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A sparse, utilitarian banquet hall in Rexdale is
thumping with a beat loud enough to make the windows throb — it’s as though
the room is hyperventilating. From the sidewalk in front you can clearly
hear the sonic boom, Boom, BOOM; once you're inside, the boom, Boom BOOM
rattles your rib cage and kicks you in the solar plexus. The beat speeds up,
slows down and changes syncopation through chugging ragamuffin reggae,
loping drum-breaks from forgotten mid-1970s funk singles and insistent house
grooves speeding along at close to 130 beats per minute. At the turntables
in front of a stack of speakers four-and-a-half meters high and three meters
across, Anthony and Peter Davis, known as First Offense Productions, are
keeping the beat going. The crowd consists off about a hundred adolescents,
all trying to master an air of studied boredom to mask their anticipation
fro the main draw: Maestro Fresh-Wes.
After two hours of constant beat, one of the Davis
brothers cuts it off abruptly and starts pumping the crowd: “How y’all feel
tonight?”
The kids shout back a ragged, wordless howl.
“I said, How y’all feel?‚” demands Davis again. “Do you
want the Maestro?”
Another yell from the crowd. The call and response
continues, each question more of a challenge, each answering bellow longer
and stronger than the one before it.
When the crowd is screaming steadily, Anthony and Peter
Davis start the beat once more. Seconds later, the main attraction arrives
onstage. Wearing a tuxedo, sporting a red bow tie and cummerbund, Maestro
Fresh-Wes (Wesley Williams) is prowling the platform. He moves up, down,
back, forth, reciting his rhymes with urgency and intensity:
Let your backbone slide
Let it slip, let the rhythm rip
While my lyrics leave my lips
Ladies and gentlemen, kids of all ages
Watch the brother roamin' on stages
His name rings a bell state-to-state, province-to-province
When the introducer says the name they get loose and looser
Maestro, maestro with the magnitude
That's longer than the lines of latitude
Going tropic to tropic, topic to topic
Yo! Are you ready for the drop?
Yeah!
Then drop it
Wes’s DJ, known as LTD, is powering the words and the
performance with nothing more than a set of turntables and a mixer. He moves
fluidly between the wheels of steel and the cross-fader. A record on one of
the turntables carries the beat as LTD accents the mix by cutting in short,
biting phrases from another. As well as providing the rhythmic spine of the
performance, LTD serves as Wes's interlocutor, using phrases from records to
answer questions in the raps, comment on lines or exhort the crowd.
The maestro continues to stalk and stomp. Only minutes
into the opening number and he's pouring sweat. His face in profile looks
like a hatchet, a fierce scowl underscoring the words that rattle
rapid-fire:
Hiroshima had a game -- a hurricane
LTD is on the cut, Maestro's the name
The needle won't skip or the crowd will flip to frantic
As I watch 'em drip
He draws back the wax like a bow
The bass is the arrow to break the bone marrow
And blast it off like a rocket
Again -- are you ready for the drop?
Yeah!
Then drop it!
While LTD pilots the sinewy beat through another break
in the lyrics, a pair of dancers wearing red jackets with Dope State written
across the front in yellow take center stage. They're called EZ Duz It and
Do It EZ, and they run through a series of athletic moves: bouncing off each
other in midair, spinning faster than LTD's turntables and suddenly dropping
to the floor.
As Wes returns, dozens in the audience rap the lyrics
along with him. They're some of the people who have pushed his first record,
Symphony In Effect, 50,000 copies past the platinum mark (sales of more than
100,000) in Canada alone -- a first for any black Canadian artist.
I'm a ruler, that's how I reign
I do to rap what the Mona Lisa does to the frame
Ridden in rhythm, my rhymes are like a rodeo
I ain't kidding, they jock my portfolio
Play it wise, hit the studio
I'm rocking international
Now they call me Uzi-o
MCs have died because I have killed them
Supporting the beats for their children
Some veterans lose the field
Cause rap is not a joke, it's a game for real
Sucker boys cuss me, females rush me
When I'm off the set, my homeboys they touch me:
Wes, you ate 'em up like a beast.
No need to use an Uzi when the mic's my piece.
Wes often will put on two shows a night: one for an
underage crowd that wouldn't normally be able to see him in the venues he
plays, or who have parental curfews to worry about; a second performance is
for more autonomous audiences. But what's onstage, Wes says, doesn't change
simply because of who's attending: “I try to keep the same show. I mean, if
I have to modify it, modify what I'm about, it’s not giving the crowd the
real thing. Some of my songs, people say, are a little bit explicit or
whatever. But kids joke around on the street saying a lot of the same
things. If I'm any different from the norm, it's just that I decided to put
it on wax.”
