1/23/07, 4:39 pm EST

Live Chat With Krishtine de Leon: The Complete Transcript

Rolling_Stone: Welcome to the chat with Krishtine! Start asking your questions to Krishtine.

DanK_: you and your mom seemed close in the first episode — how was it being away from her for so long?
Krishtine: I’m the youngest of four in my family, and they consider me to be the “last chance”, so I’m very lucky to have all their support in whatever I do. In most Filipino families, moving away means leaving them behind, but it’s not the case in mine. My family knows that this is one of our biggest chances at actually living the “American Dream”, and doing it my way. It was only for two months, but I was definitely missing the home-cooked meals!

Mordy: Hi, I’m curious about your more generalized experiences with Hyphy music. At what point did you start to identify yourself with it - and feel like you were its representative. Why did you choose hyphy to be the scene you’re promoting?
Krishtine: Hyphy is not only a musical movement, but a lifestyle for many of the youth in the Bay Area that were being completely ignored by the mainstream. If you think about it, nobody has given San Francisco any attention since the hippies smoked pot on Haight and Ashbury. So I consider us the “Galapagos Islands” because we were so far removed from the spotlight for so long that we developed into these creatures that no one has ever seen before - hence the “hyphy movement.” For the majority of my journalistic career, I have been trying to represent the “other”, the side of America you probably have never seen before, and all I had to do was start with my hometown. What you see in the form of “hyphy”, superficial or not, is really a reaction of the independent spirit prevalent in the Bay, and our success at surviving artistically.

erica: what’s your favorite non-hip-hop act?
Krishtine: Sizzla and Tanya Stephens are two of my favorite “non-hip-hop” acts. Reggae music is another huge passion of mine because it has political commentary, but you can still dance like there’s no tommorrow. The music that I like reflect the issues going on in that community, because although music is supposed to be an escape, it’s also something that can tie people universally through a message. And believe me, I do tire of seeing women parading around like grazing cattle in these hip hop videos nowadays.

kevin: what’s your favorite album from 2006?
Krishtine: That’s a tough one…2006 was a “bad year” for hip hop album sales. Most of the albums I liked weren’t even released until the fourth quarter, with T.I. being the only one to really make it platinum. I have a lot of close favorites: Sleepy Brown “Mr. Brown”, Ghostface “More Fish”, and Snoop’s “Blue Carpet Treatment” coming to a close second. But I got to say that my favorite is Ms. Mary J. Blige “Breakthough”. I’ve grown up through that woman and she has never compromised who she is and where she came from; a characteristic I can admire above all artists.

citizen192: What was the first album you fell completely infatuated with?
Krishtine: Depends on what you mean by “infatuation.” If you mean puppy love, it had to be TLC’s “Ooh..on the TLC Tip”, their first album. They were the first women to address issues on sexuality, feminism, and having fun at the same time. I needed that in my life! But as a grown up with a different idea of what I need in music, I fell in love with “The Sentimental Side of John Coltrane.” Now that’s some grown up infatuation right there. I used to fall asleep to that album every night.

It_Is_What_It_Is: did you get to eat filipino food while you were in nyc?
Krishtine: Yes! Thank God! I would have died if I didn’t! Luckily, I have family in the Bronx, and since the Filipino-American community isn’t so prevalent in the East Coast, it was a blessing to have them on that side to hold me down. Food is something that I consider to be as an integral part of a family as the actual get-together, and for a while I was eating delivery every night because it was a luxury I didn’t have back home in SF. But then, you realize that you need something that feeds more than just your appetite, and I took that long train ride North just to remind me how good it tastes and how lucky I am to have a choice!

superhyphy: what do you have to say to folks hating on you, stereotyping you for reasons such as your grillz or your ethnicity
Krishtine: You know what, I fully expect people to be afraid of what they’ve never seen. This country, despite its delusions of grandeur, is not as tolerant as people would like it to be, and I have no problem being an example of that. If I have to be that Hurricane Katrina to expose all the decay going on beneath America’s schizophrenic consciousness, so be it. I brought my grill on to the show very deliberately because I want people to start a dialogue about their own comfort levels of seeing someone like me in a position they want to be in. And they’ve reacted predictably: out of superficial resentment. And envy. But hey, anyone who is anyone will tell you that “If you ain’t being hated on, you ain’t doing s***t.” Bring it.

bombaclat: how do you feel about the way you are being presented on the show? is their portrayal of you accurate?
Krishtine: The only concern I have about MTV is that they didn’t divulge any background information about the qualifications we held for our selection. They just jumped right into it, which didn’t give people enough time to develop their own judgement. What most people don’t know is that we hated the cameras most of the time, because they affected our ability to be real journalists. They were so obsessed with the aesthetic that they conveniently left out the fact that I was the most highly-published journalist out of the six, and that I was more than just this “ghetto” caricature that got in through affirmative action. And you will see that as the show goes on. But as a far as the portrayal of myself being accurate, it’s yes and no, depending on what behavior of mine is going to get ratings. And it seems that me cursing people out and forgetting my grill is good television. Acing interviews and wowing editors is not exciting, although I did plenty of that as well. It was just on the cutting room floor.

lumpy1181: What’s your most played song on your iPod?
Krishtine: I listen to a lot of songs on my iPod! I was never the type to “play stuff out”, but I am definitely feeling Nas’s song “Hip Hop Is Dead.” The production on that is amazing, thanks to Will.I.Am, and Nas is one of my favorite lyricists out there, bar none. He is one artist I admire for making such a bold statement, and actually being (street) intelligent enough to have an answer. Solution-oriented hip hop. I dig that.

Rolling_Stone: Today’s chat is over! Come back next week [Tuesday 4pm EST] to chat with Russell.