AS HEARD ON THE...
BLACKIE & THE RODEO
KINGS
For the full interview, listen to the April 8, 2020, episode
CM: You all write songs for
Blackie albums, and also each
have very successful projects
away from this group. So,
when you’re writing, do you
each know when a song is a
Blackie song and when it’s for
your other projects?
CADENCE WEAPON
& HUA LI
For the full interview, listen to the April 1, 2020,
episode
CM: You’re now one of the mentors at the
Banff International Songwriter Residency. In
your earlier years, did you take advantage of
these sorts of formal development oppor-
tunities, and did they play any role in your
growth as a young hip-hop artist?
Cadence Weapon: I’d say absolutely not. Never; I
was never given any opportunity like this. Because
you’ve got to remember, back then, in the mid-
2000s and stuff, singer-songwriter [programs]
wouldn’t have been something that I would be
applying for. It wasn’t the way of thinking, and
also places like the Banff Centre wouldn’t be
searching out people like me, which is part of
why, I think, Shad and I have been reached out to
for this project. They’re really trying to change the
demographics of who’s applying for this.
For me, rap is very close to folk music. They’re
both singer-songwriter forms. I feel like they’re
both very lyrically-dense forms of music. Recently
I posted something on Instagram talking about,
like, “Hey, I’m at the Banff Centre and I’m doing
this singer-songwriter thing…” and all these
younger rappers I know were like, “I could apply
for that?” You
know, they
have no idea
that it’s possi-
ble.
Hua Li: I mean,
rap music is the
music that tells
the story of the
people, and I
think that’s also
how we define
folk music,
right?
Hua Li
Stephen Fearing: I know these
guys will have a different answer,
but I do not have a book of songs
that I haven’t recorded. I basically
come upon a new project, either
my own record or a Blackie record, with nothing in the hopper! It’s terrifying because
both these guys are so prolific and the calibre is very high. With this newest record,
[King of This Town,] I was going to bring ideas, and then a bunch of those ideas got
finished on my own. I had these sketches because I wanted us to write together,
which we did, but for me, I write for what’s right in front of my face.
Tom Wilson: By the way, let me just clarify something; it’s been the same goddamn
story with this guy for 25 years! He’s like, “Hey, um, I don’t have any songs, but I have
some ideas.” It’s like, “mm-hmm.” And then he’ll show up at the studio and is like, “Well,
I had this idea but then my flight was delayed in Seattle so I thought I’d finish the
song,” and he plays the song and it always ends up being my favourite song on the
record. It’s like, “Oh, I see, you wrote this between a Starbucks and a magazine stand
and it’s fantastic?” So, just needed to clarify that.
SNOTTY NOSE
REZ KIDS
For the full interview, listen to the April
15, 2020, episode
CM: With a song like “Cops with
Guns Are the Worst!!!” off the
new Born Deadly EP, which was
inspired by the Wet’suwet’en
blockades and the police actions
against Indigenous protesters,
how much are you carefully
crafting what you want to say
verses letting the emotions flow out?
Darren “Young D” Metz: It’s very rare when we write something that we write a
verse and then that’s it. We’ll break it down, record it and listen to it, and be like, “Ah,
I don’t like that; it could be better.” So, for that track in particular, we rewrote both of
our verses two or three times. It’s very rare when we get it on the first try, but that’s
because it’s just that, we want people to get exactly what we’re feeling and what
we’re saying and paint that picture.
Quinton “Yung Trybez” Nyce: We rewrote that song twice from the original ver-
sion. It didn’t sit well with Darren, the way we’d recorded it and what we were talking
about. He wanted us to go back to the drawing board, and it kind of works like that
right now because he lives in Vancouver and I’m in Toronto and we’d never worked
like that before. So, when I sent him the beat and the verses and the hook, he just
wasn’t down with it. So, obviously if one of us isn’t down with something that we do,
we obviously have to go back to the drawing board because it’s the both of us.
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18 CANADIAN MUSICIAN
Cadence Weapon