Learning about Korean music was like learning my native tongue, albeit musically. Sonically, he uses traditional Korean music in his tracks, a striking difference from A Grain of Sand or even other Asian American rap groups who tend to use conventional Western standards. Samples of recorded sound bites float in, offering stark politicized commentary. Jamez challenges Asian American panethnicity. He sometimes aligns more with blackness than with Asian American-ness.
Identity becomes fluid, hybrid and contradictory.
His Asian America isn't bound by the constraints of nationalist identities, and lacks the stability that helped ground the previous generation. Home is where da heart is, but my heart is turning into stone. A Grain of Sand and Jamez have acted as both prophets and apostles of Asian America's identities, revealing important ways in which culture intertwines with politics. The dance between Asian American artistic works and the political times they inhabit has always been intricate. Asian American music records the rhythms of history between the notes.