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Retro-revivalist rebel

k-os knows who he is
kos

Who: k-os

What: FIS 2005 World Snowboarding Championships

Where: Whistler Conference Centre

When: Saturday, Jan. 22

Tickets: SOLD OUT

I first caught sight of k-os in his Superstarr Pt. Zero video.

He appeared amid a slew of carbon copy offerings by his contemporaries featuring virtually indistinguishable sloe-eyed emcees in boxy athletic jerseys and scantily clad booty babes looking bored as they tried to out-whore each other.

K-os lit up the screen like a firecracker. A spastic-fantastic clad in a combination of Cuban military and 1980s street garb proclaiming his rhymes into a megaphone over a jazzy piano riff, cut with jaw-dropping displays of old-school b-boying filmed in grainy cinema realitŽ.

My attention ramped immediately from mildly distracted to compelled.

"Who," I had to know, "is this?"

Underneath the enigmatic moniker, pronounced "chaos", also an acronym for "knowledge of self" is thirty-something Toronto-based emcee Kheven Brereton whose ability to turn heads has only increased since the release of his debut album Exit and the Superstarr Pt. Zero single in 2002-03.

The release of his second full-length album Joyful Rebellion in August 2004 has only upped the ante. From the opening track B-Boy Stance, a manifesto about remaining true to the foundations of hip-hop, through catchy radio-friendly follow ups like Crabbuckit and Man I Used to Be, it seems these days everyone wants to know who k-os is.

Including Brereton. A supposedly brief phone chat stolen during set-up for his show in Halifax last week turns into an aerobic discussion of life, roots, identity, personal philosophies, and influences. Off the mic Kheven Brereton is as energetic, vibrant and articulate as his k-os persona on the mic. In either incarnation, the man isnÕt afraid to let it flow.

His Ôb-boy stanceÕ has tagged him a retro-revivalist and he accepts it proudly.

"All humans are retro-revivalists," he states. "ThereÕs nothing new under the sun and anyone trying to tell you theyÕve done something new is lying to you.É The originality, to me, is lyrical and itÕs personality."

Take reggae artists, he offers, defiantly unique despite the fact many artists are using the same beats.

Take Crabbuckit. Brereton says the track came from fooling around with a swing-jazzy bass line equal parts Hit the Road Jack and Love Cats by the Cure. He added handclaps, let the quirky rhymes flow, and the result is one of the most unique and danceable hit tunes of 2004.

HeÕs learned to accept his spontaneity and trust his instincts, in the creative process, but also in terms of his career and his place in the hip-hop nation as a Canadian artist.

"Our whole generation of the echo boomers, growing up listening to American hip-hop, going down to New York on holiday in the summertime staying with our cousin in Brooklyn and coming back with the latest running shoes, and all the cool tapes and pretending weÕre American in Canada. That helped us skill-wise, but it didnÕt help us on an esteem level because then we started thinking Canadian hip-hop sucked," he recalls. "For a while that was what it was like with all music. Canadians didnÕt like their own music."

HeÕs excited to report a shift in perspective now, and cites fellow Toronto artists Sam Roberts (a collaborator on Joyful Rebellion), Broken Social Scene, and the Dears.

"SomethingÕs obviously happening. IÕm part of that movement, but I just happen to be a rapper," he says. "I was in the studio with Broken Social Scene the other day and I was like, ÔIÕm more a part of this as an artist than I am a Canadian hip-hop artist.Õ"

Cross-genre pride aside, he is hip-hop to the core, in love with the music and excited to be at a point in his career where heÕs able to correspond with luminaries like Lauryn Hill and Chuck D.

"When you love something itÕs in you. ItÕs in your blood," he says.

Which is why the one criticism that he simply can not let roll off his back is when heÕs attacked for his Canadian suburban upbringing (he was raised in Whitby, Ont.), and charges that he lacks ghetto street cred.

"IÕm not gangster, I grew up in the suburbs. Can I not be a rapper because IÕm from the suburbs?" he vents. "ItÕs crazy. ThatÕs what IÕm fighting against. That level of ignorance."

He simply doesnÕt buy it. While he experienced a Canadian middle class upbringing, his Trinidadian parents, he emphasizes, had things a lot different.

"My mom was a ghetto superhero. She lived in the ghetto and she made it out of it and she doesnÕt want to go back there. ThatÕs a real superhero, if you can escape it. And IÕm the result of a person that did that and now IÕm making music based on all my influences."

Uplifting, self-assured music, unconcerned with prescribed image or where you might be from. ItÕs all part of the Joyful Rebellion he refers to in the title of his latest album.

"Rebellion is joyful," he assures. "You can go against the system and still love what you do and embrace the fact that youÕre different."

K-os and his band play the Telus Conference Centre to close the 2005 FIS Snowboard World Championships following the closing ceremonies on Saturday, Jan. 22. ItÕs one event that definitely wonÕt be affected by the weekÕs foul weather. The show was declared sold out at time of press.