The Aftermath
Some words about the overwhelming response to my last newsletter
The response I received to my last newsletter has been absolutely staggering. When I woke up one day a few weeks ago and randomly decided to write about my experiences with my old label, I didn’t really expect the passionate outpouring of support from all corners that I got. Thousands of people read the original post and I was interviewed by CKUA, CBC Radio and The Globe And Mail. In a couple of those articles, my old label Upper Class Recordings provided a generic statement attributed to a guy who used to be an intern there:
"We believe in a culture of trust and transparency and this is what was provided to any of our artists who wanted to understand the business side of our label. The plain facts are that most musicians in our country sadly do not make money."
Upper Class believing in "a culture of trust and transparency" couldn't be further from the truth. I asked them for accounting many years ago and they told me it was "no simple ask" and never provided it. I asked about my poet laureate money multiple times in 2009, they ignored me. I asked for reporting documents back in 2015 and I'm still waiting.
In an email from 2007, I said, "i would like to know how much i have been making for these shows and any shows since the last pay period. and i'd like to know what costs are balancing out how much i make." They never told me. I asked for more transparency and they responded by saying, "I love that you don't know whats going on in the boardroom or rather bored room... It keeps your mind on music, love, the scene, hot chicks, performing."
Another musician who was signed to UC hit me up and thanked me for speaking out. Dozens of artists told me similar things had happened to them with their labels. People in the industry reached out to discuss their bad experiences with my old management. A few managers contacted me including one who commented on my last post wondering if he’d failed his artists in the past. I suddenly became a sponge for music grief and realized how endemic theses issues truly are.
My post seems to have spurred a lot of conversation about the extractive nature of the record industry. My greatest hope is that I helped to bring awareness to what it’s like for your average artist going up against these corporations. I’d like to thank all of you for reading and subscribing and encouraging me to keep writing because I probably would’ve never mustered up the confidence to write about my experiences at all without having y’all as an audience.
Just as the dust was settling from the aftermath of my last post, I found out that Parallel World has been shortlisted for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize! I honestly couldn’t be happier. It’s my third time on the shortlist but I haven’t been back on there for almost a decade. I’m so impressed by the diversity and vibrancy of this year’s nominees when compared to previous years. I was up for the inaugural Polaris Prize in 2006 for Breaking Kayfabe and my competition was Metric, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade and The New Pornographers, bands who were the foundation of the early '2000s indie rock explosion in Canada. I was pretty much an unknown artist, a Black electro rapper from Edmonton. The only other artist of colour was K’naan. This year, that racial equation is completely flipped and it also feels like the music world is more amenable to what I’m doing than they were back then. Fingers crossed but I’m happy as hell to have gotten back on there with this particular album.
Vinyl Update
Very sorry to everyone for the delay in receiving your records. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my entire career. I’ve been told that the albums will be shipping the first week of August. Thank you for your patience, they are coming soon. There’s three factors that I’m dealing with right now:
There’s a worldwide vinyl production delay as a result of the pandemic. The global production capacity for vinyl is 160 million units but the current demand is sitting around 320-400 million. Before the pandemic, the wait time would’ve been two to three months and now it can be as much as ten months to a year
Despite having approved the test pressings months ago, I keep getting pushed back in the queue by bigger artists. Something like the 12,000 units of that Bee Gees cover album by the Foo Fighters that came out two weeks ago for Record Store Day takes precedence over the 500 units of my album
The pressing plant is based in the Czech Republic. From what I understand, it’s getting pressed this week but the records still have to get shipped from Europe then shipped to my label, then shipped to me and then shipped to you.
Just wanted to give everyone clarity on what’s going on. As soon as I get them, I’ll get to sending them out ASAP and I’ll send a picture of me covered in an avalanche of boxes. If you want to get in on this batch (I don’t think I’m gonna do a repress after this hassle haha), you can pre-order your copy here.
Played my first show in 16 months a couple weeks ago in Montreal and it was absolutely amazing to perform in front of a live audience again. I’ve got a few Canadian dates coming up fairly soon with more to be announced:
8/8 - Edmonton, AB (!!!!) - The Black Lodge - SOLD OUT
9/2 - Rouyn-Noranda, QC - FME / Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Noranda with Backxwash and Maky Lavender - SOLD OUT (they may add tix so stay tuned to their socials)
9/11 - Hamilton, ON - Supercrawl - Tickets
And for my American friends, come hang with me and Fat Tony this fall!
9/30 - Denver, CO - Hi-Dive - Tickets
10/2 - Chicago, IL - The Empty Bottle - Tickets
10/3 - Cleveland, OH - Beachland Tavern - Tickets
10/6 - Brooklyn, NY - The Sultan Room - Tickets
10/8 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl - Tickets
10/13 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs) - Tickets
10/14 - San Antonio, TX - Paper Tiger - Tickets
10/15 - Austin, TX - Far Out Lounge - Tickets
10/16 - Fort Worth, TX - Wild Acre Live - Tickets
10/20 - Los Angeles, CA - Zebulon - Tickets
10/21 - San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill - Tickets
10/22 - Portland, OR - Polaris Hall - Tickets
10/23 - Seattle, WA - Clock Out - Tickets
Some Recommendations
Currently obsessed with season two of I Think You Should Leave, I really enjoyed this article in Vulture about how they produced the shirts for the Dan Flashes sketch. The guy begrudgingly accepting the insane price on the shirt inside the store is literally me:
The new self-titled album by Vince Staples is probably my favourite record this year so far. It takes courage to make an album so self-assured and refined as a major label artist in the streaming era where instant gratification is the order of the day. This album is subtle, nuanced and succinct. It’s clearly a great record to drive around to, the production by Kenny Beats drifting along with a playful sense of ease but Vince’s lyrics still stand up to scrutiny when you take time to consider the layers of what he’s saying.
I was saddened by the death of journalist Janet Malcolm back in June. Known for her work at the New Yorker, she was truly a master of the profile. I went back and combed through her work, which is impossibly detailed and delicately rendered. Her profile of classical pianist Yuja Wang includes a moment that might’ve been ignored by a less observant writer:
“I had arrived early at Lincoln Center, and stopped into a café for a sandwich, though not so early that there was time to eat the whole large overstuffed thing. When I offered Yuja the half sandwich the waiter had wrapped, she accepted. Predictably, she opened the sandwich and ate the chicken, then the tomato, then the lettuce, and then—unpredictably—the bread.”
Malcolm’s profile of visual artist David Salle, “Forty-one False Starts,” is one of the best pieces I’ve ever read. It would be rare today to have as much access to a subject as she does when visiting Salle many times in his studio over the span of several years but watch what she does with it. While comparing his loft to the typical artist’s domicile, she somehow describes the exact apartment I currently live in:
“Serious artists, as we know them or like to think of them, are people who get by but do not have a lot of money. They live with second or third wives or husbands and with children from the various marriages, and they go to Cape Cod in the summer. Their apartments are filled with faded Persian carpets and cat-clawed sofas and beautiful and odd objects bought before anyone else saw their beauty. Salle’s loft was designed by an architect. Everything in it is sleek, cold, expensive, unused. A slight sense of quotation mark hovers in the air, but it is very slight—it may not even be there—and it doesn’t dispel the atmosphere of dead-serious connoisseurship by which the room is dominated.”
Malcolm paints a portrait of an artist who liberally takes snatches of existing images to make his pop art by sampling other journalist’s writing about him in a similar manner. By drilling down and assessing how one’s feelings about someone can change over time, Malcolm says a lot about Salle but even more about human nature.
You can find me at my website, updating my playlist, DJing on Twitch or hanging on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. You can listen to my music on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp