>> The following is a presentation of KBTC Profiles.

[ Music ] >> There's more than one way to do a rap song or a hip-hop song.

There's just so many different avenues of expression.

Being Cambodian-American, I embrace both aspects of the culture.

Hip-hop culture and rap music to me is the language of the unheard.

The language of the marginalized.

The language of the oppressed.

Growing up in the hood here in Tacoma, in Salishan, that really just was a natural progression for us.

[ Music ] >> What sparked my interest in hip-hop when I was young was just the poetry and wordplay of it all.

I was always into music.

I play guitar.

I come from a very talented family.

My cousins all are musicians.

It wasn't really until Wu-Tang Clan, the 36 Chambers album, and I was like, "Holy crap, what is this?"

I love the sound.

I love how the RZA took old karate movies that I grew up watching and implemented in the album itself.

So I gravitated towards his style of music.

It was really that album that inspired me to start making rap beats and rap music.

A lot of the things I do is self-taught, so I taught myself MIDI, MIDI controllers, and keyboards.

What really inspired me was how RZA would take old-school samples from the '50s and '60s, low-time music, speed it up, make music out of it.

So I took that concept and applied it to Cambodian music.

So I would take Cambodian songs from the '50s and '60s, speed it up, and make beats with that, too.

So trying to define my own sound, trying to recreate the boom-bap sound with the Cambodian influence in the background.

The 2nd Language formed out of my cousins: Sathia Chet and Sam Tea.

Before The 2nd Language came to what it was, to what it is today, I was part of another group called the United Nations.

We called ourselves the UN because there are so many -- you know, living in the east side, there are so many different backgrounds.

So we had a Samoan, Laos, Black, Cambodian.

So we just called ourselves the United Nations.

Our thing was trying to bring everybody together under the same sense of unity.

So the United Nations made sense for us.

We started doing it as a group, working with so many people, everyone's trying to pay their bills.

We really couldn't get together and put together a United Nations album, so I really worked closely with Ted and Sam because we had the opportunity to, and we had the drive and the motivation to.

Our main goal was really to put out music, and that's what we did.

The 2nd Language itself was a solid three years, from '05, where we dropped the album, to '08, we was really active doing our thing.

When you listen to music, you get a feeling, you absorb the energy, and you don't necessarily understand the lyrics or the words per se, but you do capture a feeling.

You capture the energy.

Me, being an English as a second speaker, you know, as a second language, I feel that, you know, music is something that you can understand and feel, but you don't have to speak the language.

So music is a second language for everybody.

On the album, some of the major themes that we wanted to catch was really how we were living during that time.

It was really a reflection of our time, trying to grow up and find ourselves.

>> We started coming up with, like, concepts and storylines and what ideas would fit with this specific type of beat, and then whoever had lyrics to go with it, go ahead and work on it, and then if your verse was good enough, it would go on the song.

And if it wasn't, then you're going to find another song.

We'll go find another song for you type of idea.

The process to make my album was really fun and challenging.

We worked in silos when we wrote, but then, at the same time, we all came together at the end to make a product, get to where it needs to go.

That whole three-year process, it was long, strenuous, stressful, fun.

I mean, it was a rollercoaster ride, man.

The album came out in 2005, but we started that in, like, early 2000, '99, '97.

So it's like a 10-year process to really get one product that still, you know, has some value today, I think.

>> The most positive impact that we had from the album is just inspiring a generation of Southeast Asians and Asians in general for them to explore their own talents.

My son, Harlem, is 17 years old.

He's now making beats, he's also rapping, and it just makes me feel so full and filled with joy to see him pursue something that I wanted to do at his age.

>> He is a very encouraging person.

Both my parents have encouraged me just to keep going and expressing myself in a way that feels right to me.

I think it's about just continuing on the legacy that my dad kind of just set out, but doing it my way.

I don't want to hide in his shadow forever, if that makes sense.

>> My hope for the future is just really to continue to do what I believe in and continue to fight for my community the same way and make an impact the same way The 2nd Language album did, to cultivate a community and environment in this world that we live in just to bring more peace and more kindness and more empathy to really the [inaudible] that divide, and I see art as the best way to go about that.

[ Music ] >> Funding for this edition of KBTC Profiles is provided by the KBTC Association.

>> KBTC Profiles are available at kbtc.org.