KMEL’s G-Biz On How ‘Scrillacon’ Valley Shaped Him

KQED’s Silicon Valley Unseen is a series of photo essays, original reporting and underreported histories that survey the tech capital’s overlooked communities and subcultures from a local perspective.

I

first heard the phrase “Scrillacon Valley” at a record store on El Camino Real in Mountain View.

My friend had pulled a Norteño rap compilation off the discount CD rack. Like most Bay Area hip-hop during that era, the album’s cover displayed regional pride: a flamed-up crew of Chicano gang members in front of an all-red low rider in San Jose. Across the top, bold as a No Limit Records diamond-encrusted insignia, read the title: Scrillacon Valley.

Today, Chicanos don’t have the same kind of presence in Mountain View, a city with no record stores left. But my memory of that time period endures, and particularly that phrase, a subversive play on Silicon Valley and its money.

Indeed, this is one of the globe’s hubs of wealth — and, subsequently, wealth inequality. While more than half of the world’s tech billionaires live in Silicon Valley, San Jose has the fourth-highest rate of homelessness in the United States. 

Scrillacon — a play on the ’90s hip-hop slang for money — is aspirational. It’s used by those on the fringes of Silicon Valley, who live among the region’s absurd wealth but don’t get the same access to it.

So when I recently spoke on the phone with Gary Bizer, also known as KMEL’s G-Biz, I had to mention Scrillacon Valley. We laughed at the bygone vestiges that shaped us in the ’90s and early aughts — the rap anthems, the house parties. And we mourned, too.

Long before Gary became a fixture on local rap radio, we were friends in middle school. Raised in East Palo Alto, he moved to Mountain View to finish high school. At the time, our neighborhood marked the southeasternmost edge of the city, bounded by a confusing mix of U.S. Highway 101, former orchard fields, tech offices, motels, Section 8 housing, an RV park and an active military base. It’s where I once saw Gary break a grown man’s nose during a neighborhood boxing tilt.

Between the family of eight Samoan brothers in a two-bedroom home at the end of the block, Mexican kids like Pollo and Darby across the street, and football players like Gary in the nearby apartment complex, our neighborhood had no shortage of friendships — and fights.

Back then, our corner of Scrillacon Valley felt like an actual community where everyone knew each other. None of us imagined that the fight we should’ve actually been preparing for was much bigger and more invisibly pernicious: the preservation of our home.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Alan Chazaro: Man, it’s been a minute. What’ve you been up to these days?

G-Biz: My brother, I’ve just been putting in work. I hit the 10-year mark at KMEL last month. Been doing nonprofit youth development for a while. I oversee the digital music lab for Dev Mission, a free enrichment program in San Francisco, focused on getting more people of color and women actively working in the tech industry. As Bay Area natives, it’s so difficult to break into that field, and people are being pushed out. So we focus on education around tech skills and opportunities, especially for those youth and folks from underserved areas.

That’s important. Especially since we grew up in the part of that Bay where tech work has really changed the affordability for local families.

It goes back to gentrification. To think that Mountain View and EPA [East Palo Alto] are so different from what they were growing up. Those pockets of culture that used to exist have dissipated. Back in the day, you could walk down to the club in Mountain View, Limelight, do whatever the fuck you wanted to do, and walk the fuck home, bruh. They had those little clubs out in Sunnyvale, we would go down there. I remember my homie Nicar, when he got his very first car, we pushed that little thing down to the club and all over, just rolling down 101. That’s the type of shit you don’t really see anymore.

It’s unaffordable. The culture has changed. So many of us have been pushed out, unless you were lucky enough to get a form of housing, or worked in the tech industry to sustain yourself. It’s just hard to keep up. It’s sad that it’s all dripped away. That sense of community leaves when the culture starts to fade. And we’re seeing it in the larger cities, too. Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco. You see that shit when someone new walking around and I’m like, hold on bruh, I ain’t never seen you before.

The rent in Mountain View is among the highest in the country. That’s the reality living in the Bay now, sadly. Where are you at these days?

I live in Oakland, been based here for the past 13 years. I moved to the East Bay around college. Still trying to figure out how to stay in the area and afford it. It’s ridiculous trying to make it. But it’s lively here; it’s where the action is.

What’s your connection to Silicon Valley?

I’m originally from East Palo Alto. My mom came out from Arkansas when she graduated high school and moved to EPA with her auntie and uncle. I had four great aunties and uncles. Two of them still live there; they’re the last ones living. I was born and raised there, but we always went to school in Mountain View, starting in kindergarten.

Education was always important in my home. My mom made sure that no matter what, we had access to it. Compared to EPA during that time, which was known as the murder capital, Mountain View had better schools. We moved to Mountain View later on and lived there with my aunt and a few of my cousins. It made it easy during middle school and high school.

