didnt know she won. my friend from sfsu told me about her reppin the bay on the show.
did a quick search on her. she writes or maybe now 'wrote' for ruckus magazine.
12/13/06, 8:29 am EST
Meet Krishtine de Leon
AGE 24
HOMETOWN San Francisco
COLLEGE San Francisco State
FAVORITE BOOKS Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
FAVORITE MOVIES Austin Powers, Dumb & Dumber
FAVORITE MUSIC D’Angelo, Voodoo; John Coltrane, In a Sentimental Mood; the Jacka, The Jack Artist
What’s the origin of your name?
I was named after an Indian philosopher named Krishnamurti. My dad really liked him because he said that the way to find truth is not by following a leader but through yourself. When I was little, my dad would tell us we were going to Disneyland and take us to Ojai, California, where the J. Krishnamurti Foundation is. He really tried to beat the philosophy into my head. I hated it until I started reading his books.
What were you like as a kid?
Teachers said I was very smart but that I was a chatterbox. And a lot of kids said I was bossy — before Kelis said it was cool. I was always a cool kid, never a dork — I wasted a lot of time with the in crowd.
How did you get into hip-hop?
I like to say that I was born the year hip-hop reached the West Coast, which was ‘82. I wasn’t there yet; I was born in the Philippines. But I was absolutely immersed as soon as I came to America — my older sisters and I used to make dance routines to Salt-N-Pepa and Kid ‘N Play.
Do you have a personal motto?
“Married to the Hustle.”
How did you get into writing?
In middle school I started toying around with rapping. At that point hip-hop was already such a strong influence in my life. I would write rhymes in these little books and I would hide them. It was like this secret that I had. It was always therapeutic. That’s how I started writing period. I started thinking I wanted a career in writing when I was a junior in high school. I would write these essays and my teacher would pull me aside, and I’d be like, “What did I do now?” I was so used to getting in trouble. And he’d be like, “No, these essays are amazing!” He started really putting a bug in my head that I could really go somewhere with it.
When did you start writing about music specifically?
In college. For my final project in my magazine journalism class, I pitched a story on how violence is affecting the Bay Area hip-hop community. Around that time, lot of the artists were getting killed just before their careers started to blossom. People would only hear about them post-mortem. That was in September of 2004 and coincidentally Mac Dre, who was one of the biggest rappers out here, got shot and died. That’s when I started to really take it seriously. During my last year of school, a friend of mine forwarded me a job posting for this magazine that was coming out — a hip-hop magazine. It was the first of its kind in the Bay Area. At first I came on board as a writer, but I turned in my first draft and gradually discovered that nobody had edited it. I asked the co-founders, “Who’s editing these pieces that are going in?” Nobody was doing it. So that’s when I got super-involved.
What was the magazine called?
Ruckus. I’m not going to try to be big-headed about it, but I feel like the fact that we created our own publication really helped the Bay Area music community reach its potential, because people that didn’t understand it through the music could pick up our magazine and see aesthetically and culturally, all the aspects that they wouldn’t be able to see without physically being here.
-- Rolling Stone
