Bambu aka Buck Taylor, one half of Native Guns, the former defunct hip-hop group from LA, talks with Art Nouveau Magazine about his third album …Exact Change…, fatherhood, and mobilizing the Filipino Community. Bambu tells us about new album projects, his condolence of gang-banging, and why he would rather have his music described as Revolutionary controversial gangsta rap to distance it from the “candy-ass revolutionary flower power rap.”

Art Nouveau Magazine: …Exact Change… is your third and latest album; tell me about the process of making this album that was so different from the process of making the first two?

Bambu: The first album (Self-Untitled… , 2002) was an accident; it was a bunch of songs I had been recorded and we put it out kinda as a compilation. I just wanted to see what would happen with it. And the second album, (I Scream Bars for the Children, 2005) was made with the same dude still kinda a combination of a bunch of separate work. But with …Exact change… I actually sat down and gave myself a goal to talk to about what was happening at the end of 2007 early 2008. Even mechanically I worked with all new producers and engineers (Illmind (G-Unit, Little Brother), Amp LIve (Zion-I, Linkin Park, Goapele), Sabzi (Blue Scholars, Common Market) and Johnny 5. and emerging producers Fatgums, Nick James, 6Fingers, CZA, and I.D) making the work a little more introspective and cohesive.

ANM: On the idea of being introspective, what song on the album best sums up your overall intent for the project?

Bam: “Misused”. “Misused” sums up my political and my social views of the world. For me a big question is how do I leave the world, when I leave the world? And “Misused” answers the question of how the world will remember me in an open letter to my son about who I am with out being too emo but being a father and a man.

ANM: Your now on tour with and have worked with a lot of people over the years: Common, X-Clan, Medusa, Dilated Peoples, Psycho Realm, Planet Asia, Zion-I, the Blue Scholars, Immortal Technique, and the Visionaries just to reminiscence over a few but what’s your dream collaboration?

Bam: Andre 3000! You should always rap with someone who’s going to push you in the studio. Its pointless to get in there with someone who you can beast on a track, and with 3000 he would push me lyrically and stylistically he would take whatever we worked on to the next level.

ANM: What inspires the content of your rap?

Bam: I’ve got to a point now that I’m always rapping, and formulating rhymes, because it natural to me. I don’t need to sit down ad say now it’s the time to write.  I write political and social raps because of my partner and the conversations we have, because of my son, and because of the community work I surround myself with. I’m always ready to rap because I’m constantly inspired with the work that I do.

ANM: What is the community work that you do that has contributed so much to your rapping and this album?

Bam: I work with this Kabataang maka-Bayan, or Pro-People Youth, which is a progressive youth and student organization. We’re educating the masses and raising the social consciousness of the youth to organize and mobilize in response to issues affecting our local communities, and the oppressed people of the Philippines. We try and bridge the gap between the struggles on international issues and the issues we have here. My raps have come from giving a voice my neighborhood and the Filipino community and other hoods just like it.

ANM: As a Filipino American rapper, how have your narratives from the Asian community changed hip-hop?

Bam: I just make hip-hop.  I’m not just an Asian rapper or a Filipino rapper. Hip-hop historically is a black and brown art.  I am just fortunate enough to be apart of this and with that I bring in some the issues that are specifically important to the Filipino community but also inclusive of any marginalized people.

ANM: From a freestyle promoting the album you said: “You give a fuck who I piss off? / When decade after decade my whole people been pissed on?” What goes through your head when u say a lyric like that?

Bam: (laughs a little at my reciting his freestyle) We’re upset. Whether we want to believe it or not black and brown people are upset and as a cultural artist you not supposed to say those things. That’s something a gangsta rappers say. But if you’re pissed off, that’s all you need to say. NWA has taught us, we don’t need a poem to say, “Fuck the police.” Just say, “Fuck the police.” I can sit a kid down and tell him that line and he gets it. He understands the decades of oppression. I don’t need to throw a date at him, or a name of a revolutionary or a martyr for him to understand. That’s why these kids listen to some of these silly raps because it’s in the “language of the youth” and they understand it. As a cultural artist, especially political it’s easy to go over kid’s heads  and throw out huge words and dates and become another form of a textbook. I want my lyrics to be thought provoking not just some candy-ass revolutionary flower power rap that isn’t really saying anything.

ANM: If they get at least one message from your music what would it be?

Bam: Ask questions. That’s the one. Because I don’t even want them to take what I’m saying as gospel as doctrine, this is the truth that I have sought out, so go and find your own truth.

ANM: Revolutionary, gangsta, political, controversial, all words used to modify/describe the music from this album, which do think best describes your intent?

Bam: Revolutionary.  Listen to “Like Us” . It’s just about going against the status quo. Revolutionary is not a word I run away from. Controversial is not a word I run away from either. I embrace all of them.  Gangsta… I’m pro-gangbanging.

ANM: You’re pro-gangbanging? (I repeated him to make sure I had it right)

Bam: Yeah. (He said in a tone that foreshadowed he was about to school me.) I’m a former gang member and a gang is just an organization. It’s a bunch of kids that are not supposed to be organized from horrible conditions, disenfranchised, marginalized kids saying “fuck it” were going to come together. Unfortunately because we’ve been taught self- hatred for years and years, we end up hurting ourselves and the communities we’re trying to protect.  But when I do my outreach I don’t condemn kids for being parts of these organizations because at the root of what they are going they are coming together. The Black Panthers was a gang. The Brown Berets was a gang just because we label them different doesn’t mean the oppression isn’t the same.

ANM: (Now officially schooled) What’s next for a rapper that obviously has a mission for educating the youth and uninformed over the pursuit of the flashing lights typically associated with rappers?

Bam: (he chuckles at my loaded question) One more full hip-hop album, but after that I’m settled to be a has-been rapper and really want to work on my rap writing workshops for kids teaching them how to think critically when they write raps. I want to really structure that program and use my work as testimony towards expanding that.

We’re going to do one last video off  …Exact Change… for “Quit” which a fun song off the album. I have a few other mixtapes (Ain’t No Future in Yo Frontin’ 2009 produced by Dj Phatrick) and a few small projects, about eight of those I’m working on with a few specific producers. (Keelay& Zaire presents Bambu Banana Split Sunday).

For everything Bambu click here.