By Blake Gillespie | Photo by Amanda Lopez

For the true MC, proving oneself in a battle is paramount; not just to prove he is gifted, unlimited with rhymes universal, but as a chance to rep his crew and community. Only the choicest of battle rappers are able to put such weight on their shoulders. After an evening conversation with Chase Moore and his crewmate Cawzlos, it is apparent that someone is hungry for some weight.

Intimidating is not synonymous with Chase Moore’s physical presence. He stands comparative to the average California male, but it’s rash to discount his size in a battle. Mixing words, Chase Moore stands strong on his own, tossing punch lines like darts at his opponents. In March, Chase battled in Santa Cruz, practically eating a burnout local rapper named Dopey Delik alive with lines like, “So if you swear you got great diction/Beware of Chase spitting/You should be scared I’ll raid where you living/I know you got chips/Your parents paid your tuition.” Stingers.

If you follow the battle circuit, the names will become hella familiar; but rarely is it possible to find music from the rappers, and even more difficult to find good music. For Chase, battling seems like an effortless exercise requiring minimal practice. Chase’s true grind comes from the pursuit of notoriety outside the spitkicker circuit. “[Battling] is really just to raise awareness for my album,” Chase said “I can definitely do both. Ninety-five percent of [battle rappers] make horrible music. You’ll hear rappers who are amazing in battles and you throw on the record and it’s… [Chase shudders at the thought] I spend a lot more time in the studio than I do battling.”

Born into music, Chase’s father, Neil Moore, is an accomplished pianist who invented a playing-based piano teaching method called Simply Music. In 1994, Neil moved his family from Australia to the United States to start his business, which is now an international success. In speaking about his father, Chase used words like “visionary” and “entrepreneur,” appreciating his father’s hustle. “It didn’t happen over night,” he said. “Me, my brother and my sister shared the same room for years. It’s dope, though, that he had that much faith and belief.”

Growing up Down Under, he said exposure to hip-hop beyond commercial hits brought over from the United States was limited. Chase borrowed an old keyboard from his dad in eighth grade to make beats. He learned the drums in seventh grade and said every year he took the hobby to heart, eventually rhyming over his production. It’s no surprise a young Chase was influenced by Wu-Tang Clan’s debut, Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. Chase said hearing “Bring Da Ruckus” in sixth grade blew his mind. Now, Chase blasts a hype verse in a gruff voice that’s tough like an elephant tusk. “By the time I really got into hip-hop I had lost my accent,” he said.

Chase spent his young adult life rapping in numerous groups, self-releasing albums to mixed reception. His group Capital Conspiracy earned a Sammie nomination. Chase attributes his youth and limited business knowledge to these ephemeral albums, some of which were never released. In 2007 Chase and Cawzlos moved to Los Angeles with the intentions of getting a record deal.

Young and hungry, the two linked up with Mike Conception, a former Crip who worked with Eazy-E, Dr. Dre and MC Hammer. Conception also allegedly struck a deal with Russell Simmons to call off a hit on rap group 3rd Bass, who dissed Hammer on record, in exchange for a seat next to Michael Jackson at the 1990 American Music Awards. Chase’s song “Lonely Road” briefly addresses his stint in Los Angeles, “I was thrown for a loop/Basically, I was too broke for some food.” “Working with a heavy hitter in the streets was a crazy experience, but I wouldn’t change it for the world,” Chase said. “For me, as an artist and producer, I just had to move back, regroup and start over.”

Chase is scheduled to release his debut, Moore to Chase, in July on LMNH (Look Mama No Hands) records, a label run by PCM (Paper Chase Music) crewmate Cawzlos. Two years in the making, Moore to Chase seemed doomed from Chase’s lack of focus and his struggles with procrastination. “Because I’m a battle rapper, I relied on a lot of punchlines and wordplay,” he said. “A lot of the material I did lacked content—just smoking weed references and I’m-better-than-you, generic content.”

Now 23 years old, Chase rung in 2009 with a renewed clarity, quitting weed and booze cold turkey. As we sat down to talk at Aura on J St., we casually ordered drinks; myself a Dos Equis and Chase a diet cola. “I started smoking and drinking around 12,” he said. “It got to a point where I was blacking out every weekend, smoking zips of weed. I just felt like I was getting sidetracked.” Chase admitted the vices never go away—a time might come when he returns to them. “I just wanted to get my head clear,” he said. “It was hard at first, but it’s for the better. I made a pact to myself that I will be sober this whole year.”

