From Kardinal to Drake and now onto Slakah The Beatchild, there’s clear evidence Canada is producing quality music. Slakah’s recent debut album, “Soul Movement,” is more than substantial proof that the typically quiet country up north has begun to make some noise worth taking a listen to.
Although he was pretty much born with rhythm, Slakah The Beatchild is extremely dedicated to growth of his musical career. He is a multi-talented artist who would rather do something himself than wait around and be held back by the restrictive schedules and costly price tags of others. As Slakah spoke with DX Next he shared about his decision to release his debut album overseas before releasing it at home, his wide array of talents, his two digit video budget and more.
Called By Name: “When I was younger I was kinda the ‘slakah’ ...slacker so I got that nickname. As I started getting inspired by music that name actually transformed and a buddy of my named Shad said, ‘The new definition of your name is because you’re so ill you’re not even trying yet so we’ll call you Slakah.’ The Beatchild, when I was young and couldn’t walk my mom would sit me on the washing machine and it was this ghetto washing machine. On the spin cycle it would make a noise like a slow steady rhythm and to me that was music and I would dance to that as my mom did the laundry. My mom saw that I was actually moving on rhythm to the music so she was like, ‘Wow, this kid has rhythm! I’m gonna call him The Beatchild.’”
Mutli-Talented: “I started off doing production. When I moved to Toronto to kinda dive deeper into the music scene to get more experience and make some connections I actually interned at a recording studio, one of the best studios in Canada actually, and it was there that I learned my engineering skills and my mixing, and my recording skills; that got me really into engineering. Recently now, I’ve gotten into video directing and video editing so that’s another thing that I do. Today I just finished doing a photo-shoot and taking some pictures of Melanie Durrant ‘cause I’m doing her album so, I’m acting as a photographer; me and my friend we went out there and we did it. I play guitar and I play piano.”
The Slakah Vision: “The Slakah vision is basically letting people around the world hear music that is very hard to come by. Music that they are searching for having a hard time tryin’ to find, I wanna provide that for people. The music industry in general is saturated with a lot of music that people don’t really have a choice in hearing. For example, we may hear a particular song on the radio 20 times in a day or 20 times on TV and we might not necessarily think it’s the greatest song but we’re force-fed certain types of songs to the point where we just accept it. There’s a lot of other music out there that might not have a video or a major label backing, and a lot of that music is great music. I just want to be able to reach people with great music and that’s the mission.”
Personal Influences: “My number one influence is actually a guy from Sweden by the name of Tingsek. After him it would be Raphael Saadiq [click to read]. After Raphael, it would have to be J Dilla."
A WONDERful Approach: “One thing I always keep in mind when I’m making music is, I don’t want to deliver something that people are going to expect. Say if I’m working on a chord progression I’ll try to come up with chords and progressions that people are not going to expect however it’s still gunna feel good, and someone else who does that very well is Stevie Wonder. Lyrically as well, Stevie Wonder is another guy and his lyrics are always meaningful. I’ll listen to a Stevie Wonder song and 10 years ago I wouldn’t have thought much of it, now I’ll hear something in it, I’ll research the lyrics and he’s speaking about something so deep or so completely different than what people think he’s talking about; to me that’s really important and that’s the longevity of music.”
Ideas Documented: “I carry around with me a book. I have a journal and when something inspires me or when I get an idea I write it down. In my Blackberry I record vocal ideas ‘cause sometimes a melody might just pop into my head. Sometimes I’m walkin’ down the street and people are looking at me ‘cause I’m humming or beat-boxing into my phone but I know it can be something special in the future. When I feel really inspired to bring some of those ideas to life I usually go into the studio and whatever jumps out at me in my hook book (my journal) or my phone I’ll elaborate on it. Sometimes I might just sit at home with my guitar and I might just strum along and freestyle and something in those freestyles might stand out and I’ll build on that.”
New Album: “The official North American release date for the album was May 26th. We released it in Europe, Japan, and Australia in September of 2008.The album features Drake, who’s definitely doin’ some big things right now around the world. We got tracks from Divine Brown, who’s a Juno nominated artist – Canada’s Grammy equivalent. We got Melanie Durrant on there. We have Ibrahim who is a real soulful very talented guy from out west. We got D.O. who is a Guinness Book of World Records setting freestyle; he went for eight hours and 45 minutes and I work a lot with him too. We got a lot of features on the record and there’s more but I’m not gonna name everybody. It’s a really diverse sounding record and it flows from front to end. My goal when I made the record was to make a record that you can put on track one and let it play though and you wouldn’t have to skip any tracks. When I made the record I made several different versions of it and I would listen to it in my car for weeks. When I started to getting sick of a song that’s when I knew there was something wrong and I had to adjust that; I shouldn’t get sick of a song this quick. So, I made sure that the song order, the sound of the song, the choice of songs was something that was really good. There wasn’t a timeline; my timeline was basically just make sure that every single song is special.”
