Thoughts
Sorry this one is a day late and a buck sort as the saying goes. Wild week for me. I usually write these in segments througout the the week and then refine them Thursday night. It takes more time then I thought it would have when I first started out but it is worth it. I really enjoy writing these and sharing my thoughts and experiences with all of you. I may not be as famous or successful in the rap game as others in a traditional sense but I feel blessed to have had any of the experiences and opportunities that I have had in this rap shit. I never considered any of it when i first caught the hip hop fever back in the late 80’s. All my experiences I think my love for it has not diminished because I have never thought that Rap owed me anything and I have never compromised a rap decision because I have never counted on rap to provide me anything other then dope music. It has proved that and a whole lot more and I have found other ways to pay the bills The ideals of the Mystik Jortenymen of being independent, controlling you own destiny, choosing your own path are ones that I think I took a little too serious and probably missed out on a bunch of opportunities and maybe even a career in this rap shit but I am a principled person to a fault at times and I have maintained those ideals as an ethos. This is pretty ranty and I am not here saying I am write or wrong or better or worse than anyone just providing some insight into the lense of which I am writing these through.
Saskatoon Folk Rap Records- Music For The Advancement of Prairie Rap
That is the crew. It is more then a crew though, it is a collective of artists that have come together to support one another, encourage one another and to help one another. I am sure at this point it should come as no surprise this was the brainchild of Epic. Epic has always possessed this incredible and uncanny knack to build communities, friendships, allyships and partnerships within indie rap. It is an incredible trait that has served him and others very well over the years including myself. He built my first rap/dj crew, The Beatcombers with a passionate rap loving group of misfits in the mid to late 90’s. I was the youngest in the crew at the time, consisting of Epic, soso, Knowskills, Innate and fringe members Phosphate and Deluxe. Deluxe was an all elements rap fiend from North Battleford who moved to Edmonton and Phosphate was a trip hop dj who I also think moved away. I didn’t know Phosphate well and he left shortly after I joined. They never made me feel like I didn’t belong, and Epic played a big role in brining us all together and uniting the crew. Epic sold me my first two technics 1200’s. The first one I bought off him had a broken tone arm which I was able to buy a new one and replace. I think It cost me 119$ for the new tone arm that I bought at Basics in Vancouver.
Forgive me if I mess up some of these details. This is my unofficial recollection of things. I am sure I will get a phone call from Epic about it. Epic is pretty much the only person i talk to on the phone on a regular basis and I love that we do that. Matre is probably the only other person I schedule phone calls with. Things happened fast and slow and I wish like I had my whole life thought to document things as they happened. So here is a shot at not letting 20 years go by before writing any of this down. I am sure I am going to screw up some things, but this is from my perspective without talking to anyone else. Fast forward a bunch of years to like 2018 and Epic is starting to come out of his rap sabbatical and playing the odd show and recording the odd verse and song here and there. This is exciting. Now there is one thing about Epic you might not know, everything he does is super calculated and with a greater purpose. Things are not flukes or coincidence they occur because he calculated the plan and executed it. He also keeps his cards close to his chest, so I have just learned to trust him over the years and have confidence in the process. However, I can be an over reactionary person going 0-100 in a second. I have really worked to reel this in over the years, but I am not perfect, and it comes up occasionally. It is shitty behaviour that I learned and had mentored to me and positively reinforced by my shitty Dad growing up. Me and my sibling call it the Charmbury Gene. Epic is good at pushing those buttons occasionally, we have a blowout or disagreement, but it is never something we can’t move past. We can both be stubborn and double down on things with each other regardless if we are right or wrong. We are able to do this because of our strong bond and friendship. I was so honoured when Epic as me to stand as his best man when he got married. I have been in a lot of wedding parties over the years but never been the best man. That shit meant the world to me!
