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By Ann Marie McQueen- Ottawa Sun, Canoe.ca
For Swollen Members, the most memorable Juno wasn't their first Juno win in 2000.
It's the one they just received for group of the year.
The Vancouver hip-hopsters have been taking the best hip-hop/rap band statuettes home the last three years straight. That's not to say that they've been getting a tad bored by all the praise.
But this year's Juno nod for group of the year signals the band's graduation into the big time. Their nominations for group of the year, as well as rap group of the year, for their album Monsters in the Closet, take the philosophical rappers, whose West Coast, laid-back lifestyles belie their socially combustible lyrics, out of the hip-hop ghetto and into music's mainstream.
Taking a break from their "Try and Shut Me Up" Tour (with Avril Lavigne and Gob), frontman Prevail and his other half Mad Child, with DJRob the Viking and Moka, know how important a Juno win is.
JUNO BUZZ
"A Juno is gratifying," Prevail says. "It causes a lot of buzz and stirs up a lot of industry curiosity, which we've tried to capitalize on since we first won."
With Monsters in the Closet, the band took a throwaway collection of archival B-sides and new material and set the whole package up with the single Breath accompanied by guest singer Nelly Furtado.
The stroke of genius was getting famed Canadian Spawn illustrator Todd McFarlane to do the video.
It all points to mainstream penetration for the Members, who will be performing on Sunday.
"It goes with radio," Prevail says of their TV stint. "Then as many people get to hear your music."
The next level for Swollen Members is out of the hip-hop genre they've reigned in since their first album, 2001's Bad Dreams.
Three straight years of being nominated for best hip-hop group is the kind of public acclaim that can, without meaning to, limit a group's options. The boys know they're capable of greater things.
"It's the first time in history that a rap group's been nominated in the best group category," Prevail boasts.
"It's history in the making. I hope it takes us to the next level."
To that end, Swollen Members are betting their next album will be a monster. Recording in Los Angeles, they hope that some of la-la-land's urban grit rubs off on their sound. The new product should be out this September.
Like everyone else who was invited to last year's event in St. John's, the band has many weird and wonderful memories of the Junos.
"David Usher and Glenn Lewis presented us with our first Juno," he recalls.
FORGOT AWARD
"We were so excited, we walked off the stage without the award. Glenn Lewis was still holding it. We didn't even notice until backstage when he came up, tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'here, man, you might appreciate this one day.'
"The party afterwards was in an old fishing house. Baby Blue Sound Crew was playing. The floor was bouncing so much that the people downstairs had to come upstairs and tell the DJ to lose 50 dancers or the whole group would fall through the floor and we'd be partying together."
April 03, 2003 [Canoe.ca]