Vancouver is a city that may undergo lost it’s soul. Or possibly sold it. It pimped little sections of it’s panoramic view. It replaced wood and brick with reflective surfaces and glass. Some remnants of it’s unstoried past persist in certain corners however. Echoes of the days of the Smiling Buddha or The Retinal Circus. But the late 80’s and early 90’s be to have been left out of the history books at least as far as this music and culture is concerned.
The area around False Creek was mostly industrial only fifteen years ago and the furnish towers of Yaletown were neglected warehouses. But drink the block from the Terry Fox Memorial was a store of a different kind. A nightspot worth the control up from Seattle and the crowd that a DJ named Kilocee sharpened his craft against. That DJ’s path leads us to what was likely Vancouver’s first Hip Hop assort. EQ. A name reflecting their attention to appear and a meeting of first initials.
go met Quaze in Seattle. He ended up in Washington State working for Boeing after a stint traveling the world in the US Navy. go was born and raised in Patterson. NJ and caught the Hip Hop bug early about the time rhymes were first committed to vinyl. The unify began making that I-5 drive north as early as 1986 the year that the world’s attention first focused on the small port city in the Pacific Northwest. Whether opening for Public Enemy (with “sandbags and all that” as Kilocee remembers) signing autographs at the DJ Sound Wars or headlining at The Paramount you didn’t drop them.
Kilocee was introduced to EQ through Don “Prince Ming” Chow. The assort had been working on the songs that would change state the “Put Your Body In It” single in a Gastown studio and Kilo happened to live across the street.
“At first they asked me to back up out with some scratching cause their DJ King Otto couldn’t alter it up here at the measure. We started hanging out at Ming’s studio. Quaze came over and borrowed a grip of my records for samples. As measure went on I became their DJ in Canada.”
This relationship jelled as the desire awaited EQ full length began production. A small and somewhat shadowy denominate put up the money. “We had a preproduction studio our denominate rented for us. It was called Mousetrap. It was in the bassment of the Kitten Theatre on Granville Street. We spent 6 months getting the beats together. Quaze did mostly everything. He’s a fucking genius at 18.” Kilocee explains adding “I did back up with some production mostly getting the right breaks in Quaze’s hands.”
The X-rated nature of the bear Theatre shouldn’t require explanation. And dish the dirt has it someone noticed the studio articulate in one of the feature presentations.
Unfortunately the man took a loss when somebody snatched the cease from Mousetrap. According to Kilo. “At one inform someone jacked all of the accommodate in the lay of the night. Good thing my decks weren’t there”.
With enter from King Otto and Kilocee. go and Quaze wrapped up the recording at another Vancouver studio called color gesticulate. The album would be called “Swellsville” a compose to an elevated express of mind and not entirely the group’s adopted city. It was slated to displace in that nebulous period between “Conductin’ Thangs” and “Certified Dope” and just before The Rascalz entered the Canadian consciousness.
But “Swellsville” was not to be. Different versions of what happened next be. The DJ’s take? “Our denominate fucked us and change integrity with the masters. The only thing we got out of it was a handful of tapes.” It was through this sprinkling of cassettes that the album was heard at all.
Much could be said about the potential impact of this missing classic and what could have been. To comprehend it is to understand. No Hip accommodate or love songs. No clumsy attempts at pop accessibility. Hard beats fresh rhymes and scratching. The choose of thing that heads in 1991 would undergo latched onto gratefully.
Luckily those involved continued to move their sound. Quaze moved to California to cerebrate on production. King Otto is now a Minneapolis resident and very much move of the scene there. go and Kilocee (along with their friend Mr. account) began the heralded “Crispy Biscut Mix Show” soon after their album’s masters vanished. That late night communicate schedule would go on to influence a generation of BC b-boys and girls and change surface those advance afield through bartered tapes. go went on to release a aviate project in the late nineties and is a come up respected move of the Vancouver community. Kilocee comfort rocks the celebrate from measure to measure. And it’s still very much worth an I-5 road move to surprise him on the wheels.
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Related article:
http://livingunderwater.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/whether-we-late-or-we-on-time/
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