Hey Rappers:
If you speak from your heart and/or guts, and do it with your own unique voice, you don't need to read this. Most spitters with any sense of self-awareness fall into this category.
But if you built that unique voice from a culture that ain't yours, you might want to consider the following.
There was a time when Brooklyn, Atlanta, Compton, Jersey and Chicago had never been cool. Well... maybe not Chicago, but you know...
Never Not Cool. Must be the wind.
Point is: People in these cities did their thing and made the place cool. Made their cities places you wish you were from.
Your city's not so bad either, y'know. I know it doesn't sound as hardcore as "Compton" to say "I'm from Moosejaw," or "I represent Fort Nelson." Trust me. I got a list of hometowns, and almost none of em have a reputation for street-savvy toughness (whatever the reality might be). But if it isn't your voice on the music, it isn't your heart that's in it.
Here's a long story to illustrate.
I started rapping in this little town you never heard of. You know where Alberta is, right? There's this little dot just north of the top of it. I have a lot of fond memories of the place, and the people there are - if I remember right - decent, hardworking, good people. For the sake of not embarrassing anybody to death by association, I'll leave you to guess the name of the place.
Here's a shot of the skyline. Thanks to RDixon64, a wicked photographer whose real-world name has eluded me.
I have way too many not-so-fond memories of that town too. But everything makes us who we are, right? The good and the bad.
I'm veering off topic again.
Anyway, that's where I grew up, in a strictly chronological sense (more on this another time). There & across the lake in Yellowknife. With a 6-month stint near Thorsby, AB... which wasn't even as cool as the name sounds. And I don't care who I embarrass there.
Like "Thor's Bay." Sounds exciting, no? It isn't. Except for the blizzards.
Anyway, I was 15 or 16 when I went public, after about 3 years of writing and practice. In the town with no name. North of Alberta. Where there were trees, rivers, nice conservative people, a half-decent tourism industry, the cleanest air in the world, the lowest permafrost levels around, and nothing else.
Well, nothing else except racism. And troubles with alcohol and drugs. And domestic violence. And poverty, cold winters, a high suicide rate, and - for a year - the highest per-capita homicide rate in the country.*
Literally nobody else was doing what I was doing, and nobody saw me coming. If you've been true to yourself, you probably have some idea what it's like to be painfully different. Well, I was already different; spitting verses over homemade beats in a country/metal town at the turn of the 90s was just icing on the shit-cake.
Get it?
Like any stupid kid, I had figured out by the age of 6 that being myself was the reason I was ostracized by pretty much everybody in my age group. Hadn't yet realized that I wasn't being myself. But that's another story. What I did know was that - no matter the consequences - I had to do what it was in my heart to do. For good or ill, that was rapping, and constructing beats for rap.
It was kind of tragically funny at first. Yeah, I blew everybody's minds with my first performance. After all, here was this kid with no social skills (and very few friends), who wasn't allowed out after 9pm, who actually took his Catholic upbringing seriously, and never seemed comfortable in his own skin. And he was suddenly jumping around the stage like a maniac, spitting out multilateral rhymes with the rapid-fire succession of a small, awkward firearm. It was new, but somehow old too.
Here's the same kid a few years later.
I had found the thing that would set me free, but I had a long way to go before I actually got free. In a lot of ways, I still do.
Not having been exposed to any rap from small towns (since there hadn't been any yet), I was learning the craft by spitting about the things my lyrical heroes had been talking about. And they were not awkward white kids from northern Canada. They were social activists from New York, hustlers from LA, formerly homeless drug dealers from Jersey, and one comedian from Philadelphia. You get the picture, yeah?
So being one of those kids who didn't know himself and wanted to be a big player (those of you with Jay-Z-like ambitions, stay with me here), I learned how to rap by spitting out nonsense. Coming from me it was nonsense anyway. And it had been said already, by people who knew better.
A lot of these guys hadn't blown up yet, but you get the idea... Big up to G-UnitChica for the drawing.
I think probably the worst thing about it was my accent. Affected, fake, front, whatever you wanna call it. Again, there weren't any rappers from northern Canada at the time; and if there were, they were hiding really well. Being somebody that had always struggled with acceptance (of self, by self... and by others), I could not face the prospect of spitting in my own voice. I cultivated a habit of falling into an accent that was Jersey-by-way-of-Compton-from-Toronto, and it was the most transparent front ever conceived.
The first time I heard the album I cut at the age of 18, I liked it. It sounded nothing like me, and that suited me fine. Sounded like Treach with a recent and severe head injury.
That album embarrasses the living shit outta me now. Has for years. Anybody who's heard it knows exactly why. Only one track on there doesn't make me wanna throw up on an artistic level, and it's about domestic violence (or rather, my answer for a specific incident, i.e. 'Hit back with a shovel'). So there's that.
Now...
You know that ticklish little pain you get in your gut when something reminds you of some shit you wish had never happened? Whenever I hear a small-town rapper or suburban soulja trying to sound like he just got outta Riker's, I cringe and weep a little for the future... theirs as well as that of lyricism.
The guys who live here have friends on the outside. And from what I hear, they don't take kindly to identity theft.
I've been spitting for literally 20 years, and just learned how use my own voice about 3 years ago. Wasn't sudden or anything, but still... If you don't know, that's waaay too long to get to know yourself.
Not only that, but every town has people in it. People are the stuff of stories. Your stories might not be standard Hip-Hop fair, but there was a time not too far back when nobody would have even tried to put gangsta shit to music. Then it was the standard. Now it's tired, and we've moved on.
Well, most of us have. There's always gonna be one of these around...
You know, this is mostly for me, sorting out all the odds-n-ends kicking around in my attic. And now that I live in Toronto, I can rap about urban decay til the chickens come home. But if any of this sounds familiar to you, you need to sit down now and re-evaluate your life. Seriously.
