Mars Chung-hun Ortiz / The Halfbreeds

Marcelo Chung-Hun Ortiz, who goes by Mars, is one half of the independent hip hop duo The Halfbreeds.

The Korean/Mexican emcee, and recent UC San Diego graduate, has been hard at work with his partner Dan Frapalappa creating music. They’ve been long time friends and have had a mutual love for hip hop music and culture.

Recently, while still in college, Mars won Freestyle Champion at UCSD’s first student freestyle battle in 2009.

The duo released their first album of material titled Mixed Tape! a few months ago. The album can be downloaded for free at their official website.

HalfKorean.com had a chance to catch up with Mars and ask a few questions to find out about himself and The Halfbreeds.

So Mars, what is your mix?
My mix is Korean and Mexican, but sometimes I tell people that I am Mongolian, Manchurian, Aztec, and Spanish. haha My full name is Marcelo Chung-hun Ortiz.

Where were you born and raised?
I was born in Glendale, California and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. Mostly Pasadena, Glendale, and the San Fernando Valley.

What is your current occupation?
My current occupation since graduating from UC San Diego is as a marketing and sales representative with Phiten USA, a Japanese health and wellness company. All my free time is spent making more music.

So, tell us who are The Halfbreeds?
The Halfbreeds is a multi-ethnic Hip-Hop duo from Los Angeles consisting of myself and Dan Frapalappa (Daniel Rocha).

How did you guys come up with the name for the group?
Our original name had to be changed because of bad publicity we got when we found out the name was already taken (which sucked for us). We had enough material for another album and a half that we will never be able to release because we keep mentioning the name. haha But it was a good thing I suppose because it led us, more or less, to embrace our ethnicity and play off of the fact that we are mixed. We are currently working on new material to express our nationalities a bit more. We both played around with a bunch of different names, but finally decided to settle on The Halfbreeds because we are both of mixed race. Dan is Mexican and French.

So, how did you guys connect?
We met when Dan moved to my elementary school in the 6th grade (1992 -1993) and we struck it up immediately because we were part of the handful of kids that listened to hip-hop. The whole rest of the school was listening to Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, The Offspring, etc. while we were bumping Tupac and trading The Sugarhill Gang mixtapes. This was also the era when hip-hop was still about feel-good vibes and just having fun, before it was all gangsta and blinged out.

We were only together for a few years (6th – 9th) when he moved to the Los Angeles County High School for Music and Arts (LACHSA) and I moved to Clark Magnet High School. Even though we pretty much never went to high school together we remained the closest of friends and began rapping and recording music just for fun during our junior year and have been at it ever since.

What kind of goals do you have as a group and also for you as an individual and part of the group?
As a group, our only mission is to make music our own way and have fun doing it. After high school Dan got signed to Warner Bros. as a producer and, long story short, got all the copyrights on what he produced taken from him and did not get paid for any of it (shady record business haha). This really pissed him off as you can imagine, and that was what really made him want to pursue music on his own. It was at this time that we began seriously making music, because up to that point we made songs just for kicks since we were bored on a Wednesday night. Once he was screwed over by the industry we took it into our own hands and began making music more consistently and with the intent to perform them one day. I can’t stress enough that it was all about bringing back that feel-good vibe and just playing around and having fun making songs about whatever we wanted.

One important note is that we have never been in it for the money. Dan is a registered nurse and anesthetist and I am a college grad from a well respected university (I could care less for my university, but many people tell me it is a really good school). We hold down regular jobs and are not planning on becoming rich from our music. Dan always says that when you are making music for a deadline, or for an A & R, or making music to pay your bills, the creative juices get sucked out of it and that is what usually forces many groups to split up or end badly. We enjoy the fact that the music is more of a hobby and not a career.

For myself, I want to make songs that can express true lyricism, like tongue twisting, alliterated type “rewind-that-part-back-i-need-to-decipher what-he-just-said” type of flow. I also want to move into a bit more of a political tone as well as do more songs to reflect my mixed heritage. I would LOVE to make a song one day in which I rap in Spanish and Korean, though my Korean is a bit sketch so I need to study up a bit more on that one. Overall, everything I want to make still has to maintain that level of happiness and making people smile.

What kind of response have you received from people who have checked out Mixed Tape!?
We’ve had positive feedback from the mixed tape, but it’s hard to get real feedback from anybody. Even if your record sucks, people will tell you that they like it because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. That’s why we want to start putting more things on YouTube. On a site like YouTube, people tell you what they really think because they never have to meet you or see you. But then again, even if people think that our music sucks, we still wouldn’t change much.

Have you guys done any or plan to do any live shows?
We’ve done a couple shows here and there and we definitely plan to do more.

Are you guys recording new material and when do you plan to release new songs, videos?
We are in the process of recording a second album and looking to bring in a bunch of other artists to collaborate on new music. Look out for the “All that Jazz” music video! Right now we are scouting locations and getting our wardrobe together!

So being that you guys are fellow mixed folks, what was your experience like growing up?
Frapalappa: Being a halfbreed of any sort is interesting because you don’t fit to a racial group. Growing up, my Mexican friends would always call me a white boy, and my white friends always called me a dirty Mexican. Eventually you just have to face the fact that you really aren’t a pure breed and that you are who you are. I try not to put myself in any one category anymore.

Mars: I didn’t really realize I was mixed until I got to school and some girl asked me if I was oriental, to which I checked if my fly was down and said, “I don’t know, am I?” Boy was that kinda stupid. As I got older it was harder to fit in because all the Asian people would look at me and say “oh you’re Korean? Do you eat kimchee?” Then I would say yes and that was about the end of it because the only thing they could see in me was the Mexican. The same went for the Hispanic people in school, except they would just think I was el chino. This lead me to hang out with pretty much everyone else, mostly Filipinos, southeast Asians (I guess because we looked more similar), and the few black people in the neighborhood. After my first trip to Korea I had a better understanding of what it was to be Korean, even though I experienced A LOT of racism in Korea. During high school I began to connect more with my Korean friends and acceptance was much easier to come by. All in all, I felt like the outsider when I was younger, but now that I’m older I get a lot of love from both Hispanics and Asians because of my mixed heritage. They love the fact that I know and enjoy the foods, speak the languages (my Korean is not so great), and have traveled extensively through both countries on several different occasions. So even though it may have sucked when I was younger, I wouldn’t change it for anything. The best part about being raised mixed was the food. I would go from eating chapchae (잡채) and bulgogi (불고기) with chopsticks to eating tamales and empanadas in a heartbeat. I should have made that Kogi Truck first, I’ve been making those meals since I was a kid!

If there was one artist you could work with who would it be?
Stevie Wonder.

Any final words to everyone?
Thank you for reading and listening, we love y’all!

Thank you to Mars for his time and sharing more about himself and The Halfbreeds. We hope that he continues to pursue music as he has a real passion and love for it. For more information regarding Mars and The Halfbreeds, please check out their official website, Facebook and Twitter.