ATSIC S05E24 - Hub
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There’s a spreadsheet below with the entire track listing, along with my best guess at which city each artists is repping. It’s an easy way to see what you’re hearing, but so is having the Mixcloud app.
My journey to improve my skills on the turntables since buying a DJ Controller in January continues this week as DJ Dice was busy. I put in some hours chipping away to create a mix that I’d still have to practice for days to do live. I have no desire to do that sort of thing, but mix by mix, I’m having some fun practicing blends and scratches in slow motion with no pressure. With these After the Smoke is Clear episodes, it’s the final product that matters, and the music played is more important than how I play it.
There’s no shortage of new music to point people to. Each week, I listen to a hundred or so new releases from artists across Canada, choose my favorites, buy them, and put them in storage. This week, I had 3 hours of boom bap stocked up that hasn’t been aired on #ATSIC yet, so I chose some that were the newest and some that matched the vibes. I had a good time blending some of the vocals over other tracks' outros and doing a little scratching with a Sayzee vocal. Coming up soon, I’ll make some episodes from the other playlists I sort new purchases into featuring trap, love songs, and dance jams. Week to week, you never know what lane this show will be paying attention to.
The kick-off Wu track this time was from the new Rakim project, a track called “SIGN OF SE7EN” that had verses from Prodigy and Method Man. I saw talk about the God MC leasing verses through Anno Domini for this project, but I didn’t hear any verses I recognized from the common indie rapper startup packages that I hear on repeat as I listen to the new week's music every Friday. I liked the project; it was a good representation of lyrical miracles who are active and influential.
The CanCon section of the mix starts up with Heavy G’s new one, the title track from his new project “Upside Down.” The new solo project from half of RUNXGUN is, for now, only up on Bandcamp, but I’m told it’ll hit streaming on Aug 9. Go support the man; I liked what I heard on my first listen through, and you’ll probably hear more from it on ATSIC.
We moved on to his RUNXGUN partner J.O. Mairs featuring on a track off of Finn’s new project. The album’s called “Live From the Shark Bar (Season 1)”. I’m not sure if it was from some sort of show I missed, but if there’s another season coming and it’s got features from the same who’s who of Toronto emcees, I’m looking forward to it. The track I played here was called “Sorry Won’t Cut It,” and it’s the soulful shit we know and love from Mairs.
Edmonton’s Deuce Fantastick’s new single “Got My Reasons” is a glorious anthem that infects my brain and stays there.
I’ve played a few from Asun Eastwood and Wizdome Bunitall’s project “Let Me Talk My Sh*t Too”. This week it’s “INOSITOL,” which was more signature smooth talk from both of these Toronto heavyweights and was one of the singles they pushed.
DK the Producer sent me “Lasagna” fresh from the East Coast, the lead single from Fredericton’s Sean One starting in promotion of an upcoming solo project. I don’t know when the album drops or when this track hits streaming, but the Uncle Fester and Justo the MC-assisted bop isn’t up right now. The classic Wayne sample for the hook works beautifully.
I don’t know much about Pats, but his Spotify bio says he’s out in Vancouver. Comptalo is American. They teamed up for “Hurricane” with Nutter Tut, and I dig the resulting brag rap barrage over a chopped vocal-driven instrumental.
Tona and The Legend Adam Bomb are both well known, and for good reason. They flex some slow-flow back-and-forth verses on “3 Words”. Tona claims best in the city, and I think that’s reasonable. With art, it’s always a blur once people attain a certain level of acclaim and mastery of skills, and “best” comes down to preference, but Tona and Adam could both make that claim without me trying to argue it. They put on a clinic here.
Che Uno goes in over a big sample on “Texture Like Sun” alongside Kng Bondalero & Lord Juco from the “Heatmerchants” album. The aura is impeccable.
I talked to Donny Sage and K.Stone for the last Fly In Formation before the summer break at the end of June, and they let me know about their Siren City collaboration. The track I played with them featured on it here, “FILTHY RHODES,” is from K.Stone’s recent project with Lethbridge producer Alchemy the Linguist “Falling Sky EP”. I brought the chorus of this song up during our talk, it’s the one that I mention is a flip on Kendrick’s “Swimming Pools”. I didn’t think I was stating a secret when I said it, but Donny didn’t seem to know what I was on about.
I don’t normally do much scratching, but I messed around with some of Sayzee’s opening bars on “Old Head” and did something that wasn’t awful before I played the actual Sayzee-produced version. The illest rapper in Niagara Falls strikes again with this one. I can’t keep up with his weekly drops, dude’s on a breakaway and has a few albums on the near horizon from what I gather on socials.
