I celebrated my 44th birthday this past Monday. Time and age are weird things. I bought a few records and told myself it was for my birthday but it was really to just buy the records I wanted to scoop that week. I have a lifetime of experiences and friendships that I owe to Rap. As I age, Rap gets more important but in different ways. When you are a teenager it is important as you are carving out an identity. But as a 44 year old that has been involved in rap for 2/3 of that time either as a fan or an active participant, it means more then ever. It provides a grounding and escape in these wild and unpredictable times. I couldn’t imagine my life without rap music nor would I want to. Rap is the best, music!
Now I get a lot of my thoughts in conversations with the homies. I was talking with Rove last Friday about a recent instagram exchange I had with Controller 7. He had posted about the Dereliks Anthology release and I sent him a message about it and we chatted a bit about the Dereliks. Rove and I started talking about how much of a genuine rap fan he seems to be and how awesome that was to us and how that mattered to us. It is weird, because if you are an artist I like and i find out you are also a big fan of rap, that checks out new indie rap, then I like your music like ten fold more. I know it shouldn’t matter but that common bond of rap fandom is a really strong one for me. All my friendships are based on rap fandom first and foremost. Like all of them. If your interest in rap wains then it seem like our friendship bond will directly wane as well.
Rove and I were talking about this shitty period of time where is became trendy as a maker of rap to turn your back on rap and say you didn’t listen to rap. This was always the worst to hear. I get it on some level as you listen to other music for inspiration, ideas, creativity etc. But it is blasphemous to turn your back on rap. It really turned me off of those artists and I think it really hurt rap in general. It was not good for the genre. I am glad this was relatively a short lived phenomena and rappers have come to their senses and got back on the rap.
Rap is pretty much the most important thing to me. It is always there no matter what and it will never turn its back on you. It gives much more than it asks for. It is simply the best.
One of my all time favourite rap groups, The Dereliks is reissuing their debut album remastered as part of a larger Anthology. The Broken Cyphers - The Anthology is a 4 x LP double gatefold set features a remastered version of their 1995 EP A Turn On the Wheel Is Worth More Than a Record Deal. It Also features tracks from the 2003 cd Change For the Bus Ride Home as well as some other unreleased and rares. On Friday I saw Controller 7 make an Inststory about the record. I immediately went to Diggers Factory and almost had a heart attack when I saw the price. Then I started scrolling down to see what was on the record and I saw side a, then B, then c, then d, then e (a third record?), then f, then g (wait a fourth record?) and then finally side h. I was like oh 4 LPs that price although a lot makes way more sense. I did what i do and said yolo and ordered the record. I am really excited for the liner notes, original artwork, and unseen private photos from their collection. I bought this without flinching but didn’t get the Freestyle Fellowship re-release of To Whom It May Concern (insert shrug palms up emoji). I think as time goes on I will start to regret that one more and more.
Mega shouts and thank you to the homie Dren who made a dope banner for the newsletter. He was working on the the cover for our album together and took a picture of my house for some art on the back cover of the album and used it to make a banner. I didn’t even realize it was an actual picture of my house at first. I love it, thank you homie!
Record 1
Backburner - 4 Tape BoxSet
The set includes the first 3 Backburner albums; Heatwave, Eclipse, Continuum and a super sick 4th tape that features various posse cuts from previously release projects from various Backburner crew member’s releases. The tapes are super sick and feature all over print based on the the album covers from their previous cd releases. I am 50/50 on the all the all over print cassettes but these ones really work well as a set. They come in a classic 70's/80’s cassette clam shell case that is reminiscent of something you would see in an elementary school library. I have these cd’s and most of the posse cuts on other cds but I couldn’t resist picking this up.
Record 2
Aj Seude - Metatron’s Cube
This may go down as the best album to worst album presentation/packaging in all time rap history. I can’t think a recent release and/or release ever that I was more disappointed in the packaging. I don’t have super high standards in this regard. Things I would like in a release is the artists name, the albums name, a track listing, an indication of a and b sides and in a cassette release a j-card. This one has two of five. It has the albums name and side a and b. If I were to pick two of five it would not be these two. I would have went with artists name and album title. I would like to hear the rationale behind the packaging of this release. The album itself is incredible. A 100 copy vinyl release with covers and track listings dropped friday and sold out in a few hours. I copped one a second after it went on sale. They also sold 10 test presses with a variant cover for 100$ each that sold out in less than 5 minutes. It is always good to see people excited about rap and dope artists get great support.
Top 5
Listening to some classics a lot this week.
