'I love singing with an acoustic guitar when I've a girl over at my place,' says self-styled charmer Brandon Ho. 'It's just that I find rapping to be a much better way of expressing the realities of living in this city. But you can't start rapping at a girl, can you? You'd put her off.'
Ho - a.k.a. Ghost Style - is explaining his transition from funk-soul crooner with local groovers Site Access, to the direct, in-your-face world of rapping. He may favour the rhyming couplet over the chorus these days, but there are clearly exceptions to be made when it comes to the ladies.
'Rap helps you express the edge of urban life,' says the 29-year-old. 'It helps you go deeper into the underground.'
He's not talking about the MTR. 'I'm talking about the gritty side of things, the undercurrent here,' he drawls.
'The music industry definitely needs a little bit of shaking up. I'm not saying that everything that's in the mainstream is bad. It's just that the voices below that mainstream need to be heard also.'
It's a view that's consistent with Ho's multi-faceted career, from the moment he ventured into the world of publishing at 25 with the short-lived Chalk magazine in 1999. 'That was all about spreading the word on local youth culture. All the music and talent which otherwise wouldn't get recognised. Unfortunately, surviving in that business takes a lot of organising. You need to make sure you've got plenty of help. But if someone gave me a lot of cash, maybe I'd do it again.'
