May 19 2005
Beloved Punters,
Well, The Rap Canterbury Tales is back on the road. I arrived in Brighton on Saturday
after a straight month of peak intensity, preparing, performing and recording. I
think a quick recap is in order, followed by some of the juicier bits from the past
few days, which have been mad.
Right, recent developments. First of all, Rap is Poetry went down on May 6th and
was a big success. The Ironworks was a swank venue for us and we got in almost a
hundred at the peak, not quite a sell-out and not quite enough for me to break even
on the night, but the audience feedback made it worthwhile several times over. I
was hoping to give people a new appreciation of hiphop lyrics as an art form, and
thanks to the flows of Emotionz, Ty-C and Ndidi Cascade the purpose of the night
was well fulfilled.
I also got a chance to premier some of my own new material at the event. Over the
past few months Lin G and I have been working on a demo EP with four new tracks,
all of which can now be sampled on my audio page.
The biggest rabble-rouser on the new CD is called "Covenant", a mosh-pit
song with heavy guitars and even heavier subject matter, based on the research of
Jared Diamond and other scientists who point to the unsustainable nature of our current
world trajectory. It's kind of a challenge for people to confront this problem and
take a look at its root causes, none of which are easily resolved.
The other bizarre frenzy I was faced with over the past month or so was a media frenzy,
thanks to a little EP of political songs I put out back in March called "Budget
Day". The purpose of the album was to get my mom re-elected as the MLA for
New Westminster, a human-interest story for sure, though I saw the term "momma's
boy" used more than once in the press. I guess I'm in good company with Tupac
on that one. Also, it turned out that I was the only musician who came out in support
of the Liberal government in any way, so a number of news stories portrayed me as
a non-conformist in a sea of bandwagon-hopping anti-government "rebels".
All in all I think the story ran on about six TV newscasts, as well as a handful
of radio and print specials. This was good publicity for a starving artist trying
make his way, but on the flip side I did receive a number of hateful emails of the
"you suck, loser" variety from incensed counter-culturalists.
Tragically, however, Joyce was not re-elected. I learned yesterday that she was
defeated by a healthy margin, the result of an effective provincial campaign by the
opposition (mostly lies) and an obsolete hospital that was closed in her union-riddled
riding. This is, I must concede, the double-edged sword of democracy. People must
have the freedom to be willfully ignorant and make bad decisions, simply because
the alternative is so much worse. I have spoken to her and I'm happy to say that
she is upbeat and looking forward to some well-deserved rest, graceful in defeat.
I remain intensely proud of her and her contributions as a public servant, and I
admit there is a grain of relief in it as well, as much as I wanted her to win.
Now "Budget Day" can be laid to rest in the odds and ends bin and I can
disentangle myself from parochial politics and attend to grander schemes. If you
haven't yet, I invite you to visit the bin.
Over the past month I also performed at over a dozen high schools and colleges, and
did two runs of the Rap Canterbury Tales at Havana Theatre. One of the college performances
that deserves special mention was at Langara College, where I was hired as the entertainment
for their all-college picnic day. The president of the college commissioned me to
write a custom rap for the occasion and I used the opportunity to roast her for the
entertainment of her employees, but also wrote her a battle rap to hit me back with.
Imagine the stunned faces at Langara when I burned their CEO over some touchy issues
in front of the whole faculty; now imagine their faces when the same CEO stepped
up on stage ("let's battle") and delivered a series of witty comebacks
putting me in my place. It was a riot. Click here to read the lyrics.
Then, in the midst of the fray, I got on a plane and escaped to England. The past
five days have done nothing but remind me of why I need to be here right now. I'm
staying in the apartment upstairs of the Nightingale Theatre, the guest of the managers.
The main floor is a classic pub, the second floor a theatre, and the upstairs a
flat. Saturday night I settled my things and went to the Brighton Hiphop Festival
launch party to meet up with the whole hiphop crowd, most of whom I know from previous
visits. The players, off my head, are MCs Elemental, Heinze, Syntax, Koaste, Buzz,
Enlish, Tom Caruana, and DJ/Producers Maxwell, Tiny and Ollie (sorry to the names
I missed).
I relaxed and recuperated Sunday, and then Monday night I went to the Rappers vs.
Poets Battle, an event they hold every year during the Festival where the local Spoken
Word poets go up against the local rappers head to head. Instead of taking sides,
I was invited to perform in the intervals as a guest mediator/bridge-builder. It
was one of the most entertaining events I've ever attended, with clever and poignant
verses coming from both sides. The poets had self-deprecating wit in their favour,
which was a crowd-pleaser in contrast to the rappers' boasts, but the rappers had
unbelievable freestyle battle rhymes, which made the poets' shaky paper-holding seem
weak. I got to step up periodically to perform my own pieces, which were meant to
straddle the divide (typical Canadian peace-keeping stuff). I finished off with
a semi-conciliatory freestyle: "All of these poets are probably wannabe rappers
/ and all of these rappers probably want to be blacker / acting tough with their
hands in their pockets / but actually, these rappers are just poets - in the closet."
