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By Kieran Grant - Toronto Sun, Canoe.ca
There's working quickly, and then there's working backwards -- and Vancouver hip-hop duo Swollen Members looked as if they were doing just that when they bagged a Juno for Best Rap Recording earlier this year.
After all, the pair seemed to come out of nowhere to snatch the trophy with last year's Balance album. They didn't have a video, had -- gasp! -- only played Toronto once before, and had a name that was unfamiliar to all but a small section of underground hip-hop heads.
Eyebrows were raised, some feathers ruffled, then, in a one-two punch, Swollen Members scored a sizable hit with their Lady Venom video and single before issuing their second full-length, the break-out success Bad Dreams, last month.
Still, the rise of Swollen Members principals Mad Child and Prevail -- playing night two of Edge102's Electric Christmas at Kool Haus tomorrow night with Bif Naked, Joydrop, and Mudmen -- isn't quite the Cinderella story it appears to be.
In fact, with the band already established in cities such as San Francisco, London, Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney, Canada is just catching up with them.
"We hadn't had a lot of opportunities to come out here," says Prevail, taking time out from Swollen Members' current Ontario jaunt for a chat earlier this week.
"The exposure was a little low even though we had things in motion. Then three things happened: The Juno was one of them, the video for Lady Venom, and the track getting spin on alternative rock stations on the radio. It was a snowball effect."
Says Mad Child: "We understood the controversy of our Juno win -- we're not going to apologize for it. The best thing about it was we got to watch it at home with our families and it was something they could relate to."
Swollen Members may have upped the stakes for underground hip-hop, but the duo don't see the Canadian scene as particularly fragmented.
"We are definitely underground, but I don't know if that's a separate branch," Mad Child says. "Hip-hop is one culture. Good music is good music. We've never tripped on where we're from or how different we are. Boundaries have been broken all over the world. The scene is popping everywhere we go -- it's as simple as that. We've been fortunate to be embraced everywhere we've gone. I don't see a difference between Toronto and Vancouver, I just see hip-hop. You meet good people, make friends, make music, have fun. That's it."
While Swollen Members formed in their hometown of Vancouver in 1996, they come by their Stateside success honestly, having previously met in San Francisco when Mad Child was a struggling -- for a time, homeless -- MC there.
His Bay Area connections led to associations with Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Aceyalone, who were among the luminaries to guest on Balance.
They also landed Swollen Members a membership in the Rock Steady Crew collective, which also includes Dilated Peoples and The Arsonists.
Meantime, Mad Child and Prevail set up their own Battle Axe Records imprint, complete with a fluid talent roster and an in-house producer, Rob The Viking.
Bad Dreams is a more self-contained effort than Balance, erasing the notion that Swollen Members were relying on their famous friends. A two-album distribution deal with Nettwerk/EMI is in place for Canada and allows the group the rare pleasure of owning their own master tapes. They remain independent in the rest of the world.
"We are hands-on with the business end of things," Mad Child says. "Not a dollar gets spent without our approval, so we can be in a recoupable position. I've said it before and I'll say it again: We refuse to get pimped by a major corporation. But we're learning that you can do deals that are new or haven't been done in a long time. This was a perfect situation for us."
"We don't want to be limited to anything," says Prevail. "Something we've been talking about for the third album is working with some more live instrumentation, session musicians. We're always keeping our minds open."
Adds Mad Child: "The cool thing is that no one we work with adapts to us and we don't adapt to anyone else. Everyone does their own thing, which makes it what it is."
December 13, 2001 [Canoe.ca]