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Latin's Urban Revolution
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Come take a ride with hip-hop's favorite Chicano in his Impala around his hood while some of today's hottest Latin hip-hop blasts out of the speakers. You're now rolling and listening to the sounds of Lil Rob – born Robert Flores in San Diego. Lil Rob is no newcomer to the hip-hop scene. Dropping his first single on the streets at the age of 16, "Mexican Gangster" quickly bubbled to the surface, catching the attention of many and generating a lot of buzz. While his career seemed prepared for takeoff, life on the streets turned in another direction for Lil Rob. At the age of 18, he was shot in the face, had his jaw wired for seven weeks and underwent surgery. He had bullet fragments lodged in his spinal cord and as Lil Rob says, "I'm lucky to be walking, let alone alive." During this traumatic period, Rob grabbed pen and paper and began to write about what he had seen around his neighborhood, stories about his life. He placed every lyric into easy-flowing rhymes about cruising, loving, partying and surviving that would put La Raza on the map and "represent" the streets of San Diego and beyond throughout every barrio. Lil Rob has traveled a long distance in his career, from the days when Latin hip-hop was looked upon as just a novelty to the time when his single, "Summer Nights," broke through on radio and became a Top 10 success on Billboard Monitor's radio chart.
In the early stages of his career it was pretty difficult. Rob explains, "Being who I am and the way I look, it was hard to even get on the radio and do all the things I've done. People would put me down when I visited radio stations, call me "Vato" and "Ese." They'd make fun of the way I talk. They didn't understand that there's a hell of a lot of folks who look like me, who walk and talk like me and crease up their pants the same way as me – needing somebody to listen to and identify with." Surveying the rap game today and the progress he and Chicano rap have made over the years, Rob nods, "I can feel the respect now. I'm seeing people changing all around me. It's a good feeling."
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