Kev Choice

Very few rappers play instruments. Most musicians couldn't rhyme a sixteen-bar verse if their lives depended on it. Yet Kev Choice is equally adept at both rapping and music theory, making him an anomaly whose talent traverses several genres. A classically trained pianist raised in Oakland, Choice studied jazz at New Orleans' Xavier University before earning a master's degree in music. But instead of entering the staid world of academia, he returned to his hometown and became an in-demand sideman for numerous local artists, from Tony Toni Toné to Too $hort. After a stint as the bandleader for Lauryn Hill, Choice currently leads a twelve-piece jazz outfit, the Kev Choice Ensemble, and holds down keyboard duties as a member of Oakland R&B/funk/soul supergroup Town Business (also featuring singer Sylk-E, rapper Too $hort, and bassist Elijah Baker). But musical chops are only one aspect of his repertoire. In addition to his jazz and classical background, he's a card-carrying member of the hip-hop generation. He not only plays jazz with a hip-hop attitude, but is a skilled rapper himself, and is currently putting the finishing touches on his solo debut, The Broken Mold. Though streetwise, his lyrics put a positive spin on the rap genre, whether celebrating the Bay Area's wealth of local talent ("Bay Diamonds") or paying tribute to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama ("Obama Song"). The first time you see Choice follow a blazing lyrical verse with a highly musical piano flourish, you'll likely be awestruck; after a while, you'll realize that his music is "Kevolutionary."

Article originally published in the East Bay Express on June 25, 2008.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/bestof/most_multi_talented_musician/BestOfAward?oid=776828 - East Bay Express

Conservative pundits whine as Barack's Bay Area supporters opine.

By Eric K. Arnold

May 7, 2008

In America's ongoing culture wars, once the race card gets played, it's only a matter of time before hip-hop comes under fire. Last year, shock jock Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers' women's basketball team somehow morphed into a sensationalistic national debate over rap lyrics. This year, the controversy over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has led, perhaps inevitably, to a right-wing hissy fit over presidential candidate Barack Obama's hip-hop constituency.

In a recent article for right-wing web site HumanEvents.com, entitled "Obama's Other Jeremiah Wrights," former New York Post staffer Evan Gahr reported that high-profile rappers like Jay-Z, Ludacris, Q-Tip, and Will.I.Am are "gaga" over Obama. Gahr called the Democratic front-runner "an apologist for their 'music'" — downplaying the fact that Obama has expressed concern about the lyrical content of mainstream rap in the past, while hinting at the genre's underlying social issues.

A self-described "liberal-basher," Gahr is peeved that Obama's links to hip-hop artists have gone "entirely unnoticed" by media attack dogs who have made Reverend Wright a defining issue in the 2008 election. Gahr's main criticism seems to be rap's questionable language: "Where else but rap do people talk so openly about n-----, b-----, and hoes? What other industry makes millions of dollars from these words?" Gahr blustered, like a Bill O'Reilly wanna-be.

Yet while Gahr accuses Obama of "moral hypocrisy" for being down with hip-hop, his beliefs don't seem to apply to himself. In a 2004 interview on LukeFord.net, Gahr repeatedly used the phrase "dumb cunt" to describe his former co-worker Mona Charen, whom he also described as a "bigger bitch than Lillian Hellman." If that's not moral hypocrisy, what is?

Curiously, Gahr overlooks the important fact that Obama's support in the hip-hop community hasn't just come from mainstream artists. Dozens, if not hundreds, of underground rappers from all over the country have strongly resonated with the candidate's message.

The Bay Area hip-hop community in particular has been solidly behind Barack, as evidenced by the popular "Obizzle Fa Shizzle" T-shirts seen around town. Artists such as Zion-I, Blackalicious, Martin Luther, D'Wayne Wiggins, and Goapele have all been featured performers at "Barack the Vote" rallies, while Kev Choice and D Labrie have gone a step further by recording songs inspired by Obama's historic candidacy.

Despite being featured during CNN's Super Tuesday coverage, Labrie's "Vote for Barack" apparently escaped Gahr's rap radar. The song — which jacks both the beat and cadence from Mims' "This Is Why I'm Hot" — offers lyrics which build on what Obama has called "the audacity of hope": Vote for Barack/Not because he's black or a Democrat/But because he kicks the facts/'Bout reaching the youth, ending the war/We really need a change in the US for sure.

