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Magnum KI has a brand new album. And to celebrate we’re having a party on December 19th at the West End Cultural Centre in Winnipeg!

Select is very different than the first Magnum KI record. Although the foundation of Ismaila’s rap and raggae vocals over Kutdown’s boom-bap beats remains intact, there’s also plenty of new elements to these songs. For one we’ve added a new vocalist, Rhonda “Fenom” Thompson; and secondly, yours truly is featured much more prominently on these recordings. We also really branched out from our comfort zone on this one in terms of subject matter and song structure. The result is an album with more layers and diverse textures than anything else Magnum KI has done previously.

Admittedly, the self-titled Magnum KI record, released way back in 2010 was an attempt by attention starved hip-hop artists to get some love from their own city. Back then Ismaila, Kutdown and I were already well established in what we did. But outside of our poorly attended underground rap shows, no one seemed to notice.

We wanted to do more with our music. We wanted to perform at bigger venues, get played more on the radio and be recognized for our talent. We wanted Winnipeg to know that we were as good at making music as any band in the city was. This was difficult to do as solo artists though, so we teamed up as Magnum KI to help elevate each other to the level of notoriety that we felt we deserved.

Maybe that sounds crazy. But the craziest part about it is that it worked. After releasing the Magnum KI self-titled album we were finally being asked to play high profile shows, in and outside of Winnipeg; we were getting paid more money than ever before; and we even got nominated for an award. People were finally paying attention to us. Our plan was working.

This so-called plan had two phases though. Phase one was to create a pop-heavy hip-hop album that would get us some attention outside of the city’s rap circles, a scene that at the time was lethargic and dwindling. Phase two, however, was to make a second album, this time one that our artistic sides could truly be proud of; an album that would make people realize that we had something special to offer.

First thing we did as part of phase two was ask Rhonda Thompson aka Fenom to join our group. Her feminine sensibilities worked well against our testosterone-laden studio sessions. Not to mention her soft, melodic voice complimented Ismaila’s deep commanding tones in a way that added a much wider depth to the sonic landscape of our tracks.

The next step was to start picking beats from Kutdown’s catalogue of hundreds (and hundreds). We wanted to keep the tempo up on this record, just like we did on the first one. We still wanted to make music that could move a live audience, but this time around we also wanted beats that evoked the edgier, sometimes darker side of our personalities. We wanted to make songs with more substance, songs that reflected our ambition to connect with people in a truly authentic way.

We spent hours upon hours in the studio, fuelled by a desire to make the album we always dreamt of making (and whatever else we could get our hands on). We often started our sessions as the sun was going down, and ended them as the sun was coming up. Our time in the studio, which was above a night club, outlasted dance parties and nights out at the bar. All the elements were at our disposal, and we were obsessed with finding the arrangement that would make them all hum together at just the right frequency.

The record has been done for over two years now. But somewhere near the end of the process we just got burnt out. The constant ups-and-downs were exhausting. One moment we felt like we were doing something bigger and better than anything we had ever done before; the next moment we didn’t know if what we were doing made any sense at all. We needed to take a break and get some distance from it.

We planned a brief hiatus and went our separate ways. But as often happens, our solo endeavours, day jobs and families swallowed up time so quickly. But all the while, the record we made still pulsed and glowed in our mind’s ear. A little time away from what we had done made us realize how proud we actually were of our work. Maybe the timing isn’t perfect on this release, but we can’t sit on this album any longer.

I don’t know if there will be another Magnum KI record after this one. Maybe, maybe not. We never made any real money with it. And with no real plan, no management and no label, it’s hard to convince four grown-ups to all get in the same boat that may or may not make to the island. But I hope this new record does well enough to convince us all to try. We’ll see.

Come check out our dual CD release party with Neil Wattson at WECC December 19th.

I

A few weeks ago I went out drinking and brought my travel mug with me. I filled it with a mix of vodka, mango juice and sparkling water and headed out into some rollicking adventures. But at some point between the last drop being drank and my stumbling feet carrying me home, my empty travel mug became too cumbersome for me to carry and it was sacrificed to the night.