Summer Tour: “There’s a Canadian tour being set-up right now for July and heading down to the States probably end of the summer.”
If you want more [click here].
Although he was pretty much born with rhythm, Slakah The Beatchild is extremely dedicated to growth of his musical career. He is a multi-talented artist who would rather do something himself than wait around and be held back by the restrictive schedules and costly price tags of others. As Slakah spoke with DX Next he shared about his decision to release his debut album overseas before releasing it at home, his wide array of talents, his two digit video budget and more.
Called By Name: “When I was younger I was kinda the ‘slakah’ ...slacker so I got that nickname. As I started getting inspired by music that name actually transformed and a buddy of my named Shad said, ‘The new definition of your name is because you’re so ill you’re not even trying yet so we’ll call you Slakah.’ The Beatchild, when I was young and couldn’t walk my mom would sit me on the washing machine and it was this ghetto washing machine. On the spin cycle it would make a noise like a slow steady rhythm and to me that was music and I would dance to that as my mom did the laundry. My mom saw that I was actually moving on rhythm to the music so she was like, ‘Wow, this kid has rhythm! I’m gonna call him The Beatchild.’”
Mutli-Talented: “I started off doing production. When I moved to Toronto to kinda dive deeper into the music scene to get more experience and make some connections I actually interned at a recording studio, one of the best studios in Canada actually, and it was there that I learned my engineering skills and my mixing, and my recording skills; that got me really into engineering. Recently now, I’ve gotten into video directing and video editing so that’s another thing that I do. Today I just finished doing a photo-shoot and taking some pictures of Melanie Durrant ‘cause I’m doing her album so, I’m acting as a photographer; me and my friend we went out there and we did it. I play guitar and I play piano.”
The Slakah Vision: “The Slakah vision is basically letting people around the world hear music that is very hard to come by. Music that they are searching for having a hard time tryin’ to find, I wanna provide that for people. The music industry in general is saturated with a lot of music that people don’t really have a choice in hearing. For example, we may hear a particular song on the radio 20 times in a day or 20 times on TV and we might not necessarily think it’s the greatest song but we’re force-fed certain types of songs to the point where we just accept it. There’s a lot of other music out there that might not have a video or a major label backing, and a lot of that music is great music. I just want to be able to reach people with great music and that’s the mission.”
Personal Influences: “My number one influence is actually a guy from Sweden by the name of Tingsek. After him it would be Raphael Saadiq [click to read]. After Raphael, it would have to be J Dilla."
A WONDERful Approach: “One thing I always keep in mind when I’m making music is, I don’t want to deliver something that people are going to expect. Say if I’m working on a chord progression I’ll try to come up with chords and progressions that people are not going to expect however it’s still gunna feel good, and someone else who does that very well is Stevie Wonder. Lyrically as well, Stevie Wonder is another guy and his lyrics are always meaningful. I’ll listen to a Stevie Wonder song and 10 years ago I wouldn’t have thought much of it, now I’ll hear something in it, I’ll research the lyrics and he’s speaking about something so deep or so completely different than what people think he’s talking about; to me that’s really important and that’s the longevity of music.”
Ideas Documented: “I carry around with me a book. I have a journal and when something inspires me or when I get an idea I write it down. In my Blackberry I record vocal ideas ‘cause sometimes a melody might just pop into my head. Sometimes I’m walkin’ down the street and people are looking at me ‘cause I’m humming or beat-boxing into my phone but I know it can be something special in the future. When I feel really inspired to bring some of those ideas to life I usually go into the studio and whatever jumps out at me in my hook book (my journal) or my phone I’ll elaborate on it. Sometimes I might just sit at home with my guitar and I might just strum along and freestyle and something in those freestyles might stand out and I’ll build on that.”
New Album: “The official North American release date for the album was May 26th. We released it in Europe, Japan, and Australia in September of 2008.The album features Drake, who’s definitely doin’ some big things right now around the world. We got tracks from Divine Brown, who’s a Juno nominated artist – Canada’s Grammy equivalent. We got Melanie Durrant on there. We have Ibrahim who is a real soulful very talented guy from out west. We got D.O. who is a Guinness Book of World Records setting freestyle; he went for eight hours and 45 minutes and I work a lot with him too. We got a lot of features on the record and there’s more but I’m not gonna name everybody. It’s a really diverse sounding record and it flows from front to end. My goal when I made the record was to make a record that you can put on track one and let it play though and you wouldn’t have to skip any tracks. When I made the record I made several different versions of it and I would listen to it in my car for weeks. When I started to getting sick of a song that’s when I knew there was something wrong and I had to adjust that; I shouldn’t get sick of a song this quick. So, I made sure that the song order, the sound of the song, the choice of songs was something that was really good. There wasn’t a timeline; my timeline was basically just make sure that every single song is special.”
Summer Tour: “There’s a Canadian tour being set-up right now for July and heading down to the States probably end of the summer.”
If you want more [click here].
