Paul Telner spoke to Canadian hip hop artist k-os last week while the musician was in Kelowna, BC. k-os visited the Cisco Systems Bluesfest in Ottawa this past weekend for a performance that included crowd surfing hits from his acclaimed Joyful Rebellion disc, including B-Boy Stance, Crabbuckit, Emcee Murdah and Man I Used To Be.

Paul Telner: Is it fair to say you are trying to change hip hop to make it more positive?
k-os: That?s what it?s perceived as from other people but I am just dealing with my own insecurities as a person. Sometimes I felt like there really wasn?t a place for me. I grew up in the suburbs and didn?t really have the ghetto reality that a lot of these people in America had had. I was like, so how come when I turn on the TV, or listen to music, there?s no one who represents me. I think that?s where it started. It didn?t start with me wanting to change things for the sake of just changing it, it started with me just wanting to change stuff because I wanted to find a place for me. So I think yeah it does come off, I am doing this because I am trying to change, but I am really just trying to create a little niche for guys like me.

Paul Telner: How is your tour coming going?
k-os: It can get grueling but you have to appreciate the best moments you have are when your actually on stage with people and performing. We are going across Canada on a nice tour bus, so it?s really a cool summer kind of outing.

Paul: How have the fans been at your shows?
k-os: They?re cool. I think there is a lot of love right now and everything is expanding and things are growing so it?s just a matter of actually embracing all that.

Paul: What was it like for you, trying to get your music to a mass audience and become known? Was it a struggle?
k-os: It was frustrating because you have all these songs and ideas for songs that are written between the people and you. First of all, I have to build up confidence in what I was doing. Was the music I was making able enough to reach people? That?s the hardest part. Putting your mind to the reality of, okay, what I am doing is actually something people should hear. I go into the record store, and go, why would someone want to get my CD? Then it was the process of a lot of good accidents. If you love something, that love comes off of you and people notice that.

Paul: Did you ever stop believing in yourself and the music?
k-os: You never stop believing in the music. But I came to the point, right before I moved to Vancouver, I was in L.A. for 4 months, and I saw the politics and left LA to come to Vancouver because I was sick of the whole industry. I told myself just write songs. It?s what I should have been doing. The first album was just me sitting in a room with my guitar, coming up with all these songs and surprisingly when I stopped caring, and just wanted to write songs, that?s when all these record companies wanted to deal with it. Then I did a performance in Toronto and there was more and more interest. I don?t stop believing in the music. I just get freaked out by the process and the industry. Sometimes that takes a toll on me, especially as an artist, and someone who?s an artist at heart.

Paul: Why do you think hip hop may have taken a darker tone in the last ten years with more explicit lyrics and themes?
k-os: The really inevitable part of it is what happened to rock in the 80s, glam rock. You had all these hair bands like Poison or whatever, Whitesnake, all these guys were in limos and it was about champagne bottles, and TV videos and Motley Crew. Rock music has gone through that stage, that adolescence of being something really organic, in the 70s or 60s with bands like Led Zeppelin, and all of a sudden people try to imitate and be like them, and basically spoofs of that. That?s what happened to hip hop. Hip hop was really organic punk music in the early and mid- 80s. Then you had a whole bunch of bands, a lot of black people from the ghetto that had money off that, or at least made a living. That inspired a lot of people to get into hip hop who might not have that same message but wanted to live that lifestyle of limos and cars. You had glam rock and you had glam hip hop.

Paul: How do you think it all started?
k-os: It all started with Puffy and those guys, and glam hip hop, there really wasn?t that much gangsterism till the West Coast came up, and then there was this battle between the East Coast and West Coast. That ended up with two men dying, Biggie and Tupac, and then that?s when everyone said it took a dark turn. But I think it?s just as dark as when Kurt Cobain shot himself. I don?t think hip hop is any darker than rock music. I just think that people cast Latino and black people in a way that is way more threatening because maybe the ghetto is something that?s mysterious to them. A murder in the ghetto is like really bad and but a murder in the suburbs still retains some kind of like weird thing. You know what I mean? If you ask someone if they would rather be shot in the ghetto or suburbs, which is a stupid question, but people would say the suburbs because of the aura of it.

Paul: How is the media connected to what has happened?
k-os: To me hip hop took a dark turn, but I think more importantly the media has a way of portraying black people and hip hop in a negative light and so when they caught any light at all that they can take these stories and run about these young black men in the ghetto with guns, and present hip hop as that, they did that. But they don?t show black people as intellectual people. They don?t show the rappers who are really saying something. That all becomes alternative hip hop to them. Yes I am a black man, both my parents are black, my mom grew up in the ghetto but I don?t necessarily believe that I have to reinforce those statements to make my hip hop have some strong statement. I think a stronger statement is intellectuality, intellectual reality and I think I had just as much of a struggle, being one of three black people in a white high school, than a kid trying to get out of the ghetto. It?s just a different type of ghetto because you?re dealing with subversive and basically institutionalized racism. It just comes down to stereotypes.

