ATSIC S06E17 - Whispered Legends
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Below this write-up, you’ll find the track list, complete with artists and their hometowns. You can listen here and follow along, or if you’re using the Mixcloud app, hit the “…” to check out the track list while you listen. There’s also a video below from the stream where I slapped this mix together. I’m having fun week to week.
This week was a rain day, and the mix ended up matching my mood — a bunch of new releases from across the country leaning toward the mellow end of the lyrical boom bap spectrum. I did the mixing myself again, but Dice will be back eventually to replace my rookie ass. Until then, I’ll keep the head nod going.
It was a bar on Chadio & The Gumshoe Strut’s new single “Bring It Back” (featured late in this hour of music) that got me thinking — there’s no rule that says being a legend means being a household name. I’d argue there are a lot of indie artists in Canada who’ve been making dope Hip Hop long enough to earn legend status among those in the know… which is who really matters. I’m not too worried about who the average person sees as an icon — most folks aren’t paying close attention to music anyway, and don’t have enough context to compare. But I’ve been tapped into this scene long enough to know who’s who, and there are too many artists I’d consider legends that most people have never even heard of.
I do the Fly In Formation interviews because these elusive masters of the craft have a lot of game to pass on, and it deserves to be documented and studied in some form. These are the whispered legends — like the kung fu masters in an Iron Fist comic that disciples only talk about in quiet circles. Guys who lived off on mountaintops and practiced skills that would astound average mortals. In my mind, that’s who I highlight on the show each week, alongside upcoming frontrunners and newcomers throwing their hat into the ring for the first time.
This mix felt like a good journey. I hope y’all have a chance to take it in — 100 percent Canadian, as always.
There’s a new one from local Lethbridge producer Alchemy the Linguist to start things off, this time with someone named RUGA.PIE dropping runaway train lyricism revolving around life’s trials and tribulations. I think this is RUGA.PIE’s first ATSIC appearance, but I’m following the Saskatoon spitter now and hope to hear more like this one.
I didn’t realize when I did it, but the next track was HarveyDent — more Saskatoon representatives. Ev Thompson and Kurlz find themselves drifting through realities and questioning existence on a trippy track from their newest album Cut The Music — “Alternate Ending.”
“Handles” has Big J.O. dropping buckets and bouncing over a sparse bass beat with a soulful hook. This one’s new to the internet this week, over on his Bandcamp, but it said the album it’s from — All I Wanted Was a Rope Chain with Eric Gordon — was recorded in 2018 (by my math). Glad it saw the light of day. I’m a fan of artists dropping a lot of music. Might as well, especially when it sounds this good.
I saw Yolanda Sargeant perform here in Lethbridge at a venue called The Slice a while ago, and I picked up a vinyl copy of Sargeant X Comrade’s Lo Fi Future — so I thought it was fitting to play a track off of it, and then drop a new single featuring Yolanda: ODARIO’s “The Situation (feat. Mad Professor & Yolanda Sargeant)” where the Toronto emcee expertly employs his signature slow flow on a dub track. I’ve also got Sargeant X Comrade’s upcoming album POWER on CD sitting beside me on my desk right now, bought at the same show. I’d like to play something from it for you on ATSIC too… but right now I can’t, because none of my four computers have a working CD drive. I’m working on it though.
Then it’s another from Roshin & Gritfall’s EP You Don’t Get It, which just got a video a week or two ago — “It Rains It Pours.” Grit says, “we’re shooting scenes making ends meet” in this track, and I get that it’s a double entendre, but it hits even harder when you see the behind-the-scenes of the video — they were in Roshin’s backyard with a green screen, an umbrella, and a guy with a hose standing on the deck behind them. I maintain that I don’t need visuals to like music, but this one is dope whether you can see it or not.
Back in Calgary, I dropped one from BLACKART — a new collab project from Jackie Art & Black$tar — called “Deserve It,” where they rap about pushing through the struggle to pursue purpose. I hear a lot of music on this tip, listening to all the indie artists I do every week, and a lot of it gets a quick skip. As much as I’m the perfect target audience for this subject, I just can’t hear every rapper constantly telling me how everyone thought they’d quit but they never will. I’ve heard it to death, so it takes something unique for me to buy in and play it. This one was a bit of a change-up from two artists I’ve played before, and I’m always here to encourage the sort of artistic growth and integrity on display. It fit in nicely on this mix of introspective rainy-day blues music.
B1 the Architect teamed with NOFACE’s New Villain over some smooth jazz horns for “The Dark Hour.” It’s also been waiting for this mix of mood music, and both of them went off profiling the pursuit of perfection in the pen game.