Initially, Labrie says, he was skeptical of Obama's sincerity, due to what he calls the "Condoleeza Rice factor." But "when [Obama] reached out to the hip-hop community, it felt like a validation," he says. "I felt no one had reached out to the inner city. Because he reached out so hard to the hip-hop community, I just decided to put my name on the line and just do it."

The rapper posted "Vote for Barack" on MySpace and blasted it via e-mail to fellow members of the Hip Hop Congress organization. "The song just took on a life of its own," he says. He's been in contact with Obama campaign staffers, but "the craziest thing to me was how the 'hood cats was feelin' it," he adds.

Choice's "Obama Song" is also a far cry from the ignorant rapper stereotype hip-hop critics have stubbornly clung to. Updating Sam Cooke's civil rights anthem "Change Gonna Come" with a sped-up vocal sample (à la Kanye West), Choice explains why Obama is his pick for president: He's the only candidate I feel really represents/A new direction, a fresh perspective/These politics is full of so much deception/I listen to his message/His views on the issues/He stands firm trying to make it better for the people.

Choice also posted his song on MySpace, and got an immediate response. "I got more hits than I've ever had. People were loving it. They started posting it on their pages ... They can really relate to it. It kinda keeps them motivated," he says.

Neither Choice nor Labrie are surprised that race has become such a prominent issue in the 2008 campaign. "As the election gets closer and closer, the attacks are getting harsher," Choice says. "They're bringing up the Jeremiah Wright thing and the black church every day. That's like the main issue."

Labrie says Obama is being "demonized" over Jeremiah Wright and hip-hop, adding, "there are historical issues that do need to be addressed. It scares people that someone that's black has that platform to speak on it. With - East Bay Express

The Choice Is Yours
Kev Choice created a cult of personality by straddling two worlds
East Bay Express
January 7, 2009

Kev Choice is a little less reserved about the drama with Lauryn Hill than he was last year, but it's still kind of a sore point. At least now he's consolidated his own career and will not be remembered, exclusively, as the music director who recruited ten of the Bay Area's best musicians for one year of boot camp with the world's most erratic pop diva. Now he's known, alternately, as the East Bay's "most multi-talented" — or, barring that, a signifier of a bizarre turn in hip-hop: The rapping instrumentalist. Kev Choice isn't just any rapping instrumentalist, either. He's a classical piano player who raps.

Thirty-two-year-old Kev Choice (whose government name is, indeed, Kevin Choice) grew up making beats and rapping with Oakland emcees Numskull and Yukmouth, but also played Chopin and Mozart at piano recitals. Today he's is a well-established gun-for-hire in the jazz and R&B scene who gigs regularly with Martin Luther, and gets spot dates whenever DJ Quik or Amel Larrieux comes to town. Choice somehow managed to keep his foot in both scenes for more than twenty years. Now he's got a new mixtape and several beats in the pipeline, plus a formidable ten-piece ensemble. He's using his rap career to nurture his parallel jazz career, and vice versa.

Choice didn't invent the hip-hop-jazz band phenomenon — artists like Lyrics Born, Crown City Rockers, and the Coup had already been doing it long before he came on the scene. But he is the only Bay Area artist to cultivate separate identities as an impeccably cool Oakland emcee and a brooding jazz pianist and merge them together in a way that seems believable. In person, Kev Choice is polite and chivalrous, a meticulous follower of backpacker fashion trends (these days he wears Coke bottle glasses and a Palestinian keffiyeh) and an enthusiastic user of contemporary slang. He teaches with Khalil Shaheed in the Oaktown Jazz Workshop and plays three-hour lounge piano sets at Vo's Restaurant in downtown Oakland. He's a striver who keeps his fingers in many different pots. And granted, it's a tricky balancing act.

"If I was a jazz pianist who just started trying to be a rapper then I guess people would look at me funny. Or if I was a rapper who tried to get in the jazz world and didn't have the chops to do it then it wouldn't really work," said Choice, admitting that he straddles the fence a little.