Since then I’ve been bringing my coffee to work in an old, washed-out pickle jar. Apparently, people at my work are very confused by a container containing a liquid that it wasn’t originally meant to contain. “What is that? What’s in there? What are you drinking?” Oh, you mean what is this brownish, milky-substance that I’m drinking at nine-thirty in the morning? Well, it’s in an old pickle jar SO IT MUST BE PICKLE JUICE!

II

I was a teenager when I began playing shows. By the time I was 20 years old I was well known in Winnipeg’s hip-hop circles as a rapper and, to a lesser degree, a producer. I played a lot of hip-hop shows, put out hip-hop albums and immersed myself in the hip-hop scene of Winnipeg and Western Canada. But as I get older and more experienced, my influences continue to broaden.

When I put out Hearts, it was meant to be a statement that I did not want to be pigeonholed. I only rapped on one of 8 songs. Yet still, people would say things to me like: “You rap kind of strange on that album. It’s not even really rapping. But you’re a rapper, so it must be rapping.” Yes, you’re right! I rap and therefore all I can do is rap. And even when I’m not rapping, I’m still rapping.

III

I AM THE PICKLE JAR

IV

Nov 10, 2013

KRANG vs. CHEERING FOR THE BAD GUY vs. SURPRISE PARTY vs. ROB CROOKS

@ dead lobster

$7

doors 8:30
show 9:30

followed by weird dj stuff
going till morning
no school / work the next day

don’t be afraid to ask for directions;
look both ways before crossing the road

facebook event page

“Sugar pill” is another way of saying “placebo.” So basically we bit the band Placebo really hard because we’re pathetically uncreative. But that’s the point. We are the uncreative creative. Ask yourself: what is creativity? How can you be “creative” when everything’s already been done? All you can do is appropriate and remix. This is the new creativity. This is the remix culture. Don’t tell us what we can and cannot sample. Don’t tell me what art is, or how art is made. We are doing it right now, making art and getting our hands dirty.

Juts kidding. Fuck that.

Doctors and other medical professionals give patients sugar pills because their sickness is in their head. It’s all made up. You’re not really sick, you’re a faker. I’ll give you this sugar pill and you’ll believe you’re being treated for your non-existent illness. You just need attention, don’t you? You’re just a big baby. Take your pill, baby. Take your sugar pill and grow the fuck up.

I think we all know who the last paragraph was directed towards: Speed Dial 7, Pip Skid and Rob Crooks. Speed Dial 7 is from Kortrijk, Belgium, which is an hour or so outside of Brussels. Speed Dial 7 came to Canada a couple years ago to tour his music around the desolate, empty halls of Canada’s experimental hip-hop scene. He stayed in a hopeless Winnipeg for a couple weeks, drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes with the acclimated Pip Skid and Rob Crooks. Rob had some beats. “Why don’t we write some raps and make an album to these beats? We’ll call it Sugar Pill Gang, because we’re all a little sick in the head.”

Greg Macpherson came by and screamed his pent up aggression into a song. Yy and Gruf got busy with different styles. Dj Co-op rapped a verse about how these kids need to learn about stuff. Speed Dial 7 took all this and made it make as much sense as it ever could:

Sugar Pill Gang.

You can download this album for free. Please do.

Do you think God had faith in himself? I mean, if he was so all-powerful and so all-knowing – like everyone says he was – then wouldn’t he have just known he was real? He wouldn’t have needed to have faith.

Right?

I mean: if you know everything, you don’t need faith. The definition of having faith is not knowing; faith is not knowing but believing anyways. Faith is not knowing but believing in spite of the fact you don’t know. God wouldn’t have needed to believe. God just fuckin’ knew. It’s too bad

he got hit by a car and died.

Pip Skid and I have been making quite a bit of music together lately. But Sugar Pill Gang is the first album we’ve built as a team from the ground up. Of course, we didn’t do it by ourselves. Speed Dial 7 raps on it too, not to mention the fact that he co-produced it with me and engineered the whole thing himself.

This album was conceived of on the road, during downtime from two Marathon of Dope Canadian tours, a year apart. Sometimes playing in front of 20 people in a far away city can make you feel like you’re on some wonderful drug; sometimes playing for an empty venue can feel like you’re on a bottomless comedown. Days off in between often feel like the world is flipped upside down, and you’re barely treading water in the inverted sky. This is the mind state we were in when we wrote these songs.

