Pete Miser: Bring It to the Masses

EurasianNation sits down with Brooklyn-based MC Pete Miser who explains to us why hip hop has become a commodity, why graffiti isn't graffiti unless it's illegal, how institutionalized racism may have given birth to hip hop, what it was like growing up half Chinese in lily-white Portland, Oregon, and exactly how many times you have to be called a chink before you're considered a "real" Asian.

By Carmen Van Kerckhove

July 2003

Pete Miser (real name, Pete Ho) is a native of Portland, Oregon. He fronted and managed the Northwest's most prominent hip hop band, 5 Fingers of Funk, touring the nation and performing with acts such as Maceo Parker, the Roots and Run DMC. After six years with the band, he moved to New York and was soon recruited by multi-platinum Arista recording artist, Dido as the DJ in her seven-piece band for her world tour.

Pete continues to live in New York where he records and performs his music. His latest album, "Radio Free Brooklyn" was released in February to critical acclaim. In addition to his own work, Pete writes and produces projects for a wide variety of artists from underground hip hop MCs such as the 6th Sense to new wave legends, the Cure. To learn more, visit his Web site at PeteMiser.com

We're giving away five autographed copies of Pete's album!

When did you first get into hip hop?

In 85 or 86, around then. The first thing I got into was b-boying, and then I got into MCing and graffiti after that. Then I bought a drum machine and started trying to make beats. I had friends that would DJ on these songs I made with my 4-track. I also started to learn how to do little scratches.

Did you start hanging out with kids who were into hip hop or did you get into the music first, or how did it come about?

I would see people doing it but I was too shy to roll up on people to ask how they did it. I was actually hanging out with a bunch of rockers at the time. I have this theory that the reason hip hop is such a fundamental part of my life is that it was the first time that without anybody else really influencing me, I was like I'm really into this, I'm going to get involved in this regardless of whether or not my friends think it's wack. There was a long time where it was just me trying to figure out how the hell they did those moves. But eventually I met other people.

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. Hip hop in the late 80s was in the hood and it was there among hip hop heads, but hip hop back then really wasn't mainstream. Portland is a very white and very segregated city. I was into graffiti and I was doing these big huge pieces, not tags. At the time the police didn't really recognize what was going on with it and there really wasn't much of a graffiti community. So now when I look back it was like, I was really putting in work and handling my shit, but I was wack! [laughs] And it's frustrating because had I been putting all that time and energy into it and had a community of other kids, and if I had been doing it five or ten years later, I would have been dope!

I've never been one for a lot of community, I've always been the type to analyze something and go to my room and work on it. Like [my album] "Radio Free Brooklyn," that's just me sitting in my room making music.

When did you start performing?

The first time I got on the mic I was in high school at this place called the E-Street Ice House. It was a short-lived club, it was the first underground hip hop club I'd ever been to. It was this total warehouse and this master graffiti writer in Portland named Ikon had all these pieces in there.

I know that you had a lot of success with a group in Portland called the Five Fingers of Funk. What's the story there? Did you decide to strike out on your own?

Yeah, creatively I was getting a bit bored because Portland is a good place to get heard if you're an indie rocker, but Portland's not a good place to get signed if you're a hip hop artist. There's nothing to support the hip hop scene in Portland. So I quit the band and I had no idea what I was gonna do.

When was that?

In 98. Most of my time since then has been spent on tour with [singer] Dido.

How did that happen? How did you hook up with her people?

I was DJing a party and her drummer happened to be at the party. We just got to rapping about DJing and bands and he said "yeah I'm in a band with a DJ, with this singer named Dido." And I had never heard of her cause she was just starting to work on her album. So they had a DJ but he quit a week before their next tour, so they called me up and asked me to audition, and I got the gig!

So what was that like? Did you guys pretty much go all over the world?

Pretty much. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, all over Europe. We didn't got to Africa or South America or continental Asia. Yeah, it was amazing in every possible way.

In my life it was most significant in terms of what I learned about musicianship. As an MC, I never really thought of myself as a musician. Not that I don't think of MCs as musicians, I just never thought of myself as one. But as a DJ, I was in a band with a bunch of seasoned bad-ass New York musicians. The drummer's would be like, "I'm swinging a little ahead of the beat on the hi hat, the snare's right on the 2 and the 4, but my kick drum is right behind the beat. So you gotta decide, are you gonna be with the hi hat, the snare or the kick drum? Because if you're inconsistent it's going to sound sloppy." I had never approached music that way so it was a real learning experience.

What was your favorite place out of all the countries you guys went to?

I think Paris, for no good reason. [laughs] It was my birthday when we were in Paris, and I'd never been to Paris before… I thought Tokyo was really cool, Tokyo was nuts!

