Masai Electro

Masai Green (born March 18, 1970), known professionally as Masai Electro, is an American beatboxer, comedian, and actor known for his ability to make realistic and robotic sounds (especially those of a vocoder) using only his voice. He appeared in commercials for Verizon and Sprint.

Career

Green was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. At the age of nine he discovered his abilities to emulate the character Darth Vader from Star Wars. He was also influenced by the synthesizer sounds of The Gap Band and Zapp & Roger. His imitation of those electronic sounds and those of a vocoder inspired his artist name. In the early 1980s he was also influenced by artists like Doug E Fresh and Michael Winslow. In 1985 he joined a local rap group called "Def Force" and opened up for artist such as Will Smith, Biz Markie and Stetsasonic.

In 2001 he performed at BET's "106 & Park" and also created an intro for Missy Elliott at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2005 he was picked up by a corporate entertainment group known as Rhythmslam from Los Angeles and opened up for Jermaine Dupri. A year later he and four other beatbox artists (among them Rahzel, Butterscotch and Click Tha Supah Latin) were chosen to promote Verizon's new broadband capacity in the first online interactive gaming commercial called the Verizon Beatbox Mixer. In 2007 he performed in a TV commercial for Sprint. In 2009 he had a guest appearance on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show. He also added his voice to the pure beatbox soundtracks of the documentary "Beatboxing - The Fifth Element of Hip Hop" with Kenny Muhammad, Adam Matta and others in 2011. Later he appeared in further commercials for Virgin Atlantic Airlines (2013) and Heineken (2014).

External links

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