Jimmy Yang - How to American

YELLOW PANTHERS

In hindsight, I’m very surprised nobody beat me up for coming up with that name. I guess I have always been more of a comedian than a musician. Yellow Panthers forever!

I was the worst rapper alive; I didn’t even have the concept of a bar or a beat. That’s like a car mechanic who has never heard of an engine or a transmission. I wanted to live the rapper lifestyle, but I didn’t know the first thing about rap. I wasn’t an artist; I was a fraud. But in the process of struggling to stay on beat, I discovered my first creative outlet. It didn’t matter if our songs were going to make it on the Billboard Hot 10 °Chart; we felt like we were making something of ourselves. With bootleg software, a five-dollar microphone, and some shitty lyrics, we made something out of nothing. Best of all, we didn’t need permission to make this. There were no rules. It felt like the opposite of everything I had to follow in school and in my family. I smelled the independent spirit of hip-hop: it smelled like America, which I guess happened to smell like the fumes coming out of an old Dell computer. For the first time, I felt like I was freely frolicking in the streets without parental supervision like an American kid.

TOO COOL FOR PROM, BUT NOT REALLY

I never got a record deal, but I experienced creative freedom for the first time. I still was nowhere close to being popular. I never went to any fancy Beverly Hills High School house parties, I never smoked weed in front of the swim gym and I never went to prom. Not that I didn’t want to do those things; I never got invited to them. I spent the rest of my high school career holding on to the music; it was the only thing that kept me from being a complete loser.

I wanted to go to prom with a high school sweetheart. I mean who wouldn’t? But I had no date in sight, so I just said fuck it and pretended to be a cool antisocial kid who didn’t care about prom. A part of me felt like I was missing out in life, but the other part convinced myself, Who cares? You were never trying to fit in anyways. Own the coolness of being a rebel badass who don’t give a shit about prom. I remember the night everyone else went to prom. I was just sitting at home watching MADtv with my dad. We loved that show and we’ve always preferred it over SNL . My dad always got very excited when the hilarious Bobby Lee came on-screen; any Asian person who made it on American television was a big deal. At that time, it was just Bobby Lee and Yao Ming. That night, my dad never asked me, “Hey, why aren’t you going to prom?” He didn’t even know what prom was. If he did know about it, he’d probably call it stupid American bullshit, especially if he found out how much money he’d have to fork out for my tux rental.

The only person that ever pressured me to go to prom was Phil’s mom, a nice Persian woman named Fariba. During my senior year, every time I went over to Phil’s house, Fariba would say to me:

“Jimmy, you have to go to prom, it’s a once in a lifetime experience!”

“Fariba, it’s okay, I don’t want to spend the money.” I didn’t want to tell her the actual reason was I didn’t have a date in sight.

“Jimmy Joon [Joon is an endearing term you put after someone’s name in Farsi], I’ll pay the money, you have to go, or you will regret it your whole life.”An all-expenses-paid prom still doesn’t sound that great if you don’t have a date.

“Fariba Joon,” I jokingly responded, “nemi khom,” which is Farsi for “I don’t want.” I fended Fariba off for the rest of the year with the Farsi phrases I picked up from hanging out with my Persian friends, which was the official second language of Beverly Hills High School.

Maybe I’m still in denial, but I never regretted not going to prom. One thing I really did want to do in high school was to join the football team. I wanted to live the all-American dream of scoring a touchdown under the Friday night lights and spiking the ball in the end zone. I was pretty fast and had some actual ball skills; my dream was to play kick return like my hero Dante Hall. He was a five-foot-six kick return specialist who played for the Kansas City Chiefs. He weaved and juked defensive players twice his size and scored hundred-yard touchdowns without ever getting touched. I was also five-foot-six and I thought I could be like Dante. So I went to my dad and asked him to sign the waiver for me to play football. He never even considered it for a moment; he just laughed right in my face.

“You? Football? Come on.”

“But, Dad, I’m fast and—”

“I’m not signing a paper that’ll make you die.”

And he was probably right. I was a hundred pounds soaking wet. I would have gotten concussed just sitting on the bench. My body was never destined to play anything more than a serious game of Ping-Pong.

I eventually graduated high school as a bona fide virgin with a 3.9 GPA. People might have remembered me as the ridiculous rapper kid who watched too much BET, but I was no longer the weird foreign kid. I never got to slow-dance with my lover at prom or play football at homecoming, but I had an authentic American high school experience. I found a group of friends who came from every part of the world and we bonded over Jay-Z. To me, that is more American than scoring a touchdown at homecoming.

THE PINNACLE OF MY MUSIC CAREER

Years later, when I was in college, I hit the pinnacle of my music career. I received a phone call from an unknown number. I picked up the phone and a man with a gravelly voice asked:

“Are you Doc West?”

“Yes, that’s me.” I was ecstatic that it was a call for hip-hop producer Doc West, not Jimmy.

“That’s great. I heard your beats online, I love them.”

Is this a dream? “Thank you, sir.”

Then he introduced himself. “My name is Laronn James.”

“Excuse me? YOU are Lebron James!?” I almost shitted myself.

“No, it’s LaRONN James.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry, nice to meet you, Laronn.”

“Are you, by any chance, a religious person?”

“Hmm, no, not really.”

“You’re not a serious Christian or anything?”

“No, I’m not religious. Why?”

Well, this is probably a Jehovah’s Witness guy, complimenting my beats to lure me into their religion. I should have known it was too good to be true.

“Okay, that’s great,” Laronn continued, “because religious people don’t agree with my line of work.”

Ah, drug dealer, cool. As long as he wanted to buy some of my beats, I didn’t care if he sold crack to babies. I don’t judge.

“I’m in the adult entertainment business.” Laronn dropped the bomb. “I make porn, and I perform in it.” I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, a bit impressed I guess; I quietly nodded. “Oh, that’s cool” was my only response.

Laronn started opening up and talked with more excitement. “I love your beats, man. I want to buy a couple of them to put in my movies.”

“Yeah, for sure. That’ll be cool.” I knew this was a story I’d be able to tell for the rest of my life.

“That’s great, I want to put one of your beats in a new trailer for my website. It’s called Fudgestick.com. Check it out when you get a chance.”

And I indeed went and checked out Fudgestick.com, for research purposes. The name was pretty on the nose; it was Laronn and his massive fudgestick having sex with MILFs. (If you don’t know what that means, look it up when you’re alone.) Two weeks later, my beat was on the front page of Fudgestick.com, accompanying Laronn’s performance in a hardcore porno trailer. With Laronn’s purchase of my beat, I officially became a professional musician, and I guess also a professional pornographer. This was the pinnacle of my music career, the highlight of my life. Fudgestick.com wrote me my first paycheck in show business.