Okay, now I'm gonna get into the race thing. [laughs] How big of a role do you think race plays in hip hop?

That's such a vast question. I guess first you have to understand my beliefs. America's fundamental problems are not strictly racial issues, they're class issues. In other words, if we didn't have racial diversity, we'd still have the same kinds of cultural oppression, but it would be based on income, not on race. But we do have cultural diversity and because of racism, class lines fall closely along racial lines. But if you're Michael Jordan you can do whatever you want, people respect you and show you love, almost across the board. Except for a few people who are so ignorant, so blatantly ignorant that they just can't get it together. So that's where America is at. Without those circumstances, I don't think hip hop would exist.

Why do you say that?

Without institutionalized segregation and racism, and the fact that the Bronx was this slightly isolated community, I don't think hip hop would exist. I don't know enough about the Bronx to say this but that's what I understand from what I've read and the stories people have told me. Because there wasn't that much of a cultural mix going on, hip hop had this little zone to evolve into a somewhat mature art form, before it became commodified. When things are designed to be a commodity from the beginning, they don't have a chance to mature and evolve into a rich tradition with a history. So I think it's because of America's social problems that hip hop exists. So what role does race play in current hip hop? Not much of a role.

Well, here's the other thing. I would say that 95% of hip hop heads are aware of what's going on in mainstream hip hop and 80% of the money in hip hop is running around in mainstream hip hop. Mainstream hip hop is so dominant in everything but quality, that hip hop is becoming more and more a commodity, a source of commerce and business rather than just a cultural phenomenon. And I think that race doesn't dominate in business, it's all about money.

You said earlier that if something is a commodity from the beginning it doesn't get a chance to evolve into a cultural tradition. Do you think that there are forms of music that are a commodity right from the start?

Maybe I'm talking about Tex-Mex food, you know what I mean? [laughs] Some shit like that, where really early on it's like, oh this is a really marketable thing. Or maybe hula hoops. As far as I'm aware hula hoops don't come from some huge tribal tradition. You had to make this plastic hoop before you could have a hula hoop so maybe someone came up with the idea. And no one wanted to fight over whether you could hula hoop well or not. People wanted to fight over MCing, I mean people got killed over this shit.

Graffiti is way much larger art form than people think, there's a lot more to it than really cool letters and designs. There's such a deep culture behind it that some people get dissed just for having really nice lines and designs. They get beat up because they're art school graffiti writers and not street graffiti writers. Two graffiti writers could do the exact same thing, put the same exact piece on the wall, and one would get and deserve respect for it and the other would get dissed for it for various reasons that pretty much only the graffiti world understands.

Even though graffiti is one of the elements of hip hop, most people who are into hip hop don't seem too knowledgeable about graffiti. Do you think that graffiti is one of the elements that has remained relatively pure?

It's probably the most pure element, but that's coming from my graffiti writer friends who are like, I don't make money off this shit! But as soon as you start to make money, you're not doing graffiti. I mean, graffiti by definition is illegal so if you do a big legal piece, yeah you're an artist, no one's going to argue that, but you're not writing graffiti.

What defines graffiti then, if that's the case?

Well, to quote the guy in [graffiti documentary] "Style Wars," graffiti is "the application of a medium to a surface!" Illegal vandalism but not just plain destruction type vandalism, like breaking windows. I'm sticking with the Webster's definition.

In other words, it has to be illegal to be considered real graffiti?

Yeah.

You told me before we started the interview that you have this whole posse of half Asian friends. Do you know a lot of mixed people who are involved in the hip hop scene or are these more personal friends?

Most of the people I'm thinking of are on the West coast. My roommate's half Asian. She doesn't identify with Asian culture though and neither do I, for the most part, which I think is maybe unfortunate.

Why do you think it's unfortunate?

Because I think Western culture is kind of fucked up in a way. [laughs] I think Chinese culture has a lot of… actually you know what? This is pure bullshit. For the most part my understanding of Chinese culture is just as skewed and superficial as most white folk's view of Chinese culture. I mean, I definitely have a little bit of a different insight because of my grandmother. But it seems like it's a culture that's been unbroken for thousands of years and because of that I give it a little more credit than a culture that's as young as European culture is.

This is an issue that I know a lot of half Asian people deal with, which is that people sometimes question their legitimacy…

On both sides, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. The song "Ho-Made" is about that. I experienced overt racism from kids I was going to school with on many occasions every though I identified way more with them than with Chinese culture. My dad doesn't speak Chinese, he's 73 years old. His mother spoke Chinese and Hawaiian, that's where they grew up. But both of them grew up in an era where it was really frowned upon to embrace cultural heritage, I mean you were really expected to assimilate. That's why I think it's a little bit unfortunate that I'm not in touch with my Chinese heritage.

