Regionally influential for roughly twenty years, the San Francisco Bay Area hip-hop scene has enjoyed moments in the spotlight of national attention now and again (Too$hort, MC Hammer, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Souls of Mischief, E-40), but for the most part, has only been in the past year or so that a new crop of independent rappers have started building a buzz that resembles the kind of hype that preceded the explosion into the mainstream of regional sounds from Atlanta, Houston and Puerto Rico.

This musical momentum has been built from countless mixtapes and underground tracks passed from hip-hop fan to hip-hop fan and- thanks to the interweb- via the blogosphere where hip-hop obsessives aggressively debate just what the ramifications of Hyphy are for hip-hop and just what a Thizz Face is. All the attention has been a boon for "Yay Area" rappers, who have started getting major play on influential urban radio outlets like San Francisco's KMEL and are starting to get signed to big deals on the major labels.

However, no Bay artists have yet to break out into national stardom. That said, one group seems poised to cross over, thanks not to innovative production or brilliant wordplay, but thanks to some truly savvy marketing. The Pack, discovered by the legendary Too $hort have been working enormous regional support for their debut single on Jive Records "Vans," and are starting to get national and international attention. The song, an ode to their favorite "punk rock shoe with the logo in the back" follows EMERGE favorite Lupe Fiasco to shine a light on the black skate scene, and like Fiasco, they are working all the angles to cultivate a crossover to Vans's suburban consumer base. It's a savvy move for a group who's sound lacks the low end thump and strip-clib abandon of the dominant Dirty South sound and whose sound and look is slightly to the left of the predominant hip-hop monoculture.

Additionally, the Pack have helped stoke the buzz for "Vans" by turning a minor standards compliance issue with the video and MTV Networks into a whole new round of online buzz because the video was "banned by MTV." A little poking around with staffers at MTV has proven this rumor false and now the Pack are declaring victory over the forces of corporate censorship along the course of their meteoric rise out of relative obscurity. The news has been broadcast via their Myspace page which is declaring that "Vans" is the "new joint of the day" on tonight's episode of 106 & Park on MTV's BET network. Additional online action in support of "Vans" includes a video remix contest at Eyespot.com and literally dozens of blog posts amplifying the band's own savvy use of the internet to generate and propagate rumors and buzz.

Expect Vans to start creeping into Nike's chokehold on hip-hop footwear and the Pack to milk the buzz they've built online to be the first breakout stars of the Bay Area's thriving underground.

It appears you don't have Flash installed.