.Weekend Crossover

An emcee and hip-hop producer find success in punk rock.

Having grown up in Berkeley, rapper H.B.K. says he knows the
difference between purist punk and punk-lite. “An authentic punk rocker
to me is like, half their head shaved, big black boots, and don’t give
a fuck about anything,” he said. “Not colorful. Not ‘I’m gonna
wear Vans and checkered earrings and a couple of tattoos’ and shit like
that.” H.B.K. takes great pleasure in derogating what he calls the “the
punk-rock poser movement,” a flash-in-the-pan trend that, he feels, is
quite far removed from his own hip-hop rock band, C U Next Weekend.

The band had its genesis about three years ago, coinciding with
similarly themed groups like the Flipsyde and the Kev Choice Ensemble.
Most of these outfits are buoyed by a rapper-singer with a strong cult
of personality, and abetted by a few sidemen who can really play their
instruments. C U Next Weekend fits that profile to a tee. H.B.K. makes
an appealing frontman with his lip ring and tattoos (at this point he
has nearly a hundred of them, including several on his face and neck),
and the seven-piece band behind him could hold its own against any
other high-energy rock group.

Despite its omnipresent hype man, Mr. 1derful, C U Next Weekend
skews more rock than hip-hop. The songs are power-chord heavy and often
climax with a sprawling guitar solo. And the group uses fast,
propulsive rock beats rather than the programmed drums of hip-hop. The
lyrics seem to focus mostly on partying and girls — similar to
what you’d hear in an Asher Roth or LMFAO album. Nonetheless, CU Next
Weekend still straddles the line between genres — which might be
the key to its success.

C U Next Weekend spawned from the improbable mixed-marriage of
former high school jock H.B.K. (whose name doesn’t stand for anything
— “It’s just three cool letters”) and ex-band geek Dan
“DanElectric” Lawrence. A few years ago, H.B.K. started going to Dan’s
house — actually Dan’s mom’s house — in Albany to buy
beats. Dan had honed his chops at Albany High, where he played trombone
in the symphonic, jazz, and R&B bands, while cutting tracks in the
school’s new digital recording studio. He went on to study music at
Sonoma State University but left after two years, when his department
became a casualty of budget cuts. He gave away about three albums’
worth of beats before launching a business in earnest from his
childhood bedroom. By the time H.B.K. got to him, Dan had the market
cornered, along with fellow Albany alum Young L from a briefly
successful hip-hop group called the Pack.

“I had a cousin who rapped, and he used to take me to studios all
around Albany,” said H.B.K. “He had a beat from Dan and I was like,
‘That shit’s hot.’ It was actually an intro, but I flipped it into a
song. … Bought another beat from Dan, flipped it … I’m like, ‘You
know what? Rather than just buy beats from this dude, we could do some
major shit, you know what I mean?”

So H.B.K. decided to holla at Dan, who by that time had risen up the
ranks and moved his studio to the Zoo in West Oakland, home of Goapele,
Bedrock, and Mephisto Odyssey, among others. “I think Dan didn’t fully
understand where I was coming from,” said H.B.K. “I was like, ‘We need
to fuse rock with hip-hop … like, real rock. And Dan was like, ‘Uh,
yeah.’ So he gave me another hip-hop beat.”

Some time in late 2006, Dan got it. He called H.B.K. at 1:30 a.m.
and played what would become the backbeat of their first single, “All
She Really Wants.” It had four woozy minor chords over a snare drum,
with a keyboard pinging out the melody line. H.B.K. was hooked.

From there, the two musicians began forming their enterprise. Dan
auditioned band members from his circle of acquaintances, and
eventually came up with the current personnel: Ladante Smith on drums,
Brett Zadlo on bass, Clay Barnett on guitar, Elliott “ET” Peltzman on
keys. Dan composed about several tracks in the studio and had H.B.K.
write lyrics for them. Then he broke the beat into its different
melodic elements and transposed them for live instruments. He said it
wasn’t hard: Most of his beats have a consistent four-chord pattern
that easily hews to a rock template. The last piece of the puzzle was
Mr. 1derful, H.B.K.’s longtime friend and fellow jock from Richmond’s
De Anza High School. One day, H.B.K. brought Mr. 1derful into Dan’s
studio after a night of partying. Mr. 1derful wore short gym shorts and
cowboy boots, and busted a River Dance move when he walked in the door.
Within a few months, he’d become the band’s official hype man.

Dan and H.B.K. had near total creative control of the group’s new
self-titled EP, which they cobbled together on ProTools and later
interpolated on live instruments. They hope to write their album the
opposite way, having the band write the music and then refining it on
Dan’s computer. “We did our first EP from the studio to the band. Now
it’s from the band to the studio,” said H.B.K. “Everything is more what
works live.” It’s also a less hip-hoppy, more rock-band-ish way of
doing things, and H.B.K. says that’s fine with him. “We’re rock, we’re
not hip-hop,” the emcee said. “The only thing hip-hop about our music
is the lyrics and the delivery, which is changing daily.”

To him, the true litmus test happened a few months ago when CU Next
Weekend performed at the East Bay Rats motorcycle club — and
didn’t get called out. In fact, the Rats loaned their club out for a
band video shoot a couple months later. Having that kind of street cred
is a tremendous source of pride for H.B.K., who, despite being a rapper
and athlete, has long been infatuated with the rock scene. “When we get
approached after shows, it’s like skater kids and real live punkers,”
he said. “They’re like, ‘I love the punk shit that you guys are
doing.'”

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