Of course I have to ask this. Your real name is Pete Ho but you go by Pete Miser. Some people would see that as a conscious decision to break from the Asian heritage. I mean, you obviously talk about your heritage openly in your music but…

Did you read the lyrics to "Ho-Made?" I brought the lyrics with me cause I wanted to quote them directly. Unless I spit the whole verse I won't remember that part.

In that song there's a line "Anglicized my name to Miser. Some say a self conscious attempt to exempt myself from bigotry sent my way, but I say they read too much into it."

I did an interview with this white guy, it was really interesting to see this white dude's perspective on that song. He thought it was this super-tortured song. The stuff was kind of tortured at the time but now it's not so much.

And the whole Miser thing is kind of a weird joke. People think I intend for it to sound like my last name but it's actually a nickname. There's this character in Frosty the Snowman called Heat Miser who wanted to make it winter all year round or some shit, I don't remember exactly what it was. This friend of mine started joking around, calling me Pete Miser, so there really isn't any significance to it. If my name was Pete Fresh or Pete Rock, people wouldn't think I was trying to anglicize my last name.

But at the same time I'm a little reticent to claim that I'm Asian, you know what I mean? Cause it's true, my Asian friends are like "you ain't a real Asian!" But I mean, how many times do you have to be called "chink" to be officially Asian?

What kinds of reactions have you had to that song, "Ho-Made?"

People really dig it. It gets commented on a lot in music reviews, and I have a feeling that it's because it's early on in the album and whatever's early gets the most listen. And I think people in this country are really primed to talk about anything that's race-related. But yeah, I get positive reactions to that song. People like the beat and they can dance to it.

Did you do all the beats on the album yourself?

Yeah, except for two songs.

Did you do the beats or was it a band?

I did the album, and then I found the band to reproduce the album. Apart from two songs, everything else is just me messing around with records and samples and making tracks.

I really like the beats on your album. I love beats that are really bass-heavy and it's rare to find beats like that nowadays, at least in mainstream hip hop. There's so many weird beats, especially those video game sounding beats that all the Dirty South rappers use.

Yeah, DJ Premier in all his interviews talks about what he calls the "Tinkerbell sound."

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm definitely from the Premier school. DJ Premier, Pete Rock… But Premier is easily my favorite producer, he's definitely in my top five.

So who are your other favorites?

Prince Paul. All the guys who do Redman's stuff, I like a lot of Redman's production. The Neptunes, Timbaland… I also like [electronic group] Tosca, where Richard Dorfmeister is the producer.

Hip hop production is really different from standard music production. Hip hop producers are basically co-songwriters. I remember when I was young, experimenting with my 4-track and drum machine, wondering why my stuff didn't sound the same as Public Enemy's.

Awhile back I met one of the members of the Bomb Squad, which was Public Enemy's production crew. And he was telling me about producing their very first record, which is a classic to me. They didn't have a sampler, so everything on that album that sounds like a sample is actually Terminator X dropping the record in by hand. And there are songs on there where they just put a mic up next to a snare drum and that's how they did the song, just smashing the snare drum the whole way through.

So are the beats on your album all samples? There are no live instruments?

There are some live instruments as well.

Because the whole album sounds really organic to me.

"Ho-Made" has no live instruments on it besides turntables. A big part of my agenda is to make samples sound like live instruments. "Ho-Made" is made up of samples from probably 15 to 20 different songs. It's really important to me to make it sound like those samples all belong together, and not have one thing jump out and make you think "oh wait, where's that one from?" The song "Toothbrush" is another one with no live instruments on it other than me brushing my teeth. The samples come from several different songs but I wanted it to sound cohesive.

It really does. When I saw you play with your band, I hadn't listened to the album right before, it was maybe a week apart, but it sounded really similar to me.

Oh, that's cool, it's good to hear. A lot of that has to do with my paying attention to people who did production for [Brazilian singer] Bebel Gilberto and Tosca. You can shape a sound a whole lot and you can make sounds take on tonal characteristics of other sounds. I feel like a lot of hip hop producers aren't adept at shaping the sounds like that. And a lot of pop producers don't shape the sound in an interesting way either. I feel lucky that I've borrowed a great deal from both those worlds because when I produce a pop song it has a hip hop quality to it, it has a more interesting tonal quality to it than a lot of standard pop production.

The other thing about the comment that you made has a lot to do with the band. The guys I'm working with I chose specifically because of their approach to music. Like, our drummer is really into playing hip hop and he's not into being busy and doing too much, he's more into being consistent time-wise. The bass player is quick to say "man, I don't give a fuck about bass, I care about the song." He considers it his job to approach bass playing for the benefit of the song, it's not about him getting off. And that's kind of rare.

