Some Maja videos for yo’ ass

Some Maja videos for yo’ ass

By Benjamin Leatherman Photo by Luke Holwerda

Mista Maja

In this week’s issue of the Phoenix New Times (on news stands now across the Valley), there’s a pretty off-the-chain profile in the music section by yours truly about local rapper Maja (a.k.a. H. Vincent Payne), a laid-back cat who offers a unique hip-hop style, whereby the 24-year-old drops rhymes chiefly about his love of anime, video games, ’80s cartoons, and other geeky topics de jour. The dude also lays down his lyrical dynamite in both English and Japanese (and occasionally even en Español), and has been a hit with nerdcore fans, Japanophiles, and other geeky types at the various anime conventions around the Southwest that he’s performed at, and even as far away as “The Land of the Rising Sun” (read: Japan).

They’ve also been peeping his pimped-out music videos available on YouTube, and now you can, too, as I’m posting a few of my favorites.

I’ve also been pretty keen on “Janglish Speak (Stronger Remix),” an off-the-chain video of Maja weaving clever lyrical flows to the camera bilingual style. There’s also a humorous parody of bizarre Japanese commercials at the end.

There’s “Transformer,” where Maja raps and rhymes about Optimus Prime and the other superstar robots from the ‘80s cartoon classic:

I’ve also been pretty keen on “Janglish Speak (Stronger Remix),” an off-the-chain video of Maja weaving clever lyrical flows to the camera bilingual style. There’s also a humorous parody of bizarre Japanese commercials at the end.

For those who wanna watch Maja work the mic live, the dood is performing at this weekend’s Otaku University Anime Conference in Mesa (visit http://www.otakuuconf.org). Or if you don’t wanna shell out the 40-or-so bucks to see him, Maja will be performing at an anime event on Saturday, October 27, at Atomic Comics in Mesa.

You can also check out his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/gaijinmaja) for more of his jams.