Surfacing

Each week the spotlight will be on musicians who are making a commercial breakthrough.

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“My Ghetto Report Card”

E-40

Warner Bros. Records

Artist info: Tupac Shakur’s steady trickle of posthumous releases notwithstanding, Vallejo MC E-40 may be Northern California’s most influential hip-hop export. The rapper -- real name Earl Stevens -- has released a dozen albums over the last 15 years (three gold and one platinum with his group, the Click). More important, he claims to have coined slang phrases such as “You feel me?” and “fa shizzle” and wrote a reference guide called “E-40’s Book of Slang.”

Back story: “Report Card” introduces a national audience to the burgeoning hyphy music scene, the Bay Area’s answer to crunk. “Hyphy” is short for hyperactive; its high-energy dance component involves going “dumb,” a frenetic version of krumping. And then there is hyphy’s car-culture connection. On the album’s first single, “Tell Me When to Go (featuring Keak Da Sneak),” E-40 exhorts listeners to “ghost-ride the whip” -- that is, to drive while hanging outside the door to make it appear that the vehicle is driving itself.

Influences: Too Short, UTFO, KRS-One