As a composer, Choice is distinctly modern and technological: He might start off at the piano, but everything he writes gets filtered through the programs Reasons or ProTools, produced as a beat, and later reinterpreted for live instruments. As a rapper and producer, he's more of a traditionalist: Choice's new downloadable album, The Bailout, is a return to the classical mixtape format — it has three sampled tracks and eighteen original beats, all blended seamlessly together by DJ D-Sharp, all available for free. It's a strange convergence of genres and creative processes, but the result is fascinating: Choice's beats sound more melodic than those of other hip-hop producers, and his band sounds more sample-driven than most of its counterparts in jazz or funk. His ensemble is anchored by strong drums and electric bass, and most of the songs have a funky, crowd-pleasing breakdown — though Choice is also prone to do something asymmetrical with the rhythm, or add a sprawling, expressionist piano solo that betrays his classical upbringing. Choice's aesthetic mirrors his music, combining jazz sophistication, left-wing politics, and contemporary urban fashion. From this pastiche he's created a cult of personality that verges on being a brand identity.

The genesis of Oakland's first rapping piano player happened in 1987, when then-eleven-year-old Choice enrolled in piano class at West Lake Junior High. His first bona fide piece was a Clementi Sonata, followed by Beethoven's Für Elise and other canonical works. He later played in the jazz band at Skyline High School and joined UC Berkeley's Young Musicians Program, then got a full scholarship to study piano performance at Xavier University in Louisiana. He went on to get a master's degree in piano at Southern Illinois University.

All the while, Choice was rapping. His original rap group — called Brothas Wit Potential (BWP) — featured Luniz emcees Yukmouth and Numskull, along with DJ D-Sharp. He made beats for other rappers, applying his knowledge of piano to an MPC sampler, and later to ProTools. He battled, he freestyled, he took the mic at rallies, and, for a time, he tried to keep the piano lessons under wraps. "I was a rapper to certain people. To other people, yeah, I play piano," Choice recalled. "Like in high school nobody really cares that you know how to play Chopin. ... I got a scholarship to go to college and nobody was really trippin."

That whole code-switching business changed i - East Bay Express

Bands to Sweat to
Our critics recommend ten music acts to get your blood pumping.

By Rachel Swan, Nate Seltenrich and Kathleen Richards

May 21, 2008

Kev Choice

If you find yourself running for some important political office, get at your man Kev Choice. His paean to Barack Obama, sung over an aptly chosen Sam Cooke hook — the song, "A Change Is Gonna Come" — is perhaps the most sincere piece of campaign rhetoric to emerge from underground hip-hop this year. Indeed, Kev Choice is coming up at exactly the right time; hip-hop is finally getting nostalgic for its political past, and it's once again trendy for rappers to use the medium as a way of articulating values. But Kev stands above the average emcee, because he's also a competent bandleader. Trained as a jazz pianist, he leads an ensemble that includes some of the Bay Area's best horn players. He transposes samples for live instrumentation, and his original tunes are more studied than what you'll find elsewhere in hip-hop. It's rare when you can call a rapper "a monster of a musician." Thankfully, this guy really is. MySpace.com/kevchoice (R.S.)

Article originally published in the East Bay Express on May 21, 2008.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/music/bands_to_sweat_to/Content?oid=731026 - East Bay Express

Soul/R&B/Funk
Brought to you by Hard Rock Cafe

Kev Choice
Before jumping into the fray as a solo artist, Oakland's Kev Choice had already compiled a pretty solid résumé with a background in both classical and jazz, a master's degree in music, and experience as a sideman under Too $hort, Lyrics Born, Michael Franti, and Lauryn Hill. Since emerging under his own name, he has brought a fired-up energy and serious musical chops to the local live scene. His 10-piece outfit, the Kev Choice Ensemble, can swing or bebop with the best jazz combos, but when the pianist and MC grips the mike and starts rhyming about Obama, it's apparent he's a special — and potentially game-changing — talent.

Published on October 14, 2008 at 5:16pm
http://sfweekly.com/2008-10-15/music/2008-music-awards-nominees/2

Article published in SF Weekly, October 15, 2008 - SF Weekly

Eric K. Arnold, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Not many classically trained, jazz-educated pianists can say they've seen Snoop Dogg in Serbia with Lauryn Hill, or played at the Playboy mansion alongside Too . Indeed, Oakland-born musician Kev Choice might be the only person from the Bay Area (or otherwise) who can claim those distinctions.

<<< Listen to an MP3: "I Can't Look Back," Kev Choice >>>

Though he's enjoyed a busy career as an in-demand sideman, Choice is itching to unleash on the world his own compositions, a cutting-edge mix of jazz arrangements, classical melodies and hip-hop rhymes. Over an Italian soda at Oakland's Urban View cafe, Choice casually explains that he's probably recorded 10 albums' worth of material in preparation for his official debut as a solo artist. There's just one problem: Every time he tries to venture off on his own, he keeps getting asked to collaborate with other musicians or go on tour again.