The lead “single” from the SPG album features the legendary Greg MacPherson. I can use the word “legendary” without any sense of hyperbole because his legend was known to me well before I ever laid eyes on him. Little has been done since to spoil his mythology in my mind. It’s not without pride that I tell you he sings on a song that I took a part in creating.

There’s a full album coming of this stuff very soon. Make some room on your iPods for Octobre 8th. In the mean time, have a listen to “Out of My Way”  (Ft. Greg MacPherson):

From the Sugar Pill Gang press release:

“The international force known as the Sugar Pill Gang is a band of depraved outsiders and pseudo-musicians. Individually Pip Skid, Speed Dial 7 and Rob Crooks are three misfits that have emerged from the gutters and alleys of their hometowns, drenched in puddle water, with alcohol breath and nicotine-stained teeth, to connect across oceans, from Belgium to Canada. With vague ideology and disconnected narratives, they scoff at the idea that they are to be attached to some sort of coherent “movement.” They are fully entrenched in an absurd world, devoid of meaning or substance. Over driving beats, they are shouting some kind of poetry that sounds like the primitive moaning and groaning of the basest form of expressive being. Not only are they convinced that they won’t be understood; they are sure there is nothing to understand. This is the Sugar Pill Gang’s invitation to a new kind of party.”

I hope you like it!

When you you’re living in the Canadian prairies, summer is a mind-fuck. The winter’s are so long, and dark, and cold that the only thing keeping you from falling asleep in the snow and freezing to death is the hope, sometimes surer than others, that summer is coming. But we fantasize about it and idealize it to a point where there’s no way that it could ever live up to our cabin-fever-induced expectations. It’s our version of the Paris syndrome.

In the last days of winter, when the weather warms up a little and we finally put away our parkas, we start sketching out some big plans. “This summer we’re going to do it right,” we tell ourselves. “We’ll spend every weekend at the beach or lake; we’ll go on road trips to the States and catch some shows; we’ll play baseball with our friends; we’ll take advantage of as many festival events as possible!” And as soon as the first puddles begin to form, we’re out on the patios drinking beer in t-shirts, titillated with the excitement of a whole new chance to make this summer the best summer ever!

Of course the first couple weekends of summer are a write-off, since we’re not used to the revved-up partying that goes along with the new found pressure that warm weather brings. The result is that we go too hard on Fridays and end up spending the rest of the weekend in a dark room, locked in the death grips of a vicious hangover. Then, to make up for lost time, we spend too much money on weekday beers, and blow our budget for the weekend road trip to Minneapolis. All of the sudden, it’s July, and we haven’t even started any of the work we vowed to have finished by September, so we spend a couple weekends inside trying to catch up. By the time we even realize it’s August, summer is flying by with such momentum that we barely have enough time to catch one last house party.

Those three months of summer just seem to vanish into thin air. How can time pass us by so quickly? It seemed like just yesterday we were only twenty years old. Tomorrow we’ll be 40. Then 50. Then we’ll be old persons, looking back on our whole lives like we do the summer.

Before you get the wrong impression, I am by no means on some pseudo-existentialist, seize the day, yolo bullshit. The so-called “moment” that the descendants of Kierkegaard so desperately want us to capture is not real; and having “Faith” in something like that in our accelerated epoch seems like romanticism. Time is the only thing that is real, and the only thing real about time is it’s unceasing flow, which never stops for a “moment.”

So what is left for us to do but accept the passage of time, and the inevitability of death? Accept it, revel in it and make it the companion that holds us up and keeps us going, not like a crutch but like the all consuming hunger that first drives us towards life. Yes, the end is inevitable, but by that same token so is life, and so learning and growth, and so is pleasure and pain.

Factor‘s my old homie from Saskatoon. His new album Woke Up Alone is about accepting death too. He’s coming to Winnipeg on August 31st to release it to us. Do you get it now? Do you see why I wrote this rant about summer ending and tied it in with death??

Hey, by the way, you should come to the Factor show this Saturday, August 31st at the Windsor! Factor will be there with a band, including Evil, Jeans Boots and Kay the Aquanaut. So will Pip Skid and the Butter Pretzels. And me too!

