Music Interview: Cutting beats and boxes

By Jon Roe

From the home of the Roughnecks,
Take a look around you can see where all the drugs went.
It’s flooded with free base.
All the damn police can’t keep the streets safe.”

Most people know Calgary as Cowtown, the city of Stampede, white cowboy hats and 10 days a year where anyone can be a cowboy and it’s alright to wear too-tight jeans with tasseled shirts. To Calgary-born hip-hop artist Tha BoxcuttA, Calgary is “the 403” and it’s not all chaps and chucks.

“There is [a hip-hop scene] and it’s growing,” says Tha BoxcuttA. “I’m down with a lot of cats, and some of ’em’s real serious. The one thing I’d say about it is the scene is very spread out. Geographically, Calgary is spread out. You have cats actually makin’ some noise but dude on this side of the city doesn’t know dude on this side of the city, you know what I mean?”

Though local music in Calgary rarely receives any support or recognition, hip-hop is the extreme case. Rarely is it covered in local media, and beyond CJSW, there aren’t any stations that will drop the needle on local hip-hop demos.

“The scene’s real divided,” notes Tha Box. “That’s one of the reasons that it isn’t makin’ the same kind of noise as other places [like tha] Montreal music scene. Or for example, you look at Atlanta. Why people are successful out there is because Atlanta supports it’s own artists. Both the population, the media, the radio stations there. You got a good community growing. Here it’s kind of like every man for himself, thrown out to the wolves.”

The most notable element of Tha BoxcuttA’s music is how local it truly is. His first music video for the song “Crackitivity,” off the EP of the same name, was shot on the corner of 25th Avenue and Erlton. The video depicts Tha BoxcuttA strutting down the neighbourhood he grew up in and includes a scene of him pouring a beer on the ground in front of a picture frame of a friend who died in the neighbourhood. He nods soulfully to the camera, and gives hand slap props to the guy’s brother.

“That’s my home-boy right there,” says Tha Box. “His name’s Dan. He got killed on the same block I lived, where we shot the video. Shit was crazy down there. Long story, short–I was hustlin’, my home-boy was hustlin’. He lived a block down. Somebody lit his house on fire while he was sleepin’ one night. I don’t know what reason. The cops never investigated, they didn’t care. He’s a person I came up with, he lived on my block, he died on my block. That block is a lot of heavy shit man.”

Tha Box himself admits his music isn’t saying anything new. Similar life stories have become hip-hop cliche, and are now pervasive throughout mainstream music. What’s important to Tha BoxcuttA is that people give him a chance, and then make a decision rather than automatically dismissing him on preconceived notions of local artists or the genre itself.

“Maybe they shouldn’t listen to me,” shrugs Tha BoxcuttA. “Ultimately, it’s not why I do it. Obviously if I feel I’m going to put my heart into somethin’, I’m going to try and promote it and take it to the extent it can go. Whether somebody else feels that, I’m not responsible to how somebody takes it. I’d say check it out for one thing. Then make your decision from there. We got the website goin’. There’s a lot of information there, and I’ve got the [new] album droppin’. At that point somebody could decide for themselves.”