by RAF KATIGBAK

Bleubird is a walking contradiction. His first name's French but he doesn't speak a word. He works at a vegan restaurant but he eats meat. And as anyone who's heard his debut CD Sloppy Doctor can attest, he's one of the most positive yet bitter MCs you'll ever have the pleasure of nodding your head to. In a single line, he'll sound as political as Noam Chomsky, as dirty as 2 Live Crew and as emotionally fragile as a young girl's diary entry.

When it comes to performing, sometimes he rocks a crowd (in Germany they wouldn't let him leave the stage) and sometimes a crowd rocks him (once in Pennsylvania, he was grabbed off the stage by his feet and thrown out of a club). While his unorthodox verbal blasts and frankly cynical, abstract and sometimes silly lyrical content aren't the kind of ringtone material commercial radio is getting payola for, it has garnered him a diehard underground fanbase from South Florida (his birthplace) to Switzerland, as well as nabbing him respect, collabos and opening spots with everyone from Grand Buffet and Anticon's Alias to Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu.

Mirror: Your flow is pretty intense. How did it develop?

Bleubird: I'm pretty much a clusterfuck. Between what I'm listening to, what I'm reading, what I'm doing, it's like 100 different things. Music is a culmination of all that... it's kinda dumb to say "chaos," but that's what it is. It took a lot of trying. My first raps six years ago were horrible. They were garbage.

M: Okay gimme a taste.

B: It burns me to even say them, but it was shit like, "I'm a motherfuckin' knight in tattered armour, sound bomber, quiet stormer." It was pretty bad stuff. But I can appreciate it 'cause it was where I was comin' from at the time. I had to really work on that shit.

M: Did people call bullshit on you back then?

B: I never really ran into too much trouble. I got "white boy"-ed a lot, but that was back in the day, not that it even mattered. Now there's that whole argument like, "Oh, this is real hip hop, and that's backpacker hip hop and this is indie hip hop. I mean, I've been called "fag rap." I've been called, y' know, a whole slew of names. But I just ignored it all and kept going. That's pretty much how I formulated my style: I dove head-first into it and went all out.

M: It must be hard to keep your chin up when people are constantly buckin' you.

B: Yeah but it's just fuel for my fire. It's like they say, "Opinions are like assholes: everybody has one." I just played a show with the Shape Shifters where I got pretty much booed off the stage and got called a "cracker." But then, Percee P - the legendary rapper from the Lord Finesse days - just happened to be in the crowd and gave me a hug after the show and was like, "Those are the same people that were booing us when hip hop started." So out of this horrible situation came something that made it worthwhile. It's like they also say, "All great truths begin as blasphemy."

With Ghislain Poirier, Omnikrom, DJ Sixtoo at Main Hall on Fri., Aug. 19, 9:30 p.m., $6

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