Events

[HIP HOP] When hip-hop initially began to permeate mass consciousness, so much of it consisted of boastful rants about why one MC’s rhyme schemes were superior to another. It took a while before artists with more poetic grace began to emerge: writers that were able to blend the boastful template with worthwhile storylines. Both Wu-Tang’s Ghostface Killah and Slick Rick (the latter famously name checked in the late Amy Winehouse’s “Me and Mr. Jones”) were transcendent innovators from the start, pushing at the boundaries of their craft without giving into shtick. Killah, whose given name is Dennis Coles, has been releasing consistently engaging music as a solo artist for twenty years, preferring to set his dark urban narratives to obscure soul samples, creating an old school soundtrack that’s thoroughly modern at the same time. Coles is known for non-linear storylines, often resulting in a more impressionistic approach that lets the listener draw their own conclusions about the fates of his characters. Slick Rick, on the other hand, launched his career with a good-boy image that informs tracks like “Hey Young World,” embedding a positive message in an accessible hip-hop sound. It’s a formula that’s struck a lasting chord, making the British born tunesmith the most sampled hip-hop artist ever. Ironically, Slick Rick ran into some serious legal troubles—a pair of attempted murder charges—that landed him in jail for five years during a crucial time in his career: the early-to-mid-1990’s. He was officially pardoned in 2008 and, after multiple deportation attempts, was finally granted dual US-UK citizenship last year. Both of these legendary MC’s bring their idiosyncratic approaches to urban storytelling to Canalside on Thursday, July 13 with DJ Milk opening.