Words by: Mark Anthony Jenkins

Establishing one’s self as an artist in the music industry is a daunting task on its own, but what about trying to shed the perception of an entire city’s musical identity? Though L.A. may forever be synonymous with “gangster rap,” it appears that a new generation of artists is challenging that notion. With the city’s musical landscape shifting like the very fault lines beneath its surface, one artist helping to cause that stir is Diz Gibran. His recent release, Soon You’ll Understand, produced by New York native Moonshine and put out by Crooks and Castles, has garnered much attention, putting him at the forefront of a new West Coast movement.

“There’s always been emcees like me and a lot of the cats that you’re hearing now from the West Coast,” Diz states between drags of a cigarette, fresh from opening for the Clipse at Downtown L.A.’s Club Nokia. “[T]he internet and music blogs, it made it a lot easier to get our music out there. The majority of cats out here don’t bang; you’re affected by it, you know people that do, but you don’t bang.”

A snowboarder and skater since 1989, the fashion-entrepreneur-turned-emcee credits growing up around a diverse group of people for his varied interests. “I was always a kid that was all over the city, I wasn’t only on my side of town, I mixed with everybody. I went to school with people from everywhere.”  While discussing what it was like to board before it was cool for urban black kids to do so, Diz acknowledges how times have changed and how good it feels to see the skateboard scene so vibrant in the city. “I had homies that skated that was from the hood and I would take my boys snowboarding. Back then though, we were the minority, and everybody was giving us shit for it, because it wasn’t accepted…but we kept doing it.”

Nowadays, it is almost cliché for a rap artist to have his own line of clothing after dropping a few hits. Unlike his counterparts however, Diz’s path to fashion didn’t come as a result of his music career. While at Florida A&M University, he began working with some friends that had created their own clothing line, helping them market and sell their products. Bored with college life, he decided to leave school and upon returning to L.A., became an investor with the Diamond Supply Co. He also started The Stevenson/Gibran Agency with his long time friend Terron, a sales and marketing company within the clothing industry. “I grew up in fashion; [from] getting ‘Best Dressed’ in high school to boosting and all that. My parents would always find clothes and would be like, ‘We didn’t buy this shit!’”

Though he admits his parents were less than pleased with him leaving college, Diz acknowledges that they have always stood behind him. “My parents have always been supportive of what I did, but they didn’t always accept it at first. But I think over time they got to know me as a kid that was strong minded, and anything I did, I was serious about.”

With the release of “Soon You’ll Understand”, Diz is quick to point out that his focus is music. He has amicably left Diamond Supply and although his hand is still involved in the fashion world, he declares that he wants to continue to develop musically and push their latest release, with thoughts on doing videos for select tracks. “Before anything, music is my first love. The thing about it is music and fashion goes hand in hand. But it’s a no brainer…if I have to choose between fashion and music, its gonna be music.”