BILLY X. SUNDAY says, “Tara Henley stand up!”
Me and my lady took a long weekend to visit Montreal. The rail fare was pretty damn cheap and you can’t beat the view on the train as you ride alongside the Hudson River due north. I kind of forgot about my cares as I peeped tiny upstate New York towns with farms and horses and the what not. The bucolic scenery had me in a daze until we arrived at the Canadian border. I was questioned by several customs officers about my business in Canada. I thought this was a joke on some “We already have enough Black people” type shit. Truth was that these niggas were holding a passenger manifest and on that printout it displayed my arrest record.
Damn. I thought these dudes were gonna send me back to NYC, but they figured that since my last conviction was in 1993 that I wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Shit done changed since September 11th, 2001. Everything done changed. The way we travel abroad, up to the music we listen to on our iPods. I was on some Native Tongues shit while walking around Montreal. It’s a backpacker city so I figured that I’d let some backpacker music be my soundtrack.
Montreal is an interesting city. It’s a lot more like America than its counterpart Toronto. Montreal is a lot dirtier than Toronto. You could eat off the ground in Toronto, not so much in Montreal. It felt like a college town, except niggas spoke French, and there weren’t any niggers. There was a handful of mulattos, but I didn’t see any real Black folks. You know, the kind that have DNA from two Black parents. The biggest rapper in Montreal was one of these halfBlack dudes (is anyone keeping score because lightskint is in the lead?). His rapper name is Cadence Weapon. I fucks with dude because he is on some Kid Cudi rhyme style. Like KanYe West and most pop rap acts nowadays you need to listen to sonn with shades on and a disco ball over your head. Still and all, this nigga rhymes better than Lil’ Wang every day of the week.
Sometimes I fucks with rap dudes that don’t live in America. I got into this Nigerian cat from Brixton, England several years ago. Dude’s name is Ty Chijoke (score one for brownskin brothers). His album ‘Upwards’ featured live instruments played by Africans that used to tour with Fela Kuti. I know what your thinking. “But Sunday, don’t you HATE Africans for selling your great-great-grandparents to the white?” Yes, I do hate the Africans, but I love African music. Go figure. Fela Kuti is a fucking giant, and if you don’t know who he is you are definitely part of the problem with the world today. So as I was saying, I fucks with this cat Ty. This dude spits some real shit. Peep the track with him and Bahamadia on it.
I know I always speak of bringing a change to how we listen to rap and then becoming the change we want to bear witness to. There are artists that can give us that good food for our earlobes without preaching to us. Fuck with this cat Ty. He gets deep with his shit and the fact that he comes from Africa which is the most hardbody island next to England says a lot to me.
I liked Cadence Weapon’s “Breaking Kayfabe” LP better than his new album but he’s alright. Sometimes his flow gets a little bit on the “I’m not listening to the beat AT ALL” side but he’s alright. “Afterparty Babies” is alright but it’s gonna take a few listens to rock with it.
One.
Good stuff. My fav T-Dot artist is Kardinal Offishall.
K-Os from Toronto/Trinidad is like a Wyclef Jean 2.0, with rap reggae & rock tunes
Where could I get that sweatshirt?
EGC : I thought that he was going to go bananas in the mainstream when Superstar Part 0 came out. The video was dope, but dude was just a bit ahead of the curve with that and his musical scene. You dig Atlantis : Hymns for Disco? I definitely did and keep it in the current rotation.
Now who’s still doing the Bacardi Slang?
@evan, all I’ve heard of K-Os is his 2006 Atlantis Hymns For Disco album, which I enjoyed.
I don’t know any more about dude. I would enjoy the chance to listen to his older albums, but the proverbial album queue is real long, so it might not be for years, if ever.
long live tara!
As a Canadian citizen of African birth, I’ll tell you why u didn’t see any melanin in Montreal Dallas; you were a tourist. You always on some Haiti is the gulliest shit, but you didn’t visit the hood. Senegal, DRC, Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Burundi, Rwanda and Mali are well represented in the MTL, but never for tourists. You gotta keep the jawn clean of the riffraff when company comes over, no?. The French played their part in slicing and dicing the African pizza too, you know. But when you tell people that Africa consists of 53 countries of various European conquest, they still ask you if you speak ‘African’ You wanna see a city with no black folks, come to mine in Vancouver. We’re gonna be on that 2010 faster, stronger, higher shit for the winter Olympics and the the carpetbaggers, slum lords and RCMP are on some gestapo shell-game gentrification type ish. Fela said ‘music is a weapon’ back in the sixties and proved it by causing riots in Germany and Ghana when he performed. Ain’t no cat that could do that today. I recommend Red Hot and Riot as an easy intro for those who don’t know. Its full of the now defunct Soulquarians. After that, work your backwards for the real Fela. As for the euronegro’s that ply ‘urban’ music, I don’t understand the apparent novelty… Tricky, Goldie, 4Hero, LTJ Bukem and Roots Manuva were bustin grapes in the UK almost 2 decades ago. Dubstep, Grime and today’s ilk in the UK would’ve never existed without them. BTW, your Montreal excursion posts were dope… keep up the travel posts and visit the Canadian left coast. The haze grows on fire hydrants out here. The money might not be green, but the exports are.
brrlesk, now I want to go…
long time reader/lurker, first time poster…
kardinal offishall is supposed to be coming out on akon’s label…wompwomp
k-os has a beef with him currently…
a gang of hatians be up in montreal for real tho’. i gots mad family there and visit on the regs. eff around a=on any given sunday and you will be served with a swing of the cutlass.
Candence Weapon sounds kind of a drum machine Fela Kuti (You No Go Die is a beast). Shout out to “propulsive dance rhythms” and the African Diaspora’s International Cultural Legacy. Jazz Fest in New Orleans usually books a few groups every year that work in Fela Kuti mold. I saw Olu Dara and Femi Kuti at the House of Blues during Jazz Fest 2001, it was excellent.
MTL got mad haitians emm light skin dudes were probably Arabs, cause the got madd Algerian and Morocan niggas up there. I’ll be invading Montreal this weekend for a bachelor party so I’ll keep you updated on the numbers…
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