Los Van Van

Yeah.

Uh, um, but with all this groovy way, which is very influenced, and this is, I'm paraphrasing Manuel and other musicians that are here that I got to talk, extremely influenced by Changuito, percussionist of Los Van Van.

Yes, yes.

Changuito-

Tocando la música que me gusta.

Que me gusta, que me gusta.

So yeah, you were just talking about Changuito and his influence, um, Changuito from Los Van Van.

I don't even remember if he was...

In and amongst those times, it became clear to me that I had a different calling than that of Cypress Hill and that I was to become the first solo Latino-based MC to blow up on spots on behalf of all Latins in hip-hop." so they then asked him if he ever regretted that decision and he said the only decision he ever regretted was not pursuing a major league baseball career so he was obviously very good at not just rapping but athletically as well so he did an interview with the albuquerque journal back in 1990 and he talked about the difficulties he had coming up in the game as a latin rapper something that's commonplace now but was entirely new back in the 80s he said this i'm a black hispanic when i do bilingual stuff like my new song monte rosa it doesn't always get accepted some black people don't want to have anything to do with it to them rap's a black american thing the feeling is that if we hispanics want to get busy we should buy their tapes and dance to their music wrong it was the blacks and the puerto ricans that started rap i'm trying to bring people together hispanics whites and blacks So in terms of hip-hop history, he told Hip Hop Golden Age that music is in his family.

He said this, Music is my family history and business from my grandfather, who invented many Cuban rhythms in Cuba, to just about all my uncles who followed in his footsteps and are on tour in Spain and France and Germany today, to my cousins Ivan, Ray and Mayeto, who made his mark as the frontman for Cuba's most known band, Los Van Van.

To my immediate family, my brother Sendog of the groundbreaking multi-platinum rap group Cypress Hill.

But his inspirations aren't the usual fare of LL Cool J rapper's delight in the message.