And making the audience part of the act clearly hooks
them. Call-and-response sparks something elemental, something that springs
from the long oral tradition that gave birth to rap’s precursors. An early
form was called “playing the dozens,” a ritual of rhyming insults and
put-downs that goes back to the turn of the century in Afro-American
culture. But it was only about fifteen years ago that DJs in the Bronx in
New York City figured out how to use two turntables to keep a beat going
nonstop — all night if need be — to keep the dance floor full. After that,
playing the dozens while playing that beat was the next logical step.
In its early days during the middle 1970s, hip-hop — the collective term for the explosion of American ghetto art forms that
include rapping, scratch mixing, break dancing and graffiti — helped channel
the creative energies of young urban blacks into something other than the
destructive gang culture that was destroying lives. More than one American
rap star has talked about watching friends die as a result of zip-gun
shootouts — tragedies that tailed off considerably with the rise of hip-hop.
Instead of joining gangs, kids organized into crews: tight units comprised
of at least one and often four or five rappers, a squad of break dancers, a
slew of graffiti writers (as they called themselves) and a DJ. Some of the
most famous crews eventually got record contracts. Grandmaster Flash, for
example, released solo singles and recorded with his rappers. They were
known collectively as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and their
1982 twelve-inch single, “The Message,” helped turn rap from good-time party
music into hard-edged social commentary:
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs
You know they just don't care
Rats in the front room
Roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder
How I keep from going under
Now twenty-three, Wesley Williams was a ten-year-old
in northeast Scarborough when the first rap started appearing on record.
“We’re talking Grandmaster Flash, the Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Spoonie
Gee — that’s what I grew up listening to,” says the Maestro. “I was rapping
since I first heard the stuff. At first I rapped at house parties, school
dances, the Concert Hall. If I could get a chance I’d talk on the mike for a
couple of minutes — even ten seconds. You’ve got to pay your dues.” Wes
didn’t consciously set out to pay his dues. Initially, his objectives were
strictly short-term: “When I first started, I just said to myself, I just
want to get something out of this — I want to get a fresh car. But then the
reality comes in.”
That reality, composed equally of the intense
competition in the Toronto rap scene and the Canadian record industry’s
apparent resistance to almost all black acts and rap in particular, meant
that Wes spent seven years working on his performances and writing material.
But it wasn’t until 1988 that he began recording demos and sending them to
record companies. And, like every rapper and DJ before him, part of that
development was to create a stage persona and a name to instantly
communicate what he was all about. Instead of opting for a streetwise
approach, he went for sophistication, calling himself a maestro. He was,
after all, conducting the jams. “Fresh” is slang for anything new, desirable
and unexpected. With that combination, the first syllable of his name just
seemed to fall naturally into place.
When it came to contacting record companies, says Wes,
“We went to the States and Canada. In Canada, we went to the bigger labels.
They just sent back the packages: Sorry, we’re not really interested right
now.”
Rap’s rapid infiltration of the mainstream may have
helped Wes’s efforts to some degree. After growing and developing on its own
for the first part of the 1980s, rap finally started to attract the
attention of major labels and radio stations about three years ago.
Suddenly, the majors were looking to sign rap acts, and
many “urban contemporary” radio stations (a trade euphemism for black) were
at least doing rap specialty shows, if not adding new tracks to their
regular playlists. It’s only been with the rise of Maestro Fresh-Wes,
however, that it has become possible to hear rap on a big commercial AM
station like CFTR.
T.O. critics
are hard to please
I've witnessed the death of many MCs
Just like birds shot down from the sky
But not me --
years ago I made MCs cry
But nowadays nobody wants to battle me
They just saddle me, sit back and straddle me
Ask me for forgiveness, I ain't forgetting it
You rode my rhythm and now you're bowleggin' it
I'm a professional, you're just a novice
Girls love me state-to-state, province-to-province
Me and my homeboys, they're just jockin' us.
We got variety, we're not monotonous
These are the rhymes you wish you was honin'
But s--- is mine 'cause I'm showin' you.
His current record deal with New York’s Lefrak-Moelis
Records was the result of chance. “They were on holiday with Steve B
[another LMR artist] in Toronto,” says Fresh-Wes. “They saw me on Electric
Circus [Citytv’s weekend dance music show]. They just happened to be in the
room. Then, boom — contracts were set.”
Says Larry Moelis: “We have to be very selective about
which acts we’ll sign. We don’t have a lot of cash or resources. We can’t afford to sign someone who won’t make an impact. We can’t afford mistakes.”
