ATSIC S04E31 - Historic
I've decided that I want to leave a trail of weekly mixes behind me through life. This show is a round up of my favourites, week after week. I used to buy albums and keep 15 tracks on rotation until they were memorized, now I’m taking 15 to 20 out of the 80 or so new songs I hear each week, and making a mixtape to keep myself entertained. Now that my homies DJ Dice and DJ Baggylean are on board, the results are even better, because there’s some surprise added to the mix when it leaves my hands. The emphasis on these mixes is and always has been to document the scene week by week with a lens that covers the entire modern Canadian Hip Hop scene, but it’s also important in my own life as a way to stay connected to the living and breathing Hip Hop kulture.
DJ Dice mixed my picks again this week, and the result was a very mellow menagerie of new and old, drum and drumless, low-energy boom bap. You can feel the chilly chill in the air these days. Autumn stroll music for the full, unedited 60-minute mix this time felt fitting. The music begins with another Edmontonian Hip Hop head, Tariiiq, with an older cut called "When the Levee Breaks (Tribute)." It's weird to call something like this one rap rock, but with a classic guitar sample and a full-on sampled classic rock vocal for the hook, and then the typical intricate lyricism we expect from Tariiiq, what else is it? It's not the Fred Durst brand, but it's got some real rock chops no matter how you slice it. The beauty of Hip Hop is bringing all the genres together and stirring the pot.
Then it's a couple of first-time contributors for ATSIC, with Babble On & Dag. Babble On is a Cree artist from Thompson, Manitoba, and he's still wildly slept on, sitting around 50 monthly listeners on Spotify right now. I have like 9 on mine, but I'm going to pretend I can help send anyone his way anyways. He's got a new EP out called "Roots," with the self-titled track as well as this one, "The North," which has him dropping some reality raps talking about how resource extraction and racist policy are affecting his people. I think platforming and including conscious Hip Hop alongside other types of rap is important, or we end up preaching to the choir standing in the echo chamber, and whatever other clichés. Rap has real power for taking a message and making it accessible, sort of "some sugar with the medicine" type thing, but it seems like more and more often, artists are opting to make music as middle of the road and unoffensive to either side of the spectrum as possible.
On a similar but unrelated note, there's a movement on Threads I've been seeing where people are talking about wanting to keep the app free of politics, and I just don't really see how that's possible, since politics will affect our lives whether we're paying attention or not, and the app is about people sharing their stories with words. I hope it doesn't turn people away from the show, but I intend to keep playing music that talks about important topics from various perspectives, regardless of who it might make uncomfortable (I'm looking at you, book-burner con types), because I think masterful storytelling is a key component of creating a more empathetic world.
Moving on, it's "Sunday" from Justo the MC & Brelstaff. I think I’ve been confused into thinking Justo is from Toronto, but he’s not, his Bandcamp says Brooklyn. Probably got mixed up because he did an entire album with DK the Producer, who I’m talking to on Oct 30 on Twitch.
"EA Snorts" is a hilarious name for a song, so 10 points to Shottie, Asun Eastwood, & Tev95, or whoever came up with that one. Super smooth vocal sample stretched out and looped up, and these emcees go to work, with Asun telling us about how he smashed one of the candidates in the recent Toronto Mayoral campaign. I googled because I thought I remembered hearing about how there were tons of candidates in that race, turns out there were 102. 17 were females, and one was the current Mayor, Olivia Chow. I didn't actually look up the other 16. Just over here rap nerding, don't mind me. Fuck the government lol, all the power to them both. I just saw Asun on some live podcast, he mentioned that he used to be a social worker. I should see if he wants to come on FiF.
Then it's out to the forest with Daniel Son. I don't have any idea where it actually is that this guy escapes off to, but I gather from his social media and his lyrics that there's some backcountry lodge somewhere where nefarious things are happening and he’s rapping in a shack like this guy WillSurvives. I really liked the bars about "light a spliff on the beach, I'd rather listen than speak. Gave sight to the blind when the vision was weak." Here's hoping that homie gets to enjoy the nature for a long time before they drop his "Ashes in the Rapids."
"Hall of Fame" is one of those where it's a nice, simple loop, no drums, and an emcee flexing. Skizza went in on this sparse AK Productions track from their newest drop.
Slik Jack & MANZU BEATZ just posted their newest album called "Blue Collar Crimes" today as I type this. "Pass da Pistol" was an early single from it, with some sinister soul organ vibes and chopped vocal samples giving Jack a foundation for his steady head-nod flows. It might not be exactly the same vibes as Fortunato's 2 "Blue Collar" albums or as Arlo's upcoming "Blue Collar" LP, but I still think this is the era of blue-collar raps. Lots of hard-working emcees financing their dreams these days, whichever tool they put work in with.
D.O. Gibson is someone who I was talking with Mickey O'Brien this week about on Fly in Formation. Mr. Gibson provided "Last Name" to the mix tonight, and he's also provided the Hip Hop community with an artist summit called the Northern Power Summit, which I digitally attended in either 2020 or 21. My takeaways from it were Meyer Clarity, a Toronto-based rapper and producer who spoke about, if I remember correctly, addiction or depression and music making, or something like that... and some gems that Wendy Day shared in her keynote speaker slot. She's a legend in the music industry who I had been completely unaware of prior to the NP Summit. Now I listen to her podcast, "The Cheat Code," on a regular basis. Anyway, this track was in the vault for a while, from his 2021 album "Still Driven." Being thematically on point is more important than keeping everything restricted to new releases.
