Persona: Keen One

May 30, 2008 8:33 PM
by chipi [email]

When you were growing up you knew this guy. He was in and out of your town, hanging around for a few years - soaking up every ounce of cool from the vibe in the city. Lucky for us, when the sponge of dopeness that is Keen decided to overflow, he ended up on Miami Beach.

For the past three years, Keen One has been pouring his Hip-Hop heart and soul into Takeout Tuesdays at Buck 15. The first of what's become a series of conscious-old school-unpretentious-chill-vibe hang outs on the Beach. A jack of all trades - Keen's parties are informed by his ventures into the B-Boy, Skating, Tagging and DJ world. Anything and everything the cool kids ever did, Keen's been in on for years. Humble and easy going, Keen has the rare distinction of being a promoter who catches no beef - the guy is loved by all.

CoolJunkie joins in on the love fest and gets in on a glimpse of his wisdom.

Name: Keen One

Age: I’m pretty up there. (laughs) I just turned 22 again last week. (laughs)

Occupation: I am an artist first, DJ second...actually, let me take that back. Artists first, skateboarder second, DJ third.

Where do you come from? I was born in Laos. It’s a country between Thailand and Vietnam. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia and a little bit up in New York City, and then I moved down here and I've been here for about six or seven years.

What’s your favorite place in Miami? I like going to the parks by my house with my dogs, it’s right there when you exit off of I-95 onto Biscayne Blvd coming from the beach. It’s a little small park. No one really goes there so it’s super chill.

What do you wish Miami had more of? Good book stores.

Less of? The typical South Beach mentality crowd.

Where do you run away to? I don’t really run away from anything.

What party do you miss?I miss the party that used to happen at the Marlin Hotel. The Marlin Hotel is a cool place. The hip hop night there was good.

What’s your favorite party right now? Takeout Tuesdays at Buck 15!

Why did you guys start Takeout Tuesdays? We started Takeout Tuesdays about 3 years ago at Buck15, since the place opened itself. The main reason that we started that party was to create a safe haven for me, to have that kind of party on the beach. You don't really find that kind of vibe out here. That kind of music didn't exist on the beach back then. We play Old School Hip-Hop, Funk, Soul, Reggae, Dance Hall and its basically no pretentious energy. It's for anybody to come and have fun, that's really what the place is about and it's why I keep on doing it there. The people who own it are fully about that as well and that's why they have that place and keep it going as what it says. Jenny and Amir are super cool people. They also do Art Shows inside it as well.

What’s musically exciting to you right now?Anything that is innovative. Anything that is creative. Right now I’m having a hard time enjoying a lot of the new music that’s coming out. It’s been hard to find good music lately. That’s why I’ve been digging back to an older selection of stuff, some old-school hip hop, some late 80s and early 90s and a lot of the old funk and soul stuff. I think that going back to that gives you a lot of inspiration and motivation.

Name a record that changed your life: Dinosaur Jr. "Bug".

What does the Hip Hop scene need right now? More real people. More creativity.

What do you think the Miami scene needs right now? For ALL to make a bigger effort in supporting local events in either the art communities, the music and club scene and definitely support your independent owned businesses. Support!

Name your heroes:My mom, my dad and my sisters and my close close friends.

What was the first hip hop song you ever heard? I’ll probably say Grandmaster Flash Planet Rock. That would be one of the first ones that I can remember that early on. That’s when I started break dancing and when I started listening to more hip hop stuff.

Are you a breaker? Yea. I started breaking when I was…it was like 88’, 89’.

What was your best breaker move? What was your signature move: Because I was into martial arts I liked to do more gymnastic moves like flips. I’d always do windmills and backflips.

When did you start tagging? I started tagging at about 89’.

Who would you say influenced your style in that regard? Definitely Tackz from AM7. Beno, Masevo, and definitely Sen and Jaz. Those are definitely critical guys that influenced me a lot and not only me but people even in Nashville. In Nashville is where I started tagging and painting.

Can you describe your favorite moment as a DJ? I guess any moment when I get the crowd hype and everyone is singing along with the song.

Name a local act that you admire:I have a few, Le Spam the All Stars, Mayday, Fusik - these young cats coming up, they're all B-Boys. It's a live funk band, it's really dope.

When did you start skating? I started skating in '85 and I still skate to this day.

Do you skate every day? Pretty much, for the last three years I haven't been skating that much at all. Probably like, once a month for the most. But, lately for the past seven months, eight months straight - I've been back on my skateboarding game again. It feels good, it feels right, it feels like what I've been missing so I've been back at it.

What's your favorite place to skate in Miami? My favorite place to skate is definitely MIA Skate Shop, my second favorite place would be this cement park in Perrine.

What's your favorite skating trick? 360 flips.

What's your worst skating injury? I've had a few concussions from skating.

Can you play any instruments? I can play the triangle really well.

What was up with that piece you did for Big Boi? We did a piece for him, it was me and my boy Daks. At the time Daks and Big Boi were pretty good friends and Big Boi had just moved to this new house and that was right when MTV cribs had just started up. They wanted him to do the first episode and so he wanted us to come and redo this whole garage/studio thing that he had and so we went there and that was my first time meeting him. We rocked the whole place apart and everybody from the Production team on MTV cribs were giving me props on the piece.

Had you tagged up the wall? Actually I did a whole production piece. Each one of us did our own piece. Daks and SB did this whole combo production together. Big Boi is really big about females and naked females and things like that, that was when the whole stripper pole came in and everyone started to get that. So he wanted to do something with naked girls, so I had this naked girl that was in Japanese Animation because that's my style of painting. Across it and underneath it said Big Boi in kind of Japanese font style thing, but he couldn't read it. Later when he was on the show he was trying to read it and said "I don't know what it say, I hope it don't say 'Fuck You' or nothing like that".

What's up with your custom shoe designs? I haven't done custom shoes for a while and I thought it was kind of overdone. I got over it. We're doing this thing with my friend who travels the world with Sneaker Pimps. I'm the one that helps to put together the shows that happen here in Miami, since day one. I've just had a long time period of dealing with custom shoes and dealing with the whole sneaker culture. It's kind of changed though, it's been kind of saturated by the market. Anyone who has the money can get them now, it's not like it was before. You had to have the passion for it to go out and search and find it and you'd really throw yourself into it. Now you can just go online and say 'You know what? I want these shoes' dit-dit-dit-dit (makes typing gesture) and boom, you've got it. It's that instant gratification.

Name a dream of yours you have yet to accomplish. One of my dreams is just to be - well, I think it's everyones dream. I just want to be successful in everything I do, to have a comfortable life and that my family is well taken care of. That's really it. That's really all I need. As long as I'm happy with what I'm doing it doesn't matter if I'm rich or poor.

What's on the horizon for Keen One? I think I'm just focusing back into my skating right now. It's just more just like enjoying it again and from that it circulates around my life as with my creativity with art, my music and everything else I do. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about it. For the longest time I felt like I was missing something in my life and that was one of the key things that was missing - I wasn't skating. Now that I'm skating more it's actually helping to motive me more with my artwork and music.

Click here to watch and read more about Keen One and check him out at Takeout Tuesdays at Buck15 every Tuesday, at Jazzid with Mayday every other Friday, every other Wednesday at PS-15 for Yo! BBQ, Sundays at the Hard Rock Casino at Jazziz and at art walk in the Garden next to the Moore Building.