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K-OS VibeZ

Fifteen tracks from a Canadian artist who has spent twenty-five years refusing to make the same record twice, or to play the game at all.

k-os

Kevin Brereton is from Toronto, of Trinidadian descent, and the name is an acronym for Knowledge of Self. He emerged in the late 1990s and immediately became known for two things: making genuinely genre-fluid music — hip-hop, reggae, rock, folk, all in the same album — and being publicly, persistently critical of the music industry he was working inside.

He famously pulled back from an early record deal and has spoken at length about commercialism and about the pressures placed on Black artists to perform a particular kind of authenticity. That stance cost him commercially and is the reason he is respected.

He has won multiple Juno Awards and is one of the most significant figures in Canadian music, which is a category that includes a great deal more than most international listeners know.

What to listen for

"Crabbuckit"-era material and "Man I Used To Be" are the best-known, and both are built on upright bass and live drums rather than anything resembling a standard rap beat.

"Sunday Morning" and "The Love Song" are the warmest things here.

"Crucial" and "Zambony" lean hardest into reggae, which is where his Trinidadian background and Toronto's Caribbean population meet.

"Faith Part 2" with Drake is the historically interesting one — an early appearance from a younger Toronto artist who was about to become the most commercially successful rapper alive.

"Spraying My Pen" with Saukrates and Shad is the Canadian rap summit — Shad in particular is one of the finest lyricists working in any country.

"Black Ice - Hymn For Disco" and "Superstarr Pt. Zero" are the deepest cuts, and "The Rain" the prettiest.

Go deeper

Joyful Rebellion (2004) is the album, and it is one of the best Canadian records of its decade.

Shad is the essential onward recommendation — TSOL won the Polaris Prize, and he is a genuinely great writer.

For Toronto more widely: Saukrates, Kardinal Offishall, Michie Mee and the whole pre-Drake generation built the scene that made everything after possible, and almost none of that history is internationally known.

One final note on the refusal. Artists who criticise the industry publicly tend to pay for it, and k-os has — a body of work this strong should have travelled considerably further than it did. But the records themselves benefited: nothing here sounds like it was made to satisfy anyone, and twenty-five years on that is exactly what has kept them listenable.

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