Check out the details at the Facebook event page.

It’s been a long time, I should’ve left you without a blog post to step to. So here is a little update of what’s going on with me and my mind:

Before I put out the Hearts EP, I worked on a lot of other people’s music. It was fun, and at the time seemed promising. I liked working behind the scenes and thinking of myself as a producer. But in the end it just wasn’t as satisfying as I wanted it to be. Although I gained a lot of experience working with other people, it wasn’t getting me to where I wanted to go.

The biggest sacrifice I made while working on other people’s music was pushing my own music to the side. At no point did I ever stop making songs, but I wasn’t finishing the projects I was starting. And the rare time I would release something, it didn’t have the support behind it to make people take notice. After a few years of this, I couldn’t help but feel as though I had been focusing my energy in the wrong places.

Putting out Hearts was a big step for me. It got me back to thinking independently. Since it’s release last year, I’ve been bitten by the bug again and can’t wait to share all the music that I’ve been working on for so long. Birdapres and I released Argyle in May, but that was just the beginning: you can definitely expect more music coming from me this year, solo and collaborative. And each piece of music I release will be as diverse from the last as Hearts was from Argyle, from Krautrock influenced pop to post-punk influenced rap.

Some people may say this will confuse the audience, that they won’t be able to trust my brand. But those people maybe under estimate this theoretical audience. I am a dynamic person, and I think dynamic people will be interested in what I do. And as for genre’s, who really takes them seriously these days anyway?

Not too long ago on Twitter there was a tweet on my feed from the legendary Houston rapper Scarface which caught my attention. Scarface had retweeted and replied to a tweet directed at him from a young woman living somewhere in the States:

“Ok RT @xxxx Bieber: @BrotherMob You need to make real rap music like Nicki Minaj”*

(*@BrotherMob is Scarface’s handle. I ‘x’ed out the young woman’s handle. For those of you not on Twitter, RT means “retweet.” The young woman tweeted at Scarface “You need to make real rap music like Nicki Minaj,” which Scarface retweeted with his added reply, “ok.”)

First of all, Scarface’s reply was perfect. How else could he have responded? The fact that he responded at all to this bizarre tweet was funny enough, letting his fans and followers in on the joke. Proving he has a sense of humour, Scarface followed it up with this:

“Naa Nikki is fire she has a point”

But what really peeked my interest was the young woman who originally sent the unprovoked tweet to Scarface. I mean, this young woman is certainly allowed to like Nikki Minaj’s music more than Scarface’s (I guess). But why this out of the blue and unfounded attack against Scarface? What’s going through this girl’s mind? Is she the hilarious author of a “weird Twitter” account? Or is she crazy? I had to investigate.

The first insight into where she was coming from was her Twitter handle, which used “Beiber” after her first name, like a patrynomic. In other words, she is a Belieber. (I am no psychoanalyst, and therefore will not go into her potential “daddy issues.”)

The girl’s Twitter account drew me in even more. Her tweets were almost exclusively hate-filled jabs directed at perceived pop rivals of Justin Bieber and fanatics of different pop stars that currently occupy the top 40 charts. Racist and homophobic slurs are used viciously and without conscience. Some of her other tweets ask her followers to look at her avatar, a picture of her young, smiling, chubby face. “Don’t I look like Miley Cyrus?” she implores.”People tell me I look like Miley Cyrus,” she posts after getting no positive replies to the former. Her pubescent insecurities ooze out of the screen.

Some examples of her tweets:

(In response to Eva Longoria tweeting support for San Antonio’s NBA team) “@EvaLongoria THE SPURS ARE TRASH U UGLY BITCH”

“Drake has more BET awards than Eminem has gotten in his career. So whos the king of Rap?”

“@wizkhalifa Your son has a drug addicted father and whore mom. i hope hes fucked up and dies by the age of 20″

“Justin Bieber has 3 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Michael Jackson has 0. Who’s better?”

