The main hall of Prague's Roxy Theatre is thumping like a heartbeat. Only minutes before the drummer and bass player were deep into an electrified funk. But when a tall figure emerged from the back of the stage to take the microphone, the rapper's staccato chant snapped the band into a deep syncopation.

NI, (aka Eric Cherry Hill), whose broad, towering physique resembles a football lineman dressed for a casual stroll, is again on a Prague stage delivering heartfelt, skillful rhymes with jazzlike precision.

"One of the reasons I love this place so much as an artist is that you stand on what you have done before and on what you are doing now," says NI. Interviewed at a Prague chill-out bar known as Soft Bellies, NI confesses his fascination with Europe grew out of his touring experience with Living Colour. Although NI's role with the band was primarily drum tech, he was often called on stage to help the band out with vocals. Taking a sip from a tall glass of cola on ice, NI reflects, "I saw the reaction and the way the crowds were. The people were open to it; it was a genuine love of music, instead of in America, where it was more like whatever is on the radio is what we are going to go with."

In 2004, NI took a break from nearly three years of working with Living Colour to focus on his own music and test the waters of Prague. During his first month he met Seattle-born piano prodigy Loren Colen, who shared a musical ambition NI describes as "to explore and not find the obvious; to look for deeper things."

NI and Colen also shared a rigorous home-taught background in musical theory. Colen, as NI says, is the type of pianist who is "rarely ever at a loss as to where to go musically."

Soon NI and Colen latched onto a rhythm section session duo from Mexico City known as Omar & Hachu. Together as Cherry Hill they combined virtuoso keyboards, piercing urban American rhythms, and NI's vocals, all delivered with a catalytic live band presentation unusual in either hip-hop or rock these days. Even after Cherry Hill's brilliantly engineered album For the Love of the Art and two years of regional high-profile hip-hop activity, NI and his band still spend their days waiting for the phone to ring.

But no moss was growing on their feet. As NI says, "We were pounding the pavement for two years; we had this strange position where we had notoriety, fame and everybody knew who we were, and absolutely no concerts booked. We had no management." NI tried numerous angles, including offering an unplugged oeuvre to better comply with local urban noise laws or doing a double trio performance with a post-metal band to broaden possible venues. Although initially these concerts were scheduled, they always somehow fell through before they were staged.

In 2005, NI also watched promising deals with the Czech-based offices of Universal and Sony fall through. If you talk to enough musicians in this country, you will hear one factor of his frustration echoed: "They don't really look into the Czech Republic for new things because of the language problem. So basically what happens with us is we get lumped in from the outside by 'Oh well, they're a Czech group,' and then from the inside we get lumped in as 'Oh well, they're an American group.' "

Although European promoters and labels may have blinders on to emerging Czech acts in general, the case is especially acute with a form of music such as hip-hop that's leveraged on intense wordplay.

As NI says, "I would say the difference between launching Cherry Hill from the Czech lands and launching Hendrix from the UK, is that in the UK people could understand what Hendrix was saying and they could also get into the music of it. I would never go so far as to compare myself to Hendrix; he is Hendrix, for Christ's sake. The reality is, though, the Czech language builds all of the hip-hop [industry here] around Czech hip-hop staying in the Czech Republic."

As a paradoxical backdrop to their problems with the music business, in the past year Cherry Hill has opened concerts for international stars like R&B diva Kelis and hip-hop gods Ghostface, while watching their music video No Surrender gain votes on Czech Television's Medusa hit countdown program.

NI's recent work with award-winning Czech producer Indy a Wich, which includes layers of sizzling woven studio montage, has had thousands of people downloading preview tracks from hip-hop Web portal Boombap.cz over the past few weeks. But the lack of any significant local cooperation with the business end of things is what NI describes as a "complete pounding-your-head-into-the-wall sort of situation."

Despite all this, NI prefers the community of the local scene to what battles he would have to fight with the cults of personality and payola back in the United States, a scene NI describes as "more wretched than any other." Yet, he admits, "the biggest ray of sunshine is the support from the fans. Last week we went to 007 and there were guys there in Cherry Hill T-shirts and people wanting to take pictures with us and stuff like that. The love from the fans is the most amazing thing I've ever seen and it gives us energy and inspiration to keep doing it."