Gruf - Hopeless
Peanuts & Corn - Tape Hiss (1993-97)
Buck 65 - Weirdo Magnet
Rove - If Not Now (sorry this was a promo, unreleased)
Quelle Chris - Deathfame
Classic Material
2Mex - La Like 12” & Songodsuns - Love Fights Back 12” & Busdriver -Walkind Dead 12”
I got these two 12” from 2Mex after djing for him and Busdriver at a show at the infamous Airliner Hall in Saskatoon. I have a VHS copy of this show and I watched it sometime this past winter, however as I am writing this I don’t remember many details. It was wild to relive this night like 20 plus years later. Now, for those of you who are not aware of the Airliner Hall in Saskatoon, it was a hall in as strip mall on the edge of and industrial park near the airport. It was not much in the way of aesthetics. Capacity was around 350 persons. It had white drywall walls, a kitchen/canteen area, a one foot raised stage at the back wall, the ceiling was no more than 10 feet high and it was tracked with large panels, there was a small green room that may or may not have ben part of the kitchen area and two washrooms. The positives were it was cheap to rent and they would rent for hip hop shows. The negatives were location, you had to bring in your own sound and lights and the power supply was not adequate but I will get back to that later.
The show was like most other shows at the Airliner Hall, all ages, very intoxicated crowd, and exceptionally energetic. I think there were only like 5 or 6 shows before they quit renting to hip hop shows. One of the things that made shows really pop off there was that fact that is was away from everything in an area that after business hours was a ghost town and kids took advantage of that and drank heavily outside. I don’t remember there being a lot of fights though, those came later in the scene at other venues.
I should probably rewatch the video as I don’t recall who all performed but the flyer I found says with: “Epic’s Farewell Party featuring Epic & Friends” so I am guessing Epic rapped and I am sorry I will have watch the video and update in a future issue. The homie Alex Kuma, who is writing a monster book on some Canadian hip hop scenes taught me a trick to figure out years of shows as they are often left off flyers. So the flyer says it is Saturday September 1st, I knew it was in the early 2000’s so I looked on the calendar for a September 1st that fell on a Saturday and there is one in 2001. I also asked Epic as a double check and he confirmed 2001 and added “that night was insane”.
The show was one for the record books. I don’t get nervous for show all that much but there are a handful that I have and this was one of them. I was dj’ing for Busdriver and 2Mex and that was really intimidating. We ran through the set list in the kitchen/greenroom and they gave me a bag full of records. Busdriver had some acetate plates with his instrumentals on them. He explained what they were and how fragile they were and that scared the shit out of me as I didn't want to scratch them or ruin them in anyway. The show was going really well, people were over hyped. Like it was reaching a real fever pitch leading up to Busdriver and 2Mex taking the stage. I remember we took the stage. I don’t remember much of the performance per say but the highlights I do remember is Busdriver and 2Mex absolutely destroying it over Madness’s One Step Beyond and the crowd absolutely losing it. Also Busdriver and 2Mex performing Walking Dead had the crowd in a frenzy. The show was incredible, however we kept blowing the breaker box during the set and losing all power and lights in the building. Every-time the power came back on there was new and significant damage to the venue. For example; large tracks of the ceiling being ripped down, holes in the drywall walls, huge marker tags, damaged bathrooms etc. It was wild. We were able to reset things and kept the set moving. The crowd kept getting closer to the stage and surrounded the stage on all sides and started to crowd on the stage in the back and sides as the set went on. There was a lighting rack behind me. People were standing on speaker stacks and holding on to the lighting rack. Well things were completely out of hand and the fever pitch exploded. The the light rack was pulled down on to me. I think my shoulders took the brunt of it but it knocked me down to the ground. 2Mex immediately stopped performing and came to my aid to make sure I was okay. I really need to watch the video again as I don’t remember if we recouped and performed more or that was the end of the show. The homie Noyz319 used to come to Saskatoon from Edmonton a bunch in those days before moved here and he filmed a bunch of shows in that era. He gave me a copy of this show on VHS tape a lot of years ago. Thank you homie! He is sitting on a gold mine of recorded shows. I hope one day to sit down with him and watch them.
An oral history or podcast of this show would be really something I think. Maybe a future project. I know I am missing a lot and I know many will send me messages or talk to me about their recollections. Probably have to do a follow up in the future at minimum.
Closing Ramblings
I have two new shirts up at Stylesmakefights.ca One for my radio Show You Know The Rules designed by the homie Aiden Searle and the other formy dj crew The Stone Cold Party Rockers with the homie Rove designed by the homie Awol One. Also the homies at Audio Recon have some dope new shirts too
I host two weekly radio shows Third Verse on CFCR 90.5 fm in Saskatoon Saskatchewan every Wednesday 9 -10:30pm CST and You Know The Rules on UMFM 101.5 in Winnipeg Manitoba every Sunday Night 10-11pm They are pretty great and you should check em out.
Also i got some cool shirts, poster and hats in the Ugsmag Shop if you want that fly shit.
**legal disclaimer all records and songs were run through the RAP NEST 5000 SUPER ANALYTIC COMPTROLLER MACHINE that is certified by the I.A.A.R.R.A (International Association of Analytical Rap Recordings Analysis) in layman’s terms, it means the machine is never wrong.
Catch you next week with more thoughts from the rap nest.
Peace
-chaps