"The main thing I need to do is stop working with other artists," he sighs. "I have to (give) myself 100 percent."

About the only thing holding Kev Choice back at this point might be Choice himself. Talent and drive are clearly not an issue for the 32-year-old, freckle-faced artist, who calls his music "Kevolutionary." He's used his monthly residency at West Oakland speakeasy/art gallery/performance venue Black New World to premiere his works in progress. In January, he presented his magnum opus, "Hip Hop Sonata" - which adds a lively, vibrant feel and Choice's own rapped lyrics to melodies written by Schubert, Chopin, Ravel and Beethoven. The following month, he donned a porkpie hat and a blazer and led his 12-piece jazz group, the Kev Choice Ensemble, through a tribute to African American purveyors of "America's classical music" - jazz - in honor of Black History Month. For Friday's gig, he'll switch styles yet again, with a program featuring guitarist B'nai Rebelfront titled "The Future of Funk."
Jazz from the source

"I never want to do the same thing twice," Choice says. With a musical background like his, he doesn't have to. A gifted child, Choice started studying classical and jazz piano in the Oakland public schools (back when the public schools still had music programs). Teachers immediately recognized his potential, and he was selected for the Young Musicians' program at UC Berkeley. He went to Louisiana's Xavier University to study classical music, but found himself more drawn to New Orleans' jazz scene.

"I was never a prototypical classical musician. I never saw that as my goal," he says. Studying jazz in its birthplace, "I got a good grasp of the discipline of having to really know your instrument," he says.

After earning a master's degree in music at Southern Illinois University, Choice could have become a professor. Instead, he hooked up with Michael Franti and Spearhead and spent a year and a half on the road. Subsequent session work and gigging with the cream of the local urban music crop eventually brought him to the attention of the enigmatic Hill, who hired him as her musical director and instructed him to put together a 17-piece ensemble from the local talent pool. Within a month, he found himself on a tour that would take him to 12 countries - a far cry from the conservatory or the academy.
A musical encyclopedia

Choice says he learned a lot from his time with Hill, whom he calls an "encyclopedia of music." He's also worked with local artists such as Goapele, Lyrics Born, Ledisi and Too , who's tapped Choice to be a core member of a forthcoming funk-oriented project, to be called Town Business, also featuring singer Silk-E and guitarist/vocalist Martin Luther. " wanted to do something different," Choice says.

Choice is just as jazzed about his own stuff. Smiling, he passes along a five-song CD, a sampler of what he has to offer as a solo act. Lyrically, he presents a mix of street-savvy observations and consciousness-raising commentary. On "Bay Diamonds," Choice pays tribute to the region's talented - but often overlooked - artists, while noting the "same streets where they run around getting hyphy" are the "same streets where they shot Huey (Newton) and Lil' Bobby (Hutton)." On "Time is Now," he claims to be "the first emcee spitting while sitting at an acoustic, 12-foot grand/ 88 hammers at my fingertips, too legit like '88 Hammer."

Musically, Choice presides over an eclectic range of influences. Sped-up, Kanye West-like samples blend freely with Debussy-esque piano flurries on "I Can't Look Back." The jazz/funk/R&B fusion of '70s acts like the Blackbyrds and Roy Ayers gets updated with a contemporary hip-hop twist on "Hustles, Tricks and Games." Sexy female vocals (from Genevieve) smooth out the midtempo drum beats and Bernie Worrellian keyboard squiggles of "Down on Ya."
Product of his environment

"I try to make my hip-hop songs feel like a (classical) movement," Choice says, adding, "even if we're - San Francisco Chronicle

NOMINEES
Soul/R&B/Funk

Kev Choice

Born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, Kev Choice has been studying piano for more than a decade, earning music degrees at Xavier University and the University of Southern Illinois. All along, Choice has performed with rap ensembles, composing tunes that draw equally from Bud Powell, McCoy Tyner, EPMD, and Nas. Recently he has been putting the finishing touches on his first full-length, The Broken Mold, which melds the soul-sampling grooves of Kanye West with the conscious rapping of Blackalicious. Live, Choice performs with a six-piece band, offering a genre-busting mix of soul, jazz, and rap, which led to Lauryn Hill requesting his services as musical director for a recent show in New York City.

Article originally published in SF Weekly, October 17, 2007
- SF Weekly