From k-os comes musical order
Canadian hip-hop artist mixes genres, styles and sounds and makes it all fit together
It’s late August and Kevin Brereton (a.k.a. k-os) is back in Toronto, the city of his birth, to oversee final details on the release of his sixth full-length album, Can’t Fly Without Gravity, released Friday.
How excited is he? Well, his rapid-fire answers practically tumble over themselves. There’s no need to prompt the 43-yearold rapper, and it’s clear that he’s put a great deal of thought into the vagaries of a career that’s seen him move between labels that have acknowledged his talent but have had little idea what to do with it.
Now signed to Dine Alone Records, with Can’t Fly Without Gravity he’s honed the eccentric and eclectic musical style that netted him multiple Juno Awards and platinum sales status in the mid-2000s. Mixing up indie-rock, pop, hip-hop, reggae and funk has always been a k-os trademark, but it seems to have taken more than 20 years for the record industry to begin catching up.
The Edmonton Journal spoke with him recently. Q Can’t Fly Without Gravity sounds like a streamlined version of what you did on records such as 2004’s Joyful Rebellion, or its successor, 2006’s Atlantis: Hymns For the Disco, in that you’re once again back to heedlessly mixing up genres. A Well, that’s a sound that I had to veer from to see just how fun it is. Back then I liked the idea that when a new k-os record came out, people were forced to deal with not knowing what it would sound like. I used to be a kind of Dennis the Menace that way. Q That probably didn’t endear you to the label. A Astralwerks kind of understood where I was coming from, but it was tough dealing with Capitol and Virgin. I remember going to my American label, this fateful trip where I stood in front of the president of the label and they were like, “We need a single. What is this, what kind of music is this?” You could see the steam coming through their ears, because they had no idea how to market it. Now, it’s normal that you’d have someone who could sing as well as rap. But back then … Q Well, you’ve got some obvious pop singles on this record. A The last song, Another Shot, is very pop candy, as is Spaceship. I have to admit that moments like that sometimes make me cringe a bit, but then you have the grittier songs like Steel Sharpens Steel or Wild4TheNight. I like the order on this album. It gets you ready; it builds. What I learned with this record was how to sequence. You can’t just drop an order on people and then snicker about how different the songs can be. Q So you’re more interested in a seamless listening experience? A It’s more effective, even gracious, when you do it in such a way that people don’t even notice that you’ve gone from hip hop to reggae to pop to indie-rock. Like how The Clash would drop hip hop or reggae in their songs, but it was so well done that the punks barely noticed. That was a touchstone for all of us. Q Is there anyone else you like doing that these days? A Oh, yeah. Taylor Swift, this country girl using (rapper) Kendrick Lamar on her single (Bad Blood) was really inspiring to me in making this record. It feels like a free-for-all now. That’s a dream song; I wish I was on that track. Q Do you get the feeling we’ve reached a point where people understand that all music fits if you approach it right? A Oh, man, absolutely! One of my favourite guitar lines is the one from (Thin Lizzy’s) Boys Are Back in Town. I remember realizing at some point while sitting in a bar that it was so Irish. If you played it on the fiddle you would get it immediately, but harmonizing on guitar you might miss it. ... Those are the musicians and bands that have me for life, the ones that slip something on you, except that they’re not really slipping anything in because it’s so blatant. Q That’s some quality music dissecting. A That’s kind of what I do. My dad is a computer engineer, and my grandma used to tell me that she knew he’d become one because he used to take things apart — radios, washing machines and bikes. His dad would say, “OK, now you have to put them back together.” That’s how he gained the knowledge. Well, my last record, a double album (2013’s Black on Blonde) that separated rock and hip hop, was just me taking music apart. How was this guitar line done, am I able to rap over rock rhythms? This record sounds like me putting it all back together again, because now I understand the parts.