Beats, Rhymes, & Toxic Waste – Chaz Kangas Celebrates 50 Years of Troma with a Tribute Album
It’s rare that a person gets to combine their passions, but emcee, and cult film aficionado Chaz Kangas has accomplished exactly that with his upcoming album, The Troma Project: 50 Years of Reel Fan-Toxic Hip-Hop.
Yes, Troma Entertainment, the famed indie film company that gave us such cult classics as The Toxic Avenger, and Class of Nuke’Em High, has reached the half century mark, and Chaz, along with producers J57, and Bald Halfwit, and a team of Troma loving emcees, have created an album in honor of this landmark anniversary.
Due out October 31st via Four Finger Distro, what makes The Troma Project truly unique is that each sound in every beat comes from a sample from a Troma film, or score.
An impressive feat, and equally impressive is that Chaz made sure that while the album is clearly geared to Troma fans, it can still be enjoyed by everyone else.
“I like when you’re referencing something, if someone doesn’t know what the reference is, they won’t feel totally lost. They’ll think that it’s just like a face value sort of thing, but the person who knows what you’re talking about, they catch that second layer to it.”
The first multi-layered single from the album is “Girls School Screamers” featuring Desdamona, RhymeStyle Troop, and Anna Diorio.
I caught up with Chaz to find out more about The Troma Project, and his lifelong inspiration from Troma. He also discussed the incredible kindness of Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman, an unlikely connection to The White Stripes that Jack White may, or may not know about, and the song he considers the “Yesterday” of Troma.
I want to go all the way back to when you were a very young Chaz Kangas. What was the first Troma movie you saw, how did you wind up seeing it, and what made you an immediate fan?
Cannibal! the Musical.
It was at a Hollywood Video, and I remember first seeing the video case for it.
I’d heard the name of it because I was a big South Park fan, and when Rolling Stone magazine was covering the South Park explosion they had mentioned Trey Parker’s previous works, including the Mormon porno superhero film Orgasmo, and (he and Matt Stone’s) college film, Cannibal! the Musical.
It stayed in my brain until it was Christmas break of 1999. School’s out, holidays about to hit, and Hollywood Video has just the case for it on the shelf, which meant someone had checked it out.
It wasn’t in stock again until the Friday before Valentine’s Day.
I watched it that first night, and I remember being floored with how great it was. Toe tapping great songs, genuine razor sharp wit, and delightful violence.
I had not seen anything like it.
The intro for the VHS was directed by a young James Gunn.
They didn’t even mention South Park in the intro, because (the VHS was from) 1996, and South Park came out the following year. Then I recognized that The Toxic Avenger, who I knew from the cartoon show Toxic Crusaders, was part of the intro, along with Lloyd Kaufman, the president of Troma Studios, and creator of The Toxic Avenger.
I also remember seeing previews for all these movies that I had never heard of – Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D., Tromeo and Juliet, Bugged!, Frostbiter.
Seeing the familiarity of Toxie next to Lloyd, and then the movie began, altogether it wound up being just this perfect storm of being like – I should see more of these.
Chaz and members of The Toxic Avenger cast in 2024
After watching Cannibal!, the very next day I called a friend over, and I’m like, “You need to see this movie,” and he was floored by it, as well.
The day after that, my mom, I was describing it to her, and my mom loves musicals, I showed it to her, and she was uproariously laughing, and she had never seen anything like it.
So the next week then I went into Hollywood Video, which had a cult classic section, and I rented The Toxic Avenger, and watched that with my mom. It was the R rated version, so it wasn’t quite as distinctly violent, but there’s plenty there where it’s very much an adult movie, but it was a horror comedy.
There had been horror films prior to them that had some funny moments that I had seen, and really liked, but The Toxic Avenger was the first time it was so extreme in both ways, and I didn’t know you could mix genres like that.
In my 13 year old brain I decided that’s it – I’m going to see every Troma movie I possibly can.
So much of it was what I’d later come to realize was this visceral feeling of artists making what they wanted to make. Seeing something like Redneck Zombies, or Surf Nazis Must Die, or Class of Nuke’em High, they’re all so different, but what they all have in common is the fact that it was someone being like – hey, I have this very left of center movie that I want to make, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it.
It was a really refreshing, and inspiring, and powerful new world to find myself in.
I wound up that July (as a 13 year old) going to Comic-Con in San Diego – this is before Comic-Con was a massive cross-multimedia haven – because on a few Troma VHS releases they had mentioned that every year they’d go to San Diego Comic-Con, and my family was going to San Diego that same week anyway.
I remember meeting Lloyd Kaufman. He was wearing a T-shirt that had the logo of the band Flipp, who were a glam punk band from Minneapolis, who also had a cameo in Terra Firma, and actually did the music for the trailer.
It was cool meeting Lloyd, and meeting some of the other people around Troma, like Julie Strain and Doug Sackman.
I was 13, but I was really interested in movies, and a few months prior, Troma had inspired myself and my friends to start making movies on our own.
A movie called Vegas in Space was the one (that inspired us). It’s a sci-fi drag queen epic, which we saw knowing nothing of drag, but just saw the Troma logo on the box, and it was a brand we could trust.
We realized this is a massive sci-fi epic that’s shot in someone’s apartment that they just like kept changing, and redecorating the background. We felt inspired to start making our own movies.
I’d ask people at Troma questions about the films, movies, the advice, the rollouts, and also reading Lloyd Kaufman’s book, All I Ever Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger, and just being 13 and internalizing all this, and this real, as DIY as it gets, how to make your friends into stars, how to promote.
They were so cool, because it didn’t feel out of reach to me.
So many of my friends who were also into movies, and wanting to make movies, their heroes were, especially at that time, untouchable. Meanwhile, Lloyd Kaufman’s email was on the Troma website, and he’d write back to people.