Paul: Do you think hip hop will take a more positive spin in the future?
k-os: I don?t know man, that?s a good question. I go away, and live in my reality and do these interviews where I talk about positive things and then I go on my tour reality on my bus where I am with my friends going across the world, speaking to people and friends about hip hop and then I turn on my TV and its the same shit that has been going on ten years ago! Shit hasn?t really changed in fact its gotten worse. Everything is sexual or violent and the worse part of it is there isn?t even a place for something intellectual. It?s okay to let people be who they are, if they are violent and sexual, then let them exercise their demons, but at least make a little place for something that?s not that. In rock music you got Tom York, Chris Martin and then Ozzy Osbourne, Kid Rock and Pink Floyd. There is room for intellectual. There is classic rock, hard rock, but hip hop, there is only hip hop. Hopefully in the years to come, hip hop will start to divide where there will be classic hip hop, progressive hip hop, and radio stations give audience as much of a variety that they do their rock audiences.

Paul: Your videos are fantastic; tell me about their vision.
k-os: Well I will give that credit to me and my three friends, we are in a group called the Love Movement and we shoot all the videos. It?s basically four minds who get together and go to lunch at a good restaurant and talk for hours about these ideas and then we hone them in so it?s really about four friends doing an art project, kind of like in high school. Micah Meisner is really the director, and the genius behind the thing because he is a filmmaker and he is approaching these videos like mini films and people pick up on that.

Paul: What?s next in your career? Any new albums soon?
k-os: The big task for us right now is penetrating America which is starting to happen. I told myself I will wait and spend my time trying to crack this record across the world, probably to January first of 2006 and then after that just go and chill out. Just relax and start writing. I am really into literature and have been working on this book for a couple of years. Or maybe sit down with my friend Micah, and write some sort of screenplay. I am partying a lot now and on stage a lot and I think I need some time away from that, to come up with new ideas, and new versions of myself so I can write another record.

Paul: Is your music for everyone? Is it something older people and younger people can listen to?
k-os: I think in the beginning this record was targeted for people who were just fed up with the world and felt like they didn?t have a place. By embracing all these different types of music and ideas I was saying maybe it?s not about trying to find one particular place to be at in the world. Maybe we can be comfortable in many different places. I think that now has resonated beyond just a core audience. The beginning of it is just an extension of my first record where I am basically speaking for a lot of people that spend a lot of time in their bedrooms wondering why the world is like this and maybe a bit fearful of social interaction. I think I am one of those misfit guys, or one of those music studio guys who said I am going to come out into the world, and this is my joyful rebellion. I am still rebellious because I know the world is screwed up, but I am happy about where I am right now.

Paul: In past you?ve said that you are not all that comfortable with people recognizing you and staring at you because of your fame. How do you feel about that now?
k-os: Depends on the people. To make a general statement about people coming up to you would be a bit ignorant and also arrogant but I would say it depends on the moment. I try to take people for who they are at the moment. Someone could just stare at me, and it irritates me because I don?t understand why. Just before, this woman from Kenya said to me, why are you staying at a hotel when you could have stayed at my house! It was so genuine. I was like, I don?t really know you! She is like, does that matter? It put me in check, some people show genuine love, and she showed me love and I am like I don?t know you when I should have been like, maybe next time. You have to take things moment by moment and you will be able to deal with reality.

Paul: You are an example of someone making it big and maintaining respect for others no matter what you achieve. Why do you think fame changes and makes people lose a part of themselves for the worse?
k-os: Probably the mythology of the whole star machine and the mythology of how you are supposed to act. We have watched people on TV for years, we watch interviews, documentaries, and we think we know what it’s like to be popular and considered a celebrity. But it?s nothing like what you think. When you get there, it?s like pay as you go. I keep my eyes and ears open and I always remember that I do this because I feel the world is in a certain place right now, and I am going to contribute my part to make something progressive happen. I am not going to say good or bad, because that gets tricky but I will say I want to keep my thing progressive. I don?t think I can be progressive if I get caught up in the illusion of stardom. I think I can enjoy those things, which means being exposed to more people and people treat you better, which of course enhances your life. But if those things were to vanish tomorrow, my music wouldn?t change. I see celebrity as a chance to access people rather than as a chance to be better than people. I don?t think my high school life was insecure. I was on student counsel; I had friends, girlfriends, so the music industry isn?t a thing that I am seeking to make me feel fulfilled. In fact I am kind of coming to this thing trying to deconstruct the whole bullshit about it. So when someone says can I have your autograph, and I say no, it?s not because I don?t want to, it?s because sometimes you need to deconstruct the whole mythology about the whole thing.

Paul: What can fans expect from your live shows?
k-os: It?s our band and we have added some new songs, our sets are longer, some new encores. We are trying to seek perfection with the way that we come across, not to the point where it?s sterile or has no vibe, but we want to give people something that?s on the next level, as far as spiritual. I don?t mean that like a weird evangelist kind of way. But I saw Coldplay and I said if we can come off like that and move people in that way then I think you are giving people a spiritual experience that doesn?t have a real name to it. That?s the best thing musicians can do.

Paul: What do you say to young people who want to get into the music business?
k-os: Music was made to elevate human beings. Music was a gift to us to allow us to go higher. As long as you are doing music for those reasons, to help people take it to a higher level, as long as you care about people?s souls, and you love people then your music will come out in a way that will help people evolve and grow. That?s the broadest way I can say without impressing my doctrine on people. I would say it?s all about helping people grow, making them feel good, not recklessly, where it?s all about the party all the time, but making them feel good so that if they hear the song ten years from now, it will still mean something to them and it might mean something to their children too.

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Paul Telner (www.paultelner.com) is a comedian/personality who hosts/created Apauled, the most popular American college comedy show.






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