Che Uno is back for a second track, this time with Lord Juco and al.divino on a track from The Quarter Inch King’s project “Sun of May”. This is the only one I’ve had a chance to hear off that project, but I’m a sucker for the dusty cowboy style of sample. Sounds like a saloon where a shootout’s about to happen.
DJ Muggs & Raz Fresco really nailed the formula on their new “The Eternal Now” project. Raz’s first trip to the west coast to record the album resulted in a real gem of an album, and one of the singles was what I played this week - “Blow the Spot Up,” where the BKRSCLB front runner drops an appropriately villainous lyrical bombardment over some sinister strings and crispy drums.
I think there needs to be a discussion where Toronto elects themselves some new representation in the Hip Hop scene. I personally vote to elect Raz Fresco as the torch carrier if the voice of an outside observer counts. He’s out there making moves and securing cosigns from legends, and the music and direction is always very on point. There are obviously other artists who could be in this new poster boy conversation, but one way or the other, that city needs to move on and adapt, there’s no shortage of talents there that are much more tied to the traditions of Hip Hop, at least from where I’m sitting.
Speaking of legends from Toronto, Saukrates has a new one this week called “My Pager Burnin Up (Eastside of Thangs)”. He’s got Redman and Masta Ace along with him, bringing us back to the classic funk sounds of the Def Squad era. This one’s supposed to be from Sauks upcoming album “Bad Addiction” due in September.
Moka Only is another legend who never stopped dropping new music, to a level where I couldn’t be overly surprised to see that “Inference and Hearsay” was only one track off of an entire project with Checkmate and K-Rec that shares the name of the lead single. This one’s a mellow jam that gives the veteran lyricists plenty of access to airplay.
“It’s Been a Long Strange Trip” is from Cult Encounters & BrahmaBull, and I know nothing about either of them, but this song was in the vault for a while since earlier this year, and it was its time to shine.
Winnipeg’s Rob Crooks & Edmonton’s Epic paired up for a full project, “Nassau Manor,” named for the housing complex where they recorded it during a trip to Winnipeg. Kitz Willman checked in for the assist on this one, and the results are as wonky as can be expected. I’ve heard things about the U of Arizona, but I don’t know if either of them talked about anything I’ve heard. Abstract and dope as always.
Another sample I can’t imagine trying to clear, and also don’t feel bad typing about because it’s so blatant and well known that this can’t even be considered sample snitching - “War Pigs” is exactly what you imagine it would be, featuring verses shooting holes in the military-industrial complex from Lee Reed, Kay the Aquanaut, and Mother Tareka, over a boom bappified loop beat from Cee Reality’s new album “Fuck the Colonizers”. Yes indeed, fuck ‘em.
That’s all she wrote for this week.
There’s no “Making of #ATSIC” video this week. Normally I stream while I put the episode together from the comfort of my own home, but this week I wanted to concentrate more on practicing my skills than narrating or juggling the tech needed to get the audio to stream.
The music is followed by another episode of my podcast interview series Fly in Formation, this time I talked with K-Blitz, another emcee from Edmonton who I hadn’t met, but had always been aware of and watched from the sidelines. Really friendly guy, this was a great episode. We talked about the Edmonton scene, his recent and upcoming music, music marketing, leasing beats and verses, beef (I finally weighed in on Kendrick vs Drake on this one, and we had differing opinions), and a bunch of other stuff. Check the FiF playlist for an archive of all the past guests. Mixcloud is the only spot to listen to the audio only interviews each week, grab the app, it’s free and there’s all sorts of dope DJ mixes from curators who care about the music much more than an algorithm cares about your playlists on streaming platforms.
Every week, I buy every song I play, unless the artist sent it to me, saving me a buck. I believe in buying music to support independent artists. Making music is time-consuming and expensive. Streaming doesn’t pay much at all, and since streaming has become the way most people consume music, it’s even more important to make sure to buy tickets, buy music (physical or digital), and buy merch from artists you want to hear more from. Streaming pays next to nothing, so if you want artists working on more music instead of working more shifts at their day job, you need to show them love by opening your wallet and giving them financial support.
Season 3 of my interview series Fly in Formation is soaring along in style, with 30 interviews down since January. I’m taking the summer off to enjoy life a little, but I’ll be back for September with weekly talks featuring artists across the country talking about the craft and the industry grind. Make sure to hit follow on Twitch or subscribe so you don’t have to watch the ad breaks during interviews when I’m back in September. I love seeing the community pop up in chat to say hi even if just while I’m gaming or working on my own music. Next week I’ll be up in Edmonton working with my homie Deez Waxx on new music, and I’m hoping I can stream the sessions while various artists come through to cook with us, so don’t sleep on the streams.
Telling a friend is another great way to support the show, I appreciate everyone who helps spread the word immensely.
Stay Up.
