ALL STAR 2011 - Ozone Magazine

26-year-old Dominic Hunnrepresents his LA neighborhood—LeimertPark—wheneverhe has the opportunity. Leimertrepresents the burgeoning subcultureof Cali rap. Just as theSouth Central neighborhoodboasts culture, middle class livingand aesthetic beauty, there’sa rougher side if visitors take acloser look. The rebirth of losangeles rap features artistsfrom both sides of the tracks;all obviously influenced by theirpredecessors, but bold enoughto grab the baton and take themusic farther in either direction.Enter Dom Kennedy: an intriguinglycocky, yet intuitive rhymespitterwith that easy flowindigenous to California hip hop.Dom has created quite a stir as anew artist, most recently droppingthe critically acclaimedmixtape, From the Westside withLove. ozone had a conversationwith Mr. Leimert Park about thechanging face of LA rap, his placein it, and the exact definition of“choosing up.”What’s your background? I heard yourdad raised you.I was raised by my mom and my dad.They lived in separate homes but I wasback and forth with both of them equally.My mom is from Los Angeles and mydad’s family is originally from St. Louis.You rep hard for Leimert Park. What’sit like?Leimert Park is where I grew up. Whenmy parents got divorced, my mommoved to Leimert and settled there. It’sbeen my home off and on since 1992.You know, living there, eating there,going to the barbershop, everything. Soit’s home. You can live a lot of places butyour heart is always at home. That’s whyI always talk about it. When you read agood book about somebody, it alwayshas a setting - somewhere where thestory takes place. That’s just where mystory takes place. That’s where I startedout getting my confidence, on the livingroom floor in my apartment in LeimertPark. So I’m just paying homage, I guess.I heard it’s not a bad neighborhood, butnot exactly a “good” one either.Exactly. It’s not the best place but it’sdefinitely not the worst place. It’s mostlylower middle to middle-class families,single parent homes. There’s definitelya lot of art there. A lot of movies werefilmed there. It just has a good vibe. Itsupports culture. When I was a kid I saweverything that was taking place and justbecame a part of it.Tell us about your journey from then upuntil now?I was just a regular kid. I went to school,but I wasn’t the best student. I playedbaseball; that was my first love. I rapped,you know, but all my homies used to rapat some point, just like most inner citykids. Kids listen to songs and have fun,but nobody says “I’m a rapper.” I was justfreestyling or whatever like everybodyelse. After I got out of high school I didthe junior college thing for a minute, butI always knew it wasn’t for me.Around that time I had a cousin, JasonMadison, who ended up producing alot of the stuff on my first mixtape, 25thHour. He was a DJ, so he had all this DJequipment his dad had bought him.We used to go to his house and playinstrumentals to whatever records wereout at the time. We didn’t have laptopsback then so he would get records or CDsor buy singles of songs that were on theradio. Whatever song was tight, he hadit. Vinyl records used to always have theinstrumental. I would rap over the instrumentaland record it from there. If youmessed up, you [ruined] your whole CD,you know? That’s how it started. But weweren’t tryin’ to come out with nothin’.We were just having fun. It was importantto what I do now, but we didn’t know itback then. After years went by, I was like,“I’m not really a rapper.” I wasn’t gettingpaid from it. I was a student.Around 2005, the way I looked at theworld really started to change. Somethinginside of me kept urging me totell my story through Hip Hop. It wasthe thing I loved the most, so that wasmy outlet. That’s when I started gettingthe idea in my head and thinking, “Well,maybe I can do it.” So I started writing atnight, and I’d come up with rhymes andthey were getting better and better.In 2007, I started working on my firstproject, which would eventually becomeOZONE MAG // 57