I wound up going back to Comic-Con in 2002 and 2003, and Troma asked me if I wanted to work behind the table, and sell Troma movies for them for a few hours. I wanted to have that hands-on experience talking to the people who were there, and give Troma some free labor on the side. They wanted to pay me in movies, which when you're 16, 17, you’re essentially cutting out the middleman right there.
During that time, as well, my freshman year of high school, I made a feature length film with my friends. We shot it over spring break in 2001. It’s still kind of amazing to me that my friends and I shot and filmed and finished a feature length movie before any of us could drive.
I had this long-time working relationship with Troma, and Lloyd was willing to do a cameo in some of these movies that I would make when I was a teenager.
Having Lloyd Kaufman’s name on there would allow me to reach out as a 15, 16 year old to record labels to get permission to use their bands’ music in movies, including the White Stripes. Before they hit, it was just about when “Fell in Love with a Girl” was hitting, I had reached out to Sympathy for the Record Industry, which was the label they were on before Columbia picked up all those records for distribution. I’m like, “Hey, Lloyd Kaufman shot a thing for it. Can I have permission to use one of their songs?” and having (the label) be like, “Yeah, sure. Here’s the address, send us a copy and we’ll make sure they watch it, and we’ll get back to you.”
They had a pretty busy summer that year, so I would not fault them for not watching it.
That was also how I met and developed a relationship with Sage Francis. He was talking to me as an adult when I was like, “Hey, I’m an aspiring filmmaker. Lloyd Kaufman’s in this movie.”
And Lloyd, you know, would have nothing to gain from that, and I’m sure I’m far from being alone in being someone who working with Lloyd Kaufman really helped their life in some way.
Chaz and Lloyd Kaufman in 2024
Now you’re releasing The Troma Project: 50 Years of Reel Fan-Toxic Hip-Hop, which features production that consists entirely of sound samples and scores from Troma films, with you, and various other artists, rapping over those Troma-filled beats. How did this project come to fruition?
The time that I was getting really into Troma was also the time that I really started rapping. The demos (I recorded) when I was in eighth grade, there’s Troma references in there, and sound samples that are in there.
Even the albums that I put out over the years, pretty much everything I’ve ever released has some, even subconsciously, touchstone to Troma on there.
The whole idea of doing a full-on Troma album was something that I’m kind of surprised I’m among the first to ever do. There are people who have done punk tributes, or jazz tributes, and things like that, and a lot of those are like covers of Troma themes, and things like that, which is very cool. I wanted to do something that didn’t just channeled the history of Troma’s films, but the unique energy that’s kept Troma in propulsion for a half century now.
The event horizon of this comes from a great podcaster named Zack Beins, who has the Talkin’ Troma podcast. I was a guest on there talking about Def by Temptation. A few weeks either before or after that he had randomly tweeted that he had a dream that myself and this Denver rapper, Extra Kool, had made a song about Troma.
I think dreams can often bring good ideas. It was a Paul McCartney dream that “Yesterday” came from. With that in mind, I figured the “Yesterday” of Troma could potentially emerge from this.
So Extra Kool hooked up a beat from a guy named AwareNess, and we did a song called “Lloyd-K (A Tribute to Lloyd Kaufman, The President of Troma Studios and Creator of The Toxic Avenger)” (released in 2022).
A few months later, Lloyd heard it, and then he reached out to me, and pitched the idea of – why don’t you put together a vinyl, and Troma can put it out?
While I had his ear, and I was thinking, because Troma's 50th anniversary was approaching, I said – what if we did a full on Troma tribute album?
He said, you can do that, and I pitched him the idea of getting his permission, and his blessing to go through the Troma library for samples, and he gave his blessing.
J57, who I’ve known for 21, 22 years now, has always been a great guy, and always involved in great projects. For the better part of the past decade I’ve done a Christmas song every year as a benefit for RAINN, and Wigs For Kids, and J57 and I have been doing those exclusively together since about 2017. I hit him up about Lloyd giving us the blessing for doing a Troma album, and he was down. That was like 2022.
I started going through Troma scores, and I had the thought – what if every sound in the production comes from a Troma movie? We have access to 50 years of samples.
J57 was working with his protege, Bald Halfwit, who is just an amazing, amazing producer, as well, and he got into the spirit of it.
Then taking the time for me to write it, I didn’t want every song specifically about a movie, and being like, “Well, my name is Toxie, and I’m here to say …” That was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I wanted something where even if someone has no idea what Troma is, they’ll still be able to inhale the aroma du Troma, and get why this thing is so special.
Also just in terms of Troma, a lot of things they stand for – the DIY aesthetic, the pro environmentalism, the level of equality and equity, and just a lot of the Troma informed social politics – being able to convey all this while still making something that is fiercely independent, and also full of the insane, unpredictable, but passion driven attention to what makes Troma great.
Oh man, I gotta think on this one.
The thing with Troma, Lloyd’s had a great influence from Stan Lee, and Marvel comics, because his heroes, his protagonists, they’re closer to Marvel heroes than any other sort of hero, because they’re people who, in addition to the supernatural, or superhuman hero elements, have to deal with very real life problems. So in the realm of Troma, there isn’t that utopian idealism. Everyone is well-rounded. Everyone has their strengths and their flaws, just like we all do, even if we’re not hideously deformed creatures with superhuman size and strength.
So Construction Worker #5 it is!
Oh, no, #6, cause he ran away at the end. He’s the one who looks twice after seeing five people get disemboweled.
To pick up The Troma Project: 50 Years of Reel Fan-Toxic Hip-Hop, which has a limited green vinyl run, head over to Four Finger Distro’s Bandcamp page.
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