ATSIC S06E01 - Boycott America
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Below this write-up, you’ll find the track list, complete with artists and their hometowns. You can listen here and follow along, or if you’re using the Mixcloud app, hit the “…” to check out the track list while you listen.
After a short hiatus, we are in fact, still right here for the kick off of Season 6. When I started this show I never imagined it turning into a weekly all Canadian hour of music, but here we are, and at this point the only Americans included in the show are the ones who are collabing with Canadians, or the weekly exception of one new song from the almighty Wu Tang to start each show. They get the pass. It is what it is.
You can find every style of Hip Hop across Canada, being made by artists at a very high level. It’s not always easy to find, but it’s there, if you look for it - or if you let me do the looking and just tap in to ATSIC. We gotta stop letting the billionaires tell us what to listen to. I dunno when that came into fashion but when I was growing up I still felt like digging up the next upcoming artists was a way to show off that you knew what was going on out in the big wide world - show you had some taste, or some sense, or something. Show that you weren’t one of these fucking guys going along with whatever they’re told to. I was making HMV order albums they otherwise wouldn’t have brought into Edmonton, and I felt cool playing that music for the people around me. I do my best to carry on that tradition, bringing a bunch of music into one spot for people to discover new artists they’ve likely never heard. At this point it feels more eccentric than “cool”, but that’s fine by me, I’m old enough now to not worry about weird.
Now, to put words to why this year I’m going to start yelling about what I’ve already been practicing every week on the show - playing only Canadians and boycotting Americans.
I’ve been shocked at the silence from Hip Hop voices in the days after this fucking guy’s inauguration. The real president went full mask off on that podium with that disgraceful salute, and the crowd cheered it. They let some racist billionaire buy the country with misinformation campaigns to manipulate the uneducated masses who won’t read anything longer than a tweet. In the past years I’ve played Canadians because it’s a fun niche, but now it’s pretty much fuck yall Americans, until I see otherwise. More than half of yal are disgraceful and it’s become a danger to the world. I know the new administration is likely trying to provoke more BLM style riots so they can stomp dissenters out and lock everyone up, totalitarian style, but someone has to say or do something, and Hip Hop used to be the voice of the oppressed. Where are we?
I’m halfway joking about this, because of course I recognize that most of the American artists are not in any real way to blame for this mess, defunding schools, privatizing prisons, and a whole slew of other factors in society that we can all name contributed to this situation vastly more than any silence from Hip Hop did. I also know we aren’t supposed to be looking to our favourite artists to be political leaders or saviors of the people. Society at large should take the blame here. That said -
Snoop performing by himself, spinning his own beats like a wedding DJ, doing exactly what he had spoken out against a few years earlier was truly disgusting. It was sad though not altogether surprising to see him bowing down to the powers that be for a pay check and being made to look stupid while he did it. Musk went and made fun of him online afterwords. His newest album was lackluster at best.
K.Dot, the guy who was really concerned about who’s “not like us” in the Hip Hop culture hasn’t said anything that I’ve seen, which makes me wonder if he’s more concerned about the rise of pop music than he is about the rise of fascism. Kendrick has never been one to pop off on social media, which might prove the smartest move of all, but here’s hoping he has something to say come Super Bowl when he’s given the eyes and ears of the entire world. There are some PDF files he could be shaming who aren’t musicians, but only time will tell on that one. To be clear here, I’m not team Drake either, my nationalism isn’t blinding, in fact it barely exists when my country isn’t being repeatedly publicly threatened. Kenny should perform “Not Like Us” but he should probably also say something about his country being taken over by nazis.
While I’m ranting about it, I also have to give Eminem a dishonorable mention - the guy who many Trump voters would tell you is Rap God dropped an album 3 months prior to election and conveniently forgot how much he hates Trump. Instead we got another corny dance song about Christopher Reeves followed swiftly by a pop up smile and wave at a pep rally to tell us he supports Kamala. Better than nothing, sure, but too little too late. He’s a word smith, and most people’s criticism of his late career is that he’s run out of meaningful things to say, so I would have thought this was a perfect moment for him to have found some relevant material. He could have made a dent in the Maga movement. Of all the big name rappers, he’s the one with the most crossover fanbase in that cesspool of weak hateful white guys that vote against their own best interests. There are so many angles he could have taken to explain things to them and had them actually listen and receive the message they’re otherwise impervious to, since they’re mostly the 54% of the US who read at a grade 6 level.
