Globe-trotting with a band can take you to some crazy places.

Raashan Ahmad, emcee for the Crown City Rockers, stumbled into a skateboard shop while touring in Kosovo. Inside, a couple of guys where making beats and dropping rhymes. Ahmad was feeling the beat too, so he started rapping in the middle of the store. Only a few minutes into meeting these guys, they were vibing to the music and laughing with each other.

Keep in mind, while Ahmad was doing his thing in English, these guys were free styling in a different language. That’s what hip-hop can do: Bring people together.

“I just love the way music brings people to a level of being really, really humble, and really, really open,” Ahmad said in a telephone interview. “It was just crazy because nobody spoke any English. It was so beautiful because it was hip-hop that brought us to this place. We walked in and 20 minutes later we’re laughing and hugging each other. Still not saying anything that any of us can understand but just knocking our heads in a circle, giggling, just loving it man.”

Ahmad and the Crown City Rockers will bring that same house party energy to Sacramento State for a 7:30 p.m. Thursday show with Zion I, Deuce Eclipse and D.U.S.T. in the Union Ballroom.

The Crown City Rockers got its start back in the mid-’90s. The location was Boston, where keyboardist Kat Ouano, drummer Max MacVeety and bassist Ethan “Headnodic” Parsonage met while at the Berklee School of Music. After a couple of jam sessions, Ahmad came on as the second emcee, pairing with Moe Pope. The crew originally went by the name Mission – a homage to Mission Hill in Boston.

Success didn’t come easy, Parsonage said in a telephone interview from Oakland. The group flipped coastlines, moving to California in 1998 for a fresh start.

“We all decided to move out to California to basically tackle a new audience,” Parsonage said. “There’s a lot of musicians in Boston and we ended up playing for all of the other musicians… Everyone’s there critiquing more than they are enjoying.”

While Pope had to move back to the East Coast, Mission added producer Pete “Woodstock” Alvarado, a childhood friend of Ahmad. Pressure from a 1960s British rock band, Mission UK, and the opportunity for a fresh start inspired the group to change to a new moniker. The Crown City Rockers, consisting of Ouano, MacVeety, Parsonage, Ahmad and Alvarado, were born.

“We’re like the culmination of all that’s good with hip-hop, man,” Ahmad said. “Everyone in the group comes from such diverse backgrounds musically and culturally. We try to bring it all to the table. So if you listen to our music, you’ll hear a little bit of jazz, you hear a whole bunch of hip hop, you’ll hear some classical, (and) you’ll hear some ska.”

“I guess it could be considered throwback hip-hop in some ways,” Parsonage said. “We’ve got live instruments all through it. There’s a lot of melody in there. We’re definitely not shying away from emcee, straightforward hip-hop as well.”

The 2004 release of 19-track Earthtones displayed the genre-blending sound to which hip-hop heads aren’t accustomed. It’s distinct and refreshing. It’s full of music that begs you to chill out and move your body to the beats. While something from Lil’ John may be best fit blaring on a bass-heavy car radio, the Crown City Rockers is best suited poolside or in a dimly lit house party.

The Crown City Rockers are often compared to the Roots, De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. But that’s somewhat deceiving. The instrumentation has a classical edge. Some of the up-tempo beats rekindle images of funk-defining Parliament. These cats, while trying to keep a link to the past, are trying to push things forward. The same goes for the live performances.

“We’re not there just to play music,” Alvarado said over the phone while hanging out at Ouano’s home in Oakland. “We’re there to bring the crowd into the whole experience as much as possible. A lot of people can just play their music and not really pay attention to the crowd’s reaction. We want to make sure that the crowd is as much a part of the show as we are.”

Parsonage said that the crowds at a lot of hip-hop shows are full of people looking at the ground, posturing and attempting to look tough. These angry guys, he said, aren’t releasing their anger and the entire event turns into a stressful show.

The Crown City Rockers try to bring an excitement-filled show to people who might have a had a tough week. While they might be “fighting the good fight” during the week, come show time, it’s time to cut loose.

“We try to make it as fun as possible,” Alvarado said. “Enough with people standing around, trying to look all hard. You go back to the old days of hip-hop. Folks was dancing, having a good time. It’s OK. It’s OK to dance and have a good time about it.

“We all grew up rocking live,” Ahmad said. “We all love being in the studio and recording but we really love playing live, getting to crowd into it and trying to build a circle of energy-We really take it seriously. We really love having a party man. Just be ready for that – for a party.”

Nate Miller can be reached at [email protected].