After The Smoke Is Clear 703
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Below this write-up, you’ll find the track list, complete with artists, albums, and the city they represent. 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 Twitch stream where I slapped this mix together. I’m having fun week to week, come through and say hi, hang out and listen to music. I’m streaming often on weekday afternoons, either working on ATSIC, listening to the new releases on the radar each Friday or Saturday to make picks, doing Fly In Formation interviews on Tuesdays, or working on my own music when I can find time.
This was the first mix where I did the vocals on a nice warm smooth Shure SM7b like all the other podcasters have, so I hope you enjoy my dulcet tones with some extra.. tonality, or something. Big ups to my homie Tanner who lent me it. When he wants it back I’ll go grab my own, the upgrade is too substantial to step backwards. It only took 123 episodes of Fly In Formation for me to get here too, what a proud moment.
Anyways, lots of good music here - the new drop from The Dirty Sample/OGB’s group Cold Camp is catchy and has me looking at our +18 degree days and wishing we too could have winters that “stay cold forever.” We can’t, it’s gunna be hot and dry real real quick at this pace.
Western Canadain white guys will rejoice to hear I played both Snak the Ripper & Evil Ebenezer - Snak always gets me with these big glorious horn sample songs. I’m a sucker for that energy, and I thought EE brought a healthy dose of grounded reflection on this one.
There’s a francophone cypher from someone named Flower and featuring a name I recognized - Le Gicko - that’s just a little something special for the 1 percent of the 1 percent of Hip Hop heads who listen every week and request French representation. I have no idea what’s said, so apologies if it’s awful when you can understand it - the flows on point.
There’s B1 with Daniel Son doing some grimy dark tough guy bars on “Broken Stairways” - obligatory bucket mention in tact. There’s someone I’d never heard of named Flashbang Jimmy on this one - cool name, I wonder if Drake is gunna feature him on Ice Man?
Calgary’s 86LOVE, known for making songs about big dicks and Berta trucks is back with a follow up, this time flipping a Kanye concept and telling us about how many girls he’s going to get when he gets rich. Dream the dream broski.
More or Les dropped an album late in 25, and one of my favs on it was a track about wearing glasses - it’s more of a jam than it has any business being. Shouts to all the 4 eyes nerds and aging heads who still read things. I just got my second ever set of glasses, cuz I’m old now.
There’s also Jaykin again from his late 2025 EP “Kin” - I played a solid portion of the project on the show over the past few weeks. It’s worth a listen in full. I won’t lie, I like supporting Vancouver artists who aren’t all white guys - love to the caucasians too, I listen with my ears not my eyes and there’s plenty of dope white guys, but it starts raising people’s eyebrows when I play too many in a mix, and I get it. Frankly, it’s always struck me as a bit weird how elevated all these white guys got in an era where melanated artists just weren’t really popping off in Western Canada in the same way. There’s a few exceptions out there of course, but more in other places across the country, by my observation. It might be the Merkules effect - he helped a lot with sharing the spotlight with all his homies, and the battle rap centric scene of poor white guys who worship Eminem and who may or may not beat women and have racist tattoos have been providing an abundance of support. They even went to bat and beat up Rick Ross. It gives me bad vibes when a white guy only likes white rappers, fuck that. I’ve lived in Berta long enough to know what sort those guys are. It’s not always the artists fault either, it might just be what happens organically because Hip Hop attracts poor people of all varieties, as it should.. but some of those people it attracts are shitty bigots who can’t grasp the irony of liking rap. I’m just calling it like I see it, no shots really, just things I think about.
Skizza is another white guy, but he loudly says progressive things so I’m quite sure he doesn’t have a legion of ignorant fans - they’d turn away disgusted from a lot of what he says, and he doesn’t look like he’s cosplaying Ed Norton in American History X on his album cover. His new album with AK Production, “Winter Classic” may in fact be a classic, these guys have done 4 consecutive albums now, I think, and they might still be leveling up round by round. This is the second track off there that I’ve played in 2 weeks on ATSIC.
Lots of good shit I didn’t mention too. Give it a listen.
Fly in Formation is back to weekly episodes every Tuesday for 2026, with the first interview with Shylow online now! Next up is Toronto producer and pad smashing performer Fresh Kils, who should have plenty to chat about - new babies, new beats, a (sorta) new affinity for singing on his own songs, and whatever else has happened since we last talked. That’s Tuesday Jan 20 at 7pm MT/ 9 ET. You can watch every interview I’ve done up until this point on Youtube. Leave a comment, hit like over there, show some love and run up the playlist on a muted tab - it’ll help the algorithm show my content to more people, which will get more Canadian music in more ears.
Tune in every Tuesday for interviews with artists across the country as I continue to endeavor to learn more about local scenes and artist’s creative processes, talking to artists we play regularly on ATSIC. Come through, hit subscribe on Twitch to skip the ads, and hang out and listen to Hip Hop.
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 that’s 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. Spotify is also now investing the billions they earn into weaponized AI drones, which is just awful, frankly. Fuck those guys - I use it because it’s the only realistic way to keep up with all these drops from all these artists, but I never listen to anything more than twice on there - because I go buy a digital single of anything I like that much. You could to, and the music industry would thank you.
Shows like After the Smoke is Clear also need support. If you appreciate discovering new music without the algorithm, 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.
