Who: K-OS
When: Saturday, Sept. 27, 9 p.m.
Where: Garfinkel’s
Admission: $15 in advance, $20 at the door
Known to friends, family and colleagues as Kevin Brereton,
hip hop fans are far more likely to recognize the name, K-OS.
Despite the somewhat negative implications of his stage
moniker, K-OS actually stands for “knowledge of self.”
“I think knowing yourself is more of a process than it is
something that you arrive at,” he said. “…It’s a constant undertaking to be
aware of what you’re thinking, feeling, intonating. So much so that some people
just decide they’re not going to do it.”
But K-OS contends that his music provides him with a unique
opportunity to reflect on how he has grown and evolved.
“The advantage is, with music, I can hear it in a very
exaggerated way, because a song is pretty much your emotions on tape,” he
explained. “…My knowledge of self doesn’t come from sitting around my house and
just thinking about what I do, it comes from, ‘let me go listen to those songs
I did when I was 18 and see the difference between what I’m kickin’ now and
what I was kickin’ then.’”
With soulful lyrics, melodies and messages, K-OS is
something of an open-minded poet, his three full-length albums, Exit, Joyful
Rebellion and Atlantis: Hymns for Disco, featuring elements of reggae, rap,
rock and funk, and collaborations with groups like Broken Social Scene and Sam
Roberts.
Embracing his reputation as something of a musical zealot,
K-OS is particularly passionate about artists having a strong understanding of
self before acting as a role model.
“It may be okay to be like that sometimes on stage or in
some songs, just to let yourself go, but for the most part I feel like it’s the
responsibility of a musical artist to be aware of what they feel so they can
make a statement on society that is responsible,” he said.
Well, K-OS certainly doesn’t shy away from making a
statement.
Lyrically, Exit and Joyful Rebellion were quite critical of
modern hip-hop and the industry as a whole.
“I gained success from criticizing the system. So now I
can’t talk about how fucked up the system is, so I just ended up talking about
how fucked up stardom is,” he said with a laugh, pointing out that that’s what
“Sunday Morning,” “Mirror in the Sky” and “Born to Run” are all about.
And while K-OS switched the subject matter up on his last
album, the state of the industry is still very much on his mind.
“I can see that that’s brewing in me again, because now I
focus my attention less on the woes of being a popular guy, because I’m kind of
over it, and now I’m back on-point to giving my Cole’s Notes as to how I see
music,” he said.
If you were in the crowd during K-OS’s last stop in Whistler
— his performance at the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival last year
— you probably remember, or heard murmurs of, an on-stage band break-up.
“Me and my band had conflict,” K-OS explained, adding that
they had just returned from a lengthy, stressful tour. “It had nothing to do
with the people of Whistler.”
But he’s been previewing some new material at his most
recent gigs and will be returning to Whistler this weekend to give the audience
a sneak peek at some of the songs off his fourth album, self-produced and
simply entitled Yes, which is currently in the works.
“I’m playing new songs, just watching the crowd and seeing
how they react, because the album is maybe one or two songs away from being
finished,” he said, adding that while other genres often test their music
before including it on an album, hip hop artists aren’t known for taking the
same approach.
“This time around, it just so happens that my band is up and
running enough and we have enough older material that people know that we can
do a set of maybe the more ‘classic’ stuff, and then drop in a couple new
songs.”
Last weekend, K-OS headlined the Manifesto urban music and
art festival in Toronto alongside K’Naan and Rascalz, an experience he calls
“ridiculously epic.”
These performers go way back, and despite hints of
controversy between the artists over the years, it’s clear that there’s no ill
will between the musicians, today.
“Lauryn Hill has that lyric, ‘two emcees can’t occupy the
same space at the same time,’” K-OS quoted. “So sometimes it gets a little bit
crowded, if you know what I mean.”
Now that they’ve all successfully carved out their own
niches and identities, the time was right to take the stage together again.
Fans can expect to hear a distinctly different K-OS on Yes,
as he’s worked to push the envelope and continue to progress and evolve as an
artist.
“After a while, if you think you’re this one person, you
keep doing things to play into that persona,” he said. Becoming pigeonholed as
an artist is one of his greatest fears. “Sometimes, unfortunately, people do
that for commercial success or they do it out of fear, but my whole goal is
that if you just say yes to certain things that you’ve said no to before, but
maintain your integrity, you’ll end up shape-shifting.”
But the news isn’t all doom and gloom — there are a
few newer artists, like Feist, Black Mountain, and MGMT, who offer a glimmer of
hope for the industry as a whole.
“There’s always going to be these super-talented people
— they exist — I just hope their music can reach more than just
some underground scene.” n
