California

Los Angeles electro-hip hop group Far East Movement is one of the mentors for the 4C The Power program, a national organization based in California, which provides arts training to youth by professional artists. The idea is that the students become more engaged in high school, ultimately leading to an increase in graduation rates. 

Far East Movement (a.k.a. FM) — Kev Nish, Prohgress, J-Splif and DJ Virman — is the first Asian-American group to have a top 10 pop hit in America with “Like A G6.” The song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and has sold more than 3 million copies. It is off FM’s 2010 album, Free Wired. The second single, “Rocketeer,” hit No. 7.

While they are frequently on tour, they have made appearances at many 4C The Power events, including a benefit for the University of California Autism Center and the Red Scarf Project, which supports children in remote areas of China suffering from life threatening heart condition. They have also conducted workshops for kids on how to create a song.

“Ever since the beginning [of Far East Movement in 2003], throughout highs and lows, the communities, the people, support us,” Prohgress told Samaritanmag when FM was in town for the MuchMusic Video Awards (MMVAs) in Toronto on June 19.  “We definitely want to give back to them, so we teamed up with a person [Diann Kitamura] who’s a superintendant in Sacramento [Calif.] and she has all these events and we go out there and support.

“We bring out a lot of our artist friends, whether they’re dancers, whether they’re photographers, movie directors, people like that and we hold little workshops for like two hours and teach the kids to write a song or something like that. And they get to express that afterwards. There’s not a lot of arts focus in American schools right now.”

Nikki Sixx’s kids, the product of his generous Running Wild In The Night music program at Covenant House California which serves more than 10,000 homeless youth a year, are making more of the program than even the Mötley Crüe and Sixx: A.M. bassist imagined. 

In May 2008, Sixx donated $250,000 to the Los Angeles and Oakland shelters, mostly via sales from his 2007 New York Times best-selling autobiography, The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star, and companion Sixx: A.M. album.

“I donated a very large percentage of the proceeds from The Heroin Diairies to the Convenant House and through that, and awareness, we’ve raised a lot of money, but it goes fast. It just goes so fast,” Sixx tells Samaritanmag.

He also gets involved with other fundraising initiatives, such as auctions, and plans to donate proceeds from his photography book, This Is Gonna Hurt (our April 12), a companion to the next Sixx: A.M. album (due May 3) of the same name.

“What got me to the next level in my life was music. It was something to live for,” Sixx tells Samaritanmag. “A lot of the kids at Covenant House, they go through really hard times obviously; they’re just coming off the street; there’s gangs and prostitution; drug addiction; they’re getting into a safe environment.