CELEBRITY POLITICIAN
TV star eyes new role
Saskatchewan hip-hop duo thrilled to get invitation to famous festival
It’s mainly because most people see SXSW as kind of a tipping point for a lot of artists.
When it comes to taking a major career step, Samurai Champs know that it doesn’t come any bigger than the SXSW Festival.
The hip-hop duo, comprised of singer Merv xx Gotti (Marvin Chan) and rapper Jeah (Savan Muth), will be making their way to Austin, Texas, for showcase performances on March 13 and 15 at the festival. Formed in 1987, the festival is — according to its website — “an iconic global music industry event.”
Chan is very aware of how important the festival can be for the future of Samurai Champs.
“For us, this is huge. We’ve really thrown everything at it,” said Chan. “We’ve never actually hired a publicist before for any kind of festival or tour but we did this time because we wanted to make it count. We started prepping months in advance, sending out emails to other industry that will be there, other bands and press that will hopefully promo it as well. It’s mainly because most people see SXSW as kind of a tipping point for a lot of artists.
“You hear of bands like Feist, Katy Perry, they attribute a lot of their success after SXSW but specifically in the hip-hop realm, SXSW has tons of hip hop. There’s always been like the Asaps, the GEazys, they’ve always credited SXSW as something that impacted them. It didn’t make or break them but it definitely was a threshold breaking point.”
Chan, based in Regina, and Jeah, based in Saskatoon, have fashioned a successful career with their mix of rap with soul and R&B. In addition to touring across Canada, Samurai Champs have also expanded its fan base with tours in Europe.
Attending SXSW is yet another opportunity for Samurai Champs to continue building its brand. Given that the festival is such an important event in the industry, is Chan nervous about the showcases?
“It’s not so much nervousness. I don’t think Savan and me have been nervous about something in a while,” Chan explained. “We pretty much keep our heads in our Macbooks, trying to plan for everything. We train as much as we can. Any time we have a festival prep or tour prep, we double our workouts, we practise more with the band. There’s not really much time to be nervous. It kind of sucks because in that way, we also lose a lot of the excitement sometimes.
“People will ask, ‘You must be so excited, you’re doing so many cool things,’ and we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot I’m going to this thing.’ We definitely get tunnel vision.”
And Chan isn’t kidding when it comes to his tunnel vision.
“With all the conferences and planning for SXSW, I totally forgot that it was my birthday on Sunday until someone brought it up,” Chan said with a laugh.
While many artists head to SXSW with specific goals or results, that isn’t the case for Samurai Champs.
“I know a lot of artists may give an answer that is a bit more fantastical, like maybe a record deal coming out of it, but me and Savan have accepted for the last little while, just from being so exposed to the process of it, that everything in music is so connected toward the next step,” said Chan. “So for us, even if something comes out like a festival booker for our next festival or maybe a publishing deal or someone to help us with Spotify listing, anything like that for us would be a win. A lot of these things, you can’t really tell what comes out of it until maybe a year or two down the road.”
Samurai Champs are on the verge of releasing a full-length album. Two singles have already been released — Dripping hit the airwaves on Feb. 27 while You Know Me dropped on March 1.
For fans who enjoyed Crayons, they should be prepared for something different with the new album.
“It will be pretty different, actually. There’s a lot sounds that are a bit more on the heavier side and lot of songs that still have the softer, slower trap ballad type of feel like Crayons but it’s definitely a step in a different direction,” said Chan. “Nothing was forced. It was conscious in the way that we wanted this to happen. We knew we were going to grow and what sounds we wanted to incorporate and this is where it led. You can feel it when you know you are growing and we could sense that feeling was coming.
“We knew that everything we going to put out for the next little while was going to represent that growth.”
Joining Samurai Champs at SXSW will be DJ Tefrondon and Eleven 03, their backup band.