Emirc parks his shiny blue Toyota Highlander in the parking lot of Sure Shot Studio, in Kaka‘ako, where he’s working on tracks for his next album. Inside, he steps to the mic, takes three deep breaths, and then, in a clear, forceful tone, unleashes his latest song:
    
     I’m H-I personified, am I wrong if I wanted Tom to die instead of Katsumoto in Last Samurai?...
    
     Is this the future of Island hip-hop?
     Twenty-seven-year-old Tassho Pearce, aka Emirc, has broken through on local commercial radio airwaves with his single “Honolulu,” a well-crafted, highly listenable paean to urban Island life with a sound that transcends regionalism. The hit — with its “Next Coast flows profound, it ain’t Hawai‘i Five-O, we own this town” refrain — is a source of hometown pride. But it’s “not all palm trees and calm breeze,” as Emirc says. After all, it ends with the line, “We got dirty cops, dealers, pimps, ho’s, crack heads, you name it we got. Still it’s a beautiful place, we invite you all to come visit.”
     “I didn’t want to simplify my stuff, but I wanted to make something that didn’t go over people’s heads too much,” he explains. “Honolulu” is “a party song, an anthem. I’m not trying to bust people’s heads with any punch lines. It’s just something that people can go out and jump in their cars or the club and listen to... and a little something about what it’s like to be a rapper out here in Hawai‘i.”
     Emirc (pronounced “immerse”) wrote the song last year, as he flew home from Portland, Oregon, in a contemplative mood after watching his favorite basketball team, the railblazers, get bounced from the first round of the NBA playoffs. At that point, most of his first album, Rhyme & Punishment, was done, he recalled, but it “seemed like it was too hardcore, there was too much intensity… I needed a song to just, like, come up for air.”
     If it’s rare for Island radio to elevate a single to national prominence (as with Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”), a local act making it big from local airplay seems even less likely. Yet Emirc’s shot at the next level seems better than average given that people such as Los Angeles-based producer Greg Lawson — CEO of Invisible Entertainment, writer of Jennifer Lopez’s hit “Lost Don’t Cost a Thing” and a Grammy-winner for his work on the Chicago soundtrack — give big ups to the Honolulu rapper.
     “If you love hip-hop, you can’t miss a cat like that,” Lawson says. Emirc “has lyrical skill, definitely has a lot of charisma and he has a unique point of view that I don’t think hip-hop has seen yet.”
     Lawson and his team have been assembling the video for “Honolulu,” which Lawson says he’ll use to shop Emirc to record labels.
     The Island rapper “needs to be outside of Hawai‘i,” says Rhettmatic, a turntablist in the World Famous Beat Junkies and a contributor to Rhyme & Punishment. “People have heard him and said ‘He’s from Hawai‘i? That’s dope.’”
     Emirc concurs, with a caveat:
     “I want to have appeal outside of the islands, but there’s a fine line between being completely over the heads of people outside of the islands and riding the mainland’s jock… I consider that I can take myself to the international level and at the same time throw in as many visuals and slang from the island ... It’s my job as an MC.”
     Adding to the list of A-grade hip-hop talent putting their names behind Emirc’s work are Rakaa Iriscience of L.A.-based hip-hop group Dilated Peoples and Babu of the Beat Junkies and Dilated Peoples. Both played at the Rhyme & Punishment release party at Wave Waikïkï in January and both are working with Emirc on his next album (tentatively titled Rhyme & Punishment: Vol. 2). Emirc “understands cadence,” Rakaa says. “He understands how to set up his rhymes… It’s going to be a matter of him being a pioneer, being a franchise player for Hawai‘i.”
    
     At one time hip-hop was a bicoastal phenomenon, with poles in New York and L.A. As it’s grown and spread, new regional centers have emerged, such as Atlanta, the cradle of “Crunk.” Rakaa says he believes Emirc could be the spearhead for a similar movement originating here, with the talent “to elevate the whole island” — which is why Emirc calls Hawai‘i “the Next Coast.”
     Rhyme & Punishment didn’t come out of a vacuum. Emirc had a blueprint: Nas’s Illmatic, the 1994 rap album with a buttery flow and sharp lyrics. Clocking in at about 40 minutes, with nine tracks and an intro, Nas’s landmark work was commended by critics for its brevity. Similarly, local scene-watchers took welcome note of Rhyme & Punishment’s 10-song spareness and unadorned sound.
     “I get a lot of recordings from underground hip-hop artists and there’s, like, 20 tracks with interludes and skits and it just get tedious,” says critic Jeela Ongley, who has written for the Weekly under the pseudonym elle simple. “With (Rhyme & Punishment), all the tracks are bumpable and it just goes straight through.”
     The album also has been a marketing success. It’s been a steady seller at TooGruvz, the independent music store at King and University, since it was released in November, says TooGruvz owner James Viso. He thinks he knows why: “Not a lot of local artists come out with stuff and then promote it.” Emirc and his crew are “doing shows to promote their product. They’ve got radio play. They’ve packaged it well and they’ve got a professional recording and… some well-known producers from the mainland, like Rhettmatic…
     “These guys have been doing their thing for a long time. It just shows that they finally matured as recording artists ... They’re the only ones that I know of that really go for it. They press the vinyl. They press the CDs. They don’t skimp.”
     The first thing you notice on meeting Tassho Pearce is that he seems a lot nicer than he looks on the cover of Rhyme & Punishment. Behind the public scowl and hard lyrics is a wiry, polite man with a tiny Yorkshire terrier named Mochi.
     Stepping into his cavernous Makiki apartment, minimally decorated with vintage advertising posters, the hapa-haole hip hopper shows off his collection of about 30 pairs of near-mint kicks: the Air Force Ones, the Air Max 95, Jam Master Jay edition Adidas Superstars, Air Jordan Ones…
     On the day of a recent interview, he wears a black Rasheed Wallace Nike T-shirt with the volatile basketball star’s initials — RAW — emblazoned across his chest. On his feet are black-and-red Air Force One high-tops, the same shoes “Sheed” often wore as a Portland Trailblazer.
     Pearce is wide-eyed and excited as he talks about his career as Emirc. Suddenly, his cellular catches him. “Yo, can you hook me up with some gear?” he asks a California caller. “I’ll rock that shit on stage.”
     He downplays the fact that his moniker is “crime” spelled backwards. He’s had only minor trouble with the law in the past, he says (although he claims many of his friends have been unjustly targeted by HPD). Still, a harder image might appeal to hip-hop fans. In any case, he says, it has to be more interesting than that “regular nine-to-five stuff.”
     “There’s one line in one of my songs, ‘Dirty Language,’ that says ‘no jobs, slang ice to preachers.’ I never sold any ice in my life, but I’m speaking on the epidemic in the islands. Most likely there are preachers on the island that smoke that shit — that’s the level of epidemic here. So if I gotta say something that pisses someone off just to get ’em to think about it, I’ll do that.”
     What Emirc really stands for, he says now, is “every moment in reality counts.”
     Asked where he got the money to make his debut album, he’s mum.
     He guards his image carefully. As his photo is taken, he breaks into a smile, then thinks better of it. “Smiles are fine, but angry sells more records,” Emirc says, laughing before he reverts to a grimace.
    
