FIRST OF HIS KIND
Akeem Raphael just became the first person in Canada to graduate with a specialty in rap performance,
Through beats, bars, hooks and rhymes, Akeem Raphael is a born storyteller.
It’s something Raphael’s been perfecting since he was at least 13, probably younger.
That drive to perfect his craft is what led the 26-year-old to become, last week, the first Canadian to graduate with a specialty in rap performance.
Raphael was part of a seven-student graduating class at Centennial College, the pioneers of the school’s three-year-old Music Industry Arts and Performance program — and he was the only student in it whose focus was rap.
A couple days later, he’s sitting on a couch facing the desk that doubles as a studio in the corner of his bright apartment in a Thorncliffe Park complex.
“If you don’t mind, can I just, like, tell you my story?”
Raphael starts his tale at the beginning. “So, when I was born my mom actually passed away giving birth to me.”
It’s a choice she made, he explains matter-of-factly — it was either her or him — but one his father resented.
An aunt moved to Toronto from Trinidad to raise him, but died when he was 10, followed a couple months later by his grandmother, who had lived across the street.
“I always learn things the hard way because the hard way’s more permanent,” says Raphael, who beams positivity.
He breezed through the program at Centennial, though, which included a range of courses from learning how to mix and master songs, music theory, ear training, to pop culture music history.
Raphael took weekly one-on-one classes with his rap teacher Ches Christian — who had a decade-long rap career but has more recently focused on teaching.
“What I like most about him is his eagerness to learn,” Christian says of Raphael. Though rap can carry ego, “he had none.” With him he explored writing strategies and styles, performance and freestyle.
Raphael started freestyling at 13, with a rapping older brother to look up to, but says he wasn’t very good. An improvised rap battle between him and his sibling earned him the nickname Cookie the Rookie.
“Something, something, something, that’s why we call you Pillsbury; put you in the oven, now we call you Cookie,” he half-remembers his brother rapping, referencing Raphael’s young chubbiness (he’s athletic now) and wide smile.
“From there, I always freestyled because I told myself I can’t be a rookie forever.”
The teen pushed himself to get better as he moved to different cities — from Scarborough to St. Catharines to Maple and back to Toronto — and typical teenage influences that pushed him to stray here and there.
When he felt he was relying on weed for his freestyles, he stopped smoking and asked people to start calling him Akeem again.
He’d been improvising rhymes for children at Wonderland, where he worked in the summer, to help them overcome their fear of rides. Praise from parents hinted he could be on to something.
It was when he joined the youthoriented artist collective RISE in August 2012 that he wrote his first rap song.
“By the time I got to the second chorus, everybody was singing the chorus like they knew my song; they were hyping with me,” he recalls. “I wasn’t expecting to get that much love for writing a song.”
Akeem now calls himself Kwame, a Ghanaian name for a boy born on Saturday, which he’s adopted for his rap persona. He describes his music as inspirational hip hop, “old school vibes in a new-school way, with catchy beats and catchy hooks.”
He cites Common, Shad, Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Nas and Lupe Fiasco as influences. He also likes Kanye West’s older music, and admires his ability to stick up to criticism.
“He’s hated on for just being him,” Raphael says, noting what makes most “greats” just that is them proclaiming it.
Despite the critical acclaim he’s gathered from a career of more than a decade, West is often denounced for comparing himself to the likes of Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, and calling himself the “greatest living artist.”
“They’re no different from you,” or him, Raphael says.
That’s why, Raphael says, “My mindset is working toward being one of the greatest hip-hop emcees in this generation.”
He made inroads during his time at Centennial, says the music program’s co-ordinator Jesse Feyen, 33, who also helped found it.
“He’s just really enthusiastic and really a beautiful person. He’s able to put that energy and enthusiasm into his music and into his rap,” Feyen said.
The music program is Centennial’s first and an “institutional realization” of today’s music culture, he explained.
It combines performance, theory and entrepreneurship to create a kind of practical “fast-track” for those looking to work in the music industry, bypassing the typical “school of hard knocks.”
It was clear from Raphael’s audition he was a natural performer, Feyen added.
“We were just in a classroom and he was moving left to right, front to back; he was leaping and doing gestures.”
From being an emcee to a rapper, many things await Raphael, Feyen says. “He’s versatile.”