Another one that's a bit of a throwback, though still a 2023 release, it's been a while since I played one from Blue Collar 2, but this one matched the vibes, so we went back to the well for Fortunato and Sean One's "Breathe." It was one of the singles that I guess I didn't have time/an appropriate show to play it on when it dropped, then probably his next single dropped, and I played that and carried on with the endless wave of new releases. Glad we got this one on here.
"This Moment" by Kryple & C-Lance features someone named Justin Cohen, and it's a good example of what Kryple was saying on Fly in Formation about being an artist who draws from real-life experiences for inspiration. Justin Cohen provided a hook about seizing the moment, and Kryple takes it and sets the benchmark while looking back at his journey through artistry. This type of authenticity goes a long way in humanizing a rapper, it’s super important. Anyone who isn't incredibly naive sees through it when an artist is pretending.
I was surprised to hear Len Bowen rhyming on a classic beat from DJ Drama and Don Cannon. I just went and listened to the Wayne OG version, and the first comment on YouTube pretty much sums it up: "people who didn't live through this era of Lil Wayne will never understand how hard he went." I loved that stuff. Absolute classic. Talk to the CANNON! Tell it to my muthafuckin CANNON! and then Freeway jumps on it and just stomps a trail across it. These are high bars to jump over, but props to Len for including this one on his new "Late to the Party" EP as a bonus track expansion off of the single from NTHN4GRNTD.
Another one from Ambeez, "Step Edit" off his new album "As We Continue On," fit the bill this week exactly, with a screaming guitar sample looped up. I should ask my DJ homies what a step edit is... I can imagine it's breaking 4 bars into 16 pads... but I'm the most noob-level producer who's ever tapped an MPC. Either way, Ambeez talks about how he's always learning and getting better with the techniques, and that's the mentality it takes to keep it pushing out here. I'm all for witnessing the progression across the map.
I don't tend to play stuff with a religious connotation... at least not a positive one, but "Closer" has Vancouver island’s Swivel talking about "getting closer to god" for two verses before saying "You can be reincarnated as long as you know the Teacha's lessons." Anyone who's read the Gospel of Hip Hop will probably know what that's about. God body talk. It's a trip that Dice and I met one another because of this Gospel. We first shook hands at a book club called Cypher 5 in Edmonton, where we'd meet up with our Gospels, sit around a coffee shop, and read from and discuss the lines of modern scripture in the 800-page book. KRS-One actually currently does weekly preachings on Sundays that are very similar to what we used to do. It taught me a lot and brought about a lot of open doors. I'm not 100 percent sure that's what Swivel was on about on this one, but I think I picked up what he was putting down. On the "Making of ATSIC S04E31" stream earlier this afternoon, I paused to talk about the Gospel for probably 15 minutes at about the 1:57:00 mark, so if you want to know more about some of the importance of that in my life, check the video under the write-up.
Back-to-back tracks about lessons in the Gospel of Hip Hop, with Parab Poet’s “Speak”. What else would you expect on ATSIC, right? Had this one in the vault for a minute too since earlier this year. I'm not 100 percent sure of this either, but I bet Dice did this on purpose. If not, it's one of those serendipitous coincidences that they're back-to-back like this because the whole "word manifests" thing is a big element of emceeing according to KRS-One. I buy into it, the shit is a trip. Even the name of this show, and it being the last standing element of the Mic Club program I used to run at Arches Supervised Consumption Site, the busiest SCS the world has ever seen. It's also the most useless element of that program since the vital life-saving parts were defunded and discontinued, but that's a completely different rant that I already spewed out once today, so this is as deep as I'm getting into it here typing. Hit the video below.
Then it's Moka Only with a track that says it was released in 2023, where Moke shouts out "spring 2021" and confused me into thinking we were playing another track that betrayed our new release general format. Shrug. Either way, this one's very, very chill, and the OG sounds right at home with the natural flow we know and love. I talked to Kryple on Fly in Formation about who "The Guy" from each major Canadian city is, and we debated Vancouver's "The Guy" being either Merkules or BBNo$. I forgot Moka, but I shouldn't have; he's undoubtedly been the most long-reigning consistent emcee/producer on the West coast. He probably doesn't have a billion streams on a song like BBNo$ does though. So, it depends on what we're talking about really, I suppose, as so many of these GOAT-type convos boil down to. I’d probably have an easier time bringing Moka O to mind at times like this if he wasn’t the only artist in the country who won’t let me @ mention him on IG.
Then it's a Devious Dreams remix of a track called "Mayhem Dreams" from MLNY, Young Stitch & Celf Titled. I think I probably might have played a different remix of this track, but this one fit the vibes this time around, and Devious Dreams is good peoples; he came through to talk for the first season of FiF and always provides some real lush and layered production on his tracks.
We finish out stripped down with some lower sound quality high content quality lyrical flexes over a jazzy boom bap beat that skips along as Gritfall joins The 6th Letter on a feature. It's from 2022's "ePIFFany" album from fellow BKRSCLB labelmate The 6th Letter & ALS. Dope stuff as always. I saw Raz posting about putting some new clothing together, modeling the new drip on IG. I bought a hoodie and some sweats from the last round, and wasn't disappointed. Show love over there; that man and his cohorts are doing a lot for the scene in the past years.
After the mix, I talked to Zaze, a Toronto-based emcee who came up with Peter Jackson and did a lot of touring with famous cats through some of the bigger Canadian venues. Good talk, stick around and hear what it's like opening for an ICP tour, flipping a Blazer on the frozen Alberta prairies driving to the next destination, and raising a family while running around doing rap shows. It got cut short, but next time we'll have a lot to talk about. The video is up on Youtube with all the others.
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