Single-handedly, Senegalese artist Souleymane Diamanka converted me to slam, the post-rap, spoken-word genre that took France by storm a few years back. It’s still not something I listen to everyday, but when you’re in the mood for reversing the usual dope beats-to-dumb lyrics ratio, slam gets the job done nicely. Some people were already on [...]
Earlier today, after I was done interviewing King Kutz Barbershop owner Peter Liburd (more about this wild venture later), I went to get a coffee to warm up a bit. Out in front of the Second Cup stood a tall, thin, Black man I’d seen around the neighbourhood before. Not exactly homeless looking, but obviously [...]
I was introduced to Turkish hip-hop by Emre Ünalan, the then 13 year-old son of my good friend Fatma. Fatma, her husband Mustafa (whom she was forced to marry when she was 13), Emre and his kid sister Nihal, lived in Egirdir, a gorgeous lake-side town in Western Turkey. The family ran this sort of [...]
I love reggae. The love affair began in earnest the day I waltzed into Blizzarts, a neighbourhood bar on the Main, in Montreal. I was 20 years-old, clueless and broke. I only had the faintest notion of the city’s layout and definitely wasn’t in on where the cool kids hung out. For all I knew, [...]