I don’t know if Id Obelus from Audio Recon reached out to Epic or if Epic reached out but Epic hit me up and said we were going to drop a live lathe Cut 10” from a show we played in Bremen Germany in I think 2005. This was exciting and out of left field. I was a little familiar with the label at the time. However, I didn’t realize at the time this would be the start of a crew, friendship and partnership with Id Obelus and Audio Recon. I would call us sister labels along with Pen Theif Records and Endemik Music being a cousin but a good cousin that you are always happy to see and that is more like a brother. I am thankful for this record as I have gained some incredible new friendships and rekindled some exiting and cemented some others. Second to the music, the best part of Rap is rap homies and the friendships that are built on the passion for the music. Some of these have been online only and others from 25 plus years in person. They are all equally as important to me and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Things started to progress, and Epic shared his idea of a Saskatoon Folk Rap as a label/collective and called a meeting scheduled in the Rap Nest in November of 2019. We were benefactors of Rob Crooks being in Saskatoon for a show and Epic extended an invite for Rob to attend. I believe the people in attendance at the meeting were Myself, Epic, Dren, Rob Crooks and Nolto I think we talked about forming a collective and working together. This iswhere things get real foggy for me and I really don’t know how but all of the sudden it seems like SFRR original roster was set as things came together really quickly with Chadio, The Gumshoe Strut, Add-Vice, Mc Homeless.
Epic invited Davey K of The Dreadknots from Pittsburgh who was working with Audio Recon of n his Ultra Ra Rap Records 7” lathe cut series. Which I submitted a couple audio files for before ever meeting Davey. Thanks for introducing “yinz” to the crew’s vernacular. Epic said he was talking with a tape guy in Germany about partnering with and adding to the crew. He was being tight lipped about it, which was kind of funny. It turned out it was the homie Noblonski and he was starting Pen Thief Records and was down to partner up and join the crew. Nolto and him had worked together in the past so it was a natural fit.We invited Kitz Willman and sign one to join and later Rove was invited. I lobbied for them to be added to the crew and everyone agreed as it was all a no brainer.
Probably the best thing about the crew I that it fosters creativity and output. It has reenergized a bunch of old heads like us and breathed some new life into our creative sails. Like Rove literally started making beats in the past couple of years and made probably the best debut record in the history of rap over the age of 40. I don’t think this would have happened to the same extend that it did without the crew. I also teemed up with Dren on the beats to make a solo rap album. A few songs have been leaked on the crew cd samplers. It is in post production with Dren and sign one doing there magic to make me sound like a half decent rapper. I am really proud of the record and I don’t think I would have ever made it if not for the SFRR homies. There is no release date for this yet. I know I am not a great rapper in any traditional sense of the word but I wrote it from the heart, and I did it in my own voice and style so the Rap Gawdz will look down favourably. Peace Gawdz!
“Fuck gold, fuck silver and motherfuck cash, this is RAP” - Noblonski
So Buck 65 is back with the drop of the King Of Drums album today. He dropped it in cd and cassette with limited copies available that sold out within minutes of launching last night at 8:50pm CST. I feel bad for those that thought it was dropping today and missed out. I know the homies that wanted copies got copies, Rove, Epic, Trylemma and Hazmat79. I secured a cd and tape. I am glad none of these homies missed it but we were all surprised by the random drop time. He is playing a show in Halifax tonight and will have some copies there and the homie Aidan Searle lives out there and is going so I am excited to hear his recap of the show.
Shout out to the homie Trylemma for blessing me randomly with a copy of the To Whom It May Concern… Frestyle Fellowship double lp remastered and mixed album. This was an incredible surprise and way over the top gift. I really appreciate it homie!
RECORD 1
Paten Locke - Americancer
This album for me will probably be the best release of 2022. It is everything I love in rap. It is honest rap from the heart with a raw polished unpolished low fi rap sound that is warm and comforting. I have listening to this record on repeat since I got the vinyl. Please go and listen to this record. You will not regret it. There are certain things that seem to hit me harder then other things and stick with me. I remember when Paten Locke announced he had stage four cancer and that he was not going to fight it. He was at ease and was gong to live out the rest of his days with the best quality of life as possible. My partner lost her mom to brain cancer when she was 12 and we have talked about it a lot over the years and she said the last two years of her moms life fighting the cancer were super shitty in regards to her mom’s quality of life and that she wasn’t even really herself for most of that time. So this album hits even harder on some other levels of the soul as I think about theses things and what I would do given the same diagnosis. We live in a world where we have to fight everything and be strong but I think Paten Locke showed incredible strength in his decision. I think I would probably choose the quality over the quantity of life but I am not totally sure as I have not experienced this. This will easily go down as one of the best post humous rap releases of all time.It is available from Full Plate Records.
