Kobo

Kobo, born James Alkhass, is what you'd call naturally entrepreneurial.
He just released his solo debut album, "The Birth," on his own record label, MY Entertainment. Last year, the 29-year-old opened his own shop, MY Salon on 25th Avenue in San Mateo. "I make all the cuts -- hair and records," he laughs.

A tall man with strong features and a curly, shoulder-length ponytail, he's quite dashing, riding a motorcycle and wearing a leather jacket.

Alkhass mostly goes by his nickname Kobo, which comes from "Kid Bass," the moniker he chose as a middle-schooler for competing in freestyle rap contests.

For Kobo, rapping quickly went from hobby to passion, especially when he won the Battle of the Rappers on KMEL (106.1-FM) when he was 15.

"From there, my mom finally started believing I could do something with this rap stuff,
so she gave me her blessings," he says. "After she saw I won $1,000 at 15, she said, 'OK, maybe this could go somewhere.'"

His story starts even earlier, though. Born in Kuwait, Kobo is ethnically not Arab, but Assyrian, or Babylonian.

"We have no country," he says. "We lost Babylon 7,000 years ago. There are Assyrians you find in Iraq.
That's really what Babylon used to be. There are Assyrians in Russia, there are Assyrians in Australia. We're Christian, Catholics."

He and his family left Kuwait when he was 10. "We were living in the Middle East, where it's tough on Christians," he says. "My father -- before (the Kuwaiti government) took us all to war -- just decided to pack us up and take us to our freedom, where we were free to practice religion and escape all that persecution and escape all that was going down."

From Kuwait, the family moved to Detroit. An important birthplace in the history of hip-hop culture, Kobo absorbed the beats and rhythms of the developing genre in the early 1980s,
even though he hadn't really mastered English yet. From Detroit, the family moved again, to San Mateo, where Kobo's parents opened up a deli in the Laurelwood Shopping Center,
and he went to Abbott Middle School, then Aragon After winning the Battle of the Rappers in 1989, Kobo began performing with a number of groups around the Bay Area, and then in Turlock, where his parents moved when they retired during Kobo's senior year in high school.

Did it matter that hip-hop was primarily developed by African-Americans, and that as a Kuwaiti-born Assyrian he didn't fit the mold? "Back in the late'80s and very early'90s, the music was very Afro-centric, especially the hip-hop," he says.

"Most people accepted, but there were a few ignorant people. But like I say, music is blind and product speaks for itself, You can never deny talent. You can never deny what your ear hears, what your eye sees."

Success came early, with a record contract in 1993 for Kobo's group, Abandoned in the Streets, which changed its name to DaHomlez (The Homeless). Their album "Abandoned in Da Streetz" came out in 1995.

The record did well, but the profits went into the record company's coffers, not the artists' bank accounts. Kobo is philosophical about the whole situation now. "We were young, dumb, loved our music, didn't know our business," he says. "That was my learning the ropes.
I lost a lot of time, dropped out of college for it. It was a deal, it just wasn't the right deal.
There's a good experience. Made me stronger." Meanwhile, as he was building his music career, he was also cutting hair at a barber shop on 25th Avenue. "I started music and hair at the same time," he says. "And I kept them both.

"Hair is my daytime gig, you know, and at nighttime all the music kicks in, all the clubs and the promotion and that good stuff," he says. "Opening up my own business gave me the flexibility to do my music. If I have to take off, I can take off."

Right now, he's hoping "The Birth" takes off. It's available in San Mateo at Tower Records and Vinyl Solutions, as well as MY Salon and Mr. Pickles sandwich shop.

He's building a fan base, doing gigs at clubs like La Fiesta in downtown San Mateo, The Edge in Palo Alto, Tunes in San Jose and Limelight in Mountain View.

He's also in negotiations with a couple of Los Angeles-based record labels, which would help him distribute his album and garner radio play. Right now, he's talking to folks from KMEL -- where his rap career started -- and Wild 94.9-FM. He's got a single, "Too Hot," on stations in smaller markets, such as Reno and San Luis Obispo.