UG Rap Community

Buck 65

Buck 65 spent much of his childhood in the garden attempting to dig a hole to China. As the Canadian rapper explains, when you grow up in the small-town isolation of Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia, your entertainment options tend to be limited.

"My main pursuits were looking for Big Foot and just digging this big hole every day," he says. "As a kid living in a really remote, rural place where there's nothing to do, you just have to rely on your imagination."

The slightly skewed grand visions that propelled Buck's childhood pursuits are evident today in his esoteric brand of hillbilly hip-hop. The 32-year-old MC, DJ and producer (real name Rich Terfry) describes his music as "dirt-road breakbeat blues". But while the lo-fi grooves do have a certain laid-back, country twang, his lyrics are fiercely literate.

He specialises in meandering offbeat narratives. The rhymes on his sixth album, Talkin Honky Blues, are populated by a curious assortment of deaf violinists, one-eyed cyclists and talking snakes.

However, speaking from his home in Montreal, Buck explains that his oddball raps probably stem from his sleepy small-town roots. He traces his fascination with eccentrics to the strange and sometimes sinister characters that lurked behind Mount Uniacke's respectable veneer.

"On the surface it was this quaint little town and it seems like there's nothing going on," he says. "But if you lift up the skirt a bit there's all kinds of weird scabs and scars and twisted bones."

Yet Buck believes his rural background helped him to develop musically, by allowing him to cultivate his own style without being bombarded by external influences. His tracks have an avant-garde, even poetic feel, making him an unusual figure in a musical culture where the customary preoccupations are guns, gold and girls.

He takes his lyrics very seriously. When creating a new track he invariably begins with his husky-voiced raps, building the beats and samples around the tone and mood of the lyrics. He is full of admiration for songwriters such as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen whose lyrics, he says, "look as good on the page as they sound on the record".

He is even more enthusiastic about his literary influences and speaks in glowing terms about the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, Beat writer Charles Bukowski and poet John Donne. "I do get a lot of inspiration from the world of literature," he says, adding that he's started writing his first novel, a semi-autobiographical love story based in Paris.

It's hardly the sort of thing you'd catch Eminem owning up to, and neither is Buck's monastic lifestyle - he has never tasted alcohol, smoked a cigarette or even drunk a cup of coffee in his life. His ultra clean-living habits are a throwback to his youth when he looked destined to become a professional baseball pitcher for the New York Yankees, before a severe injury prematurely ended his sporting dream.

Baseball's loss has been hip-hop's gain. But what does the hip-hop community really make of this bohemian white intellectual? "hip-hop and I haven't really been getting along lately," he says. "Especially in North America, I am always being (falsely) referred to in the hip-hop establishment as gay." He believes this stems from his unusual style and his willingness to be "honest and open and talk about emotional things".

Yet for all his grumbles Buck remains obsessed with the genre's strong linguistic emphasis. "hip-hop's still a basis for me . . . It's a great form for a person who loves words and wants to tell stories."

Esham


For years, the name Esham has been synonymous in Detroit with the underground rap scene. Not many beyond the 313 have known about this mysterious hip hop legend or how an entire school of rappers came to be influenced by the genre he invented and dubbed "Acid Rap." Nevertheless, Esham's legacy has made a lasting impact on the hip hop world. More popular acts have come into Detroit and noticed what was happening on the scene, some even adopting the style as their own. In the mid-1990s, a genre called Horrorcore developed from his seed, with the most notable group to come out being the side project of Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, called Gravediggaz. A wider national audience was now aware of this hip hop genre, but few had still discovered the roots of it all.

Esham came on the scene in 1990 with the release of his debut album, Boomin' Words From Hell, which quickly became a hit in his hometown of Detroit. Though this album was produced when he was only 15, he came out with a furious rap style that delivered his lyrics hard and heavy. It was unlike anything anybody had ever heard come out of the city. His production was also ahead of its time, with trunk-thumping beats that used samples from a variety of sources, including P-Funk, Prince and Black Sabbath. Another Detroit rap act that was coming up paid close attention to what Esham was doing and decided to help out. At the time, Kid Rock was a relative unknown signed to Jive Records and on tour with bigger acts to promote his album nationally. Kid Rock explains, "I promoted that (Boomin' Words From Hell) on that Ice Cube tour. I took 500 of his cassettes with me and gave them to everyone I know. Me and Esham were, like, running Detroit back then. I helped Esham out, Esham helped me out." This type of assistance between Detroit artists proved to be rare, as both of these musicians struggled individually for every bit of success they achieved. "In the early days, day one Detroit struggled as a music community," Esham comments, "because there was and still is no unity." This lack of local support became painfully evident in the coming years.