“Black people are fucking up the ecominee”

Her vicious attacks on other Twitter users are only abated by the love she declares for Justin Beiber, and her online “sister,” another young girl living in a different state. To the young Belieber’s claim that her “sister” is the only one in the world who understands her, and doesn’t hate her, her “sister” replies “we are not sisters, you fat cow.” Other correspondences between the two detail an on-and-off again online friendship between two insecure girls who sometimes find solace in each other, and other times seek distance from each other, so as not to be associated with somebody undesirable.

Her sometimes-sister uses a One Direction reference as the last name of her Twitter pseudonym. Her bio reveals that her favorite One Direction member is Zayn, but she indeed likes them all. An “0/5″ at the end of her bio signifies that she is in the Oh-for-Fivers club, meaning that zero out of five members of One Direction follow her back. Her and other Oh-for-Fivers sometimes find each other on Twitter and discuss their love of One Direction and their aspirations to one day be followed by members of their favourite pop group.  Presumably, once one arrives in the One-for-Fivers club, they would never again have the time of day for a lowly 0/5er.

Most of the Directioner’s tweets are desperate attempts at convincing separate members of One Direction to follow her, barraging them with tweets like “I’ve been studying so hard. You’d be proud of me. If you just follow me, I know I’ll past my test!” and “My life is meaningless without your music.” She even attempts to turn the members of One Direction against each other, hoping that becoming a confidant will lift her up a rung on the ladder. None of these tweets are replied to.

I feel increasingly strange looking at the tweets of these middle-American, teenaged girls. And yet I am mesmerized, spending almost an hour scrolling through them. Maybe not having the most fulfilling lives at home, they turn to seeking some sort of connection with people online, even if only through “trolling.”

I wasn’t entirely comfortable with my decision, but I followed both girls, adding their tweets to my feed. I justified it by telling myself that gaining insights into a social realm I would otherwise have no access to were just too compelling to pass up.

Soon after, the Directioner showed up on my feed. Her tweet was something innocuous enough, like “sitting in class. so bored!” They can’t all be gems. I looked for the Belieber, to see if I had missed anything crazy she had posted. I was surprised to be unable to find her on my feed or in my “followed” list. Where was her account, and her crazy tweets?

“Oh man,” I thought. “She blocked me.” Of course she did. She knew something was up when some random person from Winnipeg (where?) followed her. She wasn’t as ignorant as I took her for. She wasn’t so clueless to the world around her. She was a human being, with a brain and a heart, just like any of us. She gets it. Why would I follow her? She must’ve known that it was so that I could treat her like the lowly object she had been treated like so many times before. Was I just as bad as the bullies I assume she faces in her real life?

I was disgusted with myself. I stayed off Twitter for a couple of days, the whole time thinking about why I allowed myself to be enticed down such a dark social media path. What did I want out of it? To feel superior? Or just a laugh? But I kept telling myself I can’t pass up this experience. This type of phenomenon is only accessible through Twitter. I will never meet crazy people like this in real life.

When time had numbed my self-loathing, I went back on Twitter to find the Belieber girl had somehow began to appear on my feed. As it turned out, the actual reason I couldn’t find her was because she had been banned from Twitter for a short period of time for using hate speech. Ugh. I couldn’t do it anymore. I unfollowed both of them.

Looking back on my motivations for following these girls in the first place, I can’t help but be struck by our digitally detached age. Originally I found their tweets so unbelievably insane that I couldn’t turn away, much like my motivations for watching the Jim Bakker Show. Both that religious program and these girls’ tweets were funny to me on an anti-comedy level. It was like watching an episode of Tim and Eric. But they’re not anti-comedians, and they’re not in on the joke. (I still watch the Jim Bakker Show and laugh though. Because fuck that guy.)

In a lot of ways it was more like watching Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo. These two young, insecure, possibly mentally-ill girls were gaining followers on Twitter (the Belieber especially has a significant amount of followers for someone who doesn’t seem to be putting anything positive out into the world) by showcasing the worst possible traits of their personalities. And like Honey Boo-Boo, they want us to watch their train wreck, because it’s the only way they can get the attention that all people crave. But this attention comes from all the wrong places.

By following these two girls on Twitter I was essentially exploiting them. I was playing the role of voyeur, amusing myself with their pathetic, ignorant and sad lives. And all this from a safe enough distance to not be worried about who they really are, and what their lives are actually like.

Be careful on the internet.

