All those ballroom parties their Pinoy parents dragged them to...

FIL-AM hip-hop artists recently made it to the cover of LA Weekly, El Lay's alt ernative weekly publication. The cover story titled "The Fil-Am Invasion," which was written by Sam Slovick, appeared with the sub-head, "Embedded with the hip-hop movement that's taking over Hollywood." The piece heralded the rise of hyphenated Filipinos as DJs in the burgeoning party scene in LA and in key cities across the US. Well, all those ballroom dancing parties that their Pinoy parents dragged these kids to are paying off. These DJs with names like Q-Bert and Jep are lording i t over the club scene in Hollywood and other parts of the LA area. Writer Slovick encapsulated the growing prominence of Fil-Am DJs in this paragr aph: "Icy Ice breaks down the rise of Fil-Am hip-hop like this: As hip-hop migr ated west in the '80s, Filipinos in California already had a thriving funk- and R&B-based mobile-DJ scene going on. With infrastructure intact, the Fil-Am par ty scene moved out of the garage and into the clubs in L.A., San Francisco and Southern California, where the voice of disenfranchised ethnic America resonate d with these first-generation Cali teens -- who, though many in number, felt ou tside the American mainstream. The time was right for a full-scale teenage hip- hop revolt. Fil-Am DJ crews emerged all over Southern California." Read the whole story at http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/ the-fil-am-invasion/16965/.