In 1998, Source Magazine gave Esham the title of Most Slept On Artist. One year later, though Esham continued to stay beneath the radar of MTV and radio, his style became a bestseller as Detroiter Eminem blew up onto the scene from the home of Acid Rap. Eminem was quick to reveal his sources, claiming on his debut album, "I'm a cross between Manson, Esham and Ozzy." Tensions eventually grew between the two rappers, which led to Esham dissing Eminem on his album. Last year, tensions reached a peak as Esham and Eminem protégés D12 were removed from the Vans Warped Tour for a backstage fighting incident. "It's like a father being upset with his son, a teacher and his student, a professor and an apprentice, the master and his grasshopper," describes Esham. "The bridge between order and chaos is law. I must maintain order in my domain."

In 2002, Esham found a new home and a new direction, signing a worldwide deal with the Detroit-based label Psychopathic/Red Music, an independent record label backed by Sony. This October 21, 2003, Esham's Repentance will be unveiled to the world, his attempt to bring to surface all the wrong he has been responsible for in this world and show how it has affected his own spirit. But this is not the work of a sorrowful man or a man with any regrets about how he has affected the industry. With this album, Esham is ready to conquer all that he has yet to achieve in the industry. Repentance is twenty tracks of fire and ice, and is the best album of his career. In defining the concept for the album, Esham chronicles, "Repentance is a battle between good and evil--journey into my mind to see who wins".

Just as easily as Esham can bring down a house with ruthless tracks, he can also slow down the pace and get the clubs grinding to the beat. His first single, "Woo Woo Woo Woo," does just that, with an infectious bass line that will have heads bobbing from coast to coast. As Esham characterizes it, "Woo Woo Woo is for the lovers, not the haters. It's about not procrastinating, being about something good!"

The song "Pay", featuring Bone Thugs N Harmony, is a hard hitting collaboration track from true veterans of the rap industry. Esham and the members of Bone decided to link up for this song after touring together this past summer. During this outing, his live show was in full effect and won over many loyal fans who came out to see Bone. Esham depicts this as a major point in his career. "Going on tour with Bone was spiritually uplifting, and I'm still flapping my wings from the whole experience." The chemistry that they developed is evident on this song.

No longer will the world sleep on this legend of the Detroit underground, as Esham will be out in full force to spread his words to the world. Look for Esham to tour nationally in support of Repentance, which will be sure to draw even more fans to his music with his intense live shows. Prepare for a new generation to follow Esham's lead, as his Repentance marks a confrontation with the entire hip hop industry.
(quelle:eshamtheboogieman.com)

ANACRON

Anacron is the living, breathing personification of everything modern urban culture and hip hop encompasses. Emcee, breakdancer, producer, poet, DJ, graffiti artist, businessman. This universal b-boy does it all, and does it well.
With over 20 solo and group releases available internationally over the past decade, Anacron has recordings on numerous independent labels, his own Peanut Gallery Network label, and a couple majors to boot. He has toured the world several times over as an affiliate of underground hip-hop's most heralded crew, Living Legends. He has rocked microphones around the country accompanying bands such as Citizen King and Liquid Soul. He has left entire audiences utterly breathless from Los Angeles to Tokyo and everywhere in-between with his own high-energy solo stage performances. He has produced music and remixes for an endless list of artists, written sheet music for live jazz bands, and has even produced tracks for television commercials and film soundtracks. Throughout all of his accomplishments in the world of music, however, this man has managed to stay grounded and committed to utilizing his talents through various forms of expression. From his first underground cassette/vinyl release in 1993 up to his most recent CD and vinyl releases, Anacron has remained an enigma; a well-known name with an unsung reputation.

"[Anacron] is the hardest working man in independent hip hop."
- Kevin Beacham, WNUR's Time Travel and Rhymesayers Ent.

Anacron remains extremely active outside of his music career. Currently based in Chicago, his home away from home, he spends the majority of his "free" time working on projects in the city. He hosts and DJ's a weekly poetry and spoken word set at the Funky Buddha Lounge (mentalgraffiti.org), along with holding down a couple of weekly club DJ residencies at a time. He remains involved in the breakdance scene, organizing and hosting a weekly breakdancing workshop at the Resource community center in Wicker Park, as well as teaching beginning and advanced breakdancing classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music (oldtownschool.com). He owns a dance company, Breaker-Breaker 279, that contracts urban dancers for commercial and private events, recording artist tours, and film and video projects.


- Written Brian Williams

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