     Pearce grew up in Kaimukï, an only child of single-parent Chris Pearce, the publisher of Hawaiian Airlines’ in-flight magazine Hana Hou!. Tassho went through a punk phase in high school, at Kalani, he recalls. Other milestones include performing in a Brown Bags to Stardom talent show, where he lampooned his principal; seeing the Run-DMC/ZZ Top double bill at Aloha Stadium; discovering the rhymes on N.W.A.’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton, the original gangsta album; and hanging out and making hip-hop with friends.
     Tassho started rapping as a cipher MC, working in the back-and-forth, freestyle form depicted in Curtis Hanson’s film 8 Mile, but he had to readjust his writing style. “I can’t just do punch-line battle lyrics,” he says, “’cause people will get bored with it really quick.”
     On his way to becoming Emirc, he passed through a large, loose conglomerate of local hip-hoppers called the HI-State Family. He was known as A.K.I.RA then, and recorded with other HI-State MCs in the groups Hoomanakaz and Invisible Inc. When he hit a speed-bump with Hoomanakaz, his career took a turn for the singular.
     Hoomanakaz had an album they shelved, he says, “because everybody wasn’t on the same page… I was really depressed about that for a minute, ’cause we put about a year into that album. It wasn’t gonna work out and I couldn’t let that keep me outta the mix… (so) I decided to turn that energy around and record my own album.”
     Turning 26 in 2002 was a wake-up call, too, he says. Jam Master Jay, the DJ in Run-DMC, was shot and killed on Emirc’s birthday that year. He started work on Rhyme & Punishment that month.
     Emirc owes the album’s tight, catchy feel in part to Eric Okuhara, aka Syze One, the producer he’s worked with since 1995. Syze, whom Rhettmatic calls “Hawai‘i’s best-kept secret,” has a foundation in deejaying, and in the hip-hop sound of the late 1980s and early ’90s. “I’m a lover of all music,” Syze says, “so I’ll check out anything to see what works.” He’s happy that “Honolulu” “doesn’t make any comprises in the hip-hop sounding beat,” he says, “even though it appeals to the mainstream.”
     Emirc also owes the single’s success to James Mora, aka Jimmy Taco, the I-94 radio DJ. Taco was the first to play “Honolulu” over the airwaves; repeat plays came at the behest of listeners, then other stations, such as KXME and Da Bomb, picked it up.
     Now Emirc, Syze One and Jimmy Taco are partners in Flip the Bird, the new local label behind Rhyme & Punishment.
    
     Back at Taco’s Kaka‘ako second-floor studio, Emirc tries again for that perfect take. He listens, takes a deep breath, locks onto the beat and channels his words:
    
     I’m H-I personified, am I wrong if I wanted Tom to die
     instead of Katsumoto in Last Samurai?
     Flow phenomenon, what’s a show with no drama?
     Blow the whole spot up then I’m ghost like Osama —
     call ‘em a show stopper, nothing short of astonishing,
     demolishing my foes but follow a code of honor;
     when I’m gone put my bones in the Bishop Museum,
     a legend like Iz but never had the pleasure to meet him;
     whether a.m. or p.m., supplying a strong show,
     the most talked about artist from Hawai‘i since Don Ho;
     I never slack a minute, I’m like the rappin’ Emmitt,
     a rapper’s rapper not an actor with an image;
     (my words) engulf the youth like an urban cult,
     turbulent verses worse than the Persian Gulf;
     who in their right mind can do what I do when I write
     rhymes? You’re dreamin’... Not even in two different lifetimes!
    
     Emirc says he often writes his lyrics while driving. “I heard that Jay-Z and Biggie (Smalls) didn’t even have to write down their lyrics,” he says, marveling. “They’re just brainstormin’ in their head. And I was like, ‘Damn, those guys are some of the greatest that ever did it, and if that’s their secret then maybe I should try to do some of that.’…
     “I’ve done it before. I’ve got a few verses, full 16s, in my head. That’s really hard…
     “Those guys are just above and beyond.”
     He pauses, catching himself:“Not that I’m your average rapper.”