See you in another present...
*In 1981 two pillars of the community were murdered. Heroes to a lot of kids. Killed in what would otherwise have been a simple B&E, except that they were home at the time.
If you speak from your heart and/or guts, and do it with your own unique voice, you don't need to read this. Most spitters with any sense of self-awareness fall into this category.
But if you built that unique voice from a culture that ain't yours, you might want to consider the following.
There was a time when Brooklyn, Atlanta, Compton, Jersey and Chicago had never been cool. Well... maybe not Chicago, but you know...
Point is: People in these cities did their thing and made the place cool. Made their cities places you wish you were from.
Your city's not so bad either, y'know. I know it doesn't sound as hardcore as "Compton" to say "I'm from Moosejaw," or "I represent Fort Nelson." Trust me. I got a list of hometowns, and almost none of em have a reputation for street-savvy toughness (whatever the reality might be). But if it isn't your voice on the music, it isn't your heart that's in it.
Here's a long story to illustrate.
I started rapping in this little town you never heard of. You know where Alberta is, right? There's this little dot just north of the top of it. I have a lot of fond memories of the place, and the people there are - if I remember right - decent, hardworking, good people. For the sake of not embarrassing anybody to death by association, I'll leave you to guess the name of the place.
I have way too many not-so-fond memories of that town too. But everything makes us who we are, right? The good and the bad.
I'm veering off topic again.
Anyway, that's where I grew up, in a strictly chronological sense (more on this another time). There & across the lake in Yellowknife. With a 6-month stint near Thorsby, AB... which wasn't even as cool as the name sounds. And I don't care who I embarrass there.
Anyway, I was 15 or 16 when I went public, after about 3 years of writing and practice. In the town with no name. North of Alberta. Where there were trees, rivers, nice conservative people, a half-decent tourism industry, the cleanest air in the world, the lowest permafrost levels around, and nothing else.
Well, nothing else except racism. And troubles with alcohol and drugs. And domestic violence. And poverty, cold winters, a high suicide rate, and - for a year - the highest per-capita homicide rate in the country.*
Literally nobody else was doing what I was doing, and nobody saw me coming. If you've been true to yourself, you probably have some idea what it's like to be painfully different. Well, I was already different; spitting verses over homemade beats in a country/metal town at the turn of the 90s was just icing on the shit-cake.
Like any stupid kid, I had figured out by the age of 6 that being myself was the reason I was ostracized by pretty much everybody in my age group. Hadn't yet realized that I wasn't being myself. But that's another story. What I did know was that - no matter the consequences - I had to do what it was in my heart to do. For good or ill, that was rapping, and constructing beats for rap.
It was kind of tragically funny at first. Yeah, I blew everybody's minds with my first performance. After all, here was this kid with no social skills (and very few friends), who wasn't allowed out after 9pm, who actually took his Catholic upbringing seriously, and never seemed comfortable in his own skin. And he was suddenly jumping around the stage like a maniac, spitting out multilateral rhymes with the rapid-fire succession of a small, awkward firearm. It was new, but somehow old too.
I had found the thing that would set me free, but I had a long way to go before I actually got free. In a lot of ways, I still do.
Not having been exposed to any rap from small towns (since there hadn't been any yet), I was learning the craft by spitting about the things my lyrical heroes had been talking about. And they were not awkward white kids from northern Canada. They were social activists from New York, hustlers from LA, formerly homeless drug dealers from Jersey, and one comedian from Philadelphia. You get the picture, yeah?
So being one of those kids who didn't know himself and wanted to be a big player (those of you with Jay-Z-like ambitions, stay with me here), I learned how to rap by spitting out nonsense. Coming from me it was nonsense anyway. And it had been said already, by people who knew better.
I think probably the worst thing about it was my accent. Affected, fake, front, whatever you wanna call it. Again, there weren't any rappers from northern Canada at the time; and if there were, they were hiding really well. Being somebody that had always struggled with acceptance (of self, by self... and by others), I could not face the prospect of spitting in my own voice. I cultivated a habit of falling into an accent that was Jersey-by-way-of-Compton-from-Toronto, and it was the most transparent front ever conceived.
The first time I heard the album I cut at the age of 18, I liked it. It sounded nothing like me, and that suited me fine. Sounded like Treach with a recent and severe head injury.
That album embarrasses the living shit outta me now. Has for years. Anybody who's heard it knows exactly why. Only one track on there doesn't make me wanna throw up on an artistic level, and it's about domestic violence (or rather, my answer for a specific incident, i.e. 'Hit back with a shovel'). So there's that.
Now...
You know that ticklish little pain you get in your gut when something reminds you of some shit you wish had never happened? Whenever I hear a small-town rapper or suburban soulja trying to sound like he just got outta Riker's, I cringe and weep a little for the future... theirs as well as that of lyricism.
I've been spitting for literally 20 years, and just learned how use my own voice about 3 years ago. Wasn't sudden or anything, but still... If you don't know, that's waaay too long to get to know yourself.
Not only that, but every town has people in it. People are the stuff of stories. Your stories might not be standard Hip-Hop fair, but there was a time not too far back when nobody would have even tried to put gangsta shit to music. Then it was the standard. Now it's tired, and we've moved on.
You know, this is mostly for me, sorting out all the odds-n-ends kicking around in my attic. And now that I live in Toronto, I can rap about urban decay til the chickens come home. But if any of this sounds familiar to you, you need to sit down now and re-evaluate your life. Seriously.
See you in another present...
*In 1981 two pillars of the community were murdered. Heroes to a lot of kids. Killed in what would otherwise have been a simple B&E, except that they were home at the time.
