Megz was an extra in the movies Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist and Step Up 3D, and she also dances in the new Idog commerical. She was a Top 30 finalist for the 6th season of So You Think You Can Dance. Recently, Megz has been choreographing and dancing back-up an up-coming singing artists. Megz aspires to continue training and bettering herself as a dancer and choreographer so that she can achieve all of her goals for her future and inspire others to do the same.

Panama-Oakland crew Los Rakas - with Raka Rich (left) and Raka Dun

By Eve Hyman (for World Hip Hop Market)

Panama and California fuse within Los Rakas the bilingual rhymes and mid-tempo bangers that are the soundtrack to urban car and street corner culture now.  Cousins Rico and Dun show love in their lyrics and block-party videos for their neighborhood in Oakland (CA). Flags wave along with bodies swaying in front of food trucks and at backyard BBQs.  The MCs from the tip of the continent are cozy in San Francisco’s East Bay, holding down hip-hop culture where rural Latin America and all-American (though progressive) city collide.

Dun and Rich are products of their environment, hailing from a city that is home to everyone from Too Short to Kreayshawn, but they spent their childhood in Panama City where drums, dance and chant are a part of the everyday, paying homage to African and indigenous heritage with colonial Spanish inflection.  Moving to California Los Rakas present a bicultural identity that is becoming standard.  Shifting language and surroundings adds layers to boastful raps, drawing in the diverse community where they live.

The duo’s swagger and charisma lend a boost to lyrics with a new twist on partying and repping your hood. Commitment and sincerity flow with each verse.  The kicker are the beats, produced by global talent that draw from pan flutes, synths, and percussion to help texture classic hip hop, dancehall, and Latin rhythms  -including cumbia.

Abrazame  is the hit they had with New York City producer Uproot Andy (Que Bajo), a love song to dance to on any coast or continent.  Chancletas y Camisetas Bordadas is their new release with Oaktown grime and broken beats, mob crowd choruses and hyphy effects.

On the eve of their planned release for their EP Raka Love, WHHM had the chance to speak with Raka Dun (pronounced Doon) and find out what to expect at their upcoming show as a part of the Trinity Global Hip Hop Festival.

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WORLD HIP HOP MARKET (WHHM): We’re real excited about your Trinity show! What are you bringing with you, any new joints, old favorites, guests?

DUN: We’re going to do some new joints, we’ve got three new songs off the Raka Love EP dropping February 1.  It’ll be us, Raka Rich and Raka Dun and our DJ Nima Fadavi and we’re bringing energy, you know our shows consist of a lot of energy!

WHHM: Definitely!  I’ve seen your show, it’s high powered.

Los Rakas is one of the few truly bilingual acts coming from the U.S.  You switch between English and Spanish easy and connect with listeners in both languages.  Do you have to adjust your shows depending on the crowd, give more of your Cali side at times and more of Panama at others?

DUN: We’re fortunate to be Panamanian and have two different cultures to draw from.  Sometimes we present a show that we practiced like that, or sometimes we change depending on the crowd, what the audience is feeling.  If people are dancing more, we change in that direction.  Our shows are real diverse and we have a nice female-to-male ratio.  Our shows in California include dancers too, friends who Turf, a style out of Oakland.

WHHM: Ta Lista is chock full of pretty girls and flag-waving pride.  Can we expect more cameos from neighborhood family?

DUN: We had a show last week and a lot of people from the community came and showed love, and we’ll keep doing that.

WHHM: Do you feel influenced by any particular artists lately?  Who are you listening to?

DUN: Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of hip hop.  A$AP Rocky, he has a new style.  He brings a new energy to the game.  Every time I see an interview he looks cool, humble, like he brings positive energy.  I’ve been listening to E-40, to Drake’s last album.

WHHM: What was it like working with a legend like E-40?

DUN: It was dope, he’s a legend and we’re really fond of his music! It was an honor.  He really put his stamp of approval on Los Rakas.

WHHM: You’ve done some nice touring here in the U.S., do you get over to Panama much for shows too?

DUN: We’re going over there in like May or June. It’ll be our first show as Los Rakas over there.  We’ve got fans – in Panama – they have all the music, all the videos, they don’t need you to put it out on ITunes or anything.  They have a lot of computer geniuses out there!  My mom says out in the neighborhood she’s seeing my videos with the bootlegs.

WHHM: You’ve collaborated with Uproot Andy on your hit Abrazame, what other collabs do you have in the works, what can we look forward to?

DUN: Bay Artists Krypto and The Jacka collaborated with us on Gyangsta, that just went up on the site (losrakas.com) on our blog.

WHHM: What changed for you two musically between Panabay Twist1 and Chacletas y Camisetas Bordada?  What can we expect from Raka Love, is this strictly for the female fans?

DUN: Panabay Twist 1 was really experimental. we just went in there like we barely knew how to count bars, you feel me?  We got the same stuff on both records, the political, the reggae, the hip-hop, the love songs.  But the hooks got more catchy, the mix got better, we got more solid.  We already knew how to work better in the studio.  We got the whole concept of down.

WHHM: You’ve had a lot going on over the past year, how have things shifted for Los Rakas in terms of day to day, rhyme topics, lifestyle?

DUN: Before the music just used to come out, now we have deadlines, artwork, mastering, all that done but you know, that’s one thing that’s changed -now we work on a schedule.

WHHM: You’ve been touring but is most of what you do still in Oakland?

DUN: Yeah, here and in New York.  This year we’re really going to hit up those countries that have been supporting us, you know like in Germany, Colombia, Argentina.

For new music and tour schedule peep losrakas.com.  And see them live March 31st at Trinity College!

Vijay Prashad is the author of eleven books, most recently, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, paperback 2008), which was picked by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop as the nonfiction book of 2008.

Prashad writes regularly in the media: as a columnist for Frontline magazine (Chennai, India), a contributing editor for Himal South Asia (Kathmandu, Nepal) and a contributing editor for Naked Punch Asia (Lahore, Pakistan). His web dispatches can be read at Counterpunch (counterpunch.org), at ZNET (zmag.org/znet) and at Pragoti (www.pragoti.org).

Prashad is on the board of the National Priorities Project (www.nationalpriorities.org).

Prashad was also featured in Jeff Chang’s book Total Chaos and participated in Jeff Chang’s Total Choas Panel at the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival 2008. At the 2011 festival, he led a panel entitled “Hip Hop and a New Global Horizon”.

In addition to being a filmmaker, Hurt is a nationally respected activist. Since 1993, he has been using his craft, his voice, and his writings to broaden and deepen how people think about race and gender. His first film, I AM A MAN: Black Masculinity in America, is a 60-minute award-winning documentary that captures the thoughts and feelings of African-American men and women from over fifteen cities across the country. Hurt challenges audiences to interrogate the damaging effects of patriarchy, racism, and sexism in American culture.

As an activist, Byron has served as a long-time gender violence prevention educator. The former Northeastern University football quarterback was also a founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for college and professional athletics. Hurt is also the former Associate Director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps.

Because of his work, Hurt has lectured at hundreds of campuses, presented at numerous professional conferences, and trained thousands of young men and women on issues related to gender, race, sex, violence, music, and visual media.