Mission: in progress
The Bay Area hip-hop crew have a new name (Crown City Rockers), a new instrument ("phono-koto"), and the same high standards.

By Mosi Reeves

THREE DAYS BEFORE a performance at the Downlow club in downtown Berkeley, the hip-hop band soon to be formerly known as Mission: are gathered at bassist-producer Ethan "Headnodic" Lull Parsonage's house in West Oakland, where they make a startling announcement. "We're changing our name," proclaims Raashan Ahmad Morris, MC and frontman for the group. Drummer Max McVeety, DJ and sound artist Walter Kitundu, keyboardist Kat Ouano, and engineer and all-around "utility" musician Pete "Woodstock" Alvarado are with him. "Max, give us a drum roll." Without a drum kit in front of him, McVeety gives a verbal simulation, while Headnodic plays a snippet of the real thing on his sampler.

"Crown City Rockers," Morris says; the startled reaction he receives leads the room to explode in laughter. "Everybody reacts differently when we tell them," Ouano says. "You'll get used to it."

"Crown City Rockers" sounds like an old-school hip-hop group, like the Sugar Hill Gang or the Cold Crush Brothers. "Crown City," Morris explains, is the official nickname of Pasadena, where he and Woodstock grew up; similarly, the name "Mission:" was inspired by Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood, where the group first formed four years ago. Unfortunately, despite the colon, "Mission:" also bore a striking resemblance to the name of a certain British Goth-rock band.

"Every time we went to a label [to shop Mission:'s demo for a record deal], they told us, 'You know you're going to have to change this name if you start getting known, don't you?' And we were like, 'Yeah, OK, someday,' " Morris says. "Then finally we started getting e-mails from the Mission U.K." Apparently, putting a colon at the end of their name didn't work.

A midcareer (or, if all goes well, early-career) name change isn't the only growing pain Mission:, or rather Crown City Rockers, have felt. Late last summer the group followed the release of their debut album, One, with a ramshackle tour across the United States. "By the time we got up to Wisconsin, we had done five dates," Woodstock says. "That's when September 11 happened." The bombings led to several of their concerts being canceled by distraught promoters, including a showcase at the annual CMJ Music Festival in New York (the festival itself was postponed). After that, Woodstock says, "we were basically playing shows to get to the next town and work our way back home."

Shortly after that misadventure, Moe Pope, who shared MCing duties in Mission: with Morris, announced he was leaving the band to be near his daughter in Boston. "It's something we'd known was gonna happen for a minute," Morris says. Back in Boston, Pope is now performing with Boston rapper-producer Insight and the Electric Company crew; he's expected to make a contribution to the Crown City Rockers' next album.

To fill his shoes onstage, Woodstock now helps out as an occasional hype-man. The Crown City Rockers have added a new member, too – Kitundu, their first DJ since Evan Decker left the group several months ago. Kitundu builds his own instruments, including an exotic-looking "phono-koto" board that allows a turntable to pick up vibrations from the strings on a koto as they are played. He has performed solo at the Yerba Center for the Arts and the Luggage Store Gallery, released a series of tapes titled "Sketchpads," and, if his performance in three days is any indication, promises to flesh out Crown City Rockers' hip-hop songs with a variety of unpredictable sounds.

All of these events took place while Mission: built a stack of national press clippings for new 12-inch singles like "Soul Chips," "Home," and a remix of "Mission:2" by Thes One of L.A. hip-hop duo People under the Stairs. " 'Home' and the 'Soul Chips' joint are me and Moe rocking with other producers," Morris says, with Thes One working on "Home" and His-Panik of Chicago-based production crew the Molemen making the beat for "Soul Chips." Nevertheless, the myriad singles and a growing reputation as a formidable live act have brought positive attention to a band that, on One's release last year, was hastily dismissed by some as too derivative of the Roots. Morris freely admits One's shortcomings. "Those songs are from '98," shortly after the group first began. "So a lot of the material that we've had for a long time has been music that's been made for a minute."

One deserves a second listen – or a first from anyone who hasn't heard it. Its best tracks, including "Contagious" and "BMS II MF – RMX," far outweigh any shortcomings, effortlessly creating a cool-out vibe sparked and agitated by Morris and Pope's wordplay. Songs like "Mission:2" prove live hip-hop doesn't have to sound like the Roots, thanks to interpolated scratches and samples that make it far more dynamic than the Roots primarily groove-driven efforts.

Nevertheless, One wasn't an accurate portrait of Mission:, if only because it didn't reflect all of the members' musical abilities. Ouano, Headnodic, and Woodstock all studied their respective instruments at the Berklee College of Music in Boston before forming Mission: with Morris and Pope. Yet One was primarily beat-driven, overly dependent on samples and drum programming, save for a handful of tracks like "Disturbing Behavior" and "It's The" that truly showcased the whole group's musicianship. Mission:'s subsequent singles added insult to injury by not even featuring the band, just the MCs.

"For the past three or four years we've been trying to get a grasp on communicating musically to each other about our ideas," Ouano says. "Lately we've all been trying to really put everyone's two cents into each song." The Crown City Rockers promise their latest efforts, which have yet to reach the public, improve on their earlier recordings. "Chocolate Milk," a B-side from the "Mission:2" single, offers a taste of better things to come. In the past, Morris says, "we did shows and it was all about playing live. Now, we're concentrating on getting more of the recording part down."

Crown City Rockers have taken part in other projects, too, while continuing to work on and record music together. Headnodic is releasing a sequel to a breakbeat album he put out last year, Headnodic Beats, sometime this month. Ouano is a member of Variable Unit, a band that also blends hip-hop, funk, and jazz into an esoteric mix and is scheduled to release their debut, Seven Grain, in June.

As a group, Crown City Rockers are part of a loose coalition of B-boys, rappers, and artists called the B-Sides Crew; one of its members, Lunar Heights, opened for Crown City Rockers at the Downlow. To play it safe, the group billed themselves as Mission:, then stopped their show early on to tell the audience their new name. The crowd seemed nonplussed. They were too interested in hearing some music to worry about names.

Thankfully, the Crown City Rockers didn't disappoint, in spite of the nightclub's wack sound system. One woman was so geeked she leapt onstage and started dancing enthusiastically while Morris led the crowd through a hand-clapping routine, then began rapping the chorus to "Contagious": "Listen when you play this / When you play this, it's so contagious." McVeety earned the most plaudits for his furious rhythmic drumming; meanwhile, Kitundu gave a jaw-dropping display of what he can do with his phono-koto, mixing the koto's eerie sounds and the turntable's trembling vibrations into an ambient interlude that would make Alex Patterson jealous.

At the end of the Crown City Rockers' hour-long set, the crowed yelled and clapped, and the band would have probably been asked back for an encore if the night's DJ, Platurn of the Oakland Faders, hadn't cut on the music too soon. The group members have high expectations for themselves; a set like this was a glimpse of the future.

Crown City Rockers play Sat/20, 8 p.m., La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. $8-$10. (510) 849-2568.