Maestro Fresh-Wes hasn’t been a mistake. The first
single from Symphony In Effect, “Let Your Backbone Slide,” sold 25,000
copies in the United States during its first few weeks of release with no
advertising and almost no radio airplay. “Backbone‚” got club DJs in the
United States interested, and as the momentum built, radio stations on both
sides of the border started adding the album to their playlists.
MTV, the American version of MuchMusic, added the video
for “Backbone‚” to the rotation on its daily hip-hop program, Yo! MTV Raps.
MuchMusic was playing the video too. But for the first few months after it
was released, Symphony in Effect was only available here as an American
import. Once “Backbone” started denting charts, Attic Records signed a
distribution agreement to handle the recording in this country.
When he signed the deal with LMR, Wes had already
finished his first year in politics at Carleton — a year that has been the
focus of breathless fascination for too many white interviewers. “It seems
like every interview I do, they always bring up going to university,” Wes
muses. “It’s strange. I don’t think they think they’re being racist, but
it’s almost like, ‘Hey, you’re black and you went to university?’ It‚Äôs like
me saying, ‘Hey, you’re white, and I’m amazed you can dance.’ Of course I
went to university. So did Farley [Farley Flex, Wes’s manager]. He’s got a
business degree. Of course. So what?”
But that kind of stereotyping persists. And the more
Wes’s success makes him a worthwhile subject, the more he encounters it.
Reporter after reporter comes to Maestro Fresh-Wes expecting some
Scarborough badass, a cartoon straight out of an early 1970s blaxploitation
epic such as The Mack or Superfly.
“Instead of giving facts,” says Wes, “they give a
fabricated version of what I’m about, trying to get across their
interpretation of what a black rap artist is like. When I speak in
interviews, I try to be as articulate and straight up as possible. And I’ve read stuff I know I didn’t say. They could be better informed. It shows me
they need to know more about rap music as well as black people. They
definitely have to learn more about what time it is. It comes with, let’s say, a culture shock. There’s a gap that has to be bridged.”
A similar gap existed in artist-and-repertoire
departments at Canadian record labels before Symphony In Effect passed the
platinum sales mark. Now that’s changed, and the reason is single and
obvious.
“Artists that are getting signed now are getting signed
because of me,” that reason says. “That’s not being conceited or bragging.
It’s just being factual. Check the stats. There’s no other Canadian rap
artist that’s made it at this magnitude yet. I don’t think they would have
gotten the attention if it hadn’t been for me. In Canada? Definitely not. I
could say that even if it was somebody else. I opened the doors; I crashed
them open. I don’t want anyone patting me on the back, because somebody had
to do it, and it just happened to be me. All the other record companies see
that, and they’re looking for another Maestro, which is understandable. All
that’s doing is stagnating the industry. They’ve got to find innovators.
Innovators are the ones who are going to get the most respect in the long
run.”
Moses led the people, 'cause he was chosen
I'm like a sequel, 'cause I'm showing
You the choreographer of this move
Conductor of the Dope State groove
Scrappin', always rappin', like shoes I'm tappin',
On the walls I'm slappin'.
Lickin', always tickin', I'm a Rolex tickin'
Stages to stages I'm stickin' MCs
Because on record they're nice
But when you see them in real life
They're not worth the price
Because you're bored right out of your skull
You rate zero because your hero is dull
I'll make it easy for you to get into me
I'll rock the concert hall just like a symphony
That's how it is: I was born ready
Just like the B stays Maestro steady
I'm showin' you.
Maestro Fresh-Wes spent most of the summer
consolidating his success with a few Canadian concert dates. He also put
together a song and a video, “Stop Playing Share AIDS,” a duet with female
rap artist D. Shan, for the North York public health department to raise
consciousness about AIDS. And, like countless Canadian artists before him,
Wes is also looking south: “My ultimate goal is to prove myself in New York,
if only because that’s where rap started.” He’d been booked to play Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater, but that fell through, so negotiations continue.
But there have been one-nighters in Florida, Virginia and Ohio.
“Ohio was good.
Miami was rough,” says Wes. “But I like playing rough places and rough
crowds, because you’ve got to earn respect. In Canada I’ve earned respect.
But I don’t mind getting booed. That’s fine, because what are they going to
say three years from now when I’m still around? Get it over with now.
Nobody’s going to come up and make it easy. I’m going to be in this game for
a while. I’ve been doing it for a while and I take my music seriously. I’ve already written ten tracks for the next album. Nobody’s even ready to think
about a second album. “Backbone Slide” s a baby in the States right now,
but it’s going to slam, I know it. The thing about this game is you can’t sleep. You’ve always got to figure your next move, because you’ve got so
much competition. Even your friends who are rap artists are competition. I
wish them all the best of luck, but I’ve got to stay awake and get my stuff
done.” |
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