Gone are the days of putting politics in music, I guess. Even for guys worth so much that selling albums or the potential of losing a fan base shouldn’t really matter any more. How much money do these fucking guys need in the bank before they’ll risk speaking their mind and losing some fans? Or is it just that they got rich and now they don’t want to pay taxes, cuz fuck everyone else right?
It’s high time someone starts fighting the powers that be, because they’re now in control of the worlds largest military, every social media platform that matters, legacy news media, and a technologically omnipresent surveillance system that blankets the entire world and remembers anything we’ve ever typed anywhere. It’s too late to go silent now. I hope the silence isn’t just because our favourite artists are too afraid to stand up, say something, and get martyred for it - but that might be a realistic fear these days, whether we’re talking about de-platforming or the more totalitarian fascist methods where people start catching terminal cancer or randomly deciding to jump out windows.
I might be missing some voices who are carrying the torch - I deleted X, so it’s probable that Chuck D is over there still tweeting, but I’ll never know cuz fuck Elon. I’ve seen Ebro going to bat in comment sections and posting in protest, and I’ve seen Toure and The Company Man and a few other commentators speak on things a bit, but where are the emcees who are supposed to be representing the unheard voices of their people? I’m not trying to play some music about partying while their country falls to ruins and the billionaires reap the rewards. Fuck all that.
So yeah, welcome to Season 6, where “old man rants at clouds” is one of my favourite genres - but I’ll still be playing all sorts of ignorant fun music too because music is also about escapism and sharing joy. DJ Dice is back next episode, and my own turntables just got replaced and are back in working order so future episodes will have prettier mixing than this one does. What we won’t be playing is music from a country that’s threatening sovereign nations on it’s borders on a daily basis, whether I believe they’ll have their own civil war to worry about long before they invade anyone else or not. Canadians need to come together right now in support of one another, and our sovereignty, and our most vulnerable. That means paying attention to what each other are saying, and listening to the art from the artists that surround us.
That also means not electing a conservative government and following in the footsteps of the illiterates to the South. It’s going to mean choosing the lesser of the evils, and piping down about all the problems we have with the Liberals until they are firmly back in office. We need to make sure we don’t elect a gov where they are going to immediately pass Christo-fascist laws that deny people’s rights to exist while allowing their billionaire overlord to seig heil at the fucking podium. Those types of right wing governments don’t read letters from their people once they take office, they don’t give 2 shits about what the people want - just ask Alberta’s UCP about coal mining in the fucking Rockies, or ask them about handing the public sectors pensions to Steven Fucking Harper so he can invest it into oil and keep his IDU bosses happy. You can ask, but they won’t answer your letters just like they don’t answer anyone else’s. Once you elect the cons, it’s too late, and this time might be the last time, if you finally start believing the words Trump is actually saying out loud at his rallies. The IDU is an organization that has been globally backing far right populist governments, including both Trump and Polievre, and providing them all the same fascist play book - they ARE the actual global cabal of billionaires that the right wing idiots are constantly fear mongering about, and they’ve probably already won regardless what happens in Canada’s next election, if I’m being realistic.
Anyways.. Enjoy the mix, it’s pretty chill for the most part, in contrast to my thoughts on world events. There is one on there from Myer Clarity called “Open Season” that is really artistic and I thought captures the current zeitgeist well enough that I had to ask him to send it over, since it’s not up on streaming or available to purchase anywhere. He was surprised I was going to play it on the radio, offering to make an edited version, but meh, it’s university radio and it’s dying anyways. I appreciate the cosign from CKXU but at this point I think if they get mad and want to pull the show off the air, I don’t actually care enough to censor my picks. I feel like I’ve built the credibility as an online platform to keep the boulder rolling either way now, so away we roll, and fuck who it offends. Plus, like I say on the show, I play all sorts of music where people rap about shooting people, what’s the difference here? If “Open Season” offends you more than hearing about gangsters shooting one another, or selling fentanyl to the hood, you need to question why that is.
Fly in Formation is back to new episodes in 2025. The first one I did in 2025 is tacked on after the mix, and this is the only place to listen to it in audio only podcast format. I spoke with J-Reds & Poltergeist OD, the hosts of Diss Or Daps in Edmonton, and we had a great chat. Tune in every Tuesday for interviews with artists across the country as I learn more about local scenes and artists creative processes, talking to artists we play regularly on ATSIC. Tuesday Jan 28 I talk to Eddy Jones & B1 The Architect, who are both returning guests who previously appeared alone, but are now coming on to talk about their upcoming album. We’ll talk about that and a bunch of other important stuff. Come through, hit subscribe on Twitch, skip the ads, and chat live while we stream.
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