start with Prince. I love how varied his catalog is, so much great music with so many different styles, influences and sounds. A once-in-a-lifetime virtuoso. An amazing catalog, and beyond that a stellar network of bootlegged live shows. Tackling topics like love, death, religion, race all while ever-evolving. Seeing him perform live in December 2010 is a concert I wish I could relive. Just stellar on every level.
Speaking of concerts, my favorite thing in the world is the craft of the live performance. Whether a play, a musical, a poetry reading, a magician, a concert, I love seeing a talent just control an audience and take them on a journey. Which brings us to wrestling. The pageantry, the athleticism, the entertainment and all excellent things that draw me in – and the nuance of the different styles from Joshi and King’s Road Puro in Japan to Lucha Libre in Mexico, all speak to such a variety under the same umbrella. But my favorite, favorite thing is that crowd control. The beauty of wrestling is, at its best, it can appeal to absolutely anyone. No matter what language someone speaks, or how much education they’ve had or where they’re from – you’re watching at least two people simulate a conflict and tell these stories with their bodies. And whether you’re in the united states and seeing a morality play in the squared circle or you’re in Japan and seeing the triumph of the human spirit or you’re in Britain and seeing physical chess or you’re in Mexico and watching supernatural beings come to life, their goal is to connect with you and get you to react. It could be through attempting to remove someone’s mask or hitting them with a light tube or a fantastic dive off the top rope. It’s that shared experience in the crowd seeing this creating happen right in front of you. That’s why I love it.
You’ve lived in New York, Los Angeles, and now Minneapolis. I could ask you a generic compare and contrast — after all, I’m a social studies teacher — but it would be remiss of me not asking about the events of late May and early June. What has it been like in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd?
As I’m typing this, we’re about a month removed from George Floyd’s murder. It’s been amazing seeing the worldwide response to a ghastly tragedy that should have never happened. It’s been inspiring seeing change happen here and so many people I know be there for each other. I’m proud of the change people I know have helped usher in. We still have so much more work to do, but now there’s hope.
How difficult has the pandemic been on you, having to keep isolated for months? It’s been tough on everyone, of course, but you strike me as an extrovert who might need to feed off of interactions with friends and the public. You’ve also been pretty open about struggles with your own mental health in the past. I need to know: are you okay?
Thanks for asking! I just had four pieces of raisin toast, so I’m good for the moment. I was in a particularly difficult shift when the pandemic first hit. I had just flown back to Minnesota from a New Orleans-to-Cozumel Carnival Cruise I’d won on the final episode of Kathie Lee and Hoda on the night of March 11. The moment I stepped into my downtown Minneapolis apartment was when my phone suddenly blew up with texts about the NBA season being cancelled. Things went into a hard lockdown around here right after that, so I went from being surrounded by people in a nonstop party for a week to suddenly no human contact. Given the potential dangers of having just gotten off a cruise (where we had no internet access so we all found out about the advisory against taking Cruise ships and the severity of the virus as we were docking after the voyage) I quarantined hard for four weeks, only leaving my apartment to do my radio show and help listeners find a sense of normalcy and a listening ear. That fourth week I went for my first walk and really regretted it. All my favorite places were boarded up and I didn’t see a single other human being for an hour. This was 9:00 PM which is usually bustling, so I went home and had a lil’ OCD panic attack. Not fun.
I’m managing alright now though. Got my meds increased and that helped tremendously. Trying to navigate new ways to see people through social distancing has helped too. While I know things are beginning to open up, I still don’t feel ready at all for that so I’m going to continue isolating. I’m trying to focus on how much fun that first big party when all this is over is going to be. My grandparents would tell me about the amazing time they had at the end of World War II, so I’d imagine something comparable is coming down the pipeline.
For the last several years you’ve hosted a radio show, First Impressions with Chaz Kangas, airing over 200 two-hour episodes. You played an eclectic mix of hip hop indie and underground music, local artists, and beyond. Any thoughts on what comes next?
It’s hard to say what comes next. My city’s on fire during a pandemic, and it seems like we’re stuck in a perpetual present, you know? I’m trying to take time to grieve the loss of the world we had pre-COVID. My favorite restaurant in the Twin Cities, Bar Luchador, shut down – so that’s a colossal bummer. I’m really trying to take a breather. Read more, maybe put together a collection of my best writing over the past decade so it’s all in one spot and release that. I was also planning on finally putting together a collection of all the annual original Christmas songs I’ve released over the past 15 years. I really don’t know what’s next, because I don’t know what the world’s going to look like. But, however it looks, I know I’ll find something. Following my heart in all this got me this far, so I’m going to stick to that plan. I’m also looking forward to trying those red, white, and blue Oreos if I can get them delivered somehow.
Fenster on Education 