Picture it, the year was 2019. Ali Wong had just released her seminal romantic comedy on Netflix entitled Always Be My Maybe. For those that ain’t hip to the film, it follows Sasha Tran and Marcus Kim (played by Ali Wong and Randall Park respectively), two childhood friends from San Francisco who are navigating life from very different ethnic foundations (Sasha’s Vietnamese while Marcus is Korean) which plays a part in their rearing and subsequently how their adult lives turn out. As they navigate into adulthood they face challenges, including facing their romantic feelings towards each other that they both neglect to acknowledge towards each other. Their common bond throughout the film is music, primarily hip-hop.
While they are figuring out their love thing Marcus fronts the hip-hop band Hello Peril, who are definitely an Asiatic satire of the band The Roots. Having started the band as a legal teenager, Marcus is the lead lyricist, songwriter, and keyboard player who holds on to his band well into adulthood, almost as a crutch to keep from moving on with his life after serious adversities hit him. The band’s members, though they make good music together, have went through line up changes mostly because Marcus does not want to be any bigger than a famous band in his neighborhood. His apprehension for playing at bigger venues across town reach breaking points, including periods of self-sabotage.
Don’t get it twisted. Hello Peril is doing the damn thing on the music and the concept is genius.
Hello Peril’s introduction in the film is a quirky hip-hop song called Hello, that introduces the audience to their style of satirical political hip-hop humor. Marcus’ delivery, while not the best of the lyrical cypher, is unapologetic in its brutal critique of tech workers ruining the ghettos of San Francisco with overpriced housing, expensive sport utility vehicles, and an over colonization of coffee shops that have ruined the charm of his hometown. Quazar, Hello Peril’s bass player, lays down sixteen vicious bars on the second verse which serve as a testimony to the group’s inability to earn an adequate living as a hip-hop band. From his disdain of not being on anyone’s radar, playing all venues from state fairs to gay bars while driving his almost forty year old vehicle to gigs and playing darts as soon as the get off stage, we get a sense that this is a hip-hop outfit that has been on the verge of making it their entire existence.
The band’s second single, Tennis Ball, came about because Quazar, who is over their merch, introduces a box of tennis balls with the band’s name on them and Marcus comes up with the bright idea to bounce back and write a song about bouncing back like a Tennis Ball to sell them. This song is a hoot, mostly because it’s more cannon fodder on the high cost of living in San Francisco especially as a performance artist, and trying to make a living in a town where you can only make enough to have homeless neighbors in the gutter you make for yourself. It has a bit of an upswing to it to inspire hope that while you might be sleeping on the cement tonight you might be partying hard on some island tomorrow if you manage to bounce back like any ball but the elongated shaped football.
Concluding the film and adding to the band’s mystique is the titular I Punched Keanu Reeves, which means exactly what it says. One of the side plots of the film is Sasha hooking up with Keanu Reeves in a one night stand (and yes, the real Keanu Reeves playing a satirized hipster version of himself) which leads to a very jealous Marcus and Keanu getting into a fight over her. As the song implies Marcus did punch Keanu Reeves and landed a successful blow to him, which, in retrospect, Keanu Reeves was a good sport for even being in the movie and letting them do this song. As it is featured in the closing credits, it’s almost a twofer to mock the events of the conclusion as well as an open ended conclusion to the band’s recording career, since it isn’t clear if Marcus will return to the group.
Hello Peril perfectly brings to boom bap to the rhythm and rhyme of their compositions. Marcus Kim is no Shing02, but that’s okay; his quirky, one second off the beat but still on the beat delivery is memorable enough for me to write this review. Still, Always Be My Maybe hams up Hello Peril’s hip-hop shelf life to that of out of control 1980s rockers. Tony, Hello Peril’s guitarist, alongside Marcus have raging marijuana consumption issues, with the former also tackling weight issues as a liposuction survivor. Ginger, Hello Peril’s drummer and only female member, has tension with Quazar and Tony for reasons unknown but is mostly overlooked in opinion and presence until showtime.
Marcus, of course, is a train wreck and a half whenever his personal life crumbles and takes it out on his band members. Between dating women his band doesn’t like such as Jenny, who acts as a hippie Yoko Ono-esque groupie stalking girlfriend who hides her lack of employment behind crusades and sabotaging auditions by urinating on stage and destroying band equipment in a drunken stupor once his chick leaves him, Marcus is the perfect front man for a band that always seems to be on their last legs while making the best songs of their career.
I think it was pretty cool that Randall Park took the time and effort to express his love for hip-hop in the film by even creating Hello Peril; the film already sets the tone of Bay Area hip-hop by featuring heavily Sons Of Mischief’s 93 Till Infinity in the opening credits and in other cues throughout the runtime. I’m not mad at the satirical nature of Hello Peril; their name is about mocking Chinese censorship (so Randall Park allegedly says) and their subject matter, while initially coming off corny, is hip-hop to the core; it’s relevant, it’s street journalism, and it’s biting in commentary without being dismissive and lame. In a nutshell, it’s the creativity and fun that’s been missing from hip-hop the last twenty-five plus years.
I can’t speak for no one else, but Hello Peril needs to drop that second EP. The Bay Area needs it.
