Who: Sweatshop Union w/Emotionz
When: Sunday, July 13, 10 p.m.
Where: Garfinkel’s
Tickets: $12 presale
The members of Sweatshop Union aren’t your run-of-the-mill,
amateur hip hop performers. Kyprios, Marmalade, Itchy Ron, Metty, Mos Eisley,
Dusty Melo and Conscience are seasoned MCs with some serious substance to their
music.
The union came together in 2000, out of the groups Dirty
Circus, Creative Minds (now known as Pigeonhole), and Innocent Bystanders.
Kyprios was the lone solo MC. The artists decided to form a collective mainly
for practical reasons — aside from the fact that they were a group of MCs
who liked the same music and happened to be friends, they needed to pool their
resources to put out a compilation album.
“It was a little bit more expensive and more difficult to put
out records than it is today, with the advent of everybody having a home
studio,” Kyprios explained. “…It was just a more sound and solid way of
ensuring you at least got a record out and it didn’t take forever.”
The group’s self-titled debut album reached Mad Child, one of
the members of Swollen Members, and he ended up releasing it on his own label,
Underworld. Soon after, Sweatshop was signed with Battle Axe Records, who
re-released their debut album and followed up with their next three full-length
efforts.
Their lyrics are heavier than your average mainstream hip hop
group, with music touching on everything from racism and poverty to the war in
Iraq.
But Kyprios stresses that they aren’t trying to push a personal
agenda.
“It’s kind of a blues mentality with hip hop beats — it’s
like the shit we don’t have and the things that we’d like to see different,” he
said.
Rather, they’re simply trying to encourage listeners to think
critically, rather than the same old “hip hop hypocrisy.”
“It’s called
Sweatshop Union and its basically at a time when everyone was rocking Nikes and
dunks and at the same time trying to be socially and politically conscious, and
its like, ‘well, dude, where did your shoes get made?’” Kyprios explained.
You would think putting seven strong musical personalities
together in the same room could end badly. But almost eight years later, the
collective is still going strong. They’re touring regularly, and they’re just
getting ready to drop their fourth CD,
Water Street
, in early August.
“There’s ego and I’m sure there’s pretense, as well,” Kyprios
admits. “It’s seven men, and it’s like brothers — we’re going to fight
and want to get our voices… and our thoughts heard, but I think we have enough
respect for one another and above all, the music, that that generally shines
through.”
As a prominent group on Vancouver’s hip hop scene for almost
eight years, Sweatshop Union is something of an authority on the genre. But it
wasn’t always that way.
“I really resented some of the older cats in Vancouver when we
were up and coming for not watering the seed, and I have to say that there was
just a Music West thing that went down out here, and it really kicked me in the
ass, because I didn’t know a lot of the kids,” Kyprios said with a laugh. “…That
being said, I’ve always thought that Vancouver has a very strong base for
talent, when it comes to artistry of MCs, DJs, producers, bboys, graffiti
writers.”
Now, when approached by new artists who are looking for career
advice, Kyprios has some simple words of wisdom.
“I hate to be stereotypical, but it is one of those things
where… you do have to keep your head down, you do have to take your licks, and
there’s gotta be a certain level of perseverance because there’s so many people
that don’t want you to succeed,” he said. “There’s so many people that are just
mid-level, have been trying to do it, and just don’t want to see other people
shine.”
The group rolled into town back in March to tear the roof off
of Garfinkel’s with Choclair. Now, they’re coming back for their summer show
this weekend to promote their latest album, so expect to hear them break out
some of their fresh material.
Kyprios points out that though it’s been a few years since
their last CD release, they haven’t exactly been locked in the studio the whole
time. The individual members have been caught up in touring and working on solo
projects, and with other aspects of their personal lives, like marriage and
babies.
Sweatshop Union has also been working on making a name for
themselves in the States.
“We’ve been very lucky that the guys that we work with do
licensing of music, and they’ve been able to license a lot of music to
snowboard and ski and mountain bike and all kinds of extreme films, so it’s
given us a foothold in a lot of these cities, like Colorado and Salt Lake City
and these mountain towns.”
Despite their hectic schedules,
Water Street
should be an impressive offering.
“I think that this is obviously, I feel, our best record to date,” Kyprios said. “It’s our most encompassing and our most far reaching. It’s got a lot of different tracks on it, a lot of different tunes on it, definitely something for everyone.”