Then I performed "The Rhyme Renaissance" to seal it up, which also allowed
me to plug my show. For all of my attempted diplomacy I was still accused afterwards
by one woman of showing a strong pro-rapper bias that she didn't appreciate, go figure.
I performed The Rap Canterbury Tales Tuesday and Wednesday nights to decent but not
full houses, and after the show Wednesday went for a drink with a few friends, which
led me unwittingly to a great personal triumph that still has me buzzing and too
wired to sleep. The short version of events is this: I entered a local freestyle
battle and won the whole thing, defeating the local MCs and taking home a fat pot
of cash (a first for me). For those of you interested in the details, I will attempt
to describe the event.
My companions mentioned they were going to a hiphop show at the Pressure Point that
night, which I hadn't heard about but I decided to tag along. The hiphop night turned
out to be a CD launch for a local group, with various acts showcased, rappers and
R&B singers and Drum & Bass MCs, though no one I knew was performing. The
whole crew was there though, and I was soon informed that the main event was an open-entry
MC battle with a prize of £150. Just greeting the MCs I knew in the crowd
I marked at least three or four rappers there who could serve me in a freestyle battle,
including Heinze, Syntax, and Enlish, but I signed up anyway. Then asking around
I learned that Heinze and Syntax hadn't even entered and Koaste wasn't there, and
everyone was predicting a showdown between me and Enlish. Interestingly enough,
Enlish was actually on that posse track we recorded back in January with me and Elemental
and Syntax and Caruana, though I had only met him briefly that one time.
There were eight rappers signed up for three eliminations rounds. Enlish won his
round easily and none of the other rappers had too much to offer beyond angry-sounding
gibberish. The first MC I battled insisted on kicking A Cappella rhymes which were
obviously written, so I only had to go one round with him and then the judges pretty
much disqualified him. As it happened, they lined me up with Enlish in the second
round and he ripped into me on some low-blow "ya momma" jokes and some
Canada disses, references to ice hockey and Gretzky and the like - all good lines
actually; he had the crowd roaring. But I heard him kick some of the same punch-lines
at the Rappers vs. Poets battle, and I hit him on that: "wow, those rhymes sounded
nice / I liked them even better when I heard them on Monday night!" Plus he
had dropped one line like "I'm a real hip-hopper" and before he finished
I knew what he would use as a rhyme 'cause I was wearing a Rap Canterbury Tales T-Shirt,
so I pointed to it before he finished saying "you're just a copycat, biting
off Chaucer." Then I could come back: "Y'all see me point to my shirt
when he kicked his flow? / That's 'cause his rhymes are pre-dict-a-ble." Then
I dropped a bit of a tongue twister that got people going: "I'm a cunning linguist
/ he licks like cunnilingus / smell his funky fingers? / he just came to wank over
the R&B singers!" He also had his cap twisted on sideways, which gave me
another good shot: "Nothin' you can say could ever shock me / This kid's a coward,
it's just his hat that's cocky."
In the end I beat him, though it was so close that a few people in the crowd told
me they thought he should have won. Still, I had the loudest cheers hands down,
which put me in the final round with this rapper named Gyzmo, who was not unskilled,
but his rap just came across as an aggravated blur. I don't remember all my punch-lines,
something like: "So this is Gyzmo? / He looks like a backpacker / Talks like
a gangster / so he's just a schizo / Oh wait, Gyzmo - I get the resemblance / look
at his ears, he does look like a Gremlin!" The judges put it to the crowd and
the crowd's will was known, making me $350 richer in Canadian terms and giving me
a primo opportunity to plug my show once again, publicity you simply can't buy.
For the rappers reading this like Emotionz and Ty-C I can see you guys thinking "big
deal" - but I've been jumping up in battles for three or four years and I've
never taken home any money until last night. Now I don’t know whether to spend it
or laminate it. It was one of those things I had almost conceded would never happen,
but this time I captured the right mix of luck and mojo and went home feeling like
I could die happy.
I now have two more days left in my Brighton run, and then next week I'm staging
a Rap is Poetry Brighton series at the Mad Hatter Café, my venue from last
year. I also have plans to record some songs with some of the hiphop talent in this
town, which is considerable. Then I'm heading back to Cambridge for another tour
of high schools through June and July, teaching hiphop lyrics as poetry and performing
Rap/Chaucer for English students of English. For the next few months I will do my
best to write more often and less voluminously. I can tell from the first few days
that it promises to be quite a summer. All the best,
Baba