I got to develop a good understanding that a lot of folks don’t necessarily get. Lot of my family and friends in my old hood didn’t know how to interact with white people. I got to go to school and connect with all kinds of different people. That was extremely useful for me. But it wasn’t no easy walk in the park either.

What brought your family to this region from Arkansas? And how have you seen it change?

My mom worked at Hewlett-Packard growing up. One of the biggest tech companies, the grandfather of what Apple is today. Having that insight, from her literally being in the tech industry, was major. I remember her talking about stuff in the ’90s that folks were just catching onto in the 2000s. I was able to see it continue to develop and grow firsthand, not realizing how massive it was getting. I remember when we finally got a computer at the house, that was big shit. From the days of dial-up internet to the first days of viruses and Napster and Limewire. We were that first generation that got to grow up with it and see the boom and impact. 

Mountain View and what it looks like now, you don’t even recognize parts of the city anymore. The astronomical prices. When I drive back to EPA, bruh, I don’t even recognize the streets I grew up on. Now you got three of the largest tech companies in the world within a few miles’ radius. Amazon, Facebook, Google. Humongous hubs, all near each other. They’ve taken over and pushed the living rate up. EPA is a million-dollar city now. You can’t buy a house under a million. My dad is like, what? He bought his house for $200,000 (laughs). When the property value was low, people came through and bought it off for cheap. People sold off in mass in the early 2000s, moved out to Tracy and those areas. That happened from EPA to Vallejo.

How have your experiences of traveling all over the Bay Area reshaped the way you see Silicon Valley now?

With KMEL, I’m going hood to hood. From the Crest to Hunters Point. I have an understanding of those places. At the same time, I’m able to rub shoulders with folks in Santa Row, Danville, Blackhawk. I do a lot of work in different neighborhoods, and you can see that divide and who is under-resourced. There are people down the street with all the tools they need, but I’m over here working with kids who barely have running WiFi. As I’ve grown older, that divide has only gotten bigger and bigger in the Bay.

Silicon Valley was ground zero for all of that. We saw it happen here first. Now we’ve seen that ripple in Frisco, Oakland, Richmond. The Black population in SF is now around 5%, bruh. That’s ridiculous. Black, Asian, Latino folks have lived here for hella long. Earlier in the 20th century this is where you could get port jobs, working at the docks and offloading for the ships. Now that shift, from industrial to technological, has absolutely changed the makeup of folks who live here.

Silicon Valley isn’t geographically listed on any map. It’s more of an idea than it is an actual place. But how would you define where it is for people who don’t know?

Most of the Peninsula and South Bay is Silicon Valley. The true heart of it is San Jose. San Jose has been the hub for these mega companies. How many acres does Apple have out in Cupertino? Google is in Mountain View. Of course we know X [formerly Twitter] has been in Frisco for so long [and is now reportedly moving to San Jose]. Lyft and Uber have hubs in Oakland. Tesla has a huge factory down in Fremont. And you can’t forget about San Bruno [with YouTube]. It’s sprinkled all over, but the most centralized part of Silicon Valley is definitely the San Jose area.

I’ve heard people say things like “San Jose isn’t part of the Bay Area.” Why do you think this part of the Bay doesn’t get the same kind of love as our neighbors up north?

Folks just talk out the side of they neck. Unless you have family in these other parts of the Bay, you might not travel here. My first time at KMEL when I was younger was my first time in Richmond. People were like, you ain’t never been to Hilltop? Hell no. What I’mma do there, breh? My family wasn’t traveling like that. So imagine someone in Vallejo, a place with a namesake, where you got 40, Mac Dre, all them. Same with SF, Richmond, Oakland. People who grew up out there don’t always have business going down to San Jose.

A lot of it ties into the music, too. Folks show love to other places because they got Dru Down, San Quinn, Rappin 4-Tay, JT the Bigga, Too $hort. All them held it down for their cities hella hard. San Jose doesn’t have that [name recognition in rap]. But what people don’t understand is that Shark City is the source of some of the most influential and historic Bay Area songs ever made, by none other than The Slapp Addict himself. Rest in peace to the good brother, Traxamillion. He was from San Jose, and he had so much reach and pull and love around the Bay.

It’s easy for folks to not know that some of their favorite anthems came from San Jose, made by a guy from San Jose. Folks might not know about Sean T out of EPA and what he produced [including Mac Dre’s “Feelin’ Myself”]. Folks forget about Dem Hoodstarz being some of the biggest hyphy stars. Totally Insane, Neva Legal. That’s history. Folks might not know that. It’s funny because Pittsburg got rappers like Mob Figaz, so people say that’s the Bay, but then they turn around and say Antioch ain’t the Bay, even though it’s the next city over. Same thing happens with San Jose. There’s a separation of generations that contributes to it all. They might not know the musical history here. But they need to put some respect on this area.