Yeah, that's hard to find. So how did you hook up with these guys?

Well Keith played bass in Dido's band so we got to know each other on the road. Ivan, the drummer, I know through this activist circle. Blowout, the DJ, used to work at [famous record store] Fat Beats and I just kind of rolled up on him and was like, what's the deal? He's super cool, I'm really glad I met him. The piano player I know through some friends in Portland but we never really hung in Portland.

How long as the band been playing together?

I guess it'll be a year in August. We've only played together eight times, maybe less than that. I think we've rehearsed fewer times than we've played shows.

One thing that really impressed me when we first got in touch was the fact that you're multi-talented: you wrote the songs, you did the beats, you did the artwork on your album cover, your whole marketing deal is very polished. Where do you see yourself five or ten years from now?

Sleeping more! [laughs] Five to ten years from now I would hope to have five to ten albums to my credit and I would hope to be doing a lot of production with other people. I don't really fiend for celebrity the way most people do who MC or sing and I don't know if that's gonna fuck me up in the end. I fiend to be in the studio and to make really good music. I hope to have done a film too by then, I'm really into the idea of film. It seems like the next logical place for my brain, like I'm really into this audio editing stuff that I'm noticing is really similar to film editing. But that's just this kind of crush I have on filmmaking right now. I also want to do a gallery show. A friend of mine has been beating me up about that, saying I should do a gallery show of my paintings.

So you paint too?

Yeah. You know the middle of the album cover? That's a painting I did with some friends. And I also want to have a big origami show! And a gardening show! [laughs]

And an Olympic gold medal?

Yeah, definitely!

So you own your own record label, right?

Yeah, Ho-Made Media which is essentially just me.

Do you see yourself building that up? Like by signing other artists?

I'm into it in theory, but I'm not into it in lifestyle. I'm not applying to Universal Records to be an A&R guy there because that's not how I want to spend my time. That's the same way I don't really want to spend my time being an A&R guy for my own record label. As it is I don't spend most of my day making music, I'm spending most of my day sending emails and taking things to the post office, like day job stuff because I don't have anybody that works at my label. And I have this deep-seated fear that if I were to expand my label it would be more of that stuff. So I'm not ruling it out but it would involve a lot of figuring out how it would work.

So do you do beats for other people?

Yeah, I've always done beats for people in Portland, artists you'll probably never hear just because as I said the industry doesn't really look at Portland. I've been working with a friend of mine who's a singer named Maria Christensen, I'm doing about half of her album. I'm really, really into that.

Do you feel like your sound or your music has changed at all since you moved to New York from the West Coast?

Yeah. After the Dido thing I got an appreciation for pop music that I didn't have before. I've always been one of them backpacker hip hop heads who was like, "fuck that shit!" But Keith and Dido are responsible for me being willing to listen to pop music. So that's significant, in fact, I made a conscious decision to not be a dick about music anymore! [laughs] And also the fact that when you're walking around in New York you hear Latin music and you hear Russian music, I mean you hear so much different music. I never listened to Brazilian music before I came out here. I hated house music and then I discovered, oh there's house music that I like.

I don't want to get on a music industry rant, but the radio presents music from any kind of genre that is as close to straight-up pop as possible. So if you hear country music on the radio it's because it's garbage country music and country music heads are like, I don't want to listen to that shit. And after realizing that, I'm confident that there's some kind of country music out there that I would dig. In fact, I have a couple albums of country music that I dig.

So, who are some of your favorite MCs?

Redman. Tash from Tha Alkoholiks. The whole Anti-Pop Consortium crew. De La Soul. Who else? Oh, Andre from Outkast. For some reason I'm always slow to say Andre even though as soon as I say it I kind of slap myself for not thinking of him sooner. Andre's ridiculous, man. Gift of Gab from Blackalicious.

Are you into the Pharcyde at all?

A little bit. It's really weird how I always get compared to them.

When I was listening to "Ho-Made," certain parts of the song the way you were rhyming really reminded me of them.

Yeah, I never really got into them. It's really weird how many people just assume they're one of my favorite groups because they're one of their favorite groups. I bought my drum machine from the Pharcyde actually.

I guess cause we do similar stuff, or at least people assume it's similar stuff, maybe that's why I don't listen to them a lot because they're not doing anything that I didn't think of? That's probably really presumptuous of me to say though. But yeah, the Pharcyde is cool.

Visit Pete Miser's official Web site to learn more about the MC, listen to his music, and buy his albums: PeteMiser.com

About the Author
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder of EurasianNation.

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