Record 2
Mathematik - No Divison volume 2
Mathematik has always been one of my favourite rappers from Scarborough. From first hearing him in Down Ta Erf to his iconic debut Ecology he is someone i am always checking for. I am not familiar with a lot of the names in the production credits on this record but the beast are classic. This is classic T-dot-o-dot boom bap. Bitch Ass is the jamb. Fire raps, fire beat fire real life struggle raps. So damn raw and good. This album is super dope front to back. Definitely check it out if this type of Rap is your thing.
Classic Material
cfcrew - take a look inside
So 21 years ago I was in a rap group called cfcrew. It was Factor on the beats rhymes and cuts, Patty C aka Forgetful Jones on rhyme and me on raps and cuts. Factor was starting to make beats and him and Patty C made the certified classic Saskatoon banger Decisions. I didn't know Pat yet, but Factor played me the track and I was like damn this is dope. There were both in high school at the time in the twelfth grade. I really felt there was some endearing charm to the track. I was like shit we should form a group and make a rap album. I think I probably strong armed them into it being the older guy but they didn't put up much of a resistance to the idea. We made the album in the OG Factor G studios in his bedroom studio in the basement of his parents home. I loved that version of the studio. It had such a cozy warm vibe. It was really where we forged the Sideroad Records Crew and where a lot of the most classic releases up to Metropolis Now was recorded. It was also where Factor put in his 10,000 plus hours making beast and recording raps. So it is such an important place.
The album was entirely produced by Factor except for Land Wars which was produced by soso. It was a solo track that is probably the best rap song I ever made. We worked with some of the homies on the records with Devotea, M.Phasis, Epic and a guest verse from L Griffsta who was an interesting cat who was a former professional Minor League Ball Player who was in the city for a minute because he had a chid here and was super dope at rapping and generally a fun person to kick it with. I am not even sure how we linked but Saskatoon was a really small city back then and if you were into rap you knew everyone that was. Past To The Present is my jamb. We did that one live a few times and I thought it was my best verse. We opened for Aceyalone at the Union Center Hall. That was the peak for us for sure. I think we only played a handful of shows before we started focusing more on, for me djing and for Factor on beats and working with other rappers. Epic let us rap on the posse cut on 8:30 In Newfoundland that got us dissed pretty hard on the Hip Hop Infinity review of the album. I think Factor really took that to heart and probably is one of the reasons we never made another album. I had the idea to rap together as a trio and I am not sure if it worked that well. Maybe we would have been better suited to rap individual verses. I am still glad we did it. We took a chance and maybe it didn’t work out as well as we had planed but we still took the chance. You can second guess everything if you want or you can just keep going forward. I try to just keep it moving.
I am not sure why but soso let us put it out in partnership with Clotheshorse Records and hosted it on the label website. We made like close to 500 burned cd copies that were hand assembled with sticker cd labels, color photocopy covers. soso did a photo shoot for us for the cover. Factor and Patty C being in high school were able to unload them to their homies like hot cakes. It is hilarious to look at the cover now as we took the photo in his apartment living room. So being “polite canadians” we took our shoes off at the door and we are all in socks on the front cover. The cover ended up also looking like a Weezer album cover. I have no idea who did the design and layout of the images and text of the album. The photo on the inside of when you open the cd where we are all jumping in the air is on some Degrassi High Zit Remedy shit. I love that photo. There was no real plan for the photo shoot we just wandered the block around soso’s apartment and took a few random photos.
I love this record not because it is is technically sound but because it was us jut shaving fun, hanging out, creating what would end up being a catalyst in creating so much amazing rap music and an incredible Sideroad Records Crew.