“I was always loaded in the studio,” he said. Hearing his music sober, Chase spent January re-recording old songs and writing personal songs delving into his struggles with establishing an identity and turning his back on addiction. On “Lonely Road” Chase declares, “In order for my clique to get ample wealth/There’s a lot of business I got to handle myself/And I’m not demanding help.”

Chase and Cawzlos are fervid in establishing their crew and label into Sacramento streets. Fed up with a lack of community support, Cawzlos caused a couple eating dinner next to our table to leave as he shouted “fuck you”s to local radio stations and bars that won’t support local music without payola. “We act as if we hate politics, but at the end of the day our front yard is the Capital,” he said. “We politic like crazy. We clique up. We campaign hard.”

As Chase and I talked, Cawzlos paced the block, talking on his phone and with fellow musicians who happened to pass by. Cawzlos expressed frustration with his contemporaries. He said the conversation was essentially two people “all about their own shit.” Cawzlos recalled when, only a few years ago, Sacramento hip-hop was thriving with artists getting features in Vibe magazine. He said cold shoulders from radio stations caused artists to turn cold shoulders on each other. “If people continually shun you, you’ll recreate a new method to getting your shit out there. And when you figure out your niche, you’re not telling the next guy. Why would you tell the next guy, because it took you 14 years to figure out how to even get to this point?”

It’s not all distaste for Sacramento. Cawzlos is featured on Chase’s album on a cut called “City of Trees,” in which the duo shows love. “We don’t deny that we’re from here, or that we love it here,” Cawzlos said. On “City of Trees” Chase acknowledges a hurt that lingers here as he raps, “When Robert Horry hit the shot we couldn’t stand the Lakers/Could you believe it?/Ai-yo Maloofs we need a new arena.”

The crew recognizes the next few months as a gamble with Chase as the guinea pig. “If you want to swim, you gotta jump in the water,” Chase said. “We’re coming in a big-ass boat ready to dive in the water.” Cawzlos added, “Yeah, I want to be rap star, but as a CEO I have to decide who is the most fit to play that role on our label right now. Even for me to say that, it hurts as an artist, but I’m realistic. Chase is our flagship artist and Moore to Chase is going to be the stepping stone for everyone to follow.”

Moore to Chase will be released in July as a dual package that includes Right on Time, a collection of extra songs that did not make the debut cut. “You have to give a lot more before you can be ready to receive,” Cawzlos said. Catch Chase in Oakland on June 6 battling in the Grind Time Battle of the Bay IV.

Post from: Submerge Magazine

Favorite MCs:
1) Eminem
2) Jay-Z
3) Chase Moore

Least favorite MCs:
1) Dose
2) Aesop Rock
3) Cawzlos

Favorite albums:
1) Thriller – Michael Jackson
2) 2001 – Dr. Dre
3) They’re All Gonna Laugh at You – Adam Sandler

Least favorite albums:
1) C True Hollywood Stories – Canibus
2) 8 Diagrams – Wu Tang Clan
3) NOW! That’s What I Call Music 17

Favorite concerts:
1) Rock the Bells where Mos Def performed “True Magic” produced by DJ Epik
2) Ashford & Simpson at GlideChurch in SF
3) Chase Moore in 2004 The Source Unsigned Hype battle at Arco Arena

Least favorite concerts:
1) Ugly Duckling where they dissed JD and Jay-Z
2) N.E.R.D.’s performance at Sleep Train
3) Downtown James Brown on 28th and K St.

Favorite movies:
1) The Dark Knight
2) The Godfather II
3) Terminator 2

Least favorite movies:
1) Batman & Robin
2) Napoleon Dynamite
3) Jaws-3D

Favorite radio stations:
1) Shade 45
2) KBMB 102.5
3) KSFM 103.5

Least favorite radio stations:
1) KBMB 103.5
2) KSFM 102.5
3) The one that has Ryan Seacrest on it

Favorite DJs to work with:
1) DJ Epik
2) DJ Oasis
3) Kodak

Favorite venues to rock live in Sac:
1) The Library (R.I.P.)
2) Joe Style’s Shop (R.I.P.)
3) The Boardwalk

Favorite bars in Sac:
1) The L (shout out to my brother Leon)
2) Whiskey Wild (only if I’m faded and on the prowl)
3) Flame Club (cheap as fuck)