Nik Porrelli is another new artist on the Saskatoon scene, and he teamed with Regina artist Coleville Williams to bar out on “Reading Week.” I didn’t realize this was the heaviest Saskatchewan Hip Hop mix yet, but here we are. I’m just playing stuff I like that I think sounds good together, and sometimes the scenes line up like this.
Said is an artist I don’t know much about, but I’d guess he’s from Toronto, ’cause his profile pic has the CN Tower in the background. He recruited heavyweights Junia-T, Rich Kidd, and Coyote for a remix of “Paper,” and it serves as a few moments of turn-up motivation music to switch things up a bit.
Another posse cut follows that, with “Give Enough” from ThisIsHipHopp — a Toronto producer who sent over this sinister-sounding horn selection that conjures visions of Godzilla crushing shit. Reks, The Inglorious Poet, and Ren Thomas all do what they do in flawless form. The “braggadocio posse cipher” track is another one I hear plenty of every week, so it goes without saying — if it’s one I decide to actually play on the show, the artists are giving it their all. I definitely prefer the “braggadocio posse cipher” to the “tortured psychopath murder strangler posse ciphers” I keep hearing from certain crews.
Tona has been dropping a lot of quality singles, and “Be” carries on tradition — slowing things down over some soul-drenched boom bap for this ballad to the artist grind. Longevity in the game takes a lot of perseverance and dedication, and a lot of support from the team, the family, and mentors — and this one shouts out all of that.
Spesh K sent over a mellow summer jam called “What Is Wonder” with a smoked-out vibe that sort of represents the sun coming out from behind the clouds in this mix. The casual delivery we expect from Spesh is on full display, and some guitar samples and a classic jam-band-style chorus round out the track nicely.
We stay oot on the East Coast for Saint John’s artists NickxGarret with “Never Sleep,” which features both a classic Nas sample and the closing bar “being awake is the cousin of life,” which I thought was pretty clever. I’ve recently talked about wokeness with a few artists on FiF — notably Dan-e-o — and we riffed on the concept of this track: that if you aren’t woke, then what are you — proudly asleep? This track plays with that concept many of us have probably independently concluded on, and it matched the laid-back ethos of the hour this time.
Back on the West Coast, we have Victoria’s BRAINiac re-emerging for a feature on a track from Seattle-based artist Kjahn. More chilly chill boom bap and bars on this one.
For the closer track this week, Propaganda is an LA artist, but he teamed with Shad for “Don’t Mind Me” — where they talk about authenticity and maintaining culture, calling out the phonies calling it in. I would never.
This week there’s another “Making of ATSIC” video from Twitch, I did stream while I made it Thursday afternoon, and it was a one take session this week for the mix itself, but I’m not doing anything fancy so the first half of the video is mostly me nodding along to the music. This week Twitch’s algorithms recognized too much of the music I played as copywritten, which means it mutes that section on the playback, so those sections are chopped out. You can hear the audio if it’s live, so tap in on weekdays over on Twitch, I’m on all the time either working on ATSIC, listening to the new releases each week to make picks, or workin gon my own music.
Fly in Formation is flying high. On the episode attached to this ATSIC, I talked with Hardbody Dreams for a FiF where we talked philosophy, race, and social justice more than music. It was a very enlightening talk for me, because it’s the first time I’ve ever got to ask questions to a 5%er. Of course we also talked about this Vancouver based artist’s music and a bunch of other important stuff. Tune in every Tuesday for interviews with artists across the country as I learn more about local scenes and artists creative processes, talking to artists we play regularly on ATSIC. I’m looking forward to my next interview for FiF, Quake Matthews! He’s certainly the most famous person I’ve hosted on the show, and he’s been making a lot of moves to continue the rise. Come through, hit subscribe on Twitch, skip the ads, and chat live while we stream.
I buy every track I play on ATSIC unless it’s sent to me directly. Streaming barely pays, so it’s essential to support indie artists by buying their music, tickets, or merch to keep them creating. Listening to #ATSIC on Mixcloud is free for you, and makes sure that each song you hear pays the artist at least SOMETHING. Spotify pays 0.006 CAD per stream, and only if the song hits 1000 plays in 3 months. Assuming a song gets 1000 spins, that means it takes around 125 Spotify plays to earn an artist the same .76 cents they earn from my 1.29 purchase on iTunes.
Shows like After the Smoke is Clear also need support. If you appreciate discovering new music without the algorithms, or if you appreciate my efforts to get indie artists music in more ears, consider donating via PayPal to help me buy the tracks and keep the show going. Every dollar helps indie artists and ATSIC alike.
If you can’t donate, that’s all good — people who can afford it are paying, and you get to enjoy a free show while I earn a living. Do me a favour though, and help spread the word to other people who love Hip Hop! Shoutout to everyone who is already supporting financially, by sharing the show, or by coming through in comments and chat to help build community.
Stay up.