(Click on poster for Facebook event page)

In the past few weeks, you, like many others, may have asked yourself: “what the hell has happened to our beloved Albert?” After all, we’ve all heard the stories that have surfaced since the now infamous ‘toasted bun’ incident went public. The last thing I remember paying attention to was the picture of the bikini-clad waitresses, posing in front of the atrium. “Those poor girls,” I thought, “caught up in something they probably have little-to-no idea about, trying to fake a smile in the less than beach weather spring air, only to have hordes of angry Albert-lovers rally against them on Facebook.”

“We want our Albert back!” we’ve been collectively screaming. “We want boys and girls smoking cigarettes and doing drugs together in the girls bathroom; we want guys pissing on the walls in the boys bathroom, where the urinals used to be; we want some drunk person bottling some even drunker person out on the dance floor; we want blood and puke stains in the carpet, and chips in the floor tiles!”

Mind you, some of that stuff still happens at the Albert. But some things do inevitably change. The Albert qua the Albert was a special place that became a rite of passage for many of us. It was a place that represented so purely the Winnipeg experience, an experience that can be so dark and raw at times. The Albert was that underdog in all of us, with so much spirit and so much fight (figuratively and literally); it was a run-down dive to the naked eye, but with so much character underneath that the initiated couldn’t help but love it.

And now it has brand new floors, brand new customers and a brand new owner who is potentially a huge asshole. (I say “potentially” because I’ve never met him.)

But one thing that the new Albert still has, that the old one had too, is bands. Realistically, there are probably a lot of places you like to patronize that have assholes for owners. The difference might be that the owners of those other places didn’t buy a place with so much history, that meant so much to so many people.

Unfortunately, the Albert as we remember it may never come back. In fact it probably won’t. Neither will the Lo-pub. Nor will Wellington’s. But in spite of all the blows this city has taken over the past few years, and the many more that are coming, don’t we need to keep focus on what mattered in the first place? It’s all about live, underground music in the end; and we’re losing venues at an alarming rate. Say what you want about the Albert, but don’t turn your back on local music.

FRIDAY, MAY 31st at the ROYAL ALBERT ARMS HOTEL

A LION IN YOUR LAP (10:00)

GHOST TWIN (10:45)

DJ BEEKEENI (11:30)

ROB CROOKS (12:30)

(with DAMIEN FERLAND djing Synth Music between sets)

$5

 To all of my friends and fans that have been vocally skeptical about how much I sing on my new shit, here’s something just for you. Argyle is an EP Birdapres and I made full of raps and beats, and it’s all based around the theme of being in high-school. Why high school, you ask? Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why did Judas grab the Romans while Jesus slept? In the simplest terms possible, we went with it, and it worked out. Below is a more detailed description of the album and the creative process behind it. You can read it to find out more.

In the meantime, you can download the album here.

“For the first time ever Birdapres has teamed up with Rob Crooks to bring you Argyle. Named for both an alternative high school in Winnipeg and the pattern that adorns school uniforms, this eight track EP hearkens back to the days of low-hanging backpacks, mind-numbing classes and juvenile delinquency. Although Bird and Crooks are well beyond their teenage years, they artfully use the theme of high school to express the feelings of alienation and ennui that followed them well into adulthood.

The poetic insight that laid the theme for Argyle came from Birdapres’ observation that most people had a friend or classmate tragically pass away during the months or days surrounding graduation. From that dark inspiration came the pensive “Bus Stop Blues,” a song that developed the overarching concept for this brand new EP. Other songs cover topics such as adolescent drug-use (“High School High”), skipping class to smoke “Cigarettes” (feat. Pip Skid) and the dreaded “Summer School.”

Sonically, Argyle is contrastingly upbeat and fun. Rob Crooks, playing the role of producer in addition to emcee, took records supplied by the walking-vinyl-encyclopedia Birdapres and fed them through his sampler to create beats influenced by Krautrock to Miami Bass. Samples from classic 80s and 90s high-school movies are sprinkled throughout the EP adding a narrative that takes the listener from the first day of school to graduation and beyond.

The final result is a hip-hop album unlike any other, relating the experiences of angst-ridden high-school students to the existential problems facing us as grown-ups today.”