Least favorite bars in Sac:
1) Barcode
2) XO Lounge
3) Flame Club

Favorite places to take a lady in Sac:
1) My bed
2) My bed again
3) A quiet picnic overlooking the river at dusk

Guilty pleasures:
1) Katy Perry
2) Marvel Comics
3) Fried chicken and hot sauce

Photo by Carlos Lopez

Post from: Submerge Magazine

To start off can you give a brief history of yourself up to the present?
When I was 14 I went to a school called Hiram Johnson, which was a GATE program school, and I was the opposite of that. I met Adam McIntyre there… They call him Ef Double, and he was doing the graffiti thing. From 14 to 18 I was just doing straight graff, like really in the streets and staying present with the graffiti. That was when I started getting high, too, and venturing out in the mind a little more, and everyone was talking about freestyling. I didn’t give a fuck about music or rapping or any of that until I was like 18. I didn’t realize what I was doing, but people would be like, “Man, you need to rap and pursue that.”
One thing led to another, and graffiti kind of got played out to me, and I felt like what I put on the wall just represented what I put on the wall, like it didn’t represent me. Graffiti is a secretive world, but I’m a real loud person and very vocal; I wanted to be seen and heard, and that’s all I wanted. Around that time we started the Cawz, which was me and Adam, this dude Byron, and Jeremiah, and it took about four years to finish our first album, which is called Tracks. We were doing a lot of shows, and a lot of promotion type campaigns, and that is when graffiti and music really clicked for me, like, “OK, I can use my graffiti mentality of just getting out there and representing and mixing that with marketing and promotion.” It was never like, “Carlos is a great rapper,” or, “Carlos is a great performer,” it was like, “Carlos is a great promotion guy.” Adam was a great rapper, Byron was a great rapper, Jeremiah was a great producer, I just instilled the hustle into the circle. That was like ’97 or ‘98.

When did you recognize that you had the potential to do something
with the rapping?
We all moved to LA and got management out there, and even then I was still real insecure. I knew I could do it, but I would play the background. It wasn’t until we moved back to Sacramento that I really started stepping my game up. When the Cawz broke up though, that’s when I was like, “OK, I’m not gonna stop this now, I’m too deep. I’m feeling this too much, I gotta get better,” and that’s when everything started happening. That was like four years ago. I started buying gear, and recording tons of songs. I was naturally a poet, but rhythmically I wasn’t there. It wasn’t until a year ago that I got signed by a guy named Michael Concepcion in LA, and that was when everything started to get serious. I had to be elite, because I was around elite people. I ended up getting shelved, and that made me realize I was closer than I’d ever been, but I still wasn’t the guy. But in that year, I studied real hard, and got better, and now my bar game is vicious. I always knew I was meant for this, but I just didn’t know my position. I thought I was just the CEO, or the marketing director, but now because of my studies, I feel like I can do all of that and be that dude on stage.

It’s crazy because when I listen your music, you speak with so much passion, it just sounds like it does something for you much deeper than just spitting out words.
I’m a real spiritual and deep person, and I’m trying to bring a message to what I’m doing. If I didn’t find music, I would be strung out on drugs, hands down. It was never about the money. I come from the graff scene where it’s all about recognition and never about the money, and I still carry that in my music today. I’m 27 years old and people come up to me like, “You gotta get your money,” but I always say it will come. If the money comes, it comes. I know what I need to do, but I don’t do it for that. I don’t know why I think that way, I just do. I’m not in the record sales business. Cawzlos is not here to sell records; if I sell a record, that’s cool. I want to go platinum selling T-shirts or whatever.

To wrap things up can you talk about what you’re up to at the moment?
Right now I’m working on some new stuff with Jeremiah to take on the road. I’m doing some tour managing for these guys MC Rut, Middle Class Rut, and they produced two of the songs on there. MC Rut is like number three on KWOD right now, which is real good for independent group going heads up with mainstream acts. Warner Brothers is putting us up in LA; they’re playing El Rey. I’m also managing my cousin, M I Gezzus, who is real dope. I also started a record label with Ahman aka Wisdom, Josh aka 26Hrz and Mathie Bush called Trendsetters, and our saying is, “Being yourself is in.”

Is there a time when you think you will put the music aside and strictly be doing the business side of things?
Yeah I could see that. Right now being an artist comes first.

Post from: Submerge Magazine