the hum / By Bob Doran

I Made a MySpace

Lil Maniac at the MySpace Party, Delta Nationals All Over The Map

(Jan. 31, 2008)  If you’ve been listening to Lila Nelson’s radio show, “Meet Me In the Morning” Sunday mornings on KHUM, you’ve heard about her “Write Your Own Damn Song” contest. (If you come up with an idea, she writes a song around it.) This Sunday she’ll be singing a “damn” song about Humboldt’s MySpace scene, and in connection with that she threw in a little trivia contest on her last show. The question: How much did kazillionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch pay to acquire MySpace? A correct answer got your MySpace into her song. Because she’d mentioned the figure on the air earlier, she got a call immediately from Jesse in Eureka. Unfortunately he was disqualified since he somehow has never signed up with MySpace.

When she asked for a true MySpacer to call, I responded with the correct info (he paid $580 million), so I guess my MySpace will be mentioned in her new song. Mine is no big deal. I’m no space-case. I haven’t gone the “pimp your MySpace” route, and only check in infrequently. However, virtually every band or musician on Earth has one and to get beneath the surface you have to have an account — so I’m there, at least sometimes. Now, I could go off on the negatives: Its clunky, inelegant interface, or the danger inherent in a relatively unrestricted communication platform — but the truth is, that platform is a fascinating, amazing thing that has opened up whole new worlds for all sorts of people. Of course Humboldt is no exception. MySpace founder Tom Anderson has 222,041,770 friends. A few of them are here.

$Nub, aka Lil Maniac, performs Saturday, Feb. 2, at The North Coast Myspace Party, held at the Eureka Vets Hall.

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By chance, the night before I talked with Lila, during a break between sets at the tr√®s cool RJA Quartet M show, I’d found a glossy mini-flyer on the Music Dept. bulletin board hyping the first ever North Coast MySpace Party. The show, assembled by local promoter Tech Williams‘ Do Som Bout It Productions, is coming up on Saturday, Feb. 2, at the Eureka Vets Hall. It featuresDJ Hazy “on the ones and twos,” Humboldt-homegrown hyphy from North Bay Ridaz, plus young $nub from the Maniac Krew, aka Lil Maniac, whose MySpace page offers a glimpse of what it’s like to be a teen in U-freak-a in this day and age.

Lil Maniac lays down some history in the requisite MySpace “Bio of the Artist”:

“I was born in Eureka, Calif. in Sept. of 1992. My dad was always into hip hop so I grew up listening to 2pac, Nas, House of Pain, Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg, NWA and a lot more. When I was about 5 years old my dad taught me how to use the turntables. I was always into poetry and began to rap to beats my dad would put on. My dad was in and out of jail a lot so I didn’t really take my music seriously. When I was 8 years old my mom, my sister, my brother and me moved out of a small house, where we slept in the back room of my grandma’s house, to the projects. I started getting into a lot of trouble with fighting. When my dad got out of prison we unpacked his mixers and mics. At the time I was doing a computer class for community service, and I would record my raps with a guy named Elijah 1 who was 17 at the time and I was 12. I had been writing raps and poetry for a long time, but never took it seriously until I started recording at this community service place MARZ [the Ink People’s Media, Arts & Resource Zone Project]. When I was 13, my dad built [a computer] for me and I started recording everyday until 4 a.m. and that’s when I made a MySpace to put my music on. I am now 15 and am in a club at school called Rapper’s Delight. We host break-dance and rap battles and do graffiti. I have performed at three events: Rappers Delight: Beginning Of The End Show, Eureka High School Bonfire, and Tech’s Monsta Bash Halloween Party, and blew ‘em the fuck up!! I am currently working on my CD.”

I want to meet Lil Maniac some time and hear more about MARZ and all. Unfortunately I’ll be outta town this weekend so I’ll miss the big MySpace bash, where I’m sure $nub will blow it up. But it’s cool, I sent out a Friend request. I know we’ll be in touch.

Straight outta Bolinas? Why not? That’s where rapper Bo-Rat got the Bo from. He’s hyping his new CD Project Cutty at Red Fox Tavern Thursday, Jan. 31, with Oakland’s Delinquent Monastery and Fortuna’s Dirty Rat Crew along for the ride.

Same Thursday at Humboldt Brews, it’s Humboldt Buds, a jam-a-thon with